sdelfin

@Sketcz The side-scrolling snowspeeder level feels tacked on in the first place. It's short and adds little to the game other than displaying a huge snowspeeder sprite on screen. It's not especially well designed or consequential. Check out a longplay to see for yourself.

@bring_on_branstons I had a similar thought that Mario Kart was a weird choice. I think the likely thing is they were taking aim at a major release that was recent at the time they made the ad and paint it in as bad a light as possible to make Sega's platform as a whole look better. I imagine it was an attempt to counter the good reviews and word of mouth Mario Kart was getting.

I've always appreciated demakes like this. There's just something cool about making something work on hardware that isn't perfectly suited to it. I remember when this was new. It seemed an odd choice. But it reviewed very well and I remember thinking it looked great. I recall people at the time thought it was among the better fighting games on the system.

That's a great story. There are still many people of her generation that have negative opinions over video games as a whole, so it's nice to see someone like her playing games so openly. I think it is great for the mind because the best games,even if they are not puzzle games, are like puzzles in motion. I imagine Tetris is a very good game for brain health. Bomberman also sounds like it would be good as well.

I was out of gaming for a while and was pretty terrible when I got back into playing, mostly retro and retro-style games. But I got better quickly. My gaming reflexes are better than ever in my 40s. I never thought I'd be able to beat Ninja Gaiden on the NES legitimately, but I did that a couple of times a few years back. Doing that definitely stimulated my brain, and it wasn't so bad either. A lot of it is pattern recognition. And I'm sleep deprived, so if I ever get that sorted, I expect my reflexes will improve a lot. But my contingency plan for old age is to play arcade beat-em-ups(they're my favorite) so I can credit feed, and lots of RPGs, if my reflexes and joints do fail. But the best way to keep abilities up is to use them.

For some reason I was not aware of this project until a couple of months ago. I tried the demo on Steam and I really liked it. The visual style is not going to be everyone's favorite, but I gave it a chance and thought it looked better while actually playing it than in screenshots and video. I also thought they captured the Truxton vibe. The only really bizarre thing is playing a vertical shooter that's 16:9 widescreen horizontally. It seems to work fine and I'm open minded, but it is very strange.

@gingerbeardman what I remember and was able to find again is that the developer Kevtris used an oscilloscope to compare his Game Boy core to a real Game Boy to view the electrical signals and determine that the timings were the same.

I'm not sure how software emulation is tested, but I know Higan/bsnes was extensively tested with the entire library and every element was approached with maximum accuracy as the goal. The Accuracy version of the emulator was, as I recall, made to emulate one game that did something weird correctly. That version processed everything on a per-pixel basis, as I recall reading.

I've been pointing out for the last year and a half that many of the claims in favor of FPGA are wildly overblown. To be clear, FPGA is cool. It works very well. The accuracy is very good for the most part. In the case of Saturn, it probably is overall a better experience than software emulation right now because Mednafen, while excellent, has some issues including with interlaced games. But there seems to be some new developments with Saturn software emulation too. I'm not surprised Saturn's FPGA core is still not fully accurate, since the system is so complex. That isn't to say the results it produces won't seem accurate, and that's the most important thing. We've also seen a developer of arcade FPGA cores admit they use hacks to get the games running. That's why in the past I have said there are "myths" pushed in favor of FPGA and how it's not magic. But what matters is how the games run. FPGA does a good job running games. But so does software emulation.

@gingerbeardman I think it is possible and that some of the simpler systems such as the Game Boy can be, essentially, perfect. I remember reading how a developer used an oscilloscope to compare a core to an actual Game Boy. But that can also be achieved in software emulation.

@RenderSpotlight NHL 94 was special and it remains a favorite among fans of those games today. I was also not much of a hockey fan, but was very much a fan of those games. They were fun video games, period. The NHL games were some of my favorite "time killing" games back then. A friend of mind had the first NHL game which didn't have a year in the title, but would have been '92. The gameplay was fantastic. '93 refined the gameplay but lost the NHL license in favor of the Players' Association. '94 had both and more refinements, so it was the best one. 1995 is when they revamped the series so it looked and played a bit different, but it was also a buggy mess. I knew three or four people who had it and it was just filled with bugs. So the series, as far as I know, peaked with '94.

Neo Drift Out was one of the best surprises I experienced in gaming when I tried it. I knew little about it other than some people like it. It's some of the most heavily concentrated fun in a game I've encountered. Visco nailed the whole vibe including the pleasant sound design. And the game is reasonably challenging at first because there's not a lot of room for error with the timer in the later stages. The cars are all quite distinct in how they handle. It's one of the easiest games for me to jump back into when I just need a giant blast of fun. It's such a great arcade game.

@sanmansan I assumed it was covered in some magazines and I just missed it. I'm just surprised that I missed it because I was keeping up with things, but it was hard to catch everything. While the internet was still new at the time for many people, I was already spending a lot of time at gaming sites around the time the performance analyzer would have been new. And I knew a lot of people who were also getting online around the same time. That was part of the fun for the PS1/Saturn/N64 era for me, getting to really follow news and reviews online and have forum dicussions as well.

I don't have a Gizmondo, but I despise that kind of coating. It gives a nice first impression(and I've never been big on first impressions), but it's not worth it. I guess my environment is especially ill suited for those coatings as I've had remote controls practically melt. I had cable box remotes covered in sticky goo within a year or two. Same with Fire TV remotes. For one of those, I used alcohol to remove most of the goo and I was much happier with the remote. As far as I can tell, heat and humidity are especially unkind to such coatings. I bet they last longer in dry climates. "Soft touch" is just not worth it and I hated that trend.

While it's true that not every game needs a remake, the Panzer Dragoon games are, in my opinion, good examples of games that could benefit from remakes. Primarily, it's because they are stuck on the Saturn otherwise with the prospect of re-releases of the original versions seeming to be unlikely any time soon. And even though emulation for official releases has gotten better in recent years, I do not trust that Saturn emulation would be handled very well. Remakes would make these great, classic games more accessible and bring their visuals up to a modern standard making them more appealing to play for many people. As with anything like this, it comes down to the execution. The remakes don't have to be shoddy, if indeed they are. Shoddy remakes are a choice.

It goes without saying that this is sad news simply from the human side of it. I know stomach cancer is an issue in Japan. It's even more sad knowing that he was a composer of the music for Gimmick. And back then, Sunsoft was known for their great game music, especially on the Famicom/NES and Gimmick was in line with that high standard for music at the time.

What's wild to me is that some people apparently think Nintendo was the only company back then inventing and/or following good gameplay principles. You could play nothing but Sega games back then and have a good foundation for game development. On later generations, PS1, PS2, etc, there were plenty of developers that could inspire people to pursue game development and teach them some good principles in that regard.

There's no winning when it comes to D-pad an thumb stick placement. I like bezels. I don't see much point in bezel-less anything, but it seems to make even less sense on something like this with integrated controls since the screen can't go all the way to the ends like on a phone. Plus, think of the fingerprints on this thing. I'd take a regular housing over this.

@Gravyc That's an interesting take I don't hear so often. I did enjoy Arkham City and Arkham Knight, which I finally played almost a year ago, but I thought the narratives were the weakest parts, while it was much stronger for Arkham Asylum. I did like the advancements in the gameplay for Arkham City which is why I still like the other games, but I'd pick Asylum as having the best premise and story. City(with the DLC), specially, was annoying because Batman and Catwoman got caught several times very early on and that got tiresome.

This looks and sounds like a sequel of sorts to DMG Deals Damage, a homebrew game by this developer meant to commemorate the Game Boy turning 30 several years ago. That was pretty fun. Interesting how the feature is flawed. I wonder if that was some kind of mistake they just decided not to correct, which happened sometimes.

I was wondering if they would do a modern update or remake of this one. This was always a bit murky since the Japanese original is a licensed game and the western release was done with Jaleco publishing, so I wasn't sure who owned the trademark. Considering the remakes of past Natsume games, I have no concerns about it. Plus the original game will still be there and still be great.

Regarding this having become a cult classic, I'm part of that. Shatterhand is one of my favorite games on the NES. When I say that, I mean it's basically tied for number one. I really love the game and play it often. I think I've beaten it with every combination I can think of. I didn't know about Shatterhand at the time it was current, though I wish I did. I have since recommended it to a friend or two who got into retro gaming after me and I got great feedback on it.

I discovered Shatterhand through Youtube probably in 2013. I saw a video and thought the game looked like it was made for me. It's rare when a game appeals to me to that degree and it actually lives up fully to my own hype for it, and Shatterhand is one of those games. I had the same experience with King of Fighters 97.

This one just didn't land for me. I won't get too in depth on it because I don't want to drag this down too much. Things people like about this one, such as the whip mechanics and the soundtrack, are things I dislike. For the whip, the level design doesn't feel like it compensated for that mechanic. The soundtrack is all over the place for me, with some tunes being excellent, but quite a few feeling very out of place to me. I think the best way to sum it up is that this game strayed too far from the Castlevania formula of the first and third NES game, and subsequent games prior to SOTN. The fact they went back to that formula for Rondo and Bloodlines does make me wonder if they got some feedback after CV4. But there's no denying that the game made a strong impression on quite a few people, as we can see.

@obijuankanoobie Yeah, not too many people need to know specific options. I've been there when it comes to "screen shake" options. Always good to know these things. Anyway, I have Ninja Gaiden Ragebound on PC and it does have an option for blood. I don't have Shinobi yet, but based on the demo and a longplay video that did show options, there does not appear to be a blood option at this time.

Just the fact that both properties were revived at roughly the same time and released at roughly the same time made me realize a Joe Musashi, Ryu Hyabusa team up needs to happen in anime form. Spoiler alert for this non-existent anime: Strider Hiryu also joins the team of super ninjas.

I got into Prince of Persia a few years back. My favorite is the DOS version, recreated as SDLPoP. The Sega CD version is quite good too. I have tried the SNES version, but not extensively. Previously, I was not so interested in the additions, and I'm not sure they'll make the game better. It's funny as the additions add more fantasy elements to the game, which are more in line with the 3D Prince of Persia game for the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox/PC. But you can tell the SNES version is very well made just from looking at it, so they definitely put effort into it.

@jesse_dylan It sounds like this new approach, if they pursue it, would probably implemented into newer versions of the OS. I doubt existing devices would have issues or run into this new restriction. There are also other workarounds such as staying on older version of Android, and manufacturers using custom systems based on Android Open Source Project. In such cases, as long as the APK files are available, it should be easy to install things. But a setup like you describe would not have any issues, I suspect.

I like the flexibility Android offers over ARM-based Linux handhelds, though I do have an unusual situation where I need to modify the screen's color temperature. But I'm flexible, so if this situation became a problem for me, I'd probably get an X86-based handheld like the Steam Deck.

@KingMike It's interesting looking back and realizing that a lot of games are poorly optimized. I saw a video on this game that did a deep dive into this one and how the coding for the water stage is likely messed up. Capcom was also guilty of that. The NES version of Strider is likely unfinished, in my opinion, and also has clear coding and optimization issues.

@Deuteros I think it was easy to miss under the right circumstances. Some of it is regional. You're not alone, though. While I was aware of this, I only learned of it several years ago by chance. I have no recollection of coming across it anywhere before that.

This just seems so odd. I think making it wider to accommodate a square, 1:1 screen which some devices have would be much better. You'd still have the same vertical height so DS and TATE games would display the same, but you'd also have a screen that's much more versatile for 4:3 games and similar ratios. As I recall, such devices with 1:1 screens were well received by those who tried them.

The oral histories for Street Fighter and various other Capcom games were amazing. I found them around this time in 2022, and I'm glad I did find them. Wasn't familiar with some of the other such articles, so I'll have to look.

I'm not familiar with this one, but Monolith was pretty good back in the day. No One Lives Forever was a lot of fun. Not surprised to hear Ice-T delivered a good performance and that it was one of the highlights of the game. Funny to hear that they tried to get Ice Cube first. When I was young, I learned of both men at around the same time and I had trouble remembering which name went with which man. The gigantic man named Tiny I think is likely Tiny Lister(Deebo) who was very recognizable in many films and shows(I recognized him in The Dark Knight). He's also known for a brief, but prominent run in the WWF in 1989. Ice-T said that Lister was a close friend of his, so that connection is there. And I understand the intimidating first impression upon seeing him, as he'd be around 6'5" and a very muscular 300 pounds or so.

@Fiyz That is true, but also making a game for a classic console brings such projects extra publicity. So there is a risk there, but it's balanced by a possible reward for doing it that way.

@cawley1 I think that comparison to ZPF comes down to how widespread the distribution is. I've observed that the kinds of people who buy the carts understand the situation for the developer and don't rush to dump the carts and release the ROM. For example, I saw with Mad Stalker for the Mega Drive, the ROM wasn't easy to find for at least several weeks from what I saw(people asking for it with no luck). With a Steam release, it's available to a wider audience, so the type of person inclined to extract the ROMs, even if it's just something they do for their own amusement, would have easy access to the game.

It's hard to say what the impact of the ROM being out there is in this case. This isn't a typical situation. It's a retro-style game for a retro console at its core. The developer is well regarded among the audience for this and the project was well publicized. I find it plausible that this would have minimal impact on sales. So many people who were interested in this were planning to buy it one way or another. It's unfortunate the cart release comes much later, but carts are largely for collectors now so it's a subset of the audience. But the ROM was going to be out there eventually. I doubt it will affect cart sales much since collectors are not affected by such things. Hopefully it doesn't hurt the digital and modern platforms much. This is to be expected, however, when people know there's a ROM in the data files. As it only took less than 24 hours to have it extracted and playable, whatever method they used to protect it was woefully inadequate.

Of course, I understand and agree with Koshiro's plea for people to buy it. I think this game may be "resistant" to piracy affecting sales for reasons I mentioned before, and I hope that's the case. I was distracted by Ninja Gaiden Ragebound and the demo for Shinobi Art of Vengeance, so I didn't get around to Earthion until the day after release. Feels funny calling it a day-two purchase. I'm only one guy, but the ROM was already out there by the time I purchased the game, and that development wasn't going to change it.

@WileyDragonfly If the article seems contradictory, it's because the dev contradicts himself. "Next step will be removing Linux support entirely". "Linux support is not being removed from DuckStation, I have no immediate plans to do that." So he has no plans to do that, but it also will be the next step. Sounds reasonable to call it a threat to me.

Being able to play demo versions is a fascinating inclusion and not a bad idea for extras. This sounds great. I didn't realize this one was coming out on the 31st. It's been a busy day with the full release of Ninja Gaiden Ragebound(the demo was quite good), and the demo release of Shinobi Art of Vengeance(full game to be out in a month). Shinobi is what had my attention today, as it came out of nowhere and I stumbled upon it by chance. But Earthion sounds great from the review. Looks great too, but that was obvious for a while. Glad to see it's complete. Digital version on PC was always going to be the version for me. What a cool day to be a retro gamer.

@MontyMole well it looks like my guess was a bit off. I didn't expect the term would be used in that context so early on. Thanks for providing that interesting information.

@The_Nintend_Pedant Yeah, I've heard people say that before. I was alluding to that when I said "what is called "AI" now" but that's not something I wanted to get into any deeper than that. I'm not the best person to make such distinction. Whatever that distinction is, the label of AI for them is not going away.

I wonder when the label of AI applied to game logic started. I wouldn't be surprised if that came to be due to the culture at the time, with the concept of AI being a topic in movies, shows, and books that were popular. That's my best guess.

AI as a term applied to old video games was always more of a colloquial thing. I can't speak for anyone else, but I never took it as literal, and I doubt many people did either. Certainly, it's a far cry from what is called "AI" now. The ghosts in Pac-Man were following their programmed routines, programmed by people. Their routines having a bit more complexity to them in how they act and react was a decision made during the design process, not decisions the CPU makes on the fly. It's a silly comparison to make in the article.

I don't know at what point it was, but I started to get away from using the term "AI" to talk about how the CPU characters behave in a game. I remember seeing in an old game with character creation that there was a section for determining "CPU logic", so I started using that or "game logic" in place of the colloquial use of AI with regard to games.

@jamess thanks for the additional info. It sounds quite nice, and I've heard similar positive accounts about it. At first I wasn't too keen on the idea of IR, but that was some years ago and maybe was an inferior product as well. Plus, a friend of mine has the Sinden so I got to play with it for a while. I like that gun, but the software situation makes that annoying for me since I don't run Windows. I realized recently that the IR guns may suit my situation more, so I'll have to look at what options are out there.

@The_Nintend_Pedant There is the Gun4IR and maybe one or two other guns for modern screens that rely on IR that compete with the Sinden camera-based tech. I've heard the IR guns do work very well. Jamess posted about it above, which you probably saw. They come with their own quirks, but people do seem to like them. I haven't gotten to try one of them yet, but it does sound like their IR tech is better than the the Wii.

@FR4M3 It's originally a Pentium 4 PC with Geforce 4 GPU and an embedded Windows XP.

@Razieluigi Yeah, that's terrible formatting. I looked several times and didn't see that until you specifically mentioned it being below the video. I suppose since it's Bitmap Bureau, it makes sense they would at least consider making versions for consoles, even if it had to be changed in more significant ways than Xenocrisis.

How interesting. I was not aware of this one, which is odd because I think I was still keeping up with game news then. The fact that it's a serialized thing makes me think of the .hack series, which I believe was an attempt to do something similar. I guess that was a trend at the time to try to create a serialized RPG series or just a series that would be more frequent and was announced to be that way. I thought the idea was interesting at the time.

@gojiguy WayForward states they are not receiving any revenue from this release.

@jamess That may not have been the intention, but there is a strong implication there to that conclusion. What other reason is there to bring up that other companies will have figures with whom people who have an issue with palmer would also disagree? It essentially is an argument for not applying standards at all because you can't apply them across the board for any number of reasons. Or it's an argument that this site should not acknowledge it with palmer because then they'd have to investigate the corporate structures of other companies for the sake of fairness. In the end, it's the same argument. Plus, if you meant the latter, that's just wishful thinking because leaving that out of the reporting would reflect worse on the site than at least acknowledging it in passing. People would still bring it up in the comments and it would be worse for the site. He has also made himself more visible.

You also referred to someone's stance of drawing a line here is an "extreme position". Is it an extreme position to have any moral standard here? Is it only extreme if it is literally a "single person"? If so, who said they don't apply their standards to other people or corporations where and how they can? Whether you agree with that moral standard is largely irrelevant to the point because, one, it seems at least a reasonable standard, and, two, bringing up the application of "that approach to everything you buy" because someone "up the chain" will have different political views changes it from a simple disagreement of where the standard should be to an argument in favor of having no moral standard at all. What other reason is there to bring that part up? You may not have meant it that way, but that's where it leads.

I normally don't bother anymore with these stories involving modretro. Though I will say that I appreciate Damien acknowledging some of the political context instead of ignoring it completely as some might do. It's better that people have the opportunity to look into those things than simply not know if they were previously unaware. The reason why I bothered today is because I like WayForward and I wanted to see what this was all about.

It seems to me that those who want less politics in this space should have an issue with palmer. He's chosen his path so any project like this is inherently political. People get to have a say about why they don't like him or what he does. To expect people to not say anything is unrealistic. Some would say that it should all come down to the products offered and nothing more, but that's not how the world works, especially in charged times like these. And I've seen politically-motivated boycotts done from both sides of the political aisle. People get to vote with their wallets. In fact, we are often encouraged to collectively. So, again, the real source of politics in gaming in this case is palmer. Why is he even doing political interviews if he would rather keep a low profile? He's the issue here, not those who have issues with him.

Things in life are rarely black and white. Things exist on a spectrum. It is disingenuous to say that if you don't boycott everything you disagree with then you should boycott nothing. That's absurd. If the logical conclusion of your argument is to have no standards at all, then your thinking is flawed. Some products or companies are easier to avoid than others. Some disagreements are bigger than others. Some people have more options available to them than others. I guess the pendulum can go the other way and people could call for mass boycotts for tiny things, but I've yet to see anything of the sort gain any actual traction. And that still seems better than sticking your head in the sand and simply having no standards. In this case, palmer is a step too far for some to support, even indirectly. I am among them, though he also offers no products for me anyway. But glad to see WayForawrd is not directly involved, and I think they probably got the message that it's better to keep it that way.

Good to hear what Sakimoto shared here. He's one of my favorites and one of the best. His work in the 16-bit era, especially on the Mega Drive/Genesis is top tier for the time. The conversions of Midnight Resistance and Captain America & The Avengers brought updated soundtracks using the Terpsichorean driver and the music in both really lifted both titles. It's surprising how good the Gen/MD Captain America music is.

And then there's Gauntlet IV. Even among the best soundtracks of that generation, Gauntlet IV's music is stunning. I should add that credit for that also goes to co-composer Masaharu Iwata. Having looked into it, Iwata and Sakimoto worked together multiple times. It looks like the first time they did was way back on Revolter, so they were both getting their start in that team of enthusiasts looking to design a game.

@jesse_dylan Thank you. I know of other games that do that, but couldn't remember if CV2 did. But the NES does have an extra sound channel available so the Master System would have to make a bit more compromises.

They sound well done making good use of what the Master System offers. The Castlevania video shows the waveforms and channel usage. It's using all four channels, so some compromises would have to be made in game for sound effects, so I wonder what the best way to do that would be. We see similar situations with the Game Boy as it also has four channels available, though they are of a different type. The noise channel could probably drop out of providing music as needed to do a lot of the sound effects such as hitting enemies, while other sounds like item pick ups could probably be done on the third channel as it seems to not be doing quite as much as the other two square-wave channels.

@Missingno128 This is a product to sell. The whole point of this project is to create carts that work on the actual system. It wouldn't make much sense requiring a specific flash cart and just selling a ROM to that very limited audience.

"Why would you need to make a whole new chip"

They'd be making a whole new helper chip whether using this microcontroller on a cart, or FPGA on SD2SNES. If, by the new chip you mean the microcontroller, that goes back to them making carts so that's necessary.

"if he didn't know FPGA programming, he could just hire and pay someone to do it?"

Why do that if you're a software programmer and can just do it yourself with a cheap microcontroller? You talk about doing things that would be "far cheaper", but then would want him/them to pay a subcontractor to make an FPGA core for no good reason?

Pretty heavy stunt casting for this movie. We'll have to see how it turns out. Some wrestlers have turned out to be pretty decent and/or successful actors as well. One of them is Dave Bautista, and I want them to cast him as Dhalsim in this one. Dhalsim 2.0.