@sonypvm You don't care so hard that you have to make sure everyone knows how hard you don't care.

Gamers sure like telling everyone that there are Teams and loudly proclaiming which Team they're on.

GroovyMAME is great; I've got a GroovyArcade box hooked up to my Trinitron. I've also got a MiSTer. I've also got quite a few original consoles.

What I don't have is the inclination to choose one of those things, make it my identity, and constantly tell strangers my choice is better than theirs.

@dunk Maybe so. The unexpected success of Clair Obscur does suggest there's more of an appetite for turn-based RPGs in the tradition of Final Fantasy 7-10 than SE seems to think there is, and they could certainly do worse than follow its lead (following theirs).

@Coalescence The thing is, though, "just wanna play the games" bros aren't buying the MiSTer or the Pocket. The entire point of those systems is that you're paying a premium for accuracy.

@Deway That's an entirely fair point; MiSTer development over the last few years is a lot like MAME's rapid progress some 20-25 years ago. There have been inaccurate MAME cores, and by its nature (running on top of a general-purpose OS) it introduces some amount of latency, but the project's goal has always been archival-quality accuracy.

That said, an LLM port of a MAME core is almost certainly going to be less accurate than the original MAME core running on PC hardware.

@Damo Also this whole "gatekeeping" idea seems to suggest that nobody should ever criticize any open-source project unless it's literally illegal.

People object to open-source projects on ethical and quality grounds all the time! XFree86 went from ubiquitous to dead pretty much overnight over a one-line change in its license.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. And it certainly doesn't mean people can't criticize you for doing it. Just because a project is open-source doesn't mean I can't say "Hey, this really sucks, stop doing that."

@LowDefAl "people have decided that shoddy work is better than nothing. It isn’t"

And even if it were, saying that an AI port of an existing MAME core to MiSTer is "better than nothing" is comparing it to nothing instead of to, you know, the original MAME core that it's ported from.

If you have a MiSTer, you probably already know what PC emulators are and you probably use those too. What's the advantage of using a MiSTer instead of MAME? Primarily, low latency and accuracy. If you don't have either one of those, well, the headline is right; you're not gaining anything running the core on a MiSTer compared to running it on a Pi. You're using a $300 piece of kit to get an experience that is, at best, equivalent to what you'd get with a $50 one.

@Bot_Bot_69 The worst crime of all: he criticized AI.

@DadGamerUK "However you can't deny its a factor in the backlash against AI developed cores."

I can absolutely deny it. Because I agree with Jotego and I'm not getting paid for it.

@Bot_Bot_69 Not only that, but, like, somehow they never noticed that the people monologuing about how "You're fighting the future! You're fighting the inevitable!" in movies are invariably the bad guy and always turn out to be wrong.

@KingMike Kids today. They'd rather OCR a screenshot than turn off JavaScript.

@breach187 Wait'll you see people in the comments getting defensive about the work someone else didn't do.

@smoreon "I'm always seeing people wanting a more straightforward remake, or criticizing VII Remake/Rebirth for being bloated and taking too many liberties. Am I just hearing too many overly vocal purists? Hard to say."

I don't think it's hard to say at all. Look at the sales figures. Online fandoms are not reflective of a general audience. If people didn't want games like Remake and Rebirth, they wouldn't buy them.

I think one of the key things some people are missing is that the word "Remake" is deliberate misdirection. It's a verb. These games aren't remakes; they're new games set in a universe that looks like the original FF7 at first but turns out to have some crucial differences.

It sure works for me. I get that it's not what people were expecting, because FF7Remake is very deliberately designed not to give them what they were expecting.

Me, I like the postmodern twist. I think it's handled well. I already know the story of FF7 and I'd rather be surprised than just hit the same old beats. And I enjoy wandering around a big, beautiful open world and faffing about in it. I've sunk dozens of hours into Rebirth already (haven't finished it) and when I think "Damn, do I really have as much game still left as I think I do?" that's not a criticism.

But I also feel like part of why it works is that it fits the story, tone, and world of FF7. FF7 was already a mindf__k, it was already a game that sets you up to believe certain things and then pulls the rug out from under you. It's already a game that leaves you looking for ways to change the way it plays out. It already feels like a big cinematic adventure.

I'm not sure the same approach that works in FF7 works with other FF games. Mmmmmaybe 8 and 10? They're pretty simpatico with 7 in terms of their story structure and vibe, at least. I don't think 6 would benefit from it; I do think 6 could use an update but I think it should be a different animal than 7 Remake.

And a "modern" remake of 9 would completely miss the point. 9's whole deal is that it's a throwback. It wasn't supposed to feel modern in 2000.

@notreallyhere Trials really was a fantastic example of how to do a remake that keeps the spirit of the original but brings the gameplay up-to-date.

But of course that was always an action RPG. For the old FFs, 6 in particular, I'd prefer to keep the menu-based combat. I like the FF7 Remake games but I really don't care for the combat. And as much as they're similar games, I don't think FF6 fans necessarily want the same things that FF7 fans do.

@MARl0 That's just Pixel Remaster, isn't it?

I think there are potentially interesting ways to revisit FF6 and its systems. Make random encounters avoidable. Really emphasize each character's unique ability; maybe let's get rid of the "Fight" command entirely. Tweak Cyan's Bushido so that the later abilities are worth the charge time (and maybe have him charge the ability after it's selected instead of before). Fix tedious bits like the Auction House and the Veldt. (Maybe do like the T-Edition hack and just have Gau learn whatever enemies he fights instead of having to Leap?) Maybe rebalance the Esper/magic system so it doesn't flatten everybody out so much, or on the other hand maybe don't since that's one of the things people like about the game.

There's lots about FF6 that could use updating. But no, it doesn't need to be split into 3+ games. I like what they've done with the FF7 Trilogy but that doesn't mean it's right for FF6.

FF8, though? I'd totally buy FF8: Just the Laguna Parts.

I love features like this. New information from primary sources.

@Deway Thanks, I keep meaning to start blogging more. Maybe even start a webcomic. I figure you know what, whatever it ends up being, at least it'll be something a human made.

@Deway The AI companies love training LLMs on other LLMs so much that they're bulk-buying books just to make sure they don't!

https://www.404media.co/ai-companies-are-buying-tons-of-old-books-because-theyre-free-of-ai-slop/

@Deway Right — if you were to "unbias" AI, you would do it by training it on "unbiased" sources.

Which implies that those sources exist in the first place.

So why do you need AI to paraphrase them?

@Slider2711 I wonder what the overlap is in the Venn diagram of AI bros saying "who cares where it comes from, I just want a site I can go to to get the news about this stuff" and people who looked at Warp Point and asked "Why should I care about this? It's just a bunch of RSS feeds from other sites."

Guy in the screenshot says "What matters is the information. I actually only found out about the port because of that tweet."

So the important information that he needed an LLM to tell him was..."this is a thing that exists."

@razielmla You tell that strawman.

@Martin_H Yes, that's the great thing about growth curves; they continue at the same rate forever.

@Zero_0 Funny, "just another tool" is exactly what I think when I hear about somebody dumping a half-assed AI translation and expecting somebody else to fix it for them.

@AndyVGR You know, that text below the headline isn't just there for you to scroll past on your way to the comments.

@AlienX cool

@AllieKitsune But the flipside of that is that there are only so many person-hours and if you devote yours to a project someone else is already working on, that's time you could be spending on an original project.

I mean, obviously people are free to spend their time however they want and they don't need permission. But I do think "what can I do that isn't already being done?" is a perfectly valid question to ask before setting out.

@MSaturn Compared to the unofficial translation that another team was already working on?

@CookieByte "Just learn the Japanese language, idioms, and cultural context" is not a practical solution for most people.

And while we're on the subject of learning languages, the possessive form of it is its. No apostrophe.

I'm not necessarily averse to AI as a translation tool if no other option is available; an AI translation is (hopefully) better than nothing.

But releasing an AI translation to compete with an actual, in-development translation that people are putting real work into is a bad look. You're not helping.

There are lots and lots of untranslated games out there. Choose one of the many options that people aren't already working on.

@ghostofkutaragi why was there significant backlash if no one cares

@dodgykebaab What streams is Bluesky sponsoring?

@Blackredx "Yet you participate in society. Curious! I am very intelligent."

@ECP Can you name another government which is sponsoring GDQ streams?

WOW it takes some chutzpah to quote somebody and cut it off right before the word "but".

It's like they're so close to figuring out how marketing works.

I should have spent that $25 on beer.

It was 2013; back then I could have bought a whole case with that and gotten change back.

@Sawboss It was early days and I don't think we'd quite gotten the hang of this whole Kickstarter thing yet.

Between this and Mighty No. 9, I learned an important lesson about contributing to game Kickstarters: don't.

(MN9 at least managed to release. Though maybe they should have spent 12 more years on it.)

At this point I've got two criteria for backing a Kickstarter project: either the work is already finished and the campaign is just for manufacturing and shipping, or the person/group doing it has a track record and has delivered in the past.

(And sometimes even a project that checks both those boxes still disappoints. I kicked in on Dynamite Comics' campaign to reprint some old Gargoyles comics and they ended up delivering a subpar product over a year late. I don't know how that happened but my best guess is they subcontracted it out to some other company that didn't have Dynamite's production pipeline or experience.)

@dslayer Oh yeah, I've heard good things about most of those, now that you mention it. Keep meaning to fire them up in an emulator one of these days. (Or possibly on my MiSTer, if the 3DO core gets a little more mature than it currently is.)

@PowerPandaMods It was a great little system for indies, but now we've got the Switch and Deck for those.

@-wc- I think what he means to say is that the kinds of games that are successful on other handhelds didn't use or need the control gimmicks the Vita had and that those features added to the price tag without being worth whatever gameplay innovations they brought to the table.

He's not necessarily wrong but gyro and touch controls have certainly proven popular on other systems; it's really just the back touch that seems to have been a deadend. And I don't think any of those things were as significant a drawback as the expensive proprietary memory cards.

@Razieluigi But they wouldn't have abandoned it if it had sold better.

Which isn't to say they couldn't have made it work if they'd made more of an effort. The 3DS had a disastrous launch but Nintendo stuck with it and it became a huge success.

@ecco6t9 Yeah, that's true; when I went to transition from the card that came with it to an SD2VITA I found that the card had been corrupted. I eventually managed to recover my saves but it was a real PITA.

Course, most people wouldn't have known the memory cards were trash when they first bought one; they just would have known that they were expensive.

@Zybex242 Oh, I guess they had the best version of Star Control 2. Although that doesn't seem like a system seller so much as a cult hit.

It's not just that the memory card was proprietary, it's that it was expensive. What was it, like $80 for 16GB or something insane like that?

I guess it was good for reducing piracy, in that there's a lot less piracy on systems nobody buys.

Hahaha yeah THAT'S why Atari went bankrupt, piracy, and no other reason.

I can at least name a couple of Jaguar games that are generally regarded as good (AvP and Tempest 2000, off the top of my head). I can't think of any for the 3DO. There's, what, Gex? but AFAICT consensus is that the PS1 and Saturn versions were better.

@Tom_Gamer Yeah, the people in the comments hated GJI and some of the former staff have talked about it and made it clear they hated it too.

I don't know if it really attracted clicks or not, but management at least thought it did.

@HammyHavoc This does seem to be one of those "reporting something we just read on ROM" articles.

Which I don't judge too harshly. Online publishing is a tough business and not every article is going to be unique. (I haven't read AV Club in years but I know for a long time they were under pressure from their corporate owners to do a feature called "Great Job, Internet!" that was basically describing stuff they saw on YouTube.)