Comments 283

Re: Review: Mars After Midnight (Playdate) - A Wonderfully Weird Work Sim From Lucas Pope

gingerbeardman

@XiaoShao regarding the economics, a game with a list price of $6 means the developer will see ~$3.75 after all deductions (store, payment processor, currency exchange). And they'll need to pay tax on those earnings.

On iPhone you might be able to make a living from a $0.99 game, especially if you also monetise the player. But with Playdate there aren't enough devices to go for quantity, and thankfully the platform is free from microtransactions and ads. Pure gaming in the old school sense.

Re: Review: Mars After Midnight (Playdate) - A Wonderfully Weird Work Sim From Lucas Pope

gingerbeardman

@combywomby I'd like to make a game of this scope and varied structure, but it's just not possible to do it independently (without funding) at the moment.

The fairly low total number of Playdates (even lower if you only count those buying from Catalog) and average cost per game dictate the scope of most games. Even funded games like OOM and Pullfrog are highly polished but still bitesize experiences.

For example, my games: the highly rated Sparrow Solitaire took about a person year of dev time between two people, and we're yet to recoup our costs. The fairly quick (~300 hours) development time of YOYOZO and the accolades it has won have ensured that i should break even some 4 months after release. It would be much longer without the awards.

Lucas Pope is in a unique position in that his previous games enable him to take a chance on a game like this, and he spent multiple years on its development.

Re: N64 Comes To Evercade - Is Dreamcast Next? "Never Say Never"

gingerbeardman

Reading between the lines of the somewhat fuzzy answers, it seems they're compiling the original source code with modern tools and getting the benefits of 25 years of compiler technology improvements.

There are also likely some low hanging fruit tricks and optimisations that have been discovered since 1998 that can improve the game performance even further. So it's likely to be better/different in some regards, and worse/different in others. The lack of analog stick is surely the greatest and I'm not familiar enough with the game to know how much the gameplay was based on analog movement.

Finally, who is Maximilian Wedell? Name drop but no explanation of who he is.

Re: Wii Fans Are Reviving The Console's eShop With 'RiiShop'

gingerbeardman

@Razieluigi @DashKappei @Yoshif3 every download was preserved/backedup/etc prior to the shop closure. The whole catalogue has existed and been downloadable since 2019, if you knew where to look. Nintendo haven't taken it down in all that time.

So this is technically an easy to use piracy shop. 3DS has one too. Of course Nintendo no longer give us any way to but these old games. It's up to you how OK you are with the whole thing.

Anyway, check out MaBoShi WiiWare download! One of the greatest of all time.

Re: Review: Polymega - Now With N64 Support, But Is It Still Worth A Look In 2024?

gingerbeardman

@Damo oh, I have used one I don't own one but I have used one for a length of time over the summer. I also found it had a propensity to spit out discs mid-install (still mentioned in the review) and recognise some games as unsupported (also mentioned above) with no reasonable explanation as to why that might be. Just reading your review text it felt at odds with the pros/cons and score.

Re: Review: Polymega - Now With N64 Support, But Is It Still Worth A Look In 2024?

gingerbeardman

"Some games don't work properly." The whole issue of accuracy, compatibility, supported/unsupported, and the uneven user experience is my idea of a bad time. And then there's some hand-waving to explain it away as not really a problem and...9/10. Bizarre.

My own personal trust and opinion of any news outlet is in a constant state of flux/balance, some things improve its standing and others reduce it. This review for some reason leaves me with a bad taste, and so has had a large net-negative on my opinion of Time Extension.

Re: YOYOZO Is A New Playdate Game Inspired By The Japanese Cult-Classic 'Pendulumania'

gingerbeardman

My game YOYOZO has received a GOTY (Game of the Year) accolade from long-standing technology publication Ars Technica! 🀯

They list my game alongside three masterpieces by my heroes Nintendo! To say I'm humbled to be mentioned in the same breath as Mario, Pikmin and Zelda is an understatement. And to then be compared with such timeless classics as Super Hexagon and Geometry Wars... well... I think I've got something in my eye πŸ₯Ί

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/12/ars-technicas-best-video-games-of-2023/7