Sketcz

@KingMike
This is absolutely my kinda thing. Thanks for the link! I've long wondered about the GBC infrared, so look forward to going through their notes.

@Razieluigi Good points regarding the ROM thing. How mysterious.

How would one extract the SRAM from a real GB Camera? Can I do this with my Analogue Pocket? Is that a thing?

Barcode Battler Analogue Pocket Core presumably to follow soon after!

I just bought one. £27 mint condition. All 32 cards. If it was someone here, tah muchly.

The funny thing is, despite the simplicity of the screen, it has a stupidly obtuse abd complex set of mechanics beneath.

You can cast magic spells. They're not listed on screen, but in a manual, so you can look up F5 and see what it does and through a bewildering series of button presses activate one of the 10x function spells (they just augment numbers).

You can also get "passwords" from enemies. And inputting the 5 digits activates stat boosts.

And some cards have hidden strengths against others.

None of this is displayed. The reliance on the manual reminds me of Temple of Apshai on the TRS-80.

In 2025 it's archaic e-waste.

In 1992 it was outdated and crap.

In 1985 though...? If it had released much earlier, it would have been more interesting.

I do kinda love it.

Has anyone reverse engineered it? Because barcodes carry hidden parameters, based on how the official cards interact. (Hookshot item triples Link's damage against the Wart enemy card for example - how? Why?)

@HoyeBoye
It was. No one I knew liked it, yet they doubled down on pushing it.

Before it became a mandatory inclusion it sold like 6 mil I think?

What an intro! 🤣 (I think we all knew a dubious house like that...)

I've been wanting to drop the hammer on a Barcode Battler for ages now. They're about £25. But so many are missing cards.

Also... The idea is probably cooler than the reality.

I do want to play that Zelda game though.

I really like the idea behind the BCB. If it could have generated simple graphics it might have worked better.
The concept was better realised with:

1) Ultraman on N64, where GB carts and the transfer pak would generate characters

2) Monster Rancher (PS1), where CDs would generate monsters

3) Vib Ribbon (PS1), musics CDs generated levels

I'm just fascinated by the idea of other objects in the world creating the gameplay inside your game, depending on what you put in.

There was a PC game called Virus (I think?), which was supposed to create levels based on your HDD data, but it never really worked as advertised.

I guess I'm still salty about what they did to Steel Battalion.

I will never cease being amused by Kinect. I immediately thought it was a terrible idea and hated it. Everyone I interacted with online thought the same.

Wikipedia says 35 million units were sold. Why? How?! Who was buying this trash?

@slider1983
I feel the conditioning goes back much further (centuries), and is a deeply rooted part of the culture and national psyche.

Two interesting Japanese phrases are (meanings copied from online):

1) "Mono no aware"
Japanese term for the awareness of impermanence or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness or wistfulness at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.

2) "Wabi-sabi"
Centers on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. It is often described as the appreciation of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". It is prevalent in many forms of Japanese art.

One example of the above is a famous haiku, about how Mt Fuji is permenant, but everything else is like the temporary clouds at its summit, coming and going.

The other English speaker at the GPS, Damien Rogers, gave a great example:

Nintendo set up a temporary online thing for the Mario anniversary. They made it clear it would shut down. At the end Japanese players were tweeting, saying they had fun and thank you for that. English speakers were horrified saying they can't shut it down, they need to preserve it. (He discusses this in one of the embedded videos above.)

So there's an acceptance of things not lasting. You saw it also with the SFC Satellaview. Games which were "broadcast" and only available for a short window.

I feel anxiety just thinking about it. In Japan players generally accept this and even see merit in it. Even their Kit Kats have one-off annual flavours that never come back.

Joseph also mentioned once needing to convince a collector that it was worth preserving his collection. He succeeded, and it was preserved, so it's worth trying to change the mindset.

I'm generalising here, and painting with broad strokes, but when you dig into the history you find that the "conditioning" isn't even a recent thing.

There's historical examples of ukiyo-e paintings being thrown out and foreigners saving them because they saw value in them.

I feel like it's less a deliberate attempt at conditioning, and simply how society's norms and values evolved over centuries, due to countless different historical events. At this point though you'd need an anthropologist to examine things. I'm just going on a few shallow readings from different essays.

But anyway. The GPS are getting there, and slowly things are changing.

@slider1983 @gingerbeardman

LOL - it sounds almost conspiracy theory-ish. The reality is, I think, more mundane. It's not like some maniac politician sat down and deliberately tried to create an Orwellian dystopia. It's more that these rules were maybe fit for purpose a long time ago, in a different age, and they're now extremely outdated, and without having been updated.

There's also a lot of complex interlinking factors.

So, firstly, here's something that may surprise you. Every screenshot of a game in a magazine needs permission from the copyright holder. I've googled a random issue of Famitsu on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/weekly-famitsu-no.-211-january-1st-1993/Weekly%20Famitsu%20-%20No.%20211%20January%201st%201993/page/n49/mode/2up?view=theater

Notice how every page has a little copyright disclaimer for the publisher of each game. You don't see that on UK or US magazines. Also the Internet Archive has special dispensation to host old materials, which are uploaded primarily by people in the US. If the GPS was caught doing this, they would be in big trouble in Japan.

So here's a fun game. Every time you come across a Japanese games magazine, take a look and see if the pages are giving the same copyright notice at the bottom.

There's genuinely no freedom of press in Japan.

Look up also Japanese conviction rates. It's rated at 99%. Just think about how crazy that statistic is.

So, Japanese copyright... It's very strictly enforced, and the end result is the law - by extension - allows companies to control what's published. So here's two examples:

1) Professor Kishimoto, the creator of Pac-Land and Famista baseball, was approached by journalists in Japan to be interviewed about Famista, which sold millions in Japan. Namco forbid the interview and any coverage of it. They control the narrative in Japan because they control the copyright regarding those games. He specifically asked me to interview him since I would be publishing outside Japan, thereby circumventing Namco's reach.

2) I had a Japanese agent talking with publishers to get my books translated and sold in Japan. Lots of interest! Every publisher though said the same thing: every time a game is mentioned, we would need written permission from the rights holder of that game, otherwise they could kick up a fuss and get the book pulled from shelves.

So it's not quite so much the government prohibits discussion, it's more like there's some really old copyright laws in place, and because those laws are strictly enforced, it allows companies to control any coverage of their material. And the government is slow to update the laws as technology and society progresses.

It results in some really weird loopholes. So you can't copy the files on a floppy disk to back it up, that's illegal, but you can make a high resolution magnetic scan of the surface, thus preserving all its data.

So the GPS has to deal with lots of antiquated rules, and antiquated wording of those rules, and part of their goal is lobbying to have the law updated.

I'm just scratching the surface here, but once you dig into the minutiae of it all, some of it's crazy.

The Saturn outsold the N64. In Japan anyway.

Still my favourite console of the 32-bit era. If only because it had games that to this day you cannot find anywhere else, not even a similar experience to those games.

I often wonder. With a time machine and suitcase with £10 million, could one do anything to change the Saturn's fate? A fun thought experiment.

I do not represent the GPS, I am just the author of this piece, but to add a small reply:

Firstly, thank you to everyone who signed up as a member or made a donation. The response from the community has been heart-warming.

A statement / update will be made in time, regarding all the points made here, on social media (Twitter, Bluesky), and forums such as ResetEra and Reddit, plus plenty of emails.

Every comment has been read and all the feedback is appreciated, and each of the points is being discussed by the GPS board. Your feedback has been heard and taken to heart, especially ways to reward supporters with something tangible.

Many of the questions require a detailed response, hence the brevity here. As an example, the point by @BBOOKK about Ritsumeikan - they are already part of a collaborative consortium, with a detailed back story.

The GPS looks forward to sharing more details with the community going forward.

So what? Keep developing for it. Just keep on trucking.

This sanctimonious virtue signalling is ridiculous.

Reminds me of the Dreamcast homebrew community. They would BAN anyone who even so much as mentioned the hacked katana SDK or anything using it, like the Mega Drive emu from the Smash Pack.

I was banned three times for mentioning it. Bunch of weak willed soft jawed weaklings. WEAKSAUCE!

Compare that to the Xbox hombrew community. Stolen SDK used for everything. Zero ***** given. Virile heroes all of them.

How about the Wii community grows up, stops caring about something completely irrelevant and unimportant, and carries on business as normal?

Be more Xbox and less Dreamcast.

Seriously though. Why do they care? If you're rocking the homebrew channel you're using it to play illegal ROMs anyway. Lol

EDIT:
what @-wc- said 🤣🤣🤣

I keep meaning to play this.

Which version is best?

There were countless reasons to import during the 16, 32, and 64 / 128 bit eras. Censorship, region exclusives, release dates, more content, 60hz speeds, etc.

It was pricey, and frustrating knowing the poor quality of PAL. But it was one heckuva time to be alive.

@jamess
"I’ve played the games on Saturn and it’s all pretty mild… The thought the we’ve regressed from then due to platform censorship standards is just depressing."

I agree completely - my thoughts exactly. Censorship is unacceptable, needs to be stamped out like the first burning embers of a forest fire, and the fact we have regressed to a more puritanical stance is extremely depressing.

I lived through the senate hearings, and the Jack Thompson years, and every media scandal trying to scapegoat games, and I'll be damned before I accept the madness of those who have infiltrated games companies.

Enough is enough with this puritanical crap.

Just to reiterate: the leaked Xbox 360 remaster of Goldeneye is amazing. I bought a modded X360 just to play it, and it was worth every penny.

The remaster shows how fantastic the original's level design is. It's a masterpiece.

An official NightDive remaster would have been incredible.

@jamesamong007
What real game? A game for a modern system I don't own, haven't followed, wasn't even aware existed until now, and was too lazy to look up and compare?

That real game?

Fair enough I guess.

I voted for Last Imperial Prince. It was programmed by Yoshio Kiya of Falcom, and resembles one of their pkatform RPGs.

Is that dialogue actually by Ford?

I might be wrong. Or crazy. Or paranoid.

But parts of this have the whiff of AI.

(And if I'm wrong, then this is exactly what I predicted - a form of AI psychosis where one can no longer tell what is real or not.)

@Amsteffydam
I agree completely. I was joking, btw. Though I appreciate this wasn't obvious. I'd watched The Big Short recently, and so the "assets" was sort of a riff on people who view art in that way. Not sarcasm, but a dry irony? As in, I was sardonically mimicking them.

I only own games I want to play and only buy to play or, for some rare stuff, to upload to Internet Archive. Dropped £200 on Dive Alert Matt's Vers to upload manual scans, for example.

I have a private GC collection, but it's so easy to run the ISOs from SD card, I might as well sell them if collectors are crazy enough to drop triple figures, and there might be a price crash. On the other hand I might hoover up some deals if people are "dumping stock".

I have less than zero interest in another SNK fighter. But even as someone with no (negative?) interest, this is incomprehensibly bad. Just random unrelated pet celebs the Saudis own? I don't even know who they are. (I don't watch football nor do I... Listen to DJs?)

I stand with SNK fans in support. FREE SNK. ✊

Glad I sold Chibi Robo recently. Should I dump my current GC assets? Or hold fast in case access to these titles drives a surge in people wanting to own the real thing?

I should probably just play and enjoy them.

@Lowdefal - of all the things that influenced this list, Baldur's Gate 3 is certainly one of them.

This entire list is nullified also by the inclusion of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which is what... 2 months old? They even admit this in its entry.

Vox Pop fails again. I don't think the plebs, proles, gopniks, or rest of the peanut gallery actually understands what the word "influential" means, and so just voted for what they really, really, really, really happened to be enjoying when the poll went up.

I feel the curators should have put some effort into filtering stuff like that out. How can a game which is not even 100 days old have any influence on anything at all?

@NinChocolate
Beautifully said. I went online looking for comments and, sadly, found plenty supporting it. Unsure if they were AI or not.

Nothing feels real anymore, does it?

"If you're on pretty much any social media platform right now" - thankfully I am not, and now more so than before am I glad not to be. (My old FB account is still up for fam & friends to access, but I don't visit it unless someone sends an attachment needing downloading to desktop.)

The internet was fun, I dipped into it in the 1990s. And it was good for a while. But today the internet is dead: AI has flooded it with dog**** content, which is then crawled by countless AI bots to generate clicks, thus telling the AI algorithm that AI content is what's wanted.

It's dead. It's now made by robots for robots.

This website is about the only place still clean enough to step into. Everywhere else is turning into the worst toilet in Scotland.

I love the fact that bounties are starting to appear for the preservation of this rare stuff. Money talks, and it'll encourage people to dig and keep their eyes open.

I'm hoping this news encourages someone to fan-translate it. Segagaga is higher priority, but this is the sort of bizarre experimental title I loved on DC. (Alongside games like Seaman and Tokyo Bus Guide.)

We can but wait and hope.

@jygsaw
It had Rise of the Robots. Which is awful. But it shows the system could handle two large sprites attacking each other at least.

I mean, the monochrome GB had SFII, so if you're willing to sacrifice enough, you could squeeze it on I guess?

@slider1983
Wow!

“I just feel like ‘the’ videogame archive belongs in the USA,” said Kelly. “Videogames were born here and their ultimate historical archive should also be here."

I am absolutely lost for words.

Thank you for sharing that.

EDIT:

I can't stop reading that sentence - I will be hyperlinking this in my essay. Thank you again for bringing t to my attention. Absolutely mind blowing. MIND BLOWING!

@slider1983
Did the VGHF say that? Interesting. Got a link? This might be useful. (I'll also go trawling for it.) But your comments are useful!

@slider1983 Thank you for the confidence 😊

I'm working on a follow up essay to this topic regarding the US understanding of Japan - plot twist: high profile JP devs who directly influenced US devs, state in interviews they themselves were influenced specifically by Euro computer games.

This "Euro scene" nonsense is laughable once you start reading Japanese interviews.

There was a lot of interplay between the different regions. It's childish and reductive to attempt to dismiss or prioritise one over the other. Not even overt influence you'd notice - notable JP companies actually modelled their business on British software houses. They explicitly state this.

@Grackler - remember that Grubb wants to help bridge this divide. And you can help him by just accepting what he says is true.

LOL. I'm kidding. Grubb is borderline gaslighting with his nonsense. You've made good points.

I was debating wether to wade in on this debate, since Europe is not my speciality.

But in my view America - journos, writers, Youtubers, collectors, historians, academics, authors, etc. - absolutely 100% have a problem with bias.

I know based purely on documenting the history of Japanese games.

They view Japan entirely through the lense of what was localised and popular in America.

They ignore Japanese computers. There was a research paper which showed NEC had an over 80% monopoly on JP computers, and all three of the leading JP brands (NEC, Fujitsu, Sharp) created a galapagos scenario of isolation.

And JP computers were dominant for a time, with Nintendo only slowly getting bigger.

Even then, the console markets were different. Americans overlook landmark releases like Hydlide because they received them years later than JP.

It is infuriating. Because a lot of the US cobsole market was defined by JP, yet they have zero clue as to what was going on in JP to lead to that.

So this spat over the crash Vs Europe is amusing to me.

Everyone defending the Euro POV here: don't take it personally, America also utterly fails to understand Japan too.

But we can all help to educate this great nation. Let's do it together in solidarity.

@jygsaw Ted Woolsey, localiser on Secret of Mana, also said that SoM was planned for the SNES CD. If I recall correctly from his interview, he said "40% of SoM had to be nuked" due to moving to cartridge. Don't quote me - I'm paraphrasing from memory. But the Woolsey interviews are all over the net.

He references a journo at a newly launched mag catering to the hardcore.

I have my theories as to which mag this was... Diehard GameFan?

Anyone else have an idea?

@jamess
@dodgykebaab
I'm assuming someone will just patch and upload it somewhere.

If nothing happens I'll have a go myself.

It's obviously possible. Any rec on which PC OS to use with patching? Some obscure tools prefer XP, Win 7, Win 10, etc. depending.

@jamess
I have a jailbroken PS3 too. I look forward to your update.

What you typed makes no sense to me.

The PS3 is easier to use than my jailbroken PS4 (a right PITA). But it's usually install from USB, drop the license file in another folder, and away you go.

I have never had to patch anything...

Tbh I'm surprised they didn't make it available in a ready to use format. What does providing it like this serve? Anyone who intends to use it will be like us, wuth jailbroken systems.

Ah well.

Good luck good sir.

Where's the Requiem for a Dream style video of two NES making use of it while nerds stand around chanting aloud: SLOT TO SLOT!

@Aiodensghost
I use a flash cart and run the system on a CRT. I used to use emulators, but abandoned them because there's no scroll blurring on a CRT (with an LCD and emulation, horizontal movement causes blurring or ghosting, and none of the CRT filters help). Also the aspect ratio of the SNES is super weird, and again it was a PITA getting it just perfect with emulation.

In the end I just like using an authentic controller, via RGB SCART on my Sony Trinitron CRT.

It'll be a sad day when emulation becomes the sole means of playing SNES games.

@avcrypt
Thank you! I've had a couple systems recapped. Not the SNES yet. This is good to know.

However, this story reminded me of another similar SNES story about how the processor base was degrading.

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024/01/does-your-snes-have-a-ticking-time-bomb-inside

This horrifies me. I love my SNES. I want it to live forever. ; _ ;

I see VHS tapes. Any word on what those were?

Might contain lost footage.

I wish AI could have waited a few decades until I was dead and buried. Or I wish I could have been born just 20 or so years earlier so it arrived when I was too old to care.

I resent that I have to spend the last couple of good decades where I don't have dementia having to witness AI poison. I've even started seeing AI art on food packaging now.

@BionicDodo
It happens sometimes. One of the Ys games by Xseed licensed Jeff Nussbaum's fan translation officially. However... The hacker who partnered with Jeff to make a fan patch previously went nuclear at his "betrayal". The results were unpleasant.

There has been endless drama in the fan translation community for the last 25+ years.

My guess? Who wants the hassle? A professional company wants to spend some budget, get results, and move on, not deal with high strung prima donnas.

Most in the community are super cool. But there's always one or two whose ego causes atomic levels of trouble.

It pains me that such beautiful games have fallen into the hands of such people - Gleylancer, Valken, and Majuuou are all exquisite masterpieces.

@PinballBuzzbro is correct

@Steel76
If you want sources, check out the YT video here:

https://www.timeextension.com/features/paper-peepshows-wargame-history-and-pooping-mascots-n-my-spanish-retro-gaming-adventure

Rough time stamps:
18:34
37:26
01:05:58
01:07:00

I voted for Tower of Druaga, since so many developers have stated taking direct influence either from it, or games influenced by it.

@Steel76
Haha! Indeed. Did you know Miyamoto loved Druaga so much he had the arcade machine installed in his office to play, while making Zelda? There's an interview with him on YouTube citing Wizardry and The Black Onyx too. And in a French magazine in 1994 he said in interview he loved European computer games from a decade ago (ie: circa 1984), which is an obvious reference to the 8-bit micros of the time.

I am 100% certain none of the games voted for and presented by BAFTA will be influential.

They'll simply be highly nostalgic for the people voting, but won't take into account the games which came before them, which did the actual influencing.

Ah well.

@KingMike
Indeed - when I was told they had to ditch Mort's catalogues of scans due to wrong DPI, I winced inside. >_<

I still have all my multitaps. Just in case, one day...