I recall some sort of cheats disc free with NGC magazine that did the exact same thing! I was never going to unlock anything otherwise

Many players make the mistake of assuming Secret of Mana is an action RPG. It's actually pseudo-turn based, but done in such a clever way games are still copying it decades later.

You can't just mash the buttons because of the 3-second global cooldown. During this short time you have to move your character to avoid enemy attacks. It gives them a window of opportunity. Attack at less than 100% and you only do that percentage of max damage.

If this sounds familiar at all it's exactly the way the combat system works in Final Fantasy XIV as well as stablemate titles like Xenoblade Chronicles.

Mana also has some other limitations based on its time as a Nintendo PlayStation title. The game cannot for example display more than 3 enemy sprites on screen at once.

Edit: it's also pronounced 'Mar-na'. 'Manna' is a biblical term and spelt appropriately.

There's an irony in Sony putting an extra analog stick on the Vita and then only releasing 3 original titles that actually needed it for anything.

This might come as a shock but it's because the Master System was actually a better console than the NES.

Tetris Effect remains the only real justification for VR so it will be interesting to see what a sequel looks like.

@MARl0 Given their other options are an 8bit green version and an inferior N64 prequel I don't get the hate. Blue Storm is a brilliant game, and properly rock hard on the tougher difficulties.

@Ruka How does importing games from Japan affect importing games into Japan?!

@Ruka Er, these would be based in England.

I can see where they were going with the name but why oh why did they have to spell it like Conkers?

Yet another example of how gamers are just stuck in the past, unable to imagine a better future. If it's not the demise of disk based games (which was always going to happen) over much needed overhauls of digital copyright law it's things like this. It's not the 1980s anymore. It's ok to make a sequel to a dead franchise and change it.

@sdelfin Id go as far as to say that the GameCube version is on fact a port of a Dreamcast version that was never released. It remains highly likely that JSRF, Panzer Dragoon Orta, PSOe2 and other Sega games of that era were already scheduled for the console before Sega pulled the plug. Who knows what lurks in the bowels of Sega HQ?

@Jalex_64 I don’t begrudge anyone wanting a physical collection. But discs have for too long blinded the issue of digital archival.

From a business point of view it makes perfect sense. Game discs these days don’t even contain the full title, oftentimes requiring an additional download. I can slap a 40 year old NES cart in and play it; in 40 years time those servers won’t exist and the PS5 discs will just be shiny coasters.

The real issue is the lack of ownership from digital purchases. Copyright law has failed to keep up with the times. We should be able to extract game files from defunct storefronts for personal archival. Doing so hurts nobody.

Of course this could have been mitigated had Sony etc actively pushed for physical media to have a future and mandated that the base playable game should always fit on a Blu-ray. This would stop developers continuing to unoptimise file sizes and the runaway size of download installs. I’d put money on GTA6 being 200gb.

I don’t know why you wouldn’t just emulate the PS1 version. You can legally dump a Rom of a PS1 disc under the DMCA because it’s unencrypted.

The extra ‘gimmicks’ were to enable it to better compete with the mobile market which was running away with its dinner at the time.

People will say it was 3D but Nintendo’s answer to why anyone should carry a portable console with them was Streetpass which pioneered mesh networks and was its best idea.

It begins and ends with memory cards. Had they made it MicroSD sales would have been very different. But unfortunately Sony gonna Sony.

I wouldn’t be shocked to see PS6 games come on some sort of Memory Stick Duo.

If I’ve said it once I’ll say it again: somebody needs to come up with a standardised chipset they can licence to any 3rd party who wants to build a console but then offer a backend of retro roms players can buy, download and keep like a gaming version of iTunes.

If Steve Jobs could do it to the music industry, someone can do it with gaming. I mean, it’s not like the likes of EA actually do anything with their archives.

Riddle me this: why was it ok for Arcade games to charge us money for extra lives but mobile games get slated for it?

I really want to love the Evercade and had some fun with the Taito Super Pocket. But the lack of any JRPGs is a real turn-off as I need some meat to go with all those potatoes.

If they could finally get through to the Sega PR team they might let them licence a Phantasy Star collection. Square might be amicable to the old FF games.

Not that I’m a fan of McMahon but in this singular case she isn’t wrong. For one the PSP came out in the USA and the EU in 2005.

Prior handhelds were solely about gaming and MP3 players only played music. The PSP was a notable stop on the convergence road that lead to the iPhone and the App Store.

@gojiguy certainly in the arrogant American arm. 2000 was ostensibly the year of the Dreamcast but every great, creative game on the platform was coming out of Japan.

People need to get off their high horses about all this. The phone you’re reading this on was made using CNC machining. With machine paths generated by a piece of software. From a design by a human. Nobody types out CNC code anymore.

If an app designed by a human has grunt-code done by AI it really doesn’t matter at all.

That's the best collection yet! The lack of longevity on many of the titles often puts me off. I wish they'd do a Pocket with Sega and put Phantasy Star, Thor and Soleil on there.

@The_Nintendo_Expat And it's our job to prove them wrong!

If the PSP was such a failure why does every single handheld console now look like part of its lineage and not a DS? Even Nintendo went down that path.

We could even argue that the Vita was the last great portable console because everything since might be handheld but it isn't exactly something you play on the bus.

Nintendo, like Sony had to throw the kitchen sink at the 3DS (and Vita). iPhone gaming was on the rise and was massively eating into the casual audience that blew the DS up. They both had to offer developers as much creativity as possible.

Ironically their best idea was never a hardware one. Streetpass was an utterly ingenious idea to justify carrying a portable console in an age of smartphone gaming and it only bloody well worked.

(Sadly for Sony it already sealed its own fate by refusing to use MicroSD cards and I say this with love as I still carry my Vita everywhere)

Fable 2 is easily one of my favourite games of all time that I replay at least annually. I'm not a big fan of poe-faced RPGs like Dragon Age that never let the game get out of its own way so you can actually roleplay

My overriding memory is how so much of the in-game banter has become part of my household. My wife will often exclaim that the 'time is very late' even though she's never played it!

I still can't bring myself to play it on evil mode either. My conscience just won't let me.

Once I finish XVI I’m going to go back and finish every Final Fantasy title I never got around to, starting with the XIII trilogy. As I’m sick of open world titles I don’t think I’ll be as harsh on the linear parts of the first game.

@Tyaku Just like the PSP before it the 3DS is dead easy to hack. These inflated prices represent how much people desire a clamshell portable console they can just pirate all their favourite games for and chuck in a bag.

‘Portable console’ these days means either a monstrous handheld PC, the equally large Switch 2, your phone or retro handhelds of dubious construction. There isn’t anything like the 3DS, Vita or GBA around anymore.

The rising costs of the 3DS illustrate just how much money Nintendo would make it they re-released the GBA SP with USB-C charging and an online store.

An absolute classic perhaps only topped by Vice City.

I remain unconvinced that 6 will be anything other than 3 with shiner graphics.

I found Dragon Age to be an exercise in tedium, the classic BioWare staple of branching NPC conversations they could have done in one line and more cliches than the whole of Hackney.

Fable 2 on the other hand subverted all these cliches wonderfully, leaning into the skid rather than against it with a wry grin on its face. Pointless NPC banter is replaced by simple quotable soundbites. Even now my wife will exclaim that ‘the time is very late!’ when evening rolls around.

It’s the same with Forza. Yes, you could spend hours tinkering with engine stats only to confine the cars to the same old racetrack prisons they’d been driving for the last 30 years or you could say to hell with all that and let them loose on the open roads of Colorado. Forza Horizon took everything great about every good racing title on the 360 and stuck the landing.

@SegaAges Thankfully Fusion is an outlier as Pure put things back to just the way that should always have been.

I’ve been toying with making a sectional model out of concrete with working glowing chevrons for ages. This just made me want to do it more. What a fantastic idea!

@RadioHedgeFund I am of course referring to the iPhone. Android still has plenty of great games but nothing that really taxes the platform beyond F2P gatcha cash grabs and PS2 emulators.

These ‘gamer phones’ are rather silly because there is nothing to really flex them with and no exclusive Android games that are not quite simple in build.

They already did. It lets you play with the near-graphical fidelity of a PS4 and supports multiple controllers out of the box with accessibility profiles for each. It has full a persistent gamer profile that unlocks achievements as you go as well as free online multiplayer. Video-out allows you to plug it into a hotel TV for gaming on the go.

It offers near-full backwards compatibility with older hardware, keeping your purchases from as far back as 2008 available on cutting edge hardware. As well as quality ports of titles from consoles (notably PlayStation titles) it has its own huge library of platform exclusives you cannot play anywhere else or on competing handsets.

@MikeP The only 4-player as well

Fun fact: Wipeout 64 is the only game in the series playable with an analog stick. The analog controls on the various PS versions are largely all pretty pants, the games playing a lot better with the d-pad.

@KoopaTheGamer I wonder if they were perhaps meant for some sort of 3D movement given the mode 7 graphics of pilotwings at launch?

It's a shame this is all we got. The Gremlin back catalogue is full of fantastic titles. Harlequin, Zool 2, Actua Golf, Motorhead and N2O would all have been welcome. The sarcastic commentary of Peter Alice in Actua Golf was an special highlight

Here’s hoping that Nintendo port New Leaf to the Switch 2 and I never have to think about buying one again.

It’s nice to see but I fear Blaze are just porting their existing Superpocket games instead of signing new deals.

I’m sure we’d all love some sort of Sega collection and they’ve been shown to be quite generous at throwing around their old ROMs in the past.

Doesn’t have to be a full Konami collection, just a port of Symphony of the Night. That’s it.

The absolute dream would be Squaresoft but that will never happen.

Sega. Anything remotely Sega.

A Master System collection with Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, Wonderboy 3, Psycho Fox, Zillion, Golvellius: Valley of Doom and Action Fighter.

A collection of Phantasy Star 1-4

A Mega Drive collection of Story of Thor, Soleil, Dynamite Headdy, Ristar, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage 2, Eternal Champions and Columns.

I’d argue this is the superior collection on the strength of TLR alone. Of the original trilogy 1 is clunky as heck and 3 is far too hard. 2 is the right mix of tombs and action movie.

TLR brought it back to puzzle solving but also allows for back tracking and more exploration. Plus it has the cool train level. I’d argue it’s the purest expression of Tomb Raider.

Chronicles is a nice experiment into episodic gaming years before the internet made it a reality.

I look forward to it! My son dislikes football and doesn’t get on with FIFA yet loves to play me at SWOS. That single-button control method is a masterpiece in games design.

Whenever I have to teach about software accessibility SWOS vs FIFA is the first example I pull out of the hat. FIFA largely overcomplicates what should be a fairly straightforward genre. Even on its single button control mode you’re waiting what seems like an age for the player animations to finish to do anything.

The N-Gage QD should have been the launch device really. By then games like Ashen, Pocket Kingdoms, Pathway to Glory and ‘best video game title ever’ Glimmeratii really came into their own. FPS Ashen was the killer app IMO with decent controls (if you played Goldeneye) and multiplayer.

Sadly the PSP and DS were always going to kill it.

I thought Croc had already been announced?

So, does this mean I could play PSO again?!

Let’s be honest: if enough people can show interest in a bag of old balls like Croc then anything is possible.

The basis of nearly all modern games is the ability to break out from behind cover in a sideways motion and shoot your enemy.

Therefore the answer is Space Invaders.