They really should've gone with 2d hand drawn backgrounds for this. There's a big disconnect between backgrounds and characters now. It's like they don't exist in the same world.
It would be so much more cohesive if everything was 2d.

@Bot_Bot_69
It's "been in development" since 2014. I don't think it's coming out unfortunately.

I tried this a while back and while I do enjoy the colorful original visuals it did feel a bit amateurish in regards to the gameplay. Physics and controls felt a bit off. It also felt like they were too focused on story for a 2d Mario platformer. Like the devs were huge fans of the rpg Mario games and wanted to mix that with the platformer gameplay. I just don't think that's a very good mix.

Great article! Always fun to hear from the folks who made the games back in the day.
The SNES version of the first game is a classic for me. Such a great platformer with fun big levels to explore with huge amounts of secrets to find. Would be fun to get a retrospective on that one as well. I recall reading it got rave internal reviews from Nintendo themselves, almost reaching the levels of Super Mario World.
Never did give this one much of a try. I think I disliked not playing as Gomez like you did in the first game.

The modern light effects really clash with the retro styled visuals. Wish they'd keep it more cohesive.

This looks pretty good! I always hoped the NES Castlevanias would get 16bit versions as I preferred Super Castlevania IV to them and this seems to kinda be a half step to that.

Gotta say, it's kinda insane how many of these handhelds there are. Feels like every day there's one or more new ones coming out!

I've been hoping they'd free this from Apple Arcade jail ever since it came out on there. I think it looks fun and I love grindy games so been wanting to play it for a long time.

@ThisIsPete
This the offline version of the game with the micro transaction stuff taken out. The original non apple arcade version was a previous release on android (and maybe ios?) that was a online gacha game.

I don't recall Capcom ever making a bullet hell type shmup?

That's not the zipstick

Gotta say I've never been a fan of these "I can improve on the originals art" type of projects. You see so many of them so seems a lot of people love them, but I just want to play the original with the art by the original artists as intended.

I love seeing devs squeeze as much as possible out of lower spec hardware. And ports of games to hardware vastly inferior than the original platform like the C64 back in the day. Amazing what they were able to pull off then and it's amazing to see how much more they're able to squeeze out of the old C64 today. The new Street Fighter 2 C64 port is just insane : https://youtu.be/cQGLniOiai0

I'm not a fan of the vampire survivors style games in general (most of them are just waay too passive), but this seems like a pretty good match for the genre? I guess maybe people are pissed because there hasn't been a new actual metal slug in ages and this is what they get. Maybe if they announced a real Metal Slug at the same time people would be a little more forgiving on this one.

I like the look of it, but it does seem a bit stiff and jerky movement wise, even in the "modern" version.

Someone needs to re-release Bob's Bad Day. A great game in a similar vein that was on the Amiga.

Thanks "AI"!
And to those complaining about negativity against "AI". it's literally destroying the planet at an alarming rate and stealing art. I assume you are here because you care about video games and video games are art.
How is that not worth making noise about?

Maybe I'm the odd one, but when I see "collection" I kinda expect more than one game in the package.

Ahh yes, the number 1 requested feature for a retro gaming handheld, "ai".

I mean outside of the beautiful visuals and animation Is there that much to Broken Sword that makes it unique?
And we all know we won't get a beautifully animated hand drawn movie out of it.

I remember watching the non playable demo on a Amiga coverdisk back in the day and being so impressed. Then the game came out and it was just a janky bland platformer. It didn't even have the awesome track from the demo in it! And of course it was one of those music OR sound effects games too. But the worst part was it just didn't play well. It was janky with jittery scrolling and loose controls.

Well, they called Dolph Lundgren and asked if he was interested and the rest is history.

Looks nice,. but that sword slash sound effect has to go. Does not fit at all.

This influx of people with little to no knowledge of coding just relying on "ai" to create stuff is just stupid. Do the time to actually learn coding!
Even worse when they do it to try and get their code into open source projects like the game engine Godot. Leading to insane amounts of extra works for the main devs having to go through and check code for bugs.

This is really cool to see. A great classic game with charming characters, great music and fun puzzles.
It's amazing to think about what could have been on the older less powerful consoles.

That whole ending debacle was always just weird to me. It's like readers of a book not liking the ending and harassing and complaining to the author until he writes the ending they want. That's not how art works.

Needs a bit more contrast between the background and the player plane. It kinda all blends together.

This was always a much better look for Ryu than the S&M gettup he's been using since the Xbox days.

I could have told you this was soulless from the first snippet of gameplay we saw of it so no surprise there.

It looks nice'ish, but the combat does not look good. There's absolutely no hit reactions on enemies at all going by that second clip and a really bad sound effect too.

Looks great visually, but as always will have to wait and see how the actual game is. Looking great is the easy part.

Retroachievements are fun!
I've never been a achievement hunter, but if I like a game it can be fun to try and get some of them to get some more entertainment out of a game. It's also fun as a sort of diary of what I've done in a game.
Like at so and so date I beat 1 in Ninja Gaiden on NES without dying.
Or at so and so date I beat Resident Evil 2 on the N64 with Leon.

Is "inspired" by serous well made classic thrillers. Has cheezy fmv with acting on the level of amateur student films that in no way shape or form resembles any of those movies. Would have been better off without the fmv.

The true originator of the 3d RE style survival horror. Classics!
Such a shame that promising remake from years back got canceled: https://youtu.be/WWS9cATCSEo

@Zeebor15 I think he meant these are just old ports of the games from back in the day. It's not just roms.

This game looks very inconsistent visually. On some screenshots it looks straight up amateurish, but on others it doesn't look too bad.

This doesn't look great. Combat looks very poor with basically no hit reactions at all.

Maybe it's just me, but when I read a news story like this I want to see screens and or gameplay of the game in question, not a video of a youtuber babbling on about the whole thing for 12 minutes.

Looks very nice visually. But I've lost count of how many games look amazing but plays merely OK. So not getting my hopes up for this yet. Looking good is "easy". Playing good is hard.

That looks pretty impressive for the C64!

Why is Dana Carvey going around calling himself Mark Cerny?!

@Sherly That mod looks pretty bad visually though. It's not very accurate to the original enemy sprites at all. It just turned Duke3D to an ugly clunky n64 looking shooter.

I wish LRG concentrated more on accurate emulation as I'd love tho own these ports on steam. Especially the extended Genesis port, but if it has bad emulation it just doesn't feel worth buying.

Could be interesting as it's impossible to find new original 360 controllers now and I can't find any good unoriginal ones.

The design of Simon in the new game just does not quite fit imo. He looks too young and Disney cartoon wholesome.

If the emulation is actually great and it's the original versions of the games like stated this could be fun to have as. Unfortunately the wast majority of these type of collections have very lackluster emulation.

@metaphysician I'm pretty sure Wayward Realms is using some form of procedural generation and ai game director, not generative ai.

The original BB on the C64 is a fantastic conversion. Both it and Rainbow Islands are great on the system. So many great memories playing BB on my C64. It's the version I've played the most by far.

As someone who plays fighting games single player 99% of the time I'm VERY intrigued by this. On the wishlist it goes!

@Honkshot It just seems so cumbersome and uncomfortable to play like that on a controller, But hey if it works for folks more power to them..

As someone who played SF2 mainly with the SNES controller I've never understood the all six buttons on the face of the controller setup.
You can't hit all three kick or punch buttons at the same time to do a super attack (in games that support it) without taking your right hand off the controller and pressing your fingers on the face off it.
Not exactly convenient in the middle of a fight where every tenth of a second matters.
I understand the setup on a arcade controller because there your right hand always rest on top of the buttons.
With a SNES controller setup you have access to all the buttons at all times just by holding the controller normally.