Comments 373

Re: US RetroTINK Shipments Are Being Temporarily Suspended

Razieluigi

Weird how igniting a global trade war without any kind of plan or coherent reason can cause so many entirely predictable problems.

But at least some billionaires got even richer off the market manipulation. I hope they don't have any trouble getting a RetroTINK if they want one because it would be sad if they ever had to suffer even a moment of the slightest inconvenience.

Re: "The Biggest Art Heist In History" - Castlevania Director Takes Aim At AI

Razieluigi

This is heartbreaking stuff. Human culture is about to get drowned out by the regurgitated hallucinations of a billion computers. And people will happily buy it, feed it, and let it grow larger until there's nothing left.

Deats is right that this needs to be stopped now. It's just hard to imagine what can stop it. We'd need massive regulation implemented immediately. At least here in the United States, there's no prayer of seeing any kind of productive regulatory legislation in the forseeable future. If our shambolic joke of a government weighs in at all, it'll surely be on the side of the AI robots and the wealthy CEOs profitting off them.

Re: Here's Why The TurboGrafx-16 Is So Much Bigger Than The PC Engine

Razieluigi

@profkross I just meant that it didn't have any impact on useability. Whether it had any appreciable impact on sales, I honestly don't know. Personally, I doubt the physical appearance of the thing really mattered all that much, but there's room for reasonable people to disagree.

In the end, I think the TG-16 failed because the NES was still going really strong in 1987 and it just didn't bring enough to the table to penetrate Ninendo's cultural dominance at the time. People didn't start getting tired of the NES until at least a year or so later, at which point Sega was ready and waiting to leap into the fray with a lot more firepower than NEC.

Re: Here's Why The TurboGrafx-16 Is So Much Bigger Than The PC Engine

Razieluigi

The change in form isn't surprising given American tendencies to prefer things big and overstated. At least in this case it didn't matter much since the device ultimately sat on a shelf. But this kind of logic revealed its flaws when it came to designing handheld products like the Lynx and the XBox "Duke" that were almost comically non-ergonomic.

The name change makes perfect sense, though. Despite its lack of success, I think they got the name right. TurboGrafx-16 still sounds kind of cool to me, and I would have found "PC Engine" confusing at the time as well.

Re: AYANEO's "Small, Yet Mighty" Pocket ACE Breaks Cover

Razieluigi

Man, this is just such a crowded space now.

Nice to have all the options, but I feel like this market is going to collapse in on itself in a few more years. I don't even understand how it supports the sheer number of devices coming from Ambernic alone, much less all of its competitors.

Re: Some Fans Have Issues With Gradius Origins, And They Have A Point

Razieluigi

A comprehensive collection certainly would have been more exciting. There's enough here to be interested, but only in a "wait until it's on sale" kind of way.

I guess if your once legendary brand has been reduced to just releasing compliations of former glory, it's dangerous to release everything all at once and have nothing left to sell.

Re: A Long-Lost NES Port Of Populous Has Just Been Discovered After 33 Years

Razieluigi

This is wild.

The NES was such a forward-thinking console. The kinds of games this thing was playing at the end of its run would have been utterly unthinkable based on its initial "black box" launch.

I don't know exactly what mapper chips this cart would have been packing, but in an era of "pro" consoles, it's eye-opening to think back on a time when software was hardware, and that you could literally upgrade your console by just buying a different game.

Re: I Love The Neo Geo, But This Tiny Arcade Cabinet Is A Hard Pass

Razieluigi

Cute, I guess? But that's basically just a generic $10 digital clock/thermometer mounted in a miniature arcade cabinet.

It's the kind of thing you might see on one of those aisle tables in a department store (back when those still existed) around the holidays as a $20 stocking stuffer for desperate shoppers that have no idea what the hell to get their nephew this year.

But trying to crowdfund it at $80 a pop? You've got to be kidding.

Re: Analogue Pocket Now Supports Every Nintendo Switch Online Controller

Razieluigi

@user0 Honestly. While this is a nice update, I don't understand why they continue to ignore obvious and easy-to-implement feature requests like button mapping.

It still doesn't work with the DAC that they sold to people before quietly removing support from the list of planned Dock updates.

Analogue hit their peak with the MegaSG/SuperNT. It was still possible at that point to believe in them. The Dock is a nice piece of kit, but its strengths are mostly due to the high quality of external developer support.

At this point, they seem to be defined more by their complete disdain for their customers than anything else. I doubt I'll ever buy anything from them again. Such a shame.

Re: Today I Learned That Metal Gear Solid Roasted People Who Didn't Own A Stereo TV

Razieluigi

This is really cute, but it does make me wonder how many players routinely dig into the settings before starting a game to make sure they match their setup. Even with modern consoles letting you set master preferences, games often ignore them. I frequently have to make sure the sound settings are appropriate for my receiver and surround setup (developers seem convinced that literally everybody plays games wearing headphones now).

I'd guess the vast majority of people just connect stuff, leave everything at the default setting, and assume that's how it's supposed to be.

Re: More Than 20 Years Later, Acclaim Is Back From The Dead, And WWE Legend Jeff Jarrett Is Involved

Razieluigi

Resurrecting a brand and a logo is literally meaningless, but doing it with Acclaim is outright perplexing.

Acclaim wasn't even that great back in the day. They publshed solid ports of some popular arcade games like NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat, but it's not like they own those properties today. Otherwise, they were primarily in the business of mediocre licensed games — again, properties they don't own.

This is the weirdest kind of nostalgia play. What's next? LJN?

Re: "Might Be Time To Go Back To A Corporate Job" - Trump's Tariffs Come Into Effect

Razieluigi

@JayJ Hate to break it to you, but these tariffs are going to make food more expensive too. We don't only import electronics.

The difference between this and recent inflation is that inflation was a worldwide phenomenon resulting from the complex results of a global pandemic and supply chain disruptions while these tarrifs are just a preposterous unforced error enacted by fiat.

Re: SuperSega Back-Pedals With MiSTer FPGA, Aims For Lower Price

Razieluigi

"Sega's legal approach resulted in "about 300" of the original SuperSega units being destroyed."

And by "about 300" we mean none. Because none were ever made. At all.

Please stop reporting anything this guy says as if it's even tangentially related to something happening in reality. In fact, please stop reporting on him at all.

Re: "These Short Games Mean Nothing To Me" - Retro-Bit Translator Denies Wrongdoing In "Baffling" Rant

Razieluigi

"I started copying a lot of the dialogue directly from the Switch, just to be done once and for all."

This is genuinely wild stuff, as if simply wanting to be done with the assignment is reason enough to commit fraud. He seems to genuinely believe that it's okay to do your job only up until the point that you don't want to do it anymore, while still deserving credit (and payment) for the part that you stole.

The lack of any contrition whatsoever is remarkable.

Re: 8BitDo Has Announced The Successor To Its Ultimate Wireless Controller

Razieluigi

Interesting that they aren't announcing Switch support. Even with the Switch 2 impending, there are still a gazillion Switches out there.

I'll be really curious to see if Nintendo releases a new Pro controller for Switch 2 or if they'll just continue to offer the current model. The Pro was a solid controller but "HD Rumble" never amounted to much, and to whatever extent it was noticeable it's been pretty thoroughly outclassed by the insane haptics on the Dual Sense.

Unless they're planning a substantial upgrade, I could definitely see using one of these as my daily driver on Switch 2 (assuming support in the future).

Re: GamesCare's New Genesis Dev Cart Will Help "Create Games Beyond The Power Of The Console"

Razieluigi

Projects like this are cool, and to some extent this kind of thing was going on during the 16-bit era with advanced mappers and chips like FX and SVP. But even those enhancements were still limited by the technology at the time.

Once you're making use of an additional 30 years of technology to push this far "beyond the power of the console," I'm not sure I understand why you'd bother making your game for that console to begin with. Novelty? Programming challenge?