@Banjo- It actually took three years to make, like most of their games! It was first revealed on the GameCube, then ported and refined on the Xbox. According to interviews, Rare still had to cut content to keep some semblance of a deadline. (Just porting to Xbox was apparently a big undertaking in itself, and ate up a lot of time.)
PS: The unsold copies of Ghoulies in the garbage may be a self-deprecating joke, but that joke is based on something, whether that's actual sales figures, or just public perception!
@BobaTheFett Do you mean about the gameplay being simplistic, or about the limited scope and short length of the game? If the former, you should know that the later challenges offer difficult conditions that force you to get creative with how you approach things, so the simple mechanics are more of a means to an end, rather than the point itself.
If it's the latter, then I get that. If you asked me to try to define the "Rare Magic" that graced their N64-era output, I would point to the ambition, and the feeling that they were always trying to make the best game ever.
A straightforward shooter campaign, kart racer, or collectathon platformer? Not good enough- they had to cram it full of features, details, extras, and modes.
Ghoulies was satisfied to be what it was- not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily, but it's a step down from the extravagance of previous games.
Grabbed by the Ghoulies is a clever and fun little game (and I consider the remastered version from Rare Replay to be one of the compilation's highlights), but it suffered from all of the weight being placed on it as Rare's big Xbox debut, and the first new Rare game in a year.
There are all kinds of games like this, which are worthwhile on their own merits, but can be disappointing in their original context, due to being too small in scope, too unconventional, etc. Somewhat fittingly, Luigi's Mansion is another example, where many of us were hoping for a big, flagship Mario title for the GameCube (seeing as the last one was a full five years old at that time!), but the game's quality ultimately speaks for itself.
This disappointment due to failed expectations is understandable, but it starts to seem a bit pointless in hindsight, as we can appreciate what something is, not what it isn't.
@KingMike Could be a bit of both, for all I know. Japan, at least, is supposed to be a treasure trove for collectors, with much lower prices than you'd find in the west, but I thought Europe was a lot more in line with North America. The high prices on Pokemon, Castlevania, etc., as seen in this article, would seem to back that up!
@Andee Especially considering that the same game costs $10 CAD on Xbox (at full price)!
Similar deal with TMNT III on Game Boy: Considering the faded label and lack of any packaging, you're not getting much of a collector's experience for the £70. If you're just after the game itself, you might as well get the Cowabunga Collection for a fraction of that cost, and be able to play the dozen other games it includes.
Is there a market crash going on? As a Canadian, I'm amazed at some of those prices: £6 for a boxed copy of Sonic 1, £15 for Daytona on Saturn, and just £8 for Smash Bros. on Wii U?
I thought I noticed the prices on many games over here starting to balance out a bit, with older titles starting to come back within reach of us average peasants. But we still don't have prices like these, as far as I've seen!
@foodmetaphors I'd heard it said before that they didn't want to seem outdated with an "Xbox 2", but their choice of a "3" title, specifically, is kind of funny.
Somehow, that didn't stop them from pitting their Xbox One against the PlayStation 4, though!
"you could go and watch Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you don’t have to worry about someone having to remake it so you can watch it again"
I think this bit really highlights how the availability of older video games really isn't where it should be. It's kind of ridiculous how many games are simply not (legally!) available in any form- and as a lesser issue, I'd add that of those that are available, many have been altered or remade, which would be considered sacrilege in movie enthusiast circles. (Imagine if the only available release of Star Wars was a remaster, with alterations made to... oh, bad example. But imagine if the only way to watch episodes 4, 5, and 6 was through a full remake with modern VFX and a whole new cast!)
But things are in a much better state than they were 20 or so years ago, and we have many more old games listed than delisted each year, so that's progress!
@Razieluigi As far as the preservation itself is concerned, I'd agree that video games are in a pretty good spot: relatively few are "lost media". It's not perfect, but we've got exhaustive collections of ROMs for 40-year-old consoles, and there's a lot of awareness and effort around preservation now- in this regard, video games have caught up with TV and movies, despite their younger age.
Different people have different ideas of what "preservation" means, though, and it can possibly water things down when all these different definitions are being thrown around.
If we're talking about being able to purchase a legitimate copy of whatever game we want (not sure that counts as "preservation", but I support it regardless!), then video games are lagging way behind, based on the stats Gamecuber shared. Though even there, things are improving: look at how many older games are available on the likes of Steam, compared to where things were 20 years ago!
And then the more complete, contextual approach you mentioned... that's casting a wide net, but these things are definitely worth preserving as well!
Interesting idea, but between the potential legal issues and the fact that this doesn't actually make these games available to more people, it's probably not worth it. And don't some of these already work well on modern systems?
There are so many other PC and console games out there that could use a good remaster, with legal distribution included as part of the package!
I guess I could see an early-2000s console being called by a few of those names, like "Microsoft AMP". Most of those are just awful, though, and I don't know how an actual, professional branding company in that time could think that a console needs to have a cheesy '80s acronym as its name! At least offer some normal names as an option!
PS: Is there some significance to "TSO" or "Three Six Zero" that I'm missing? I always assumed the Xbox 360 was just inexplicably named after a full circle, and that was that, but this revelation only muddies the waters.
@Zenszulu That's the thing: this demo is already using multiple copies of textures with different lighting baked into each. Removing that would free up a fair bit of space- though again, the lighting would need to be faked another way.
Also, remember that each step down in resolution lets us quadruple the number of textures. 256x256 is still really high-res for the N64, but it allows for 16 times as many textures as we saw in this demo!
@Zenszulu This demo is overkill, though, with unique 1024x1024 textures on each surface. There's a lot of potential for a game that has huge textures without being quite so extravagant:
256x256 is still enough to fill the whole screen without any blur, and even 128x128 would hold up really well (being on par with a lot of GameCube-era textures)!
Plus, each texture here has lighting baked in. Generic versions of the textures without lighting would take up way less space (as they could be reused across different objects and surfaces), though it would mean someone would have to paint all of the vertices to simulate lighting.
@EarthboundBenjy 2012 releases do qualify- look at La-Mulana and Ys: Origin. Though speaking of Ys, it makes it onto the list despite having a more-or-less contemporary English release, as the release dates (2006 Japanese, 2012 English) just happened to line up right.
I think relative delays would be a better metric (e.g., the English release has to come at least 10 years after the original), but no matter how you slice it, it's going to be somewhat arbitrary.
@BionicDodo When I saw the headline, I thought it was going to be about fan translations. This is cool, too, but a list of games with fan translations would also be great. (Or like you said, both on one site!)
I'm probably biased, but Gen 1 is my favourite to this day. I played Yellow a fair bit more than the other versions from that gen, though, so it feels a bit overly familiar, whereas Red and Blue (and especially the original Japanese Red and Green) have a special charm in their goofy monster designs.
Oh, and you only had to trade with one other version if you had Red or Blue, whereas Yellow had to trade with both if you wanted to catch 'em all! I don't own Blue, so I had to trade with Red, Gold, and Silver in order to complete my save!
@-wc- I don't know, I always felt like the two-character gimmick wasn't as game-changing as it was hyped up to be- and then when MK8 Deluxe retained the two-item mechanic (with only one character per kart!), I felt somewhat vindicated.
That said, Double Dash (along with maaaybe MKDS) is arguably peak Mario Kart to this day, as it blends the accessibility of the newer games with the technicality and higher skill ceiling of the old ones. I've only come to appreciate DD more over the years, as the later entries, while great, seem to be missing something. It's ironic that Damien says that DD lacks a certain "je ne sais quoi", as I think that's exactly what it has!
Little clarification/correction: this port is based on the original MSX game, but the article mentions the NES adaptation before saying "That version of the game is now being ported", seemingly implying that it's the NES version that's being brought to the Genesis.
TV, hands down. Old 2D games look so much better using real hardware on a CRT TV, and 3D games hold up surprisingly well on modern screens via emulation.
I find handheld systems in general to be really uncomfortable to play on, so I usually end up playing those games on a larger screen as well.
This is such a strange turn of events. For years, we've been wanting Sega to bring back their Model 3 games so we can buy them... and now they decide to make them freebies in their latest Yakuza game?
Great news either way, though! (I just need to catch up on the other what, 8, first?)
I like how they just briefly show that there's also an HD mode, as if it's a little bonus feature that was thrown in. The whole game essentially has to be built twice, for this to be possible.
@KingMike I think what's throwing you off is that this article is from 2018!
I know there's a little acknowledgement of the article's origin near the bottom when it's re-posted, but I wish it would be displayed more prominently at the top, as that would make these cases a lot less confusing. Maybe it could even replace or sit alongside the timestamp, if that's possible. (Admins, what do you think?)
@-wc- Thanks for clarifying! I may not agree 100%, but I think I see where you're coming from. And I did feel particularly apathetic towards gritty PS3-era games at the time, though sitting out that generation and falling behind has made it (and subsequent generations!) all feel a bit fresher to me now.
I guess there's only so much that can be done with (attempted) photorealism- and especially the brown '00s AAA look... I personally feel that both pixel art and full-on cartoonish 3D graphics are also pretty well played out by this point, but there's still plenty of potential in the broadly semi-realistic middle ground that was seemingly a lot more common in the 5th and 6th gens. That, and all kinds of overtly stylized graphics, of course, of which the possibilities are endless!
PS: Ah, styrofoam blocks... have we not moved beyond 2006 Havok physics yet?
@-wc- So you think all games with realistic graphics look ugly, then? Or just the ones from 5+ years ago?
I still think Crysis (16 years old!) looks good, though the humans are a little uncanny and CG-ish, of course... but then, don't the human characters in all games still look like CGI? The gap between game graphics and reality is closing ever so slowly now.
@ludotaku You've probably already played 2D pixel art games on 3D engines without even realizing it! Shovel Knight is an example of this.
There are also some indie games now that use polygons, but render in 240p by default (like a PlayStation or N64 game), which gives the impression of pixel art when played on a modern screen.
And of course, there are voxel games like 3D Dot Game Heroes, but this is a specific aesthetic, not a more efficient way to create pixel art.
@-wc- Are you talking about your friends, or the wide sentiment that you perceived outside of that? Because if we're talking about friend circles, I see where you're coming from. Based on the people I knew, I would've thought the GameCube was way more popular than it was, and that Xbox was in a distant third place.
When I say the Xbox was considered cool, I'm going more by the impression I got based on other factors besides my friends. It's been 20+ years, but the examples I remember are gaming magazines, bits of online chatter, pop culture cameos, and random acquaintances (some of whom were admittedly my age or younger, and I'm a bit younger than you are, still being in junior high when these consoles launched).
I always thought of the annoying FPS kid stereotype as something that started with CoD4: Modern Warfare, but now that I think of it, it had some roots in the very first Halo as well.
@Tobunari Rush, like the 3D "boostathons", can be fun when you get to know the levels well enough to blast through them. I'd forgotten about the enemies (I also finished it years ago, got the emeralds, etc., and never went back to it), but I did remember that it throws in a lot of pits and things to discourage you from going fast.
I don't like any of these boost-based games as much as most people seem to- Sonic Adventure is still the closest to getting 3D Sonic right, in my opinion.
@BulkSlash As a GameCube fan, I kind of get this (remember when Resident Evil 4 was one of the console's biggest exclusives?), but it's great to see games ported to more platforms, so more people can play them- sometimes with meaningful QoL and performance enhancements as well.
Far too many games are still stranded on "dead" platforms to this day, with no way to purchase them besides expensive used copies (assuming the game wasn't digital-only!). Being able to purchase and enjoy these games today easily beats out any sentiments around exclusivity. If you ask me, anyway.
@Darthmoogle Are you having trouble with a particular game? Let me know, as it's possible I've seen it before.
The latest versions of Dolphin are usually pretty good about just working, with no settings needing to be changed (aside from telling it where your games are, and mapping the controller buttons). But there are definitely exceptions, and the old laptop might add an issue or two of its own.
Nice! Sonic Advance 1 was about as close as anyone got to the classics (until Mania, of course), but Advance 2, Advance 3, and Rush all felt like a considerable step back: too often, they had just one path through the level, bottomless pits everywhere, and hard-to-anticipate obstacles to make sure you fall into said bottomless pits unless you know exactly what you're doing.
It's great to see 2's level design getting the attention and refinement it needed!
@BorkYeahGames Linking GBA and GCN emulators has been possible for a while, but now Dolphin has GBA emulators built in, allowing for easier setup- including straightforward netplay without using Parsec!
About the HyperCube, I'm impressed: both that you got this working in the first place, and that you somehow made it even more complicated than the original setup with all that it entailed!
Interestingly, these screenshots were taken in high resolution mode. Was Sonic X-Treme ever shown off running in 480i, or did Sega crank the resolution up for the purpose of taking pictures?
(Dinosaur Planet had a similar situation, with a bunch of early images being 640x480, but the leaked ROM only runs in low-res 240p mode.)
@dimi That's not bad, if it also unlocks a wide library of CD-based games as well. Other systems would have you spend 2-3 times as much for a CD-ROM drive, instead of just tapping into your existing CD player.
@N64-ROX Probably 5Mb, since bits were what almost everyone used in that context! 5 megabytes would be insanely huge (almost unheard-of, even on SNES). 5 megabits, on the other hand, would be in the same league as TMNT2 (512KB or 4Mb) and Kirby's Adventure (768KB or 6Mb).
The thought of having huge amounts of space on the NES is an interesting one, though. It should be possible to store a ton of audio data, and then flip through the banks 16KB at a time to stream music. Come to think of it, there was a demo ROM that did something like this on a small scale. It looped a segment of everyone's favourite Rick Astley song in impressively clear quality.
Though streaming proper PCM ties up the CPU for too long, and the NES's usual DPCM is always a bit muffled, so neither is ideal. And running actual Redbook CD audio (like the Turbografx or Sega CD did) might only be possible on the Japanese Famicom, as the other regions' NES models had no way to pass audio through the cartridge port.
These look really cool, and now I'm back to wanting Pokémon for SNES to be real! (I used to wish there was a console version, back in the day.)
It just seems a shame to sacrifice a Super Game Boy for each one of these. Hopefully, someone will be able to decompile and port the original games to SNES- maybe with audiovisual enhancements?
@Daggot Yeah, on that last point, Acclaim comes to mind as one with a similarly rough story: they went bankrupt, and all of their physical assets got auctioned off to who knows where- including any workstations, servers, or tapes containing the repositories, backups, and dev materials.
A treasure trove of beta content (along with the ability to bring some lost classics to modern consoles) was jettisoned in ~2004, and for all we know, someone could have wiped and reformatted it all away, just so they could put some boring accounting database in its place or something.
@BulkSlash Is it common for publishers to keep a copy of the developers' repositories? It probably has been done before, but I find it hard to imagine it is (or especially was) common.
Guess I land right in the middle- I started with the NES and a bootleg cart containing a ton of pre-1986 titles (including many that were otherwise stuck in Japan!), but this was in the early '90s, like 1992-93.
The NES stayed popular for a long time: well into the late '90s, at least in my family/friend circles.
@Serpenterror But imagine how wonderfully awful it could have been! Maybe it would have starred Samus and American Kirby (complete with muscles and facial hair, like in the commercials) working together in a side-scrolling shooter, like the Rolling Thunder games, but with a buddy cop kind of story tying it all together.
I've always wondered: if Shinobi III is the third game, then which one doesn't count? Shadow Dancer, presumably, since "Shinobi" only appears in the subtitle? Or Shinobi (1), since it was only on the 8-bit systems?
The Japanese numbering makes more sense to me, since it separates the Shinobi series into two games of each style: Shinobi and Shadow Dancer have the slightly slower pace, with lots of ledge hopping and hostage rescuing. And then Super Shinobi I and especially II amp things up with more moves, crazier enemies and situations, etc.
I was not expecting this relatively obscure game to get a remake, but I'm glad it is! Shadow of the Ninja is already great, and Tengo Project has turned out nothing but gold for the past several years, so this should be a great match.
@AJB83 Thanks, but you don't need to go to the trouble! I haven't even played this enhanced port yet, but when I do, I won't mind cutting and looping one track. Unless you want to for your own sake, in which case, have at it!
@AJB83 Thanks! I checked it out now, along with the album version, and it seems the latter would actually work pretty well as-is. The reason I mentioned radio edits was because I was familiar with the album (Risotto) version of Goodnight Lover, and that one would definitely need editing. Otherwise, the race would be ending just as the music really gets going!
I don't know why Nintendo didn't take advantage of Yoshi's inclusion in Tetris Attack: the game itself is full of Yoshi characters, but they're nowhere to be found on the box art!
And when they lost the Tetris branding, that should have been all the more reason to set things right: rename it "Yoshi's Puzzle Attack" or whatever, and whip up some new box art featuring Yoshi and friends. Nope. A couple of releases with Pokemon (at the height of Pokemania, to be fair), but then it was all bland, straightforward presentation from then on.
PS: I'm not so sure, though, that an English release of Panel de Pon under its original title (back in the day) would have worked. Any would-be purchasers would be like "What the heck is a Panel dee Pawn? Or Panel day Pwn? Or whatever?"
Comments 498
Re: Anniversary: Rare's Grabbed By The Ghoulies Is 20 Years Old
@Banjo- It actually took three years to make, like most of their games! It was first revealed on the GameCube, then ported and refined on the Xbox. According to interviews, Rare still had to cut content to keep some semblance of a deadline. (Just porting to Xbox was apparently a big undertaking in itself, and ate up a lot of time.)
PS: The unsold copies of Ghoulies in the garbage may be a self-deprecating joke, but that joke is based on something, whether that's actual sales figures, or just public perception!
Re: Anniversary: Rare's Grabbed By The Ghoulies Is 20 Years Old
@BobaTheFett Do you mean about the gameplay being simplistic, or about the limited scope and short length of the game? If the former, you should know that the later challenges offer difficult conditions that force you to get creative with how you approach things, so the simple mechanics are more of a means to an end, rather than the point itself.
If it's the latter, then I get that. If you asked me to try to define the "Rare Magic" that graced their N64-era output, I would point to the ambition, and the feeling that they were always trying to make the best game ever.
A straightforward shooter campaign, kart racer, or collectathon platformer? Not good enough- they had to cram it full of features, details, extras, and modes.
Ghoulies was satisfied to be what it was- not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily, but it's a step down from the extravagance of previous games.
Re: Anniversary: Rare's Grabbed By The Ghoulies Is 20 Years Old
Grabbed by the Ghoulies is a clever and fun little game (and I consider the remastered version from Rare Replay to be one of the compilation's highlights), but it suffered from all of the weight being placed on it as Rare's big Xbox debut, and the first new Rare game in a year.
There are all kinds of games like this, which are worthwhile on their own merits, but can be disappointing in their original context, due to being too small in scope, too unconventional, etc. Somewhat fittingly, Luigi's Mansion is another example, where many of us were hoping for a big, flagship Mario title for the GameCube (seeing as the last one was a full five years old at that time!), but the game's quality ultimately speaks for itself.
This disappointment due to failed expectations is understandable, but it starts to seem a bit pointless in hindsight, as we can appreciate what something is, not what it isn't.
Re: CeX Retro Watch: October 2023
@KingMike Could be a bit of both, for all I know.
Japan, at least, is supposed to be a treasure trove for collectors, with much lower prices than you'd find in the west, but I thought Europe was a lot more in line with North America. The high prices on Pokemon, Castlevania, etc., as seen in this article, would seem to back that up!
Re: CeX Retro Watch: October 2023
@Andee Especially considering that the same game costs $10 CAD on Xbox (at full price)!
Similar deal with TMNT III on Game Boy: Considering the faded label and lack of any packaging, you're not getting much of a collector's experience for the £70. If you're just after the game itself, you might as well get the Cowabunga Collection for a fraction of that cost, and be able to play the dozen other games it includes.
Re: CeX Retro Watch: October 2023
Is there a market crash going on? As a Canadian, I'm amazed at some of those prices: £6 for a boxed copy of Sonic 1, £15 for Daytona on Saturn, and just £8 for Smash Bros. on Wii U?
I thought I noticed the prices on many games over here starting to balance out a bit, with older titles starting to come back within reach of us average peasants. But we still don't have prices like these, as far as I've seen!
Re: Random: A Shiba Inu Is Going To Speedrun At AGDQ 2024
Such impressive! Very speedrun! Wow!
Re: Flashback: Xbox Got Its Name Because The Other Suggestions Were "F**cking Appalling"
@foodmetaphors I'd heard it said before that they didn't want to seem outdated with an "Xbox 2", but their choice of a "3" title, specifically, is kind of funny.
Somehow, that didn't stop them from pitting their Xbox One against the PlayStation 4, though!
Re: "Like A Book Or A Movie" - Star Fox Dev Dylan Cuthbert Shares His Vision Of Retro Gaming's Future
"you could go and watch Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you don’t have to worry about someone having to remake it so you can watch it again"
I think this bit really highlights how the availability of older video games really isn't where it should be. It's kind of ridiculous how many games are simply not (legally!) available in any form- and as a lesser issue, I'd add that of those that are available, many have been altered or remade, which would be considered sacrilege in movie enthusiast circles. (Imagine if the only available release of Star Wars was a remaster, with alterations made to... oh, bad example. But imagine if the only way to watch episodes 4, 5, and 6 was through a full remake with modern VFX and a whole new cast!)
But things are in a much better state than they were 20 or so years ago, and we have many more old games listed than delisted each year, so that's progress!
Re: Kelsey Lewin Is Leaving The Video Game History Foundation
@Razieluigi As far as the preservation itself is concerned, I'd agree that video games are in a pretty good spot: relatively few are "lost media". It's not perfect, but we've got exhaustive collections of ROMs for 40-year-old consoles, and there's a lot of awareness and effort around preservation now- in this regard, video games have caught up with TV and movies, despite their younger age.
Different people have different ideas of what "preservation" means, though, and it can possibly water things down when all these different definitions are being thrown around.
If we're talking about being able to purchase a legitimate copy of whatever game we want (not sure that counts as "preservation", but I support it regardless!), then video games are lagging way behind, based on the stats Gamecuber shared. Though even there, things are improving: look at how many older games are available on the likes of Steam, compared to where things were 20 years ago!
And then the more complete, contextual approach you mentioned... that's casting a wide net, but these things are definitely worth preserving as well!
Re: Nightdive CEO Pitches Potential Way To Remaster More Classic Titles
Interesting idea, but between the potential legal issues and the fact that this doesn't actually make these games available to more people, it's probably not worth it.
And don't some of these already work well on modern systems?
There are so many other PC and console games out there that could use a good remaster, with legal distribution included as part of the package!
Re: Flashback: Xbox Got Its Name Because The Other Suggestions Were "F**cking Appalling"
@JJtheTexan As I recall, it was hard for fanboys to come up with a proper insult for the Xbox- the PP would've been some welcome ammo for them!
PS: For those who don't remember, the nicknames "LameCube" and "GayStation" were thrown around at the time, but I don't think Xbox really had one.
PPS: I guess the modern equivalent would be how there's no Sony equivalent of "Xbot" and "Nintendrone", so people turned to... ponies.
PPPS: Hehe... the previous line starts with "PP".
Re: Flashback: Xbox Got Its Name Because The Other Suggestions Were "F**cking Appalling"
I guess I could see an early-2000s console being called by a few of those names, like "Microsoft AMP".
Most of those are just awful, though, and I don't know how an actual, professional branding company in that time could think that a console needs to have a cheesy '80s acronym as its name! At least offer some normal names as an option!
PS: Is there some significance to "TSO" or "Three Six Zero" that I'm missing? I always assumed the Xbox 360 was just inexplicably named after a full circle, and that was that, but this revelation only muddies the waters.
Re: Random: This New N64 Graphics Demo Looks Incredible & Runs On Real Hardware
@Zenszulu That's the thing: this demo is already using multiple copies of textures with different lighting baked into each. Removing that would free up a fair bit of space- though again, the lighting would need to be faked another way.
Also, remember that each step down in resolution lets us quadruple the number of textures. 256x256 is still really high-res for the N64, but it allows for 16 times as many textures as we saw in this demo!
Re: Random: This New N64 Graphics Demo Looks Incredible & Runs On Real Hardware
@Zenszulu This demo is overkill, though, with unique 1024x1024 textures on each surface. There's a lot of potential for a game that has huge textures without being quite so extravagant:
256x256 is still enough to fill the whole screen without any blur, and even 128x128 would hold up really well (being on par with a lot of GameCube-era textures)!
Plus, each texture here has lighting baked in. Generic versions of the textures without lighting would take up way less space (as they could be reused across different objects and surfaces), though it would mean someone would have to paint all of the vertices to simulate lighting.
Re: New Website Aims To Catalogue All The Newly Localized Games You May Have Missed
@EarthboundBenjy 2012 releases do qualify- look at La-Mulana and Ys: Origin. Though speaking of Ys, it makes it onto the list despite having a more-or-less contemporary English release, as the release dates (2006 Japanese, 2012 English) just happened to line up right.
I think relative delays would be a better metric (e.g., the English release has to come at least 10 years after the original), but no matter how you slice it, it's going to be somewhat arbitrary.
Re: New Website Aims To Catalogue All The Newly Localized Games You May Have Missed
@BionicDodo When I saw the headline, I thought it was going to be about fan translations. This is cool, too, but a list of games with fan translations would also be great. (Or like you said, both on one site!)
Re: Anniversary: Pokémon Yellow Turns 25 And Pokémon Platinum Is 15
I'm probably biased, but Gen 1 is my favourite to this day. I played Yellow a fair bit more than the other versions from that gen, though, so it feels a bit overly familiar, whereas Red and Blue (and especially the original Japanese Red and Green) have a special charm in their goofy monster designs.
Oh, and you only had to trade with one other version if you had Red or Blue, whereas Yellow had to trade with both if you wanted to catch 'em all! I don't own Blue, so I had to trade with Red, Gold, and Silver in order to complete my save!
Re: Best GameCube Games Of All Time
@-wc- I don't know, I always felt like the two-character gimmick wasn't as game-changing as it was hyped up to be- and then when MK8 Deluxe retained the two-item mechanic (with only one character per kart!), I felt somewhat vindicated.
That said, Double Dash (along with maaaybe MKDS) is arguably peak Mario Kart to this day, as it blends the accessibility of the newer games with the technicality and higher skill ceiling of the old ones. I've only come to appreciate DD more over the years, as the later entries, while great, seem to be missing something. It's ironic that Damien says that DD lacks a certain "je ne sais quoi", as I think that's exactly what it has!
Re: Fans Have Translated The Hotel Dusk Precursor 'Blue Chicago Blues' Into English
@no_donatello Guess it came out just a little too late for a Sega CD release... and once the 3D craze started, there was no going back.
Re: Unofficial Genesis / Mega Drive 'Metal Gear' Port Sneaks Out Of The Shadows
Little clarification/correction: this port is based on the original MSX game, but the article mentions the NES adaptation before saying "That version of the game is now being ported", seemingly implying that it's the NES version that's being brought to the Genesis.
Re: Poll: Handheld Or TV - How Do You Play Retro Games?
TV, hands down. Old 2D games look so much better using real hardware on a CRT TV, and 3D games hold up surprisingly well on modern screens via emulation.
I find handheld systems in general to be really uncomfortable to play on, so I usually end up playing those games on a larger screen as well.
Re: Daytona USA 2 Is Finally Getting A Home Port, Thanks To Like A Dragon Gaiden
This is such a strange turn of events. For years, we've been wanting Sega to bring back their Model 3 games so we can buy them... and now they decide to make them freebies in their latest Yakuza game?
Great news either way, though! (I just need to catch up on the other what, 8, first?)
Re: 'Rugrats' Is Getting A NES Platformer That Reminds Us Of 'Bonk'
I like how they just briefly show that there's also an HD mode, as if it's a little bonus feature that was thrown in.
The whole game essentially has to be built twice, for this to be possible.
Re: It's Time to Celebrate the PSP, Sony's 21st Century Walkman
@KingMike I think what's throwing you off is that this article is from 2018!
I know there's a little acknowledgement of the article's origin near the bottom when it's re-posted, but I wish it would be displayed more prominently at the top, as that would make these cases a lot less confusing. Maybe it could even replace or sit alongside the timestamp, if that's possible. (Admins, what do you think?)
Re: Talking Point: Will Hand-Drawn Pixel Art Still Be Viable In Ten Years Time?
@-wc- Thanks for clarifying! I may not agree 100%, but I think I see where you're coming from. And I did feel particularly apathetic towards gritty PS3-era games at the time, though sitting out that generation and falling behind has made it (and subsequent generations!) all feel a bit fresher to me now.
I guess there's only so much that can be done with (attempted) photorealism- and especially the brown '00s AAA look... I personally feel that both pixel art and full-on cartoonish 3D graphics are also pretty well played out by this point, but there's still plenty of potential in the broadly semi-realistic middle ground that was seemingly a lot more common in the 5th and 6th gens. That, and all kinds of overtly stylized graphics, of course, of which the possibilities are endless!
PS: Ah, styrofoam blocks... have we not moved beyond 2006 Havok physics yet?
Re: Talking Point: Will Hand-Drawn Pixel Art Still Be Viable In Ten Years Time?
@-wc- So you think all games with realistic graphics look ugly, then? Or just the ones from 5+ years ago?
I still think Crysis (16 years old!) looks good, though the humans are a little uncanny and CG-ish, of course... but then, don't the human characters in all games still look like CGI? The gap between game graphics and reality is closing ever so slowly now.
Re: Talking Point: Will Hand-Drawn Pixel Art Still Be Viable In Ten Years Time?
@ludotaku You've probably already played 2D pixel art games on 3D engines without even realizing it! Shovel Knight is an example of this.
There are also some indie games now that use polygons, but render in 240p by default (like a PlayStation or N64 game), which gives the impression of pixel art when played on a modern screen.
And of course, there are voxel games like 3D Dot Game Heroes, but this is a specific aesthetic, not a more efficient way to create pixel art.
Re: Best Original Xbox Games Of All Time
@-wc- Are you talking about your friends, or the wide sentiment that you perceived outside of that? Because if we're talking about friend circles, I see where you're coming from. Based on the people I knew, I would've thought the GameCube was way more popular than it was, and that Xbox was in a distant third place.
When I say the Xbox was considered cool, I'm going more by the impression I got based on other factors besides my friends. It's been 20+ years, but the examples I remember are gaming magazines, bits of online chatter, pop culture cameos, and random acquaintances (some of whom were admittedly my age or younger, and I'm a bit younger than you are, still being in junior high when these consoles launched).
I always thought of the annoying FPS kid stereotype as something that started with CoD4: Modern Warfare, but now that I think of it, it had some roots in the very first Halo as well.
Re: This New ROM Hack Fixes Many Of Sonic Advance 2's Rough Edges
@Tobunari Rush, like the 3D "boostathons", can be fun when you get to know the levels well enough to blast through them. I'd forgotten about the enemies (I also finished it years ago, got the emeralds, etc., and never went back to it), but I did remember that it throws in a lot of pits and things to discourage you from going fast.
I don't like any of these boost-based games as much as most people seem to- Sonic Adventure is still the closest to getting 3D Sonic right, in my opinion.
Re: Best Xbox 360 Games Of All Time
@BulkSlash As a GameCube fan, I kind of get this (remember when Resident Evil 4 was one of the console's biggest exclusives?), but it's great to see games ported to more platforms, so more people can play them- sometimes with meaningful QoL and performance enhancements as well.
Far too many games are still stranded on "dead" platforms to this day, with no way to purchase them besides expensive used copies (assuming the game wasn't digital-only!). Being able to purchase and enjoy these games today easily beats out any sentiments around exclusivity.
If you ask me, anyway.
Re: The GameCube & Wii Emulator Dolphin Adds New WiiConnect24 Support & More
@Darthmoogle Are you having trouble with a particular game? Let me know, as it's possible I've seen it before.
The latest versions of Dolphin are usually pretty good about just working, with no settings needing to be changed (aside from telling it where your games are, and mapping the controller buttons). But there are definitely exceptions, and the old laptop might add an issue or two of its own.
Re: This New ROM Hack Fixes Many Of Sonic Advance 2's Rough Edges
Nice! Sonic Advance 1 was about as close as anyone got to the classics (until Mania, of course), but Advance 2, Advance 3, and Rush all felt like a considerable step back: too often, they had just one path through the level, bottomless pits everywhere, and hard-to-anticipate obstacles to make sure you fall into said bottomless pits unless you know exactly what you're doing.
It's great to see 2's level design getting the attention and refinement it needed!
Re: Sonic Fans Have Added 4-Person Multiplayer To Sonic Adventure DX
Aw, yeah! This is happening!
Definitely going to check this out, as Sonic Adventure is one of my favourite games of all time, rough edges and all.
Re: Fans Have Made The Original Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Playable Remotely
@BorkYeahGames Linking GBA and GCN emulators has been possible for a while, but now Dolphin has GBA emulators built in, allowing for easier setup- including straightforward netplay without using Parsec!
About the HyperCube, I'm impressed: both that you got this working in the first place, and that you somehow made it even more complicated than the original setup with all that it entailed!
Re: Sega Digs Up Original Screenshots For The Cancelled Sonic X-Treme
Interestingly, these screenshots were taken in high resolution mode. Was Sonic X-Treme ever shown off running in 480i, or did Sega crank the resolution up for the purpose of taking pictures?
(Dinosaur Planet had a similar situation, with a bunch of early images being 640x480, but the leaked ROM only runs in low-res 240p mode.)
Re: Codemasters Was Supposed To Make A NES CD Drive, But It Never Happened
@dimi That's not bad, if it also unlocks a wide library of CD-based games as well. Other systems would have you spend 2-3 times as much for a CD-ROM drive, instead of just tapping into your existing CD player.
Re: Codemasters Was Supposed To Make A NES CD Drive, But It Never Happened
@N64-ROX Probably 5Mb, since bits were what almost everyone used in that context!
5 megabytes would be insanely huge (almost unheard-of, even on SNES). 5 megabits, on the other hand, would be in the same league as TMNT2 (512KB or 4Mb) and Kirby's Adventure (768KB or 6Mb).
The thought of having huge amounts of space on the NES is an interesting one, though. It should be possible to store a ton of audio data, and then flip through the banks 16KB at a time to stream music. Come to think of it, there was a demo ROM that did something like this on a small scale. It looped a segment of everyone's favourite Rick Astley song in impressively clear quality.
Though streaming proper PCM ties up the CPU for too long, and the NES's usual DPCM is always a bit muffled, so neither is ideal.
And running actual Redbook CD audio (like the Turbografx or Sega CD did) might only be possible on the Japanese Famicom, as the other regions' NES models had no way to pass audio through the cartridge port.
Re: Classic Pokémon Games Get 'Ported' To SNES By Industrious Fan
These look really cool, and now I'm back to wanting Pokémon for SNES to be real! (I used to wish there was a console version, back in the day.)
It just seems a shame to sacrifice a Super Game Boy for each one of these. Hopefully, someone will be able to decompile and port the original games to SNES- maybe with audiovisual enhancements?
Re: Activision Might Have "Lost" A Bunch Of Amazing Transformers Video Games
@Daggot Yeah, on that last point, Acclaim comes to mind as one with a similarly rough story: they went bankrupt, and all of their physical assets got auctioned off to who knows where- including any workstations, servers, or tapes containing the repositories, backups, and dev materials.
A treasure trove of beta content (along with the ability to bring some lost classics to modern consoles) was jettisoned in ~2004, and for all we know, someone could have wiped and reformatted it all away, just so they could put some boring accounting database in its place or something.
Re: Activision Might Have "Lost" A Bunch Of Amazing Transformers Video Games
@gingerbeardman Right, they could get a bunch of these running without the source code if they just emulated them... i.e., put them on back compat.
Re: Activision Might Have "Lost" A Bunch Of Amazing Transformers Video Games
@BulkSlash Is it common for publishers to keep a copy of the developers' repositories? It probably has been done before, but I find it hard to imagine it is (or especially was) common.
Re: Talking Point: What Was Your First Video Gaming Experience?
Guess I land right in the middle- I started with the NES and a bootleg cart containing a ton of pre-1986 titles (including many that were otherwise stuck in Japan!), but this was in the early '90s, like 1992-93.
The NES stayed popular for a long time: well into the late '90s, at least in my family/friend circles.
Re: Like Zelda And Mario, Donkey Kong Was Supposed To Get A Philips CD-i Game - What Happened?
@Serpenterror But imagine how wonderfully awful it could have been!
Maybe it would have starred Samus and American Kirby (complete with muscles and facial hair, like in the commercials) working together in a side-scrolling shooter, like the Rolling Thunder games, but with a buddy cop kind of story tying it all together.
Re: Simon The Sorcerer Origins Will Feature Music From (Reads Notes) Rick Astley
This is a weird twist, but as someone who actually listens to Rick Astley's music unironically, I'm interested in seeing how this turns out!
Re: Anniversary: Sega's Shinobi III Is 30 Years Old
I've always wondered: if Shinobi III is the third game, then which one doesn't count? Shadow Dancer, presumably, since "Shinobi" only appears in the subtitle? Or Shinobi (1), since it was only on the 8-bit systems?
The Japanese numbering makes more sense to me, since it separates the Shinobi series into two games of each style: Shinobi and Shadow Dancer have the slightly slower pace, with lots of ledge hopping and hostage rescuing. And then Super Shinobi I and especially II amp things up with more moves, crazier enemies and situations, etc.
Re: Tengo Project Teases Remake Of NES Classic Shadow Of The Ninja
I was not expecting this relatively obscure game to get a remake, but I'm glad it is! Shadow of the Ninja is already great, and Tengo Project has turned out nothing but gold for the past several years, so this should be a great match.
Re: WipEout Phantom Edition Is An Enhanced PC Port Of The PS1 Classic
@AJB83 Thanks, but you don't need to go to the trouble! I haven't even played this enhanced port yet, but when I do, I won't mind cutting and looping one track. Unless you want to for your own sake, in which case, have at it!
Re: WipEout Phantom Edition Is An Enhanced PC Port Of The PS1 Classic
@AJB83 Thanks! I checked it out now, along with the album version, and it seems the latter would actually work pretty well as-is. The reason I mentioned radio edits was because I was familiar with the album (Risotto) version of Goodnight Lover, and that one would definitely need editing. Otherwise, the race would be ending just as the music really gets going!
Re: The Puzzling Legacy of Panel de Pon And Puzzle League
I don't know why Nintendo didn't take advantage of Yoshi's inclusion in Tetris Attack: the game itself is full of Yoshi characters, but they're nowhere to be found on the box art!
And when they lost the Tetris branding, that should have been all the more reason to set things right: rename it "Yoshi's Puzzle Attack" or whatever, and whip up some new box art featuring Yoshi and friends. Nope. A couple of releases with Pokemon (at the height of Pokemania, to be fair), but then it was all bland, straightforward presentation from then on.
PS: I'm not so sure, though, that an English release of Panel de Pon under its original title (back in the day) would have worked. Any would-be purchasers would be like "What the heck is a Panel dee Pawn? Or Panel day Pwn? Or whatever?"