Comments 291

Re: Xbox 360, PS3 And Nintendo Wii U Are "Officially Retro", Says GameStop

Zenszulu

It's a difficult one to truly define with the Xbox 360 and PS3 as many of their earlier games still had many designs from the previous generation. However by the end of their commercial life they had many games being released that would still be considered fairly modern by today's standards as many of those games were also released on the last generation of consoles as well as may have had remasters since but are still the same games.

Are they retro because of how hold they are? Yes, since an entire generation has become adults since they were released. However, I will say they are also the start of what in many ways is still the current generation where we are seeing smaller incremental leaps in how games are changing.

I still play games from both and have my PS3 still hooked up right next to my PS5.

Re: The "Last And Greatest Mystery" Of The Sega Saturn Has Been Revealed

Zenszulu

@metaphysician I think it was more the publishers complaining as they are the ones the had to pay upfront rather than the developers they more than likely just wanted to use whatever was available to help them make a better game and probably had to negotiate with their publisher to use certain ones. But it was probably the best way to go since it was on a game by game basis and even though it did increase the price of some games significantly even more so if those games also featured battery back-up it was still a better option for most people than having to buy a separate piece of hardware.

Re: The "Last And Greatest Mystery" Of The Sega Saturn Has Been Revealed

Zenszulu

It sounds great but one of the reasons people lost any faith in Sega was that they released countless add-ons for their hardware and fewer and fewer people were interested in them and always had a far smaller percentage of people buying them than the consoles userbase had. Hardware add-ons are never really successful as most consumers aren't ever really interested in them if it's ultimately just to play a very small amount of games. Sega themselves probably realised this more so with how much the Saturn was struggling everywhere but Japan and figured it was too much of a financial risk.

Re: Review: The QuickShot II - We've Come A Long Way Since This Joystick Ruled The Roost

Zenszulu

I was never a fan of this style of joystick for the vast majority of games as the longer sticks often means it feels like you have to apply more pressure in each direction to make it accurately register and as a result they would wear out pretty quickly. The only Quickshot joystick I ever used that was useable was the Maverick which was more of an arcade style stick and hade the added bonus of being useable on the Master System as well as ever 8-bit computer at the time. I think the only reason this kind of design was so popular back then was they tended to be cheaper on average than other styles of joystick.

Re: Ever Fancied Creating Your Own Shoot 'Em Up? This Week's Console Archives Release Has You Covered

Zenszulu

When I was young I tried making my own shooter on shoot-em-up constitution kit on the C64. It was then I realised that I didn't have the patience for designing a game and I lacked the ability to be all that creative in that realm. I can safely say nothing has changed in the years since. The only issue with releasing an old game creator like this is unless it comes with a method of sharing the end results most people won't be all that interested.

Re: Achievement Unlocked - This Free Service Has Changed The Way I Play Retro Games In 2026

Zenszulu

I have been on there for the past 10 years although I don't really take them too seriously like all in game achievements more just a way to track some progress in games and have a bit of fun. I will admit though some of the people that make the sets make them stupidly difficult on purpose because they know the game so well only people that can match their skill level can get them. It's to be expected when something is community driven though.

Re: "We're Not Okay Shipping It" - Hyperkin Explains Why Its Handheld Sega Genesis, The Mega95, Has Been Delayed

Zenszulu

Hyperkin do have a bit of a track record of announcing systems and then they seem to disappear. Does anyone remember the N64 console they announced and shown a prototype off of about 4 years ago? Since then it has pretty much vanished without a trace. They seem to announce things in the very early stages of development without knowing if they can actually do what they promised.

Re: "He Was Literally Frothing At The Mouth" - Yuji Naka Really Didn't Want Sega To Make Mature Games

Zenszulu

@Mrakey I know they were I am not disputing some of the poor decisions Sega of America made. Both sides made decisions during the 90's that would benefit their own market only or that they thought would and there was little open communication between the two sides. It was essentially two separate companies trying to run a single business. Sega of Japan was still stubborn and oblivious to the changing market though and didn't realise it until it was too late.

Re: "He Was Literally Frothing At The Mouth" - Yuji Naka Really Didn't Want Sega To Make Mature Games

Zenszulu

Sega was very slow to adapt to the changing market when the Saturn came out thinking they could rely predominantly on arcade conversions. So they have a history of stubbornly sticking to a philosophy. It seem to take them a long to to realise that people wanted a lot more content in their games than what they were offering. They tried to correct that with the Dreamcast but they were still few and far between. It seems like it took them going third party to realise that.

Although this isn't a great shock that Sega of Japan wasn't interested in what Sega of America had to say and anyone that worked for them as they just never got along.

Re: One Of The Most Iconic Joysticks Of The '80s And '90s Is Being Revived

Zenszulu

The Quickshot Maverick was my go to joystick for the C64 and Master System. It's the only Quickshot joystick I ever used that didn't stop reading inputs after about a month of use. The majority of Quickshot joysticks are only iconic because of how cheap they were and just about everyone's parents would buy them or they would come bundled with systems.

Re: "THIS IS THE END" - The Man Behind The Infamous SuperSega Console Finally Admits Defeat

Zenszulu

A product that never existed in the first place has now been cancelled? Oh man that is Christmas ruined for me.

I followed this pretty much from day one and it first seemed too good to be true and then after that it snowballed into the ridiculous with his so called prototype and his claims that Sega made him destroy all of the manufactured devices after they were produced so he couldn't refund peoples money.

It doesn't seem like it was a year ago when he suddenly vanished for a period of time probably to stash the money somewhere.

Re: "Never Played A Game Like It Before" - John Romero's New FPS Isn't Dead, It's Just Smaller

Zenszulu

If the game is completely different to the game that was cancelled and has been redesigned from the ground up has the game actually been saved or are they just making a new and different game with a smaller budget for a new publisher?

If nothing of the cancelled game remains and just incorporates some of the gameplay elements then it wasn't saved and this is just a new project.

Re: Random: Did You Spot This NES-Related Blunder In Stranger Things Season 5?

Zenszulu

I watched it and before I seen the controller or console I thought he was the spoiled kid who got an early Mega Drive or something until the shot shown him with a NES controller. But then I could tell they were going for the spoiled child route when he had the Hang-on arcade machine in his room. I didn't really think much else of it though as for the most part when it came to gaming references in it they have been pretty accurate.

Re: Reviving Acclaim's Old IP Is "Not The Objective" As Some Of It Was "Not Great", Says New CEO

Zenszulu

In all honesty the properties that Acclaim did own by the end were all from Valiant Comics which is under ownership anyway. The rest of the stuff they did was all either licensed from TV, sport or movies or they did home ports of other people's arcade games that they didn't own the rights to anyway. I seen a lot of random wild hopes that they were going to revive games that they would no longer have the licences to like Turok. I think many people fail to realise that Acclaim didn't come up with any original ideas except for maybe Vexx.

Re: Tired Of "The Usual North American Perspectives", This New Book Aims To Offer A Global View Of Game History

Zenszulu

It definitely is the case that North American video games seems to be talked about as if it effected the world especially the video game crash of the early 80s. It is often talked as if it had a global impact when in Europe it didn't really effect much as consoles weren't as popular as various computers at the time and in Japan western developed games or consoles weren't really a thing at that point. I imagine there are other times when it was talked about that things effected only the North American market too but were made out to have effected everywhere.

Re: Random: GameStop Drops A Clanger After Declaring The Console Wars "Over"

Zenszulu

Really gaming system rivalries only started when they first Xbox launched? Then why did I spend countless hours at school telling my friend the N64 was better than the PS1 even that one kid that had the Sega Saturn? Even before that I would often ridicule my Speccy owning friend that he didn't know what a game in colour looked like properly.

Re: Here's Why Controllers Have 'A, B, X & Y' Buttons, And Not 'A, B, C & D'

Zenszulu

I honestly never cared that much what the buttons were called they are just labels. Every console especially earlier ones all had radically different designs as well as button names. It has only become an issue for me in the past several years when switching between Nintendo and Xbox controllers when momentarily pressing the wrong buttons after an onscreen prompt. For the most part though all modern games use the exact same button layout so for many you can play any system without thinking too much about where the buttons are placed regardless of what it is called.

Re: "The Creative Cauldron Of Nintendo Is A Bit Of An Anti-Climax" - 35 Years Ago, The BBC Visited Mario's Birthplace

Zenszulu

He seems unimpressed by all of this but in comparison in the UK even by 1990 many developers of computer games were still working from home and not in any kind of office environment and it was only the larger ones that had any kind of cramped space.

I know he points out that they work on these games and just get a regular salary while Nintendo makes millions but the same could be said for the countless people who worked on movies at the time or anything that involved working on anything media related as it does to this day.

Re: Poll: How Do You Pronounce "Amiga"?

Zenszulu

Didn't realise there was ever a debate on how to say it. But I never ran into anyone that gave it an ger sound at the end and I lived in both the west midlands and south coast growing up.

Re: "Missing" Genesis Beat 'Em Up Paprium Is Finally Playable Under Emulation

Zenszulu

I managed to give it a try and I can't say I am that impressed with the game itself. Sure it looks pretty but it isn't that great at times with poor collision detection and some questionable enemy AI even on the highest difficulty. It has gained more of a reputation because of its history and how impossible it has been to get access to than because it was good game that is worth being sought after.

Re: "The Xbox Project Has Failed" - Picking Up The Pieces After Microsoft's Darkest Day In Gaming

Zenszulu

Their biggest problem is every couple of years they are changing their business strategy rather than trying to focus on one. They went from buying loads of publishers expecting everyone to flock to Xbox and Gamepass as a result. To everything is an Xbox and becoming more third party publisher. But this has gradually been happening since the Xbox 360 days and around the time they launched the Konnect. Since then they have tried to be everything to everyone and they always come up looking second best at everything. They also still haven't recovered from the awful Xbox One reveal which was again trying to be everything to everyone being more focused on anything but gaming.

All the people that thought all the acquisitions they made were going to mean loads of exclusives for Xbox and that they were going to overtake everyone seem to have not taken into account that all those publishers they brought their games were only valuable because they were on just about everything and sold well because of that not because they are system sellers.

They took huge risks thinking it would pay off to benefit their brand but it hasn't really done that if anything it has zero effect on actually boosting sales of consoles or subscriptions.