I can definitely see myself grabbing this. I bought the physical NES carts from Limited Run a few years ago, which I regret. The carts don't work on my RetroUSB AVS and it's a little bit of a hassle to connect my OG NES, so I don't get much use out of them.
But what I've played of them has been pretty cool, and a nice tidy ROM collection on a portable console would be a better way to enjoy them.
Honestly, if the best that "official" attempts to preserve this media can accomplish is to lock them up in a building for nobody to see, then there isn't any point in preserving any of it at all.
As ever, the real work of preservation will be left to the emulation community. Say what you will about the legality or morality, but it's literally the only way.
@RetroGames Definitely an enthusiast-level device, although I'd argue the "regular" Pocket already was so this revision is aimed at a niche within a niche.
I could see myself considering one of these if I didn't already own a Pocket, but the metal shell isn't enough of an upgrade to swallow that price. The OG unit already felt pretty luxe.
I also have a lot of ongoing reservations about Analogue as a company. After a strong start with their earlier consoles (I adore the Mega SG and Super NT), they've become concerningly evasive and consumer-unfriendly. And while the Pocket has turned into a really nice device, that's owed largely to fantastic support from external developers doing amazing things with that second FPGA. Analogue's own support has been slow and, in my opinion, inadequate. I'd honestly be hesitant to ever buy anything from them again, which makes me sad to say after being such a fan of their earlier hardware.
Very cool fan project! It's always nice to see this game getting appreciated because it's a classic and had some really fun ideas.
I bought a copy of this after EGM gave it a pretty decent review back in the day. We were a Genesis household, and I was desperately craving a Zelda-like.
Stupidly, I sold it on eBay a few years later. I was in school and was just scrounging money where I could. Made sense at the time but when it comes to collecting, this is easily the dumbest thing I've ever done. This was before the price skyrocketed so I probably only got like $50-60 for it. A loose cart is 10 times that nowadays, so unless I'm feeling really splurgy someday, this will forever be a hole in my collection.
Yeah, this is sketchy as all hell and requires more than a few pinches of salt until they show it in action, which will never happen. Just look at those ridiculous "renders"! I wouldn't trust this team to design the shell, much less the guts inside.
The bit about Sega is just headline bait. These guys fired off an email (if they're even being that honest) knowing it wouldn't get a response so that they could disingenuously suggest there was some kind of actual discussion going on. There isn't. There won't be.
This "project" will vanish into the ether as soon as it gets the chance to bilk some gullible crowdfunders out of their cash. No matter how many scams like this come and go, there's always another herd of lemmings lining up for the cliff.
For me, this would be worth buying even it were just MvC2.
I'm not an avid fighting game fan. I'm just there to have fun. And MvC2 is easily the most fun I've ever had with a 2D fighter. Can't wait to have it on Switch.
The name is definitely confusing, as is Udon's suggestion that the word "pi" just suggests any generic SBC. In principle, a name change would be wise. But I'm also not sure it matters for something like this. This isn't a mass-market consumer grade product.
The kinds of people that are out there looking for MiSTer FPGA alternatives are enthusiasts that do their research. It's not like grandma is going to buy some kid the wrong one for Christmas.
I feel like my issue here isn't the USB stick or even the quality of the USB stick. It's that this particular item underscores the absurdity of "archival physical copies" for certain kinds of media. You archive a digital file by saving it and backing it up, not by putting it on its own little physical flash drive and stuffing it into a box.
You really want a Switch cart because it makes your collection pretty? Have at it. But if you're playing this on PC, there is literally no reason to buy a "physical" version of the game. It's wasteful and the DRM-free file on that drive could have been just as easily downloaded to provide literally the same experience. You can copy that file and back it up to your heart's content — it's not going anywhere.
People have gone too far with the physical media obsession. And LRG is becoming a really sad company.
"Emotion Engine" always just seemed like a natural counterpoint to Sega's "It's Thinking" campaign for the Dreamcast.
This kind of stuff is always nonsense. Another point in a very long line of console makers making silly claims for the sake of marketing.
Although regardless of what cutesy name they gave it, at least this was an era in which new console generations felt like actual improvements over the prior ones. Nowadays, we still get the rose-tinted marketing and overhyped promises but the games barely look or play different than the previous generation.
This is all super exciting. I've been itching to build a MiSTer, but I'll keep my ear to the ground about this alternative.
As a side note, while Udon's assessment of Analogue's products is correct, I actually preferred them when they were single-purpose. The Pocket has finally grown into its skin, due almost entirely to the efforts of external developers rather than Analogue itself. But it still feels half-baked to me compared to the comparatively simple but excellent Mega SG and Super NT that will forever be gems in my hardware collection. They were products that did one thing extremely well, and I think there's a lot of value in that.
I'll definitely be grabbing one of these when it's available. Mine is still working, but I don't know how long that will be true and it sounds like this is genuinely well made. Even RetroRGB gave it a nod, and he's usually pretty wary of aftermarket PSUs.
The hangup about hints and cheat codes is especially bizarre since discovering those secrets was such an essential part of gaming culture back then. I was always on the lookout for those bits of information, whether it be from magazines or just passed around by word of mouth.
The slow trickle of hints and tips gave games very long tails in that era. You didn't buy games and polish them off in a week. They were played for months, and often left unfinished due to their frequently brutal diffiuclty. If anything, hints and tips kept the games relevant and increased their value. They made me eager to go home and try those tricks and to see and do things I hadn't been able to do before. This culture was so widespread and intense that all these years later, I know tips and tricks for games I didn't even own at the time!
My digital library is meticulously organized and backed up. Movies, music, games, photographs... Hell, my current PC is still home to high school homework assignments done on a Windows 3.1 PC back in the mid-90s! I back everything up locally to labeled hard drives at least once a month or after a major change, as well as to the cloud using iDrive. And when I migrate to a new machine, literally everything comes along for the ride.
Which, to your point, is a lot of work compared to keeping some LPs on a shelf
@-wc- Yeah, also agreed. I'm not a big vinyl guy, but I get why people like it for analog music. I do also appreciate the extras like cover art and wahtnot.
But for archival purposes, it seems that the ideal way to archive chip music is digitally. It has the potential to be 100% accurate and can be infinitely reproduced with zero loss.
Honestly, with chiptunes the biggest obstacle to accuracy is the hardware used to play it, because the data itself stands a very good chance of being flawless.
This is all really unfortunate. I hope LRG responds clearly and gets its act together, but they've shown little intention to do so.
That said... I do not understand the idea of purchasing chip tunes on vinyl. Say what you will about vinyl when it comes to analog music, but there isn't even a valid argument to be made that this is the intended way to listen to music specifically written to be generated by a chip and pumped directly to speakers.
I'm not even a big Godzilla fan, but Godzilla Minus One was astonishing. It wasn't just good or enjoyable or fun, although it was certainly those things. It felt real and powerful. I left the theater feeling like I had watched something important.
Nice. Always good to have more FPGA NES clones out there since Analogue has discontinued theirs.
I have a Retro AVS and absolutely love it. I have yet to run into an emulation issue, and it works perfectly with an Everdrive. It's a high quality product despite the rinky-dink webpage you order them from.
This might be a nice alternative if I needed the additional outputs, but I'm good with HDMI only.
@Steel76 Different strokes and all, but I love having the two markets merged. I loved the GB, GBA, DS, and 3DS, for sure. But portable gaming had been losing its identity anyway as devices started delivering increasingly "console-like" experiences, and the competition from tablets and phones makes it harder to sell a dedicated hand-held gaming device.
And given that the Switch has been an unmitigated success for Nintendo, I don't imagine they have plans to rock this boat any time soon.
I find projects like this technically interesting, but don't love the idea of "fixing" the music from older games.
One of the pleasures of classic console gaming is the unique fingerprint that the hardware left on its software. The sights and sounds of a SNES game were fundamentally different than the sights and sounds of a game — even the exact same game — running on Genesis.
Again, super cool as a tech demo. But once you start robbing these games of those hardware signatures, what's the point of running the software on that hardware to begin with?
Despite being a Sega fan in general, this is a console I really have yet to explore. I loved my Genesis, but then I went off to school and kind of just missed the entire 5th generation. Studying and parties played a role, but so did the fact that it was a golden era for PC gaming and our dorm was wired like one big LAN.
It was eventually the Dreamcast that pulled me back in to console gaming again.
One day I need to find an old Saturn to mod and give it a shot.
Baldur's Gate 3 may be a brilliant game, but the notion that it has not one but TWO characters deemed more "iconic" than pretty much any major character from the Super Mario franchise is preposterous.
I'd argue that any run-of-the-mill Goomba is more globally recognizable than Astarion.
I mean, that's definitely in keeping with the sense of humor of the game. Hard to be that upset about it, especially when Sega of America was busy ***** all over Nintendo in official commercials.
The first game was completely mis-marketed in the US with that dull sci-fi box art that didn't even hint at the goofball spirit of what was inside. And Battle Mania 2, which never saw release outside of Japan, is among the best shooters on the console.
I'd love to see the pair of them re-released at some point. I'd leap at the chance to buy actual cartridges, but at the very least they need to be added to NSO. They're lost classics and deserve some modern appreciation.
I'll be booting this up tonight to check out that little Easter Egg!
Final Fantasy 4, 5, and 6 represent a remarkable hat-trick. The kind of talent and vision on display across those three titles borders on supernatural, and decades later it still boggles the mind to see what they accomplished on the hardware.
But if I could only play one of them for the rest of my life, it would be Final Fantasy 6. It's a masterpiece and the series would never again know such heights. (FF9 probably comes the closest, though)
I first played it with a friend the summer before college. Since then, I've played through it several times and in several different forms. Most recently, I enjoyed the Pixel Remaster just a few months ago. I expect I'll continue to revisit it every now and then for the rest of my life.
It's certainly one of the most important games of all time, and it remains immensely enjoyable today.
But I think efforts to declare the "best game" of all time are silly. There's far too much variety in gaming (or any form of media, really) to funnel it all down like this. How do you even compare a game like OoT to something like Tetris? Or Pac-Man? Or Disco Elysium? Games can be great in such starkly different ways.
It's not just apples and oranges. It's apples, oranges, dragonflies, clarinets, and motorcycles.
I bought an Anbernic Nano for the novelty of it. It's a neat little thing (and looks awesome in red) but I can't say I use it much.
Still, it's cool to see all these different devices out there. It's really made it easy for retro gamers across the spectrum from dabbling to enthusiast to get exactly what they need at a fair price.
Interesting! I'd argue that Daedalian Opus already made use of a very similar concept on GameBoy. Not exactly the same, of course. It has more discrete tangram-style puzzles each with a definitive win state, and the pieces are pentaminos rather than tetraminos, but it retains the core idea of maximizing coverage of a space with Tetris-style blocks.
I feel like Bloodlines and Contra: Hard Corps represent an alternate universe of Konami games where the developers felt a little more free to let down their hair and get weird.
Each of them is one of the best games in their respective franchises, in my opinion. They make fantastic use of Sega's hardware and it's great to see them getting more respect in recent years than they did upon release.
Hard to argue with anything here, but the hair-splitter in me just doesn't see the Switch or the Steam Deck as portables.
I know that they are in the literal sense, but they've been so successful in breaking down the walls between portable and console/PC that I think they've created a new classification entirely.
I guess I just think there's a difference between portable hardware and an inherently portable platform.
@wiiware Yeah. In fairness, most of my gaming on Pocket is by way of FPGA cores now. But I'm the kind of weirdo that would still prefer to play a game on cartridge if I own it.
It would be great to be able to do things like re-map start and select in the Gameboy Zelda games, for instance. My old-ass thumbs don't like bending down to hit those little buttons anymore
I was really hoping to see button remapping in one of these updates. Such an obvious thing for any modern console to include.
Still, it's nice to see this thing finally approaching feature-complete status 2 years after launching. Looking forward to the FPGA Lynx cores when they finally arrive.
Thank god for all the independent developers doing such amazing work on Pocket. Meanwhile it's more than 2 years post launch and Analogue hasn't been able to get Lynx support out the door on its own hardware.
@PKDuckman Whoa, Nelly! You're being extremely defensive and I'm not sure why. I'm not anti-Xbox. I own a Series S and do not own a PS5. GamePass is fantastic. But the situation is what it is. XBox is clearly flailing and throwing all manner of things at the wall in the hopes that some of it sticks.
I don't think that Sony bringing some titles to PC has the same impact on the console industry as MS bringing their games to Playstation. Obviously there's some crossover, but PC is kind of its own animal. If we were seeing a game like Horizon on Xbox, then you'd have a fair point.
We get it. You love XBox and dislike Sony. And that's fine! Game how you want — I certainly do. But nothing you've written even pretends to explain why Sony has been absolutely cleaning XBox's clock this generation. And make no mistake, they are.
If it's not exclusives, what are you suggesting that it is? What is Sony doing that MS isn't? And what can MS do to fix the problem?
Gorgeous. That case is perfection! I kept my OG Dreamcast preserved as-is, but did build a second one with a MODE.
This kind of project would be too big for me, but I'd love to have a mini-DC one day. Although I'd prefer an option that doesn't involve cannibalizing a real one.
Blackley's enthusiasm seems misplaced at best and performative at worst.
Microsoft is in an impossible position unless it finally leverages all the talent it has purchased to create some exclusives that give the brand an identity. We've long passed the point of diminishing returns on hardware specs, no matter what kind of "technological leap" XBox supposedly has in store. This is an industry with a long history of big promises that don't deliver — I'd argue the entire current generation is one — and we should expect no different here.
Sony isn't winning because its hardware is measurably better. It's winning because it has high-value exclusives, and Xbox is really foundering in that regard. Starfield launched with a whimper. Indiana Jones could be cool, I suppose? But it's still an unproven entity while Sony is luring players with established brands that they spent the entire last generation building excitement around. It's hard to make up for a full generation of missed opportunity.
The XBox brand has no rudder. And that's a real shame, not because of exhausting console war nonsense but becuase it's important for consumers that Sony has competition in the high-end console space.
I look forward to seeing what might be in store for XBox, but this week's display looked like a company trying to play-act having a plan rather than actually having one.
This is the most inexplicably long-running scam I've ever seen.
Even if this console actually existed, it's an absurd design with a tragic lineup of amateurish games. I don't understand how it ever generated any excitement at all, much less enough to continue the grift for 4 years.
And it's still going! Who is still throwing money at this?
Comments 373
Re: City Connection Announces 'RIKI 8Bit Game Collection' - A Switch Collection Of NES Homebrews
I can definitely see myself grabbing this. I bought the physical NES carts from Limited Run a few years ago, which I regret. The carts don't work on my RetroUSB AVS and it's a little bit of a hassle to connect my OG NES, so I don't get much use out of them.
But what I've played of them has been pretty cool, and a nice tidy ROM collection on a portable console would be a better way to enjoy them.
Re: New Report Highlights One Of The Major Challenges Facing Game Preservation
Honestly, if the best that "official" attempts to preserve this media can accomplish is to lock them up in a building for nobody to see, then there isn't any point in preserving any of it at all.
As ever, the real work of preservation will be left to the emulation community. Say what you will about the legality or morality, but it's literally the only way.
Re: The Next Analogue Pocket Limited Edition Is Made From Aluminum, Costs $500
@RetroGames Definitely an enthusiast-level device, although I'd argue the "regular" Pocket already was so this revision is aimed at a niche within a niche.
I could see myself considering one of these if I didn't already own a Pocket, but the metal shell isn't enough of an upgrade to swallow that price. The OG unit already felt pretty luxe.
I also have a lot of ongoing reservations about Analogue as a company. After a strong start with their earlier consoles (I adore the Mega SG and Super NT), they've become concerningly evasive and consumer-unfriendly. And while the Pocket has turned into a really nice device, that's owed largely to fantastic support from external developers doing amazing things with that second FPGA. Analogue's own support has been slow and, in my opinion, inadequate. I'd honestly be hesitant to ever buy anything from them again, which makes me sad to say after being such a fan of their earlier hardware.
Re: HD Remake Of Genesis Zelda Rival 'Soleil / Crusader Of Centy' Launches This Month
Very cool fan project! It's always nice to see this game getting appreciated because it's a classic and had some really fun ideas.
I bought a copy of this after EGM gave it a pretty decent review back in the day. We were a Genesis household, and I was desperately craving a Zelda-like.
Stupidly, I sold it on eBay a few years later. I was in school and was just scrounging money where I could. Made sense at the time but when it comes to collecting, this is easily the dumbest thing I've ever done. This was before the price skyrocketed so I probably only got like $50-60 for it. A loose cart is 10 times that nowadays, so unless I'm feeling really splurgy someday, this will forever be a hole in my collection.
Re: "We Are Waiting For A Reply From Sega" - SuperSega FPGA Console Team Talk Price, Release Date And More
Yeah, this is sketchy as all hell and requires more than a few pinches of salt until they show it in action, which will never happen. Just look at those ridiculous "renders"! I wouldn't trust this team to design the shell, much less the guts inside.
The bit about Sega is just headline bait. These guys fired off an email (if they're even being that honest) knowing it wouldn't get a response so that they could disingenuously suggest there was some kind of actual discussion going on. There isn't. There won't be.
This "project" will vanish into the ether as soon as it gets the chance to bilk some gullible crowdfunders out of their cash. No matter how many scams like this come and go, there's always another herd of lemmings lining up for the cliff.
Re: Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection Won't Include Yoshiki Okamoto's Most Hated Character
For me, this would be worth buying even it were just MvC2.
I'm not an avid fighting game fan. I'm just there to have fun. And MvC2 is easily the most fun I've ever had with a 2D fighter. Can't wait to have it on Switch.
Re: Backlash Against $99 MiSTer FPGA Clone's Name Results In Creator Offering Alternatives
The name is definitely confusing, as is Udon's suggestion that the word "pi" just suggests any generic SBC. In principle, a name change would be wise. But I'm also not sure it matters for something like this. This isn't a mass-market consumer grade product.
The kinds of people that are out there looking for MiSTer FPGA alternatives are enthusiasts that do their research. It's not like grandma is going to buy some kid the wrong one for Christmas.
Re: Limited Run's New "PC Micro Edition" Hasn't Gone Down Well With Some Fans
I feel like my issue here isn't the USB stick or even the quality of the USB stick. It's that this particular item underscores the absurdity of "archival physical copies" for certain kinds of media. You archive a digital file by saving it and backing it up, not by putting it on its own little physical flash drive and stuffing it into a box.
You really want a Switch cart because it makes your collection pretty? Have at it. But if you're playing this on PC, there is literally no reason to buy a "physical" version of the game. It's wasteful and the DRM-free file on that drive could have been just as easily downloaded to provide literally the same experience. You can copy that file and back it up to your heart's content — it's not going anywhere.
People have gone too far with the physical media obsession. And LRG is becoming a really sad company.
Re: Modern Vintage Gamer Digs Into The PS2's Much-Hyped "Emotion Engine"
"Emotion Engine" always just seemed like a natural counterpoint to Sega's "It's Thinking" campaign for the Dreamcast.
This kind of stuff is always nonsense. Another point in a very long line of console makers making silly claims for the sake of marketing.
Although regardless of what cutesy name they gave it, at least this was an era in which new console generations felt like actual improvements over the prior ones. Nowadays, we still get the rose-tinted marketing and overhyped promises but the games barely look or play different than the previous generation.
Re: StreetPass Fans, Take Note - NetPass Resurrects One Of The 3DS' Best Features
I hacked a 3DS a few months back so I'm looking forward to messing around with this a bit.
Re: Meet The Man Behind The $99 MiSTer Clone That's Changing FPGA Gaming Forever
This is all super exciting. I've been itching to build a MiSTer, but I'll keep my ear to the ground about this alternative.
As a side note, while Udon's assessment of Analogue's products is correct, I actually preferred them when they were single-purpose. The Pocket has finally grown into its skin, due almost entirely to the efforts of external developers rather than Analogue itself. But it still feels half-baked to me compared to the comparatively simple but excellent Mega SG and Super NT that will forever be gems in my hardware collection. They were products that did one thing extremely well, and I think there's a lot of value in that.
Re: 8BitDo Just Dramatically Expanded Its Keyboard Range
Man, I've wanted a LED calculator for ages. This fits the bill, and having it double as a numpad is a nice perk.
Re: Hands On: Mind-Blowing NES Shmup Chouyoku Senki Estique Just Keeps Getting Better
I hope they sell the ROM as well. I'm a little wary of buying cartridges nowadays unless I really trust the manufacturer to make them correctly.
Assuming they do, I'm looking forward to playing this once it's released.
Re: This Dreamcast PSU Is The Only One You'll Ever Need, But It Costs As Much As The Console Itself
I'll definitely be grabbing one of these when it's available. Mine is still working, but I don't know how long that will be true and it sounds like this is genuinely well made. Even RetroRGB gave it a nod, and he's usually pretty wary of aftermarket PSUs.
Re: Once Upon A Time, Konami And Namco Didn't Want People To Share Reviews Or Cheat Codes
The hangup about hints and cheat codes is especially bizarre since discovering those secrets was such an essential part of gaming culture back then. I was always on the lookout for those bits of information, whether it be from magazines or just passed around by word of mouth.
The slow trickle of hints and tips gave games very long tails in that era. You didn't buy games and polish them off in a week. They were played for months, and often left unfinished due to their frequently brutal diffiuclty. If anything, hints and tips kept the games relevant and increased their value. They made me eager to go home and try those tricks and to see and do things I hadn't been able to do before. This culture was so widespread and intense that all these years later, I know tips and tricks for games I didn't even own at the time!
Re: Workshop Of Retro Modder And Engineer Voultar Has Been "Ransacked"
Things honestly don't look "destroyed" so much as "on the floor."
Vandalism or not, it's hard to imagine this would be that expensive to fix, much less a business-ending catastrophe.
Re: Limited Run Under Fire For "Horrible" Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vinyl Release
@-wc- Ha. I hear that.
My digital library is meticulously organized and backed up. Movies, music, games, photographs... Hell, my current PC is still home to high school homework assignments done on a Windows 3.1 PC back in the mid-90s! I back everything up locally to labeled hard drives at least once a month or after a major change, as well as to the cloud using iDrive. And when I migrate to a new machine, literally everything comes along for the ride.
Which, to your point, is a lot of work compared to keeping some LPs on a shelf
Re: Limited Run Under Fire For "Horrible" Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vinyl Release
@-wc- Yeah, also agreed. I'm not a big vinyl guy, but I get why people like it for analog music. I do also appreciate the extras like cover art and wahtnot.
But for archival purposes, it seems that the ideal way to archive chip music is digitally. It has the potential to be 100% accurate and can be infinitely reproduced with zero loss.
Honestly, with chiptunes the biggest obstacle to accuracy is the hardware used to play it, because the data itself stands a very good chance of being flawless.
Re: Limited Run Under Fire For "Horrible" Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vinyl Release
This is all really unfortunate. I hope LRG responds clearly and gets its act together, but they've shown little intention to do so.
That said... I do not understand the idea of purchasing chip tunes on vinyl. Say what you will about vinyl when it comes to analog music, but there isn't even a valid argument to be made that this is the intended way to listen to music specifically written to be generated by a chip and pumped directly to speakers.
Re: Seems Like Godzilla Minus One's Director Worked On Star Fox's Puppets
What a fun connection!
I'm not even a big Godzilla fan, but Godzilla Minus One was astonishing. It wasn't just good or enjoyable or fun, although it was certainly those things. It felt real and powerful. I left the theater feeling like I had watched something important.
Re: This NES Clone Has RGB, S-Video And HDMI Output
Nice. Always good to have more FPGA NES clones out there since Analogue has discontinued theirs.
I have a Retro AVS and absolutely love it. I have yet to run into an emulation issue, and it works perfectly with an Everdrive. It's a high quality product despite the rinky-dink webpage you order them from.
This might be a nice alternative if I needed the additional outputs, but I'm good with HDMI only.
Re: Flashback: The Nintendo NX Leak That (Almost) Fooled The World
@Steel76 Different strokes and all, but I love having the two markets merged. I loved the GB, GBA, DS, and 3DS, for sure. But portable gaming had been losing its identity anyway as devices started delivering increasingly "console-like" experiences, and the competition from tablets and phones makes it harder to sell a dedicated hand-held gaming device.
And given that the Switch has been an unmitigated success for Nintendo, I don't imagine they have plans to rock this boat any time soon.
Re: Super Rare Taiwanese Mega Man Bootleg 'Zook Hero 3' Has Finally Been Dumped
@Poodlestargenerica Yes, that part of the "everything else you said."
I appreciate you expanding on the thought, though! It did a good job of confirming that it is most definitely nonsense.
Re: Super Rare Taiwanese Mega Man Bootleg 'Zook Hero 3' Has Finally Been Dumped
@Poodlestargenerica What a silly comment.
It's fine to not like the series. Everything else you said is nonsense.
Re: Someone Has Finally "Fixed" The Mega Drive's Audio Shortcomings
I find projects like this technically interesting, but don't love the idea of "fixing" the music from older games.
One of the pleasures of classic console gaming is the unique fingerprint that the hardware left on its software. The sights and sounds of a SNES game were fundamentally different than the sights and sounds of a game — even the exact same game — running on Genesis.
Again, super cool as a tech demo. But once you start robbing these games of those hardware signatures, what's the point of running the software on that hardware to begin with?
Re: Daiva Tried To End Format Wars Once And For All, But Almost Killed Its Creator In The Process
This is awesome. Great article.
Sometimes I miss the golden age of passwords before save games. They allowed a whole playground subculture of code-sharing and secrets.
And a few years ago I was playing through Demon's Crest on my Super NT, and appreciated the ability to pick up playing my game on Switch.
Re: New Book Aims To Celebrate Saturn, Sega's Beloved 32-Bit Console
Despite being a Sega fan in general, this is a console I really have yet to explore. I loved my Genesis, but then I went off to school and kind of just missed the entire 5th generation. Studying and parties played a role, but so did the fact that it was a golden era for PC gaming and our dorm was wired like one big LAN.
It was eventually the Dreamcast that pulled me back in to console gaming again.
One day I need to find an old Saturn to mod and give it a shot.
Re: This $500 Game Boy-Style Handheld Is All About Bitcoin
Cryptocurrency exists primarily to prove that "there's a sucker born every minute" was a spectacular underestimate.
Re: BAFTA Poll Declares Lara Croft The Most Iconic Video Game Character
Baldur's Gate 3 may be a brilliant game, but the notion that it has not one but TWO characters deemed more "iconic" than pretty much any major character from the Super Mario franchise is preposterous.
I'd argue that any run-of-the-mill Goomba is more globally recognizable than Astarion.
Re: Random: Did You Know About This Not-So-Subtle Nintendo Dig Hidden Inside 'Battle Mania'?
I mean, that's definitely in keeping with the sense of humor of the game. Hard to be that upset about it, especially when Sega of America was busy ***** all over Nintendo in official commercials.
The first game was completely mis-marketed in the US with that dull sci-fi box art that didn't even hint at the goofball spirit of what was inside. And Battle Mania 2, which never saw release outside of Japan, is among the best shooters on the console.
I'd love to see the pair of them re-released at some point. I'd leap at the chance to buy actual cartridges, but at the very least they need to be added to NSO. They're lost classics and deserve some modern appreciation.
I'll be booting this up tonight to check out that little Easter Egg!
Re: Anniversary: Final Fantasy VI Is 30 Years Old
Final Fantasy 4, 5, and 6 represent a remarkable hat-trick. The kind of talent and vision on display across those three titles borders on supernatural, and decades later it still boggles the mind to see what they accomplished on the hardware.
But if I could only play one of them for the rest of my life, it would be Final Fantasy 6. It's a masterpiece and the series would never again know such heights. (FF9 probably comes the closest, though)
I first played it with a friend the summer before college. Since then, I've played through it several times and in several different forms. Most recently, I enjoyed the Pixel Remaster just a few months ago. I expect I'll continue to revisit it every now and then for the rest of my life.
Re: Game Informer Readers Label Ocarina Of Time "The Greatest Game Of All Time"
It's certainly one of the most important games of all time, and it remains immensely enjoyable today.
But I think efforts to declare the "best game" of all time are silly. There's far too much variety in gaming (or any form of media, really) to funnel it all down like this. How do you even compare a game like OoT to something like Tetris? Or Pac-Man? Or Disco Elysium? Games can be great in such starkly different ways.
It's not just apples and oranges. It's apples, oranges, dragonflies, clarinets, and motorcycles.
Re: Lucas Pope Made Playdate Classic 'Mars After Midnight' For His Kids, Not Money
You can always count on something creative and interesting from Lucas Pope. Just downloaded this today and looking forward to giving it a go!
Re: Analogue Pocket Is Getting A Game Boy Micro-Style FPGA-Based Handheld Rival
I bought an Anbernic Nano for the novelty of it. It's a neat little thing (and looks awesome in red) but I can't say I use it much.
Still, it's cool to see all these different devices out there. It's really made it easy for retro gamers across the spectrum from dabbling to enthusiast to get exactly what they need at a fair price.
Re: Lost Tetris Sequel 'Tetris Reversed' Shown Off For The First Time Ever
Interesting! I'd argue that Daedalian Opus already made use of a very similar concept on GameBoy. Not exactly the same, of course. It has more discrete tangram-style puzzles each with a definitive win state, and the pieces are pentaminos rather than tetraminos, but it retains the core idea of maximizing coverage of a space with Tetris-style blocks.
Re: Anniversary: Castlevania: Bloodlines Is 30 Years Old
I feel like Bloodlines and Contra: Hard Corps represent an alternate universe of Konami games where the developers felt a little more free to let down their hair and get weird.
Each of them is one of the best games in their respective franchises, in my opinion. They make fantastic use of Sega's hardware and it's great to see them getting more respect in recent years than they did upon release.
Re: Best Handheld Consoles Of All Time, Ranked By You
Hard to argue with anything here, but the hair-splitter in me just doesn't see the Switch or the Steam Deck as portables.
I know that they are in the literal sense, but they've been so successful in breaking down the walls between portable and console/PC that I think they've created a new classification entirely.
I guess I just think there's a difference between portable hardware and an inherently portable platform.
Re: Arcade Archives' Nintendo eShop World Record Might Be Unbeatable
I'm not entirely sure what the record is, but good job Hamster!
Re: Analogue Pocket Firmware Update 2.2 Now Available
@wiiware Yeah. In fairness, most of my gaming on Pocket is by way of FPGA cores now. But I'm the kind of weirdo that would still prefer to play a game on cartridge if I own it.
It would be great to be able to do things like re-map start and select in the Gameboy Zelda games, for instance. My old-ass thumbs don't like bending down to hit those little buttons anymore
Re: Analogue Pocket Firmware Update 2.2 Now Available
@wiiware It only has button mapping when playing FPGA cores.
Inexplicably, they haven't implemented it for cartridge games.
Re: Analogue Pocket Firmware Update 2.2 Now Available
I was really hoping to see button remapping in one of these updates. Such an obvious thing for any modern console to include.
Still, it's nice to see this thing finally approaching feature-complete status 2 years after launching. Looking forward to the FPGA Lynx cores when they finally arrive.
Re: Analogue Pocket Firmware Update 2.2 Now Available
@Poodlestargenerica Which is kind of exactly their point.
If they only have, say, Lynx carts...
Re: Japan Is Getting A Virtual-On Pedometer, Because Why Not
Still waiting for a Dynamite Cop heart rate monitor, myself.
Re: Japanese Retro Arcade That Took 10 Years To Build Goes Up In Flames
What a heartbreaking story. I hope the owner is able to find some way to rebuild, both literally and figuratively.
Re: Analogue Pocket And MiSTer Now Have A Vectrex FPGA Core
Oh wow. This is an awesome addition.
Thank god for all the independent developers doing such amazing work on Pocket. Meanwhile it's more than 2 years post launch and Analogue hasn't been able to get Lynx support out the door on its own hardware.
Re: "Feels Like 2000 Again!" - Father Of Xbox Wades In On Microsoft's Multiplatform Hoo-Ha
@PKDuckman Whoa, Nelly! You're being extremely defensive and I'm not sure why. I'm not anti-Xbox. I own a Series S and do not own a PS5. GamePass is fantastic. But the situation is what it is. XBox is clearly flailing and throwing all manner of things at the wall in the hopes that some of it sticks.
I don't think that Sony bringing some titles to PC has the same impact on the console industry as MS bringing their games to Playstation. Obviously there's some crossover, but PC is kind of its own animal. If we were seeing a game like Horizon on Xbox, then you'd have a fair point.
We get it. You love XBox and dislike Sony. And that's fine! Game how you want — I certainly do. But nothing you've written even pretends to explain why Sony has been absolutely cleaning XBox's clock this generation. And make no mistake, they are.
If it's not exclusives, what are you suggesting that it is? What is Sony doing that MS isn't? And what can MS do to fix the problem?
Re: Check Out Dreamblade, An Awesome 'Dreamcast Mini' Mod
Gorgeous. That case is perfection! I kept my OG Dreamcast preserved as-is, but did build a second one with a MODE.
This kind of project would be too big for me, but I'd love to have a mini-DC one day. Although I'd prefer an option that doesn't involve cannibalizing a real one.
Re: "Feels Like 2000 Again!" - Father Of Xbox Wades In On Microsoft's Multiplatform Hoo-Ha
Blackley's enthusiasm seems misplaced at best and performative at worst.
Microsoft is in an impossible position unless it finally leverages all the talent it has purchased to create some exclusives that give the brand an identity. We've long passed the point of diminishing returns on hardware specs, no matter what kind of "technological leap" XBox supposedly has in store. This is an industry with a long history of big promises that don't deliver — I'd argue the entire current generation is one — and we should expect no different here.
Sony isn't winning because its hardware is measurably better. It's winning because it has high-value exclusives, and Xbox is really foundering in that regard. Starfield launched with a whimper. Indiana Jones could be cool, I suppose? But it's still an unproven entity while Sony is luring players with established brands that they spent the entire last generation building excitement around. It's hard to make up for a full generation of missed opportunity.
The XBox brand has no rudder. And that's a real shame, not because of exhausting console war nonsense but becuase it's important for consumers that Sony has competition in the high-end console space.
I look forward to seeing what might be in store for XBox, but this week's display looked like a company trying to play-act having a plan rather than actually having one.
Re: You Can Own Tommy Tallarico's House If You Have $3 Million To Spare
I don't think I've ever seen a house filled entirely with children's bedrooms before.
Re: Intellivision Names Amico Mascot, Still No Sign Of The Console
This is the most inexplicably long-running scam I've ever seen.
Even if this console actually existed, it's an absurd design with a tragic lineup of amateurish games. I don't understand how it ever generated any excitement at all, much less enough to continue the grift for 4 years.
And it's still going! Who is still throwing money at this?