@ArcadeRacingCENTRAL Yeah, this actually looks cool- like some kind of Sega-flavoured Kirby Air Ride or something. The possibility of TJ Davis and Shogo Sakai being on board sweetens the deal!
It's unfortunate that this was touted as a "standalone Chao Garden" before, at least in the previous article on this site. As much as I loved Sonic Adventure, I never especially liked the grindy Chao-raising side of things, and though I've heard others calling for a game built primarily around that, it really didn't sound very appealing to me.
Though admittedly, a big part of the problem was having to switch between the Chao Garden and the Action Stages over and over, with no option to just play the main game for a few hours, build up some resources, and then go chill in the Chao Garden for a couple more hours. Plus, I had neither a GBA nor an entirely empty VMU to play the mini-games on.
@wollywoo And they could transform, and there were even secret ones?
Yep, I had the same experience reading a friend's copy of Pokemon Power, that little mini-magazine that was included in Nintendo Power for a while. (I later found it online- it was issue 6, the one which unveiled Mew.) Mesmerizing stuff for a kid in the late '90s, but perhaps that was not quite as obvious to an adult at the time.
@Lowdefal Yeah, I'm not saying Pokemon was such a shoo-in that anyone who approached it cautiously was stupid, or anything like that. There was some risk in launching a franchise of that size, all at once! (Though, speaking as someone who was a kid back then, the appeal was immediate and obvious!)
But in general, there was this constant internal pushback against anything anime/Japanese in the '80s and '90s: characters always had to be renamed/redesigned, box art had to be westernized, cultural references and text had to be scrubbed, etc. Look at basically any NES or Genesis game's box art for some easy examples!
Eventually, anime caught on in the west- Sailor Moon being the earliest show I actually remember as "anime"- but I have to question whether the limiting factor until then was audiences or just marketing. Did anime succeed in the west because of, or in spite of, itself? And could unapologetically Japanese media have succeeded earlier on, if marketing and localization had simply gotten out of the way? I mean, we westerners were more than happy to play the likes of "Ninja Geiden" featuring "Raiyu Heyabuusa", even if it had a funny name!
Like you touched on, dumb decisions kept happening even well after anime was popular in the west: the heavy-handed 4Kids censorship (which I always thought was really hypocritical, considering the stuff their own TMNT got away with!), for one. And like I mentioned, Nintendo was still putting angry eyebrows on Kirby in the mid-2000s. Even Pokemon itself was shoehorning "jelly donuts" and American money into the anime.
@Tom_Gamer What I wonder is how many actual potential customers were turned off by anime-looking character designs? It's obvious that the marketing teams in the west had a major phobia of anything too Japanese or cutesy (but I repeat myself) in the '80s and '90s, but then, they were not always in tune with their audience.
Was anime really poisonous to sales, and if so, for how long? We still saw questionable decisions happening well into the '00s, years after Pokemon had become a huge phenomenon: stuff like painting angry eyebrows on Kirby, or making Japanese games look like shovelware in an attempt to hide their origin.
But I wasn't (yet?) an angsty, edgy 12-year-old in 1990, so I can't say firsthand how anime stuff was perceived in the west at the time.
I suppose there's an argument to be made that not knowing this in a way fostered a carefree creative attitude?
That's an interesting thought, and it leads to a slightly unsettling one: Would the industry have gotten where it is now- risk-averse and full of rereleases and rehashes- a whole lot sooner if they had known that certain games would be so hugely successful and iconic?
On the other hand, some games that succeeded in spite of time and budget limitations could have been granted the resources they needed to really deliver on their true potential!
Does this mean there's going to be a karaoke scene? Or will there be a level where Joe and Yamato jump on the backs of racing stock cars (or run alongside them)?
@Coalescence I was going to say, "man, Sega's getting to be as bad as Nintendo", but then I got to the part where the hardware is technically Nintendo's property, so... yeah.
Of course, the British police were also involved- and doing what they do best, naturally- so it's not all about the game companies.
@Sketcz How often did a company realize that they were onto something really big like that, though?
Most of the time, a company just gets the job done and moves on: no ceremony, no lavish budget spent on minute details in the hopes of making a perfect classic, no saving up a bunch of game assets and records and memorabilia in the hopes that they'll be valuable, or that there'll be an HD remaster or 30th anniversary collector's edition, or that people will want to make documentaries about the project.
It would seem that Nintendo didn't really have the resources to do proper English translations back then, so it makes sense that they'd outsource. It explains how their instruction manuals turned out as well as they did, while the games themselves had stuff like: 'Many years ago Prince Darkness " Gannon " stole one of the Triforce with power.'
@KingMike I didn't know that the longer voice lines weren't in the original Japanese version until reading this article- I just knew that the "Shindou" (Rumble) version did have them... minus "So long, gay Bowser", of course!
Was Nintendo responsible for Tales of Phantasia's GBA dub? That one's up there with The House of the Dead 2 for the best worst acting in a game: "Come forth, thonder of the gods!!!" "What the HECK is that?"
How does this actually work? I assume that new games (or old games with patches) can tap directly into it, but judging by the way they're switching modes in that brief demo, does the controller itself have built-in graphics for select games, so that it can intercept the plain old VMU inputs and substitute its own thing?
@GravyThief Have you tried Phantom Edition? It's the fanmade PC port with uncapped performance and other enhancements. You can probably alter the soundtrack easily enough as well!
@h3s Your CD player is trying to interpret the game data as audio samples. Normally, audio samples have patterns that represent natural combinations of amplitude: play them in order, and they make realistic, coherent sounds. But other data could be anything, so you'll get all kinds of unnatural jumps from high to low, potentially even thousands of times a second.
Looks neat, but I have mixed feelings: is this all that different from simply buying a bunch of DRM-free games and playing them offline through one of the many launchers out there? Except Kazeta requires you to drop an extra few dollars on each game to make it physical.
However, there's something special about that old-school save data screen, combined with inserting the SD cards, that gives a nostalgic element.
And even from a practical perspective, that save data management sounds quite useful. I'm curious as to how they pulled it off, and what its compatibility rate is. Games save their data all over the place: in My Documents, in C:, in their own installation folder, in Steam, in AppData... Kazeta's save management could be really helpful if it works, but I'm a little skeptical that it'll work for more than, say, 75% of games.
Note/correction: Ys III was also released in English for North America.
Anyway, I hope these all get international releases now (preferably in English), as it would be either the first release in a very long time, or the first release ever! Of the games listed, only Ys I & II received more recent releases on Wii and the Turbografx Mini.
I liked Faxanadu and especially Ys I & II, so any opportunity to dig into Falcom's back catalogue is welcomed! I understand that most of the Dragon Slayer/Legend of Heroes/Xanadu games aren't that much like Faxanadu, but I'd still be interested. Dragon Slayer on Turbografx CD has a great soundtrack, as you'd expect.
@bring_on_branstons Ah, I never did make proper use of those weapons. Now that you mention it, I bet the three-way shuriken thing would be really helpful.
Cobra Triangle! That's a good one, but brutal- not that it comes as a surprise, being from Rare's Battletoads era! Even with a Game Genie for unlimited health, the final boss is still hard to finish off in the time limit. Snake Rattle 'n Roll isn't exactly a cake walk, either, though I haven't spent much time with that one.
@KingMike Yeah, it still struggles (flicker and slowdown), so it's not even totally stable at 30fps. The weird thing is that Konami's other games were 60fps, like Contra, Castlevania, and Getsufuumaden itself! TMNT does sometimes throw more stuff on screen than any of those, but I'd say it wasn't worth the jank, if that's why.
I always thought of Konami as technically skilled (on top of simply making fun games), but going by your Dragon Scroll anecdote, they may have used a lot of duct tape to hold things together!
@Razieluigi Got to agree with you. I liked the NES game for what it was, and I especially appreciate what it was trying to do, even if the execution was rough. If this SNES port adds 60fps and unlimited continues, that'll go a long way. But I'd also love to see a game that expands on the concept, with larger maps, more exploration, and less difficulty.
Apparently, TMNT3 on Game Boy does some of the same things, with a Metroidvania-style structure, as well as turtles all having their own unique abilities? Just recently picked up the Cowabunga Collection, so I'm planning to dig into this one soon.
@bring_on_branstons Ugh, AVGN again. Nothing against the guy himself, but I wish people would form their own opinions. It seems like whenever there's an over-hated game, I find out that AVGN had done a popular episode ripping it apart.
Now, the dam in itself is a bit of a wake-up call, I guess. Sort of like the Turbo Tunnel in Battletoads, it's nowhere near the hardest part of the game, yet it is the part where I imagine a lot of players met their match after breezing through the first bit of the game.
I didn't really struggle with the dam when I played it (I was also 11 or 12), and those single-square gaps in stage 3 weren't an issue either, as I had discovered the correct way in that first building where you get the missiles. But the Technodrome- how did you beat that as a kid??? It just goes on and on, and then that final corridor is downright hellish, with those astronaut-looking guys that can destroy your run if RNG (or a slight mistake in your positioning?) puts them in the wrong spot.
@BausRifle I think the question these devs usually ask is "why not"! But even besides that, this makes it a lot easier to add enhancements, like improved audio. In this specific case, I'm also hoping all that extra CPU headroom allows for 60fps, as this was one of the relative few NES games that only ran at 30.
@EarthboundBenjy I didn't know that Halloween hack had crossovers with other franchises, let alone such a deep cut as Brandish! Cool bit of trivia, anyway. But then, I've never played it. Only knew that it was what Fox worked on before Undertale and Deltarune, and that he was apparently a bit of an angsty teenage edgelord at the time?
@zen-dev @Professor_Icepick You know it's tongue-in-cheek, right? Check out the description on the Indiegogo page, which is full of lines like:
"eliminate all remaining pockets of resistance and free-thinking that dare threatening our Workers' Paradise"
and
"Resistence is futile. The Sovietborgs are here to free you from your freedom."
I already hate soldering under normal conditions. The thought of trying to melt tiny bits of metal onto a small board with almost the same melting point is the stuff of nightmares!
Quite a spiffy end result, though! (As a side note, I miss that trend of transparent cases.)
Even for those of us who grew up with consoles and never saw an Amiga, Brimble did some great soundtracks on consoles/handhelds as well. The likes of Driver and Glover come to mind- the latter of which caught many by surprise, it seems, for being groovier than any 3D platformer soundtrack had a right to be!
@The_Nintend_Pedant Your thoughts on the 2- and 4-button layouts make a lot of sense. You know, I don't think I've really had much experience with a normal 6-button layout. Maybe I'd get lost in the endless matrix of buttons, unable to find a point of reference!
Obviously, N64 emulation would benefit from 6 buttons. Currently, I just make do with the right analogue stick to simulate the C buttons, and I'll sometimes add a secondary mapping for C-down onto B, or something (like for the knife in Castlevania 64). Works for 90% of games, easily, but some, like Jet Force Gemini , are still a problem.
I only have 3-button Genesis controllers. Always felt comfortable with B to attack and C to jump, as they're large and more or less laid out horizontally. (Side note: I hate when the secondary/attack button is diagonally down and left from primary/jump! Makes most modern Nintendo games a real chore to play, and now that I think of it, maybe that N64 layout wouldn't be so great for Genesis unless it got turned about 20 degrees clockwise.) Mapping 6 buttons onto a 4-button controller for emulation is awkward, and requires learning the functions, as memorizing the layout of the letters is unintuitive.
It's surprising that you find the 360 controller uncomfortable. When you say the top is cramped, do you mean your fingers are too big to fit on the shoulders and triggers, or are the face buttons also an issue?
Love both the Xbox Controller S and GameCube controller. Neither is perfect (mainly not having enough buttons for certain games), but I find them both really comfortable. And the GCN's 4-button layout is ingenious, though I've always felt like the original 3-bean prototype layout would've been a bit better.
That first image is channelling Baloo from The Jungle Book. Wonder if they would've gotten a Phil Harris soundalike as well!
The Adrian Barrios one has some '90s Nickelodeon energy. I hope Kazooie wasn't actually going to look like that, though, and this was just an exaggerated frame of her screaming!
@HammerGalladeBro I never watched the show, outside of seeing some commercials for it, but I do know it has the animals all talking and getting into various antics. The game, on the other hand, is a sim where you manage a garden, try to attract wild pinata animals, and even breed more. They don't talk, but they do mate, and they also kill each other. Somehow, I don't think much of the game made it into the show! Though I do recall the character models in the show practically looking like they were ripped right out of the game, plus the game's animated intro has the 4Kids cast, and is presumably the same intro used in the show.
Don't know a whole lot about Chaotic's development, but it aired on 4Kids TV, and it featured Jason Griffith (2000s Sonic the Hedgehog) in the lead role.
The owners claim that their games are mostly "between five and 30 years old", but that's stretching the definition of "retro" just a tiny bit. Modern stuff like Cruis'n Blast (2017, so 8 years old) easily counts as retro, by that definition.
On the other hand, maybe they're just forgetting what year it is, seeing as most of the examples listed are well outside that 5-30 range: Donkey Kong (44 years), Final Fight (36 years), Street Fighter II (34 years), Mario Kart DX (12 years), and the Neo-Geo (up to 35 years).
@The_Nintend_Pedant Throw in a second stick, and you pretty much have the ultimate layout, with unmatched versatility! Come to think of it, though, the "Duke" Xbox controller basically did this... it was just missing a few buttons compared to newer controllers. Plus, it was the Duke.
My thinking on the evenly-sized buttons was that it would work well for Sega systems as well as presumably having no negative effect on N64 gameplay. I am starting to wonder if I'm unusually controller-agnostic, though. Some people have mentioned that they really get thrown off when switching between different manufacturers and generations, or when playing a game on the "wrong" controller (e.g., using an Xbox controller for emulating anything that's not Xbox or Dreamcast), but I'm not bothered by it, as long as the buttons are still in the same order.
@h3s Oh, yeah, there's no way they can't somehow get this running on mid-range or even low-end PCs, seeing as it literally runs on a low-end PC already (as indicated by the arcade system specs you posted). I think Koshiro justified the arcade version's features not coming to the Genesis, but keeping them out of the Steam version is just an arbitrary decision for whichever reasons.
@Chocoburger It's interesting and ironic how the PS2 struggled with games like this, Deus Ex, and even Half-Life, yet it had so many of its own games that looked much better than any of those, while also running at a consistent 60fps.
Even then, there were still meaningful differences between platforms, besides simply "this one is more powerful than that one" like it tends to be these days!
So basically... everyone pronounces "Amiga" the same?
I'd describe it as "uh-mee-guh", like it's a schwa at both ends, but I think we're referring to the same thing. (Though maybe some Americans draw the last syllable owwt a bit to make it clearly "ah", as in "cahr" or "Mahrk"?)
Does "Ameeger" even count as a pronunciation, seeing as it's just a context-dependent quirk? As a similar example, I watch one English YouTuber who always says "Ocariner of Time" (and sometimes "Zelder" if it's followed by a vowel like it was just now!), but in isolation, he pronounces both "Ocarina" and "Zelda" the same way I would as a Canadian!
@bring_on_branstons People complain about modern reviews/reviewers, but '80s and '90s review scores could be every bit as insane, just with an extra dash of unpredictability!
On one hand, it's neat to see how reviews back then were raw and very much of the time. They weren't coloured by legendary reputations, built over the course of decades of praise. (You're shocked that someone would dare to give SMB3 a less than perfect score. And understandably so! But that goes to illustrate that there's now that pressure to give it the praise it deserves.)
On the other hand, people seemed to have some weird priorities back then. Just in broad strokes, games that seemed "cool" and novel seemed to rank higher than we'd think they deserved, even if the gameplay was unpolished, while something that seemed "lame" (too kiddy, bad graphics, too similar to an older game, etc.) would be dismissed.
It'll be fine. Nearly every game in existence is already floating around out there (with old console ROMs and DRM-free PC games being especially easy to get one's hands on), and a majority of people are still willing to go on Steam/NSO/GOG/etc. and pay money for those exact same games.
Always enjoy these fun little jabs and easter eggs (the DKC2 one immediately came to mind, as well)!
Though the one about Dave Mirra's grave lands a bit differently now, since he actually did die at a young age, about 10 years ago. That's still long after this game came out, of course.
Coming from mainly a console background (like most Canadians under 40), I've got to say that it must have been mind-blowing to see and experience 16-bit gaming in 1985, before even the 8-bit NES had launched in most regions!
@Guru_Larry Ouch. The SMS version also has Adol- er, I mean "Aron" (yes, they got his name wrong as well) walking pretty slowly, from what I remember. Guess I didn't miss out on much!
That PCE/TGX version is surprisingly accessible for a 1989 title. Arguably friendlier (and easier) than the 2001/2009 PC remake, at least in some ways.
EDIT: I should've said it's not very Y's to play the SMS version. Missed opportunity!
@KGRAMR @FR4M3 "Ys" rhymes with "geese". At least that's how it's always been pronounced in the games (English and Japanese alike).
Though the US Master System version unfortunately called it "Y's", with an unneeded apostrophe, implying that they read it as "wise"? Let's just forget about that one.
@Honkshot I assume that longtime fans of the genre have already played Doom/Quake/Blood/etc. to death by now, having been avid players for 20-30 years, and now they're more than ready to see more games in their favourite genre.
As a relative newcomer to certain genres (Boomer Shooters being one of them), I have to agree that it's hard to care about yet another throwback to (genre/game), when I haven't even played all of the essential titles from back in the day!
Though, come to think of it, it's getting to where I can't even keep up with (or necessarily care about) all of the games that are coming out, even in genres that I have played a lot! Beat-'em-ups, for instance.
I did hear about this before, probably around 2010.
There are even VGM logs now (compact chiptune music files) that include this as a variant, so you can have your right ear blasted with high-pitched bell sounds without waiting over 45 minutes!
EDIT: Sword of Vermilion also has a similar bug in one of its tracks, where the pitch increases on every loop. It eventually wraps back around, but little quirks will accumulate if you leave it running long enough to do this several times (e.g., a couple of hours).
Interesting to see that the Evercade standard has actually taken off- when's the last time we saw a unique game platform successfully join the fray? Everything else I can think of has been self-contained (NES Classic Mini), a flop (Ouya), or just vapour (Amico).
@Jol You joke, but there is already a ray tracing demo on SNES!
As with the Super FX 3, it's bottlenecked by the SNES's bandwidth: the console simply can't update its tiles fast enough to ever do full-screen high framerate video passthrough, but within that limitation, you really can basically use anything as a source.
Comments 569
Re: Sonic-Inspired Indie 'Star Garden' To Potentially Feature New Music From Kirby Air Ride & Mother 3 Composer
@ArcadeRacingCENTRAL Yeah, this actually looks cool- like some kind of Sega-flavoured Kirby Air Ride or something. The possibility of TJ Davis and Shogo Sakai being on board sweetens the deal!
It's unfortunate that this was touted as a "standalone Chao Garden" before, at least in the previous article on this site. As much as I loved Sonic Adventure, I never especially liked the grindy Chao-raising side of things, and though I've heard others calling for a game built primarily around that, it really didn't sound very appealing to me.
Though admittedly, a big part of the problem was having to switch between the Chao Garden and the Action Stages over and over, with no option to just play the main game for a few hours, build up some resources, and then go chill in the Chao Garden for a couple more hours. Plus, I had neither a GBA nor an entirely empty VMU to play the mini-games on.
Re: Nintendo Of America Didn't Think Pokémon "Was Going To Take Off In The US", And It Wasn't Alone
@wollywoo
And they could transform, and there were even secret ones?
Yep, I had the same experience reading a friend's copy of Pokemon Power, that little mini-magazine that was included in Nintendo Power for a while. (I later found it online- it was issue 6, the one which unveiled Mew.) Mesmerizing stuff for a kid in the late '90s, but perhaps that was not quite as obvious to an adult at the time.
Re: Nintendo Of America Didn't Think Pokémon "Was Going To Take Off In The US", And It Wasn't Alone
@Lowdefal Yeah, I'm not saying Pokemon was such a shoo-in that anyone who approached it cautiously was stupid, or anything like that. There was some risk in launching a franchise of that size, all at once! (Though, speaking as someone who was a kid back then, the appeal was immediate and obvious!)
But in general, there was this constant internal pushback against anything anime/Japanese in the '80s and '90s: characters always had to be renamed/redesigned, box art had to be westernized, cultural references and text had to be scrubbed, etc. Look at basically any NES or Genesis game's box art for some easy examples!
Eventually, anime caught on in the west- Sailor Moon being the earliest show I actually remember as "anime"- but I have to question whether the limiting factor until then was audiences or just marketing.
Did anime succeed in the west because of, or in spite of, itself?
And could unapologetically Japanese media have succeeded earlier on, if marketing and localization had simply gotten out of the way? I mean, we westerners were more than happy to play the likes of "Ninja Geiden" featuring "Raiyu Heyabuusa", even if it had a funny name!
Like you touched on, dumb decisions kept happening even well after anime was popular in the west: the heavy-handed 4Kids censorship (which I always thought was really hypocritical, considering the stuff their own TMNT got away with!), for one. And like I mentioned, Nintendo was still putting angry eyebrows on Kirby in the mid-2000s. Even Pokemon itself was shoehorning "jelly donuts" and American money into the anime.
Re: Nintendo Of America Didn't Think Pokémon "Was Going To Take Off In The US", And It Wasn't Alone
@Tom_Gamer What I wonder is how many actual potential customers were turned off by anime-looking character designs? It's obvious that the marketing teams in the west had a major phobia of anything too Japanese or cutesy (but I repeat myself) in the '80s and '90s, but then, they were not always in tune with their audience.
Was anime really poisonous to sales, and if so, for how long? We still saw questionable decisions happening well into the '00s, years after Pokemon had become a huge phenomenon: stuff like painting angry eyebrows on Kirby, or making Japanese games look like shovelware in an attempt to hide their origin.
But I wasn't (yet?) an angsty, edgy 12-year-old in 1990, so I can't say firsthand how anime stuff was perceived in the west at the time.
Re: How Super Mario 64 Fixed Princess Peach's Ad-Agency Induced Naming Mishap
@Sketcz
That's an interesting thought, and it leads to a slightly unsettling one:
Would the industry have gotten where it is now- risk-averse and full of rereleases and rehashes- a whole lot sooner if they had known that certain games would be so hugely successful and iconic?
On the other hand, some games that succeeded in spite of time and budget limitations could have been granted the resources they needed to really deliver on their true potential!
Re: Shinobi: Art Of Vengeance's Joe Musashi Is Voiced By Someone With Real Sega Pedigree
Does this mean there's going to be a karaoke scene? Or will there be a level where Joe and Yamato jump on the backs of racing stock cars (or run alongside them)?
Re: Sega Accused Of Using Police To Recover Nintendo Dev Kits It Had "Negligently Disposed Of"
@Coalescence I was going to say, "man, Sega's getting to be as bad as Nintendo", but then I got to the part where the hardware is technically Nintendo's property, so... yeah.
Of course, the British police were also involved- and doing what they do best, naturally- so it's not all about the game companies.
Re: How Super Mario 64 Fixed Princess Peach's Ad-Agency Induced Naming Mishap
@JumpingJackson What about renaming King Koopa after their future CEO? Now that's foresight!
Re: How Super Mario 64 Fixed Princess Peach's Ad-Agency Induced Naming Mishap
@Sketcz How often did a company realize that they were onto something really big like that, though?
Most of the time, a company just gets the job done and moves on: no ceremony, no lavish budget spent on minute details in the hopes of making a perfect classic, no saving up a bunch of game assets and records and memorabilia in the hopes that they'll be valuable, or that there'll be an HD remaster or 30th anniversary collector's edition, or that people will want to make documentaries about the project.
It would seem that Nintendo didn't really have the resources to do proper English translations back then, so it makes sense that they'd outsource. It explains how their instruction manuals turned out as well as they did, while the games themselves had stuff like: 'Many years ago Prince Darkness " Gannon " stole one of the Triforce with power.'
Re: Interview: "We Did Try To Keep 'Forest' In The Name" - How Mario 64's Princess Peach Helped Bring Animal Crossing To The West
@KingMike I didn't know that the longer voice lines weren't in the original Japanese version until reading this article- I just knew that the "Shindou" (Rumble) version did have them... minus "So long, gay Bowser", of course!
Was Nintendo responsible for Tales of Phantasia's GBA dub? That one's up there with The House of the Dead 2 for the best worst acting in a game:
"Come forth, thonder of the gods!!!"
"What the HECK is that?"
Re: This "World First" Wireless Dreamcast Controller Has A Colour Screen
How does this actually work? I assume that new games (or old games with patches) can tap directly into it, but judging by the way they're switching modes in that brief demo, does the controller itself have built-in graphics for select games, so that it can intercept the plain old VMU inputs and substitute its own thing?
Re: WipEout's Getting Another Soundtrack This Year
@GravyThief Have you tried Phantom Edition? It's the fanmade PC port with uncapped performance and other enhancements. You can probably alter the soundtrack easily enough as well!
@h3s Your CD player is trying to interpret the game data as audio samples. Normally, audio samples have patterns that represent natural combinations of amplitude: play them in order, and they make realistic, coherent sounds. But other data could be anything, so you'll get all kinds of unnatural jumps from high to low, potentially even thousands of times a second.
Re: Kazeta OS Turns Your PC Into A Streamlined Game Console
Looks neat, but I have mixed feelings: is this all that different from simply buying a bunch of DRM-free games and playing them offline through one of the many launchers out there? Except Kazeta requires you to drop an extra few dollars on each game to make it physical.
However, there's something special about that old-school save data screen, combined with inserting the SD cards, that gives a nostalgic element.
And even from a practical perspective, that save data management sounds quite useful. I'm curious as to how they pulled it off, and what its compatibility rate is. Games save their data all over the place: in My Documents, in C:, in their own installation folder, in Steam, in AppData... Kazeta's save management could be really helpful if it works, but I'm a little skeptical that it'll work for more than, say, 75% of games.
Re: Four Classic Final Fantasy Games Have Just Got The "DX" Treatment For Game Boy Color
@GravyThief And it was remade as Sword of Mana, and then remade again as Adventures of Mana!
Re: Falcom's PC Engine CD RPGs, Including 'Ys' And 'Legend Of Heroes', Are Getting Re-Releases On Modern Systems
Note/correction: Ys III was also released in English for North America.
Anyway, I hope these all get international releases now (preferably in English), as it would be either the first release in a very long time, or the first release ever! Of the games listed, only Ys I & II received more recent releases on Wii and the Turbografx Mini.
I liked Faxanadu and especially Ys I & II, so any opportunity to dig into Falcom's back catalogue is welcomed! I understand that most of the Dragon Slayer/Legend of Heroes/Xanadu games aren't that much like Faxanadu, but I'd still be interested. Dragon Slayer on Turbografx CD has a great soundtrack, as you'd expect.
Re: Random: Looks Like We All Owe The BBC An Apology - It Didn't Twin Windows 95 With An Apple Mac After All
@The_Nintendo_Pedant Nearly 30 years later, I still remember the headline: "US family installs Windows 95 from CD-ROM"!
Re: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Will Be The Next NES Classic To Get A Native SNES Port
@bring_on_branstons Ah, I never did make proper use of those weapons. Now that you mention it, I bet the three-way shuriken thing would be really helpful.
Cobra Triangle! That's a good one, but brutal- not that it comes as a surprise, being from Rare's Battletoads era! Even with a Game Genie for unlimited health, the final boss is still hard to finish off in the time limit. Snake Rattle 'n Roll isn't exactly a cake walk, either, though I haven't spent much time with that one.
Re: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Will Be The Next NES Classic To Get A Native SNES Port
@KingMike Yeah, it still struggles (flicker and slowdown), so it's not even totally stable at 30fps.
The weird thing is that Konami's other games were 60fps, like Contra, Castlevania, and Getsufuumaden itself! TMNT does sometimes throw more stuff on screen than any of those, but I'd say it wasn't worth the jank, if that's why.
I always thought of Konami as technically skilled (on top of simply making fun games), but going by your Dragon Scroll anecdote, they may have used a lot of duct tape to hold things together!
Re: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Will Be The Next NES Classic To Get A Native SNES Port
@Razieluigi Got to agree with you.
I liked the NES game for what it was, and I especially appreciate what it was trying to do, even if the execution was rough.
If this SNES port adds 60fps and unlimited continues, that'll go a long way. But I'd also love to see a game that expands on the concept, with larger maps, more exploration, and less difficulty.
Apparently, TMNT3 on Game Boy does some of the same things, with a Metroidvania-style structure, as well as turtles all having their own unique abilities? Just recently picked up the Cowabunga Collection, so I'm planning to dig into this one soon.
Re: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Will Be The Next NES Classic To Get A Native SNES Port
@bring_on_branstons Ugh, AVGN again. Nothing against the guy himself, but I wish people would form their own opinions. It seems like whenever there's an over-hated game, I find out that AVGN had done a popular episode ripping it apart.
Now, the dam in itself is a bit of a wake-up call, I guess. Sort of like the Turbo Tunnel in Battletoads, it's nowhere near the hardest part of the game, yet it is the part where I imagine a lot of players met their match after breezing through the first bit of the game.
I didn't really struggle with the dam when I played it (I was also 11 or 12), and those single-square gaps in stage 3 weren't an issue either, as I had discovered the correct way in that first building where you get the missiles. But the Technodrome- how did you beat that as a kid???
It just goes on and on, and then that final corridor is downright hellish, with those astronaut-looking guys that can destroy your run if RNG (or a slight mistake in your positioning?) puts them in the wrong spot.
Re: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Will Be The Next NES Classic To Get A Native SNES Port
@BausRifle I think the question these devs usually ask is "why not"!
But even besides that, this makes it a lot easier to add enhancements, like improved audio. In this specific case, I'm also hoping all that extra CPU headroom allows for 60fps, as this was one of the relative few NES games that only ran at 30.
Re: "Definitely Possible" - Could A Golden Axe: Revenge Of Death Adder Mega Drive Port Be On The Way?
@Guru_Larry I liked GA2 and 3. Great soundtracks in both of them, and 3 had those branching paths and a more expansive move set.
Though I have to agree that they didn't look nearly as good or play nearly as well as SoR2. (And GA3 does not look like a first-party 1993 game!)
Re: EGGCONSOLE Versions Of 'Fray' And 'Brandish Renewal' Are Being Removed From The Switch eShop
@EarthboundBenjy I didn't know that Halloween hack had crossovers with other franchises, let alone such a deep cut as Brandish! Cool bit of trivia, anyway.
But then, I've never played it. Only knew that it was what Fox worked on before Undertale and Deltarune, and that he was apparently a bit of an angsty teenage edgelord at the time?
Re: "We Are Well Aware That It Is Hardly Possible At This Point" - You Still Have A Week To Make This Promising New Dreamcast Game A Reality
@zen-dev @Professor_Icepick You know it's tongue-in-cheek, right? Check out the description on the Indiegogo page, which is full of lines like:
"eliminate all remaining pockets of resistance and free-thinking that dare threatening our Workers' Paradise"
and
"Resistence is futile. The Sovietborgs are here to free you from your freedom."
Re: This Custom Game Boy Color Takes A Forgotten '90s Hardware Trend To The Next Logical Stage
I already hate soldering under normal conditions. The thought of trying to melt tiny bits of metal onto a small board with almost the same melting point is the stuff of nightmares!
Quite a spiffy end result, though!
(As a side note, I miss that trend of transparent cases.)
Re: "I Owe Much Of My Path To His Belief In What I Could Do" - Allister Brimble Pays Tribute To Martyn Brown With 'Amiga 40'
Even for those of us who grew up with consoles and never saw an Amiga, Brimble did some great soundtracks on consoles/handhelds as well. The likes of Driver and Glover come to mind- the latter of which caught many by surprise, it seems, for being groovier than any 3D platformer soundtrack had a right to be!
Re: After Tackling The Nintendo DS, MagicX's Next Handheld Seems Focused On N64 Emulation
@The_Nintend_Pedant Your thoughts on the 2- and 4-button layouts make a lot of sense. You know, I don't think I've really had much experience with a normal 6-button layout. Maybe I'd get lost in the endless matrix of buttons, unable to find a point of reference!
One good ramble deserves another, I guess.
Re: "The Higher-Ups Did Their Pitch & It All Just Stopped" - Banjo Kazooie Almost Got A TV Show, Here's Why It Didn't
That first image is channelling Baloo from The Jungle Book. Wonder if they would've gotten a Phil Harris soundalike as well!
The Adrian Barrios one has some '90s Nickelodeon energy. I hope Kazooie wasn't actually going to look like that, though, and this was just an exaggerated frame of her screaming!
Re: "The Higher-Ups Did Their Pitch & It All Just Stopped" - Banjo Kazooie Almost Got A TV Show, Here's Why It Didn't
@HammerGalladeBro I never watched the show, outside of seeing some commercials for it, but I do know it has the animals all talking and getting into various antics. The game, on the other hand, is a sim where you manage a garden, try to attract wild pinata animals, and even breed more. They don't talk, but they do mate, and they also kill each other. Somehow, I don't think much of the game made it into the show!
Though I do recall the character models in the show practically looking like they were ripped right out of the game, plus the game's animated intro has the 4Kids cast, and is presumably the same intro used in the show.
Don't know a whole lot about Chaotic's development, but it aired on 4Kids TV, and it featured Jason Griffith (2000s Sonic the Hedgehog) in the lead role.
Re: "We've Gone Retro" - New Arcade Bucks The Trend In An Otherwise Gloomy Sector
The owners claim that their games are mostly "between five and 30 years old", but that's stretching the definition of "retro" just a tiny bit. Modern stuff like Cruis'n Blast (2017, so 8 years old) easily counts as retro, by that definition.
On the other hand, maybe they're just forgetting what year it is, seeing as most of the examples listed are well outside that 5-30 range: Donkey Kong (44 years), Final Fight (36 years), Street Fighter II (34 years), Mario Kart DX (12 years), and the Neo-Geo (up to 35 years).
Re: After Tackling The Nintendo DS, MagicX's Next Handheld Seems Focused On N64 Emulation
@The_Nintend_Pedant Throw in a second stick, and you pretty much have the ultimate layout, with unmatched versatility! Come to think of it, though, the "Duke" Xbox controller basically did this... it was just missing a few buttons compared to newer controllers. Plus, it was the Duke.
My thinking on the evenly-sized buttons was that it would work well for Sega systems as well as presumably having no negative effect on N64 gameplay. I am starting to wonder if I'm unusually controller-agnostic, though. Some people have mentioned that they really get thrown off when switching between different manufacturers and generations, or when playing a game on the "wrong" controller (e.g., using an Xbox controller for emulating anything that's not Xbox or Dreamcast), but I'm not bothered by it, as long as the buttons are still in the same order.
Re: After Tackling The Nintendo DS, MagicX's Next Handheld Seems Focused On N64 Emulation
That six-button layout with all of the buttons being the same size looks like a great addition in general- more controllers should use that!
Re: The Making Of: Earthion - "Working On It Again Reminded Me Just How Incredible The Mega Drive Really Is"
@h3s Oh, yeah, there's no way they can't somehow get this running on mid-range or even low-end PCs, seeing as it literally runs on a low-end PC already (as indicated by the arcade system specs you posted). I think Koshiro justified the arcade version's features not coming to the Genesis, but keeping them out of the Steam version is just an arbitrary decision for whichever reasons.
Re: The Making Of: Earthion - "Working On It Again Reminded Me Just How Incredible The Mega Drive Really Is"
@SlangWon I assume he means that this version is a native PC game, and isn't able to run on (or be ported to) old consoles like the Genesis.
Re: "I Wouldn't Wish That Version On My Worst Enemies" - No One Lives Forever Dev Reflects On Challenging PS2 Port
@Chocoburger It's interesting and ironic how the PS2 struggled with games like this, Deus Ex, and even Half-Life, yet it had so many of its own games that looked much better than any of those, while also running at a consistent 60fps.
Even then, there were still meaningful differences between platforms, besides simply "this one is more powerful than that one" like it tends to be these days!
Re: Following Valnet's Purchase Of Polygon, There's A Battle To Keep Vital Pieces Of Games Journalism Online
@Damo Thanks for bringing these up- they look like great stuff!
@WhiteUmbrella If only Polygon did more articles like these, instead of writing about, uh... being bored because you're too cool to play Rock Band.
Re: Poll: How Do You Pronounce "Amiga"?
So basically... everyone pronounces "Amiga" the same?
I'd describe it as "uh-mee-guh", like it's a schwa at both ends, but I think we're referring to the same thing. (Though maybe some Americans draw the last syllable owwt a bit to make it clearly "ah", as in "cahr" or "Mahrk"?)
Does "Ameeger" even count as a pronunciation, seeing as it's just a context-dependent quirk? As a similar example, I watch one English YouTuber who always says "Ocariner of Time" (and sometimes "Zelder" if it's followed by a vowel like it was just now!), but in isolation, he pronounces both "Ocarina" and "Zelda" the same way I would as a Canadian!
Re: VGHF Acquires Rights To Historic Magazine That Covered The Rise Of The NES
It's such a weird thought that video game coverage could have been so sparse even circa 1987, when the NES was really taking off.
Great for VGHF in making this acquisition, and it sounds like fascinating stuff- definitely going to check this out!
Re: VGHF Acquires Rights To Historic Magazine That Covered The Rise Of The NES
@bring_on_branstons People complain about modern reviews/reviewers, but '80s and '90s review scores could be every bit as insane, just with an extra dash of unpredictability!
On one hand, it's neat to see how reviews back then were raw and very much of the time. They weren't coloured by legendary reputations, built over the course of decades of praise. (You're shocked that someone would dare to give SMB3 a less than perfect score. And understandably so! But that goes to illustrate that there's now that pressure to give it the praise it deserves.)
On the other hand, people seemed to have some weird priorities back then. Just in broad strokes, games that seemed "cool" and novel seemed to rank higher than we'd think they deserved, even if the gameplay was unpolished, while something that seemed "lame" (too kiddy, bad graphics, too similar to an older game, etc.) would be dismissed.
Re: Random: Is This $300 Fanmade Overhaul The Ultimate Game Gear?
A 640x480 screen? Is the image scaled exactly 3x on each axis, then?
(That'd fill the height pretty well, mainly leaving it pillarboxed.)
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
It'll be fine. Nearly every game in existence is already floating around out there (with old console ROMs and DRM-free PC games being especially easy to get one's hands on), and a majority of people are still willing to go on Steam/NSO/GOG/etc. and pay money for those exact same games.
Re: Random: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 Dev Reveals Cheeky Dave Mirra Digs Hidden Inside The GBA Port
Always enjoy these fun little jabs and easter eggs (the DKC2 one immediately came to mind, as well)!
Though the one about Dave Mirra's grave lands a bit differently now, since he actually did die at a young age, about 10 years ago. That's still long after this game came out, of course.
Re: Anniversary: Commodore Unveiled The First Amiga Computer 40 Years Ago Today
Coming from mainly a console background (like most Canadians under 40), I've got to say that it must have been mind-blowing to see and experience 16-bit gaming in 1985, before even the 8-bit NES had launched in most regions!
Re: The X68000 Z Is Getting Its Very Own Ys Collection This Winter
@Guru_Larry Ouch. The SMS version also has Adol- er, I mean "Aron" (yes, they got his name wrong as well) walking pretty slowly, from what I remember. Guess I didn't miss out on much!
That PCE/TGX version is surprisingly accessible for a 1989 title. Arguably friendlier (and easier) than the 2001/2009 PC remake, at least in some ways.
EDIT: I should've said it's not very Y's to play the SMS version. Missed opportunity!
Re: The X68000 Z Is Getting Its Very Own Ys Collection This Winter
@KGRAMR @FR4M3 "Ys" rhymes with "geese".
At least that's how it's always been pronounced in the games (English and Japanese alike).
Though the US Master System version unfortunately called it "Y's", with an unneeded apostrophe, implying that they read it as "wise"? Let's just forget about that one.
Re: Boomer Shooter 'Hellscreen' Cancels Upcoming Episodes Due To Game's "Severe Under Performance"
@Honkshot I assume that longtime fans of the genre have already played Doom/Quake/Blood/etc. to death by now, having been avid players for 20-30 years, and now they're more than ready to see more games in their favourite genre.
As a relative newcomer to certain genres (Boomer Shooters being one of them), I have to agree that it's hard to care about yet another throwback to (genre/game), when I haven't even played all of the essential titles from back in the day!
Though, come to think of it, it's getting to where I can't even keep up with (or necessarily care about) all of the games that are coming out, even in genres that I have played a lot! Beat-'em-ups, for instance.
Re: Data Discs Is Reissuing A Bunch Of Its Sega Soundtracks
Why are they "repressing" such great music? Stop holding it back!
Re: Random: Did You Know About This Strange Sonic 3 'File Select' Bug?
I did hear about this before, probably around 2010.
There are even VGM logs now (compact chiptune music files) that include this as a variant, so you can have your right ear blasted with high-pitched bell sounds without waiting over 45 minutes!
EDIT: Sword of Vermilion also has a similar bug in one of its tracks, where the pitch increases on every loop. It eventually wraps back around, but little quirks will accumulate if you leave it running long enough to do this several times (e.g., a couple of hours).
Re: Review: Super Pocket Data East Edition - A Solid Handheld, But One With Too Much Duplication
Interesting to see that the Evercade standard has actually taken off- when's the last time we saw a unique game platform successfully join the fray? Everything else I can think of has been self-contained (NES Classic Mini), a flop (Ouya), or just vapour (Amico).
Re: Hands On: 30 Years On, DOOM's "Super FX 3" Upgrade Gives SNES Players A More Polished Way To Rip And Tear
@Jol You joke, but there is already a ray tracing demo on SNES!
As with the Super FX 3, it's bottlenecked by the SNES's bandwidth: the console simply can't update its tiles fast enough to ever do full-screen high framerate video passthrough, but within that limitation, you really can basically use anything as a source.