Razieluigi

I love how we use the word "adult" to mean "utterly juvenile."

Pretty funny, though.

@DiacloneFx It's just that 4:3 screens aren't really a thing anymore so it's harder and more expensive to source those kinds of parts. There isn't a functional point to it. It's a practical economic decision.

I just don't understand the point of a handheld like this at all. There are just so many options now for playing these games on dozens of more versatile hardware choices in myriad form factors. Unless you're just absolutely ride-or-die with original cartridges (which I get on some level, but on a handheld where now you have to travel with bulky games?), or have a fixation on filling that space on your shelf for the Nomad your heart always wanted, I'm not sure who the market for this is.

Hm. I loved and finished the original Ecco when I was in high school, although I never got around to any of its 16-bit sequels. Also replayed the Dreamcast game a couple years ago and found it enjoyable despite its many frustrations.

It's an uneven franchise, for sure. I'd welcome a triumphant return, but this all goes in the "cautious optimism at best" box until proven otherwise.

@Broosh Interesting. I did have the stand-alone disc and remember it running like a slideshow and hanging frequently on my 360.

Maybe it just never ran well even on OG hardware and I had unfair expectations. Or maybe a bad disc?

Regardles, I'll welcome a way to play this in higher quality!

Excellent news. It's ridiculous how difficult it is to find ways to play this game, and the 360 backwards compatibility is notoriously bad for this title.

Even as a huge Dreamcast fan and someone who usually prefers an authentic controller experience when playing classic games, the DC's controller was poorly thought out at the time and has not aged gracefully in the decades since.

Nice that this is out there for those who want it, but the DC is one console where I'm going to choose comfort over authenticity. The StrikerDC referenced in the article really is the best choice today.

At this point, my retro collection is about as complete as it can possibly get. It's crazy and young me would be gobsmacked at all the gear he'd have one day. From actual carts to Everdrives, and from OG hardware to high-quality modern clones, there is hardly a game made before 2000 that I can't play any time I want in one form or another. My media console is absolutely stacked with an embarrassment of riches.

If I have a retro gaming resolution, it's to avoid checklists and backlogs and to simply get back in touch with the fun spirit of gaming from when I was younger. Not everything needs to be finished. Not everything needs to feel like a project. It's fine to just pop a game in for a while, have a good time, and then move on. Like I used to.

I'm not sure I'll ever break completely away from modern gaming. There are still good times to be had. But the landscape nowadays can get pretty unpleasant and it's wild how easy it is to forget that this is all supposed to be fun. Retro games are just much better at reminding me, and I hope 2026 is full of them.

In 1999, we were only just starting to glimpse a future in which every single movie and television show ever made didn't need to get a tie-in video game.

@Tyaku I enjoyed the 3D effect more than most, but I don't think that this says anything about people clamoring for 3D to return.

The 3DS was a fantastic console with a killer library even if you kept that slider set to zero at all times.

Pretty cool, espeically being able to obtain save data.

Although it's worth noting that the Pocket's save states are already a good way to preserve your saves since that data is included in a save state. I've experimented with a few different GB/GBA carts, and it's definitely possible in most (maybe all?) cases to restore save data to a cart by loading a save state that includes it.

@Guru_Larry Like most genres, definitions are pretty flexible and ill-defined with a lot of cross-pollination making it even harder to pin anything down.

I think "roguelite" is generally used to describe games with iterative runs through stages, often but not always randomly/procedurally generated, but in which some new abilities or perks perist into future runs to create a broader sense of progression.

By that definition, games as disparate as Vampire Survivors, Hades, Balatro, and Ball x Pit are "roguelites".

But there are no hard and fast rules with any of this stuff. Much like movies and music and any other form of media, games can mix and match all sorts of genres.

It's funny to think of an era when this genre was rare enough that the best anybody could think was to reference the only two prominent examples of it.

Nowadays, it feels like everything is a Metroidvania. Hell, even Yar's Revenge and Pac-Man have dipped into the genre.

It's definitely a cumbersome term, but it gets the point across. And proposed alternatives like "search action" aren't really any better.

This is incredible. Looking forward to digging through all this!

I don't know, but I'd kill to have an arcade accurate version of Q*bert on Switch.

@KingMike Ha. Two-directional scrolling in those pre-MMC days was a rough ride.

@Blast16 I don't know for sure, but RetroRBG reports "for older, non-x-series carts, simply use [the] latest firmware v2.13" so you may need an update but should otherwise be good?

I've never really been able to wrap my head around the controls for this one. Something always feels backwards no matter what settings I use.

But the sequel is a gem, and easily one of the best uses of the Wii controller across its entire library.

I still enjoy a "big" mass appeal game now and then. Titles like Horizon and Spider Man come to mind. But I don't have the time or energy for more than maybe one per year. The endless quests and achievements are meant to provide value, but eventually start to feel like homework constantly tugging at the to-do list portion of my brain.

Increasingly I gravitate toward retro games and the indie titles that evoke them. Play for a bit. Have fun. Stop.

SouljaBoy version when?

Oooh — love stuff like this. Will definitely have to load this onto my Everdrive and give it a look.

That's really impressive. I love the clever use of scanlines to create the impression of a multicolored Simon sprite.

That's hysterical.

It would also be quite handy since I already have a lot of DeWalt tools...

I always enjoy Retronauts episodes that feature Gipp and his humor. This should be an enjoyable read, but I do feel like the market for this kind of thing is getting a little saturated.

Or, at the very least, I need more coffee tables.

@SlangWon That's a distinction without a difference.

It looks like **** because they used AI.

Gotta get them Yoga Flame-broiled patties.

I have an X7 and use it regularly with the Analogue Pocket. It's not absolutely necessary, I suppose. But I do appreciate that it allows access to the Pocket's built in display modes since FPGA cores don't have access to those. Depending how you want GB games to look, this does require dipping into the Pocket menu before starting a game and forcing GB mode otherwise it assumes GBC. Not a huge problem, but worth noting.

As a downside, using a flash cart means you need to sacrifice any button remapping that might be available on FPGA cores since Analogue nowadays has general contempt for its customers and refuses to implement that basic feature on the Pocket.

And not that it's anybody's top reason to buy something like this, but it also helps that Kirkzz is a good guy and actually deserves the business.

@Azuris Yeah, and later they added that little grey nub to the New 3DS XL. It's a shame there weren't that many games that made use of them, and they didn't patch the function into older games as far as I know. The most absurd example is the way the stick works in Majora's Mask but not Ocarina of Time.

But it's wild to me that someone who regularly posts about retro handhelds would express confusion about why this device might have controls that weren't native to the NDS. The NDS didn't have 4 triggers either. Options and flexibility are good!

"it's a little weird that it has dual analog sticks for NDS games"

It's a little weird that he thinks that people wouldn't also use this to play non-NDS games.

Where did you learn how to shoot?

@HoyeBoye This entire headline took me a second to process!

I think referring to arcade cabinets as "arcades" is also regional. I usually think of that term as describing the location in which the cabinets are kept and played, and not the machines themselves.

If the Saturn emulation is solid, this is a really exciting device for me and would plug a glaring hole in my hardware lineup. Here's hoping...

Love both of those channels. This should be excellent.

@The_Nintendo_Pedant That would be amazing.

The G&W Galleries on GB/GBC/GBA were nice enough at the time, but the resolution wasn't remotely high enough to sell the illusion. At the very least, I'd love to see a comprehensive collection on Switch 2 that really simulates the look of the originals.

@tjhiphop Yeah, I never thought there was any controversy or confusion about this. The Wikipedia page for the game cites a Tedium article from 2017 describing exactly what is described above.

Weird that anybody thought thought he was fake, but I guess there's no issue too small to warrant an online conspiracy theory. Why in the world would Nintendo create a fake person, include his name as an Easter egg in a major release, and then circulate a nonsense story about why?

At this point, I think everybody would prefer either:

1. A collection that includes the original games in their original forms, or

2. A new game in the series.

This split-the-baby approach of spending time and resources rebuilding old games from the ground up makes no sense, financially or culturally. It just winds up being a more expensive way to please nobody.

I can't tell how much of this is translational.

Of course it makes perfect sense that the games they played in their formative years would have reflected regional tendencies at the time. Nobody should be even slightly surprised (or upset) about that.

But it actually is hard to believe that all these years later, they wouldn't have sought out some of those missed experiences. Artists and creators tend to be interested in the work of other artists and creators. So when I read a wild sentence like "I've never had the opportunity to play with a Nintendo game console" I'm inclined to think this was translated incorrectly. They may not have had the opportunity before, but they've certainly had the opportunity by now.

I mean, I'm not even a game designer and I've happily availed myself of the opportunity to play old Master System and PC Engine games that weren't popular in the US when I was a kid.

Of course, none of this detracts from what a masterpiece Expedition 33 is, regardless of its influences.

@dodgykebaab Seems an entirely fair counterpoint to Elon good, buy his product, no?

@montrayjak I appreciate some good pedantry — no worry! You're right that I should have said DPI, although since the physical size of the screen is fixed, the denominator can't change so I'd argue that they ultimately convey the same thing.

That said, regardless of how pin-sharp the lines are, they still won't glow like the phosphors of a CRT. I'm not normally a purist for this — I'm a heathen that actually prefers retro games to have nice crisp pixels on a modern OLED. But vector lines painted by an electron gun have a particular glowy magic to them. Back in the 80s, they're kind of what we thought the future was going to look like.

I'll be curious to know the resolution on the built in AMOLED. It's gonna have to be pretty high to do justice to the original's vector graphics, and even then it won't have that phosphor glow unless they try to fake it somehow.

I know it's nearly impossible to manufature a miniature CRT in 2025 at any reasonable cost so I understand the decision, but I look forward to hearing some eyes-on reviews of how well the visual experience holds up.

@PKDuckman I'm sure it's playable, but "not that bad" isn't good enough. There's just no good reason for a 2D pixel-art platformer like NGRB to be running at anything but 60 fps, even on Switch 1. The optimization must be embarrasingly bad.

Lilkewise, games like SAOV should be the ones easily running in 4K on Switch 2, so it's frustrating that there's only a lower-res Switch 1 version available.

Really wanted to get Ninja Gaiden on Switch 2, but it's pretty inexcusable that they don't have it running at a locked 60fps. They should have been able to easily clear that bar on the Switch 1 with a game like this, much less on the improved hardware.

And neither one is available native for Switch 2 which is another disappointment, although that may be Nintendo's fault for not getting dev kits out there.

Ended up grabbing Shinobi on PS5 and I look forward to giving it a spin tonight!

@Gravyc It's not the quality or compatibility of the emulation that's the issue.

Android is specifically intended to run on handheld devices. That just makes it more portable and versatile than Windows, which needs a comparatively beefy PC to run. The recent boom in emulation hardware, with quality handheld devices in dozens of sizes and layouts couldn't have happened with Windows-based emulation.

And even if Windows could run on small handheld devices, the cost of needing a Windows license for each device would become a problem real fast.

Nothing wrong with emulators written to run on Windows, mind you. You can still do some things on PC that you can't do on Android, and it's obviously meeting your needs! But once you balance in all these factors, it's not a surprise that Android (and Linux) have pretty much run away with the modern emulation scene.

Boy, you can barely even see "Don't Be Evil" in the rearview mirror anymore.

I'll always have a soft spot for this game. Sure, it's stupid difficult and barely on brand. But it looked and sounded fantastic, I appreciate that it's the only TMNT game that offers legitimately meaningful differences between the four characters, and I like how lean and mean they look compared to their more cartoon-inspired selves.

It also came out in an era when kids would happily bang their heads against these ludicrously challenging games for months on end, perfecting the earlier stages and gradually getting better at the later ones. I'm not going to pretend this is good game design, but there's still something cool about that.

I was in grad school when I finally buckled down and beat the game and it felt like a very hard-earned victory after nearly a decade of training.

@BernardMerguez Yes, I know. I was joking.

@RextheSheep That's hysterical.

In fairness, I was a massive Thundercats fan as a kid so their toy game was pretty solid.

Such a weird brand revival. Acclaim didn't really have a coherent brand identiy back in the day, they just... published stuff. Their two most common types of products were arcade ports and licensed tie-ins, neither of which is terribly relevant nowadays.

Curious to see what they announce, but I find it perplexing that anybody thought this brand carries any sway in 2025. What's next? LJN?

@Blankfrak I imagine they did this because those razor-sharp vector graphics wouldn't translate well to such a small low-resolution screen.

Although pixel-perfect arcade emulation is now easy to find, there's still some joy in seeing how hard developers worked to squeeze games into less powerful hardware. It was such a different era. There was no middleware. Everything was built from the ground up for each console. Sometimes games would even be improved in translation (does anybody prefer arcade Contra to the NES version?).

It was a time when consoles left their unique hardware fingerprints all over the software they ran. It gave consoles personality, and I'll always love that. Nowadays, we carry on about subtle differences between ports that no normal human would even detect if not for Digital Foundry slowing down the footage and pointing them out.

No shade for DF, mind you. Love their work. It's just evidence of radically different time and tech.

Oh wow. What incredible work!

Modern gamers will never know the childhood joy of just staring at video game manuals and absorbing every detail when you couldn't actually be playing them. Those old illustrations are seared into my memory and it's super cool to see them come to life like this.