Daggot

@russell-marlow YES! Sly Cooper is a long dormant IP that really needs to be revived. I'm kinda shocked it hasn't been talked about more as a perfect candidate for a reboot. I didn't play the last game, so maybe sales weren't great so it's been shelved. But, the series had some great characters, appealing art design and fun stories that would all hold up well today with some updates to game mechanics and QoL bits.

I'm curious if the original fitness boxing game and these derivatives are all the same game with just different assets. Nothing wrong with that, just curious if they all use the same boxing patterns and levels, etc. Loke the only thing different if just the trainer, music and background art, etc.

I'm still undecided on this. I finally picked up Yars Recharged this weekend. Only played for about 20min, but that was perfect. It really is the modern version of what those old 2600 games were - simply play mechanics with perfect drop-in and play features. Just what I've been needing. I may need to invest in a new gamepad for this. Finding my trusty old 360 wired controller is starting to drift just a little. Maybe just needs a cleaning given how old it is though.

Back to Yars, I'm still not sure how this new game is supposed to connect to the shooter game. Maybe I'm missing something in the description or trailers?

I picked up the original a while back. I honestly can't even remember which system, lol. It was brutal. A little too brutal. I didn't get far. If I remember right, the checkpoints were too spread out so the death penalty stung bad. I should drag it back out. This one looks like fun even if it's going to be brutal again. At least it sounds like the QoL features should be better this time.

I am really of two minds here. First, let the gamer select which way they prefer. Some times for some people depending on the game, prefer to enjoy the visuals vs frame rate. I expect it's rare, especially as most games have action and reaction time (low input lag) are preferred, but there are some games, or at least some spots in games where you just want to appreciate the visuals.

Buuuuut, there's also a lot to be said to enjoy the game the way the game maker intended. A lot of work goes into bringing a vision to life. This is a little philosophical I guess, but it's not nothing either.

This has been commented on multiple times in the past. It's really not clear what NL's intent is with these articles, except that I assume the writer has a daily quota and word count to make. We all know giving attention to these things just calls the wrath of Nintendo's lawyers. There's a very brief window after any article goes live that reads can react to before the take-down notice gets filed. So, what's the intent? Help Nintendo? Shutdown the dreams of aspiring developers? Make your quota? Serve the fans? It's really not obvious except to try to maybe server multiple masters poorly.

As for this specific remake - because there are really getting to be a lot of them - it's a neat take, mostly visually. I assume the change to how to get the sword is just to try to personalize your take on the game. As other have said it's a delicate balance to show you know how to design a game vs you know how to translate a designed game into a game engine; which is closer to what this is. I always assume the point is to pad the resume, get noticed and get a job in the game industry. That's getting harder by the minute with so many cuts starting last year and several key publishers pushing to use AI. Poor Gen Z and A are going to be old school developers before they even turn 40 at the rate AI is taking over things.

@Fizza This was my thought as well. But, you know, "marketing".

bleh. This game is going in the wrong direction. I couldn't be any less interested. I'm sure there are enough whales out there to keep it alive, but this is just not what the market needs. Just looks like it's trying to follow in the shadow of other games. And I'm getting really tired of that business model. Blame those same whales for keeping the model alive and well.

I can't really imagine why the development cycle is so long on this one. Maybe they're really doing some serious polish, QoL stuff? I'm really looking forward to this. OH! Maybe, maybe, maybe they dragged this out to time with the Switch 2 release and it'll make good use of scaling? So, it'll play on both system. THAT would be awesome. Wild guess.

I was going to make a similar comment like @Banjo- made. Maybe the long dev time is because they decided to do a full remake of 1-3 for the full trilogy? It would help explain things. But, also helps fit if they are making the game work on S2 as well. We can hope/dream!

Would you want any kind of physical CE version? I'm getting really torn on those lately. Last few I've gotten I didn't feel worth the money in the end. I bought the CE of XI and it was only OK. Maybe a full set of cloth maps? At least I could frame them. Which I wanted to do on the XI map, but never got around to it, LOL.

Tempting. Oh so tempting. Might play this on PC though. I LOVE the old overlay. Helps you to know the game logic is the same.

I jumped at MHS2 when it hit Steam. I thought the visuals, while not detailed, had a great feel to them. But. Yeah, the story was so lackluster and OMG the cat was beyond annoying. I get why it's a thing, but I just couldn't stand him. Luckily he almost never says anything substantial and I started just button mashing through his bits. I didn't finish the game. Didn't even get halfway. I just kinda lost interest. My daughter played on the Switch and got farther than I did, but she also lost interested. Maybe the original game was better?

I want a game like this. I think. But, idk, this just didn't have the right vibe from the arcade games. Something's off. Several post about it feels too slow. Might be that. But, I think it's more to do with this being 3D? I can't put my finger on it. Needs some kind of crunchy factor that's missing.

Was almost super excited about this. Played a few of these back on my Tandy 1000SX, but sadly, these ports do not seem to support the enhanced capabilities of that machine. It had slightly better graphics and supported 3 voice pc speaker music. Silpheed and Thexder just don't feel the same w/o those enhancements; especially Silpheed. There seems to be more flicker than I remember. Maybe, maybe, maybe I'll still pick them up - and maybe just Silpheed. I remember Thexder having some really annoying sections that I had to totally cheese to get passed.

@Takoda Wondering this myself for my kids to play on the go. Too young for a phone, so wondering if playing on Switch would be ok. They see me playing the RTX version, and want that. LOL. My youngest plays on a tablet. It's ok, but not as portable as a Switch would be.

I could really see him voice that role, not unlike what Pratt brought to Mario. The has the perfect whit and delivery for the screen version of the character.

AARG. I saw the article thumbnail and got all excited about a Sly Cooper reboot and was all like "on Switch???" since the IP is exclusive to PS. d'oh. But, seriously, the IP needs a reboot.

Better question: Will the new controller, assuming it won't have drift, be backwards compatible with the current Switch? THAT would be perfect.

@Dang_69 Appreciate the link. I used to wear just a glove when I was struggling with wrist pain. I eventually figure out how not to strain the carpal tunnel. I hadn't considered think of my forearm issue in a similar manner. That glove might help. Thx!

I want to play this sooo much, but ugh, this game destroys my hand and forearm from pressing the gamepad for so long. LOL.

It definitely has a lot of personally in the art direction. I got a sense of that original awe the first time you play Another World (Out of This World) on the Amiga back in the day. But, I cannot tell exactly what the game play is from the video. But, then the article said turn based combat... huh? I don't think I saw that in the video. Or, I didn't realize it was turn based from the video. It might be trying to do too many things. I'd want at least a gameplay trailer before making any kind of decision.

Also, the opening to Another World (US) is still one of my all time fav gaming intros. Intro ends and you're all just.. wait, am I supposed to do something now? GAH, what is that about to eat me!?!?! Great memories.

In the past Nintendo has done a kind of tick-tock strategy. We've seen this countless times with their handheld platforms. Not so much with the consoles. But, covid kinda wrecked things. Hard to really say if the 2 will be a bump or a whole new thing. I am leaning to a bump given how long it takes to develop the Soc. They couldn't afford to dump the investment with Nvidia on R&D for the tech. At best, invest a little more for a bit more enhancement given the lag time to market. but, no, really they would invest in yield to get costs down. That's the key reason from a few articles last month on why the delay into 2025. So, to me, it makes sense they're waiting to get costs down and that means a bump rather than the next full iteration. Full backwards compat? ya, I think so given their previous handheld strategies. But, will it be the ps4 jump in graphic power? maybe in docked mode. Nintendo hasn't been about tech spec but quality of experience. It's just an odd time given the Switch used old tech. So, the spec bump might be what we've heard rumors of. There's been ample time for sure. <fingers crossed> Should be a day one purchase for me, but it'll depend on the price.

@Anachronism I can't remember the name of it, but I saw one last year that parodied that exact thing. The guy wakes up in a field and realizes he is just redic OP and has to learn how to tone it down. And actually Mashoku Tensei doesn't exactly suffer this. In the beginning he is kinda OP for someone his age, but in the design of the story, he isn't OP vs everyone for every situation. Even though I kept thinking the setup makes it like he should be.

But, ya, to your point, it's hard to balance to power fantasy that makes these popular w/o making it boring or some stupid artificial wall/limit just to try to walk the power level back.

Unless they are going to revive some specific IP, I'm not sure this will have the impact they expect. Well, unless they're going for yet more retro/nostalgic money yet again. But, I can see why they may want a separate brand label for different games that don't fit under the main brand. Still, I personally don't have overly found memories of Infogrames games.

Put just a couple of hours into the game (kickstarter backer). I'm liking it. Has a blend of old school and some modern aspects and QoL bits. Love the visual and art design overall. I was hoping what was shown in the initial pitch video was going to be how the game looked, and it is. Nothing early in the game for OST has grabbed me, but I only heard a small handful of tracks. I need to go dig out the files from the download and listen to them separately.

There is one thing I need all RPG games that are level based to do going forward. There really needs to be some kind of early warning if there will be some mechanic or system later on that will impact your leveling, status, or abilities. When I tried to re-play FF VI I'd completely forgotten about the espers and how they add to your status. If you're really trying to min/max you have to know about this early and not grind as much as you can before you get to espers so you can max status before you max level. Otherwise, I love to spin in circles early in a game to just learn all the nuances of the combat system at the start. But, I'm also a grinder not a sprinter when it goes to JRPGs.

I assume the co-op has to work like Minecraft Dungeons. Since there are permanent upgrades everything has to tied to an account. You might be able to do guest players, but they will be limited to what's on the local guest account.

Hopefully there will be an arcade mode that plays kinda like Gauntlet without the need for an account.

Day one backed the kickstarter for this. It's been a long road to get to the release date of the game. I went with the digital release, but now I'm semi-wishing I would have opt for the physical. Oh, well.

The review score is encouraging. I may decide to take a day off after release and just sink into the game. It's been ages since I've done that. I probably need to make that a Friday so I'm not fully wrecked the next day. Super excited.

As hinted in the article, it's pretty clear that internal team got out of sync. From what I've read on an in-depth analysis on why the next console was delayed, it makes a lot of corporate finance sense. It's just bad for the release schedule side. Hopefully they don't try to pull a BotW, but in reverse, where they take a new platform title and try to cram it into the old platform to fill in the schedule. But, not sure what they can do try to make a holiday window at this point. Not impossible, but it risks quality to do so if they hadn't already planned for it.

Hopefully the delay means we'll have a strong 3rd party lineup for the first 2 years. That's one thing that the Switch did very well. Lots of 1st and 3rd party titles within the first 2 years. There was never any lack of new titles coming out during the entire launch window and beyond.

@larryisaman This is the way.

Ahhh, the early days of the Steam backlog. This was a huge thing about 10+ years ago when we first started Steam sales and suddenly mass loads of PC games were available for cheap. Each sale most PC games would grab hands full of games they wanted to play but were usually too expense or just never enough funds. Suddenly, that wasn't a limit. Our backlog grew exponentially. That finally ebbed. You realized the backlog was always going to be there, and you're just throwing money away if you don't actually make the time to play the games. Now, you just don't buy anything unless you seriously mean to play it, or it's finally ultra cheap. I buy maybe one game per sale and force myself to pick a game I'll put in at least 8-10hrs on. This has worked well for me personally. Keeps the backlog from growing, and at the 8-10hr mark I'm usually done with the game and can uninstall it or maybe even hide it entirely. Or, it's grabbed me and I'll dump another 20+hrs into it. Not exactly the same on the Switch since there aren't Steam like sales with stupid discounts, but you get the approach.

@Solomon_Rambling For me it harkens back to old fashion coffee table books. Not something you burn through, but you lay around for casual enjoyment. For me at least there is something about studying an image on paper vs the screen. It's slower? Hard to say. But, there is a difference in experience between paper and screen. Since it takes longer to publish a book, I find books are a little more thoughtfully put together than a list. I bought to guide books for Horizon Zero Dawn and Ni No Kunin simply because they were works of arts. https://www.future-press.com/books/horizon-zero-dawn-complete-edition/ I didn't need the guide. You can find all of that online. But, the collection and art direction of the book was something unique to the physical media. I enjoyed just thumbing through the books looking at the art, how it was arranged, the weight of the paper, etc. I keep one on the shelf and the other on the table mostly for show.

I assume this book in the article would be similar. I wouldn't mind looking through to explore the category of cozy. It's such a new thing and it's definition drifts a little. I'm going to keep an eye on this as possible gift idea for my wife who is more a cozy gamer than I am.

It wasn't mentioned in the article, but there is a demo Steam.

Ya, ya.. This is a kind of generational thing.
80s - everything had to be awesome, tubular, etc.
90s - everything had to be EXTREME
somewhere Japan kinda went crazy with adjectives ("Super mega happy special deluxe extra edition" kinda thing)
00s to 10s - IDK. i'm sure there were things
so now we're into the 20s and it's exclamation marks.

MEH let the kids/generation have their thing. Else, you're becoming Grandpa Simpson shaking his fist at the cloud.

Oh, please go ahead and get off my lawn.

This is actually a thing for me given where the plugs are and the path the power chord has to go between wall and dock. I had to point the dock backwards for the tension in the cable not to topple the deck over. I hope they do this for the Switch 2 dock. It would be a welcomed feature given how lite the system is.

I know the list is only for Nintendo systems, but I gotta say the OG version of the game holds a very special place for nostalgia gaming. While Karateka was first and established a lot that PoP would refine, it was PoP's rotoscoping and expanded gameplay that really hooked me. Not to downplay Karateka at all. That was some epic introduction to cinematic gaming that is well covered in the Gold Master making of "game".

I think games are starting to get too complicated. Tutorial sections lasting an hour are becoming less rare. Does having so many systems really make for a better game? There's more to do, sure, but that also leads to more monetization which I feel is really hurting the industry. PoP's simple game design does everything it needs to do. You'd could try to do some kind of nu-remaster and attempt random level generation I suppose, but why? The game is fine as it was.

@chiptoon Right there with you. I saw the account screen and noped right out of the demo. Hard pass. Your draconian practices are of no interest to me.

Dang those are some fine choices. Most have far reaching influences that would be on the same level as Karateka to explore. For sure PoP would be a likely candidate for nearly the same reason as Karateka was. But, that might also be the reason not to do it.

Of the ones mentioned in the article, and any one of them would prove interesting, I think I would be most interested in SF2 and Yu Suzuki. The making of for Karateka was interesting about what went into making the game. But, for these two I think there's more beyond just the developer. There's also the hardware, more about influences leading up and how ports changed the industry. SF2 and it's mega sized cart had a lot of ripples that most kids weren't aware of.

But really any of them would be fascinating.

I'd love a remaster of Puzzle Fighter. I would also LOVE for them to revisit some of their fantasy beat 'em up IP. The King of Dragons, Knights of the Round and Warriors of Fate. Any could do with a reboot or even just a remaster.

Delay? These devs, I tell ya. "Won't someone think of the shareholder value?!" This is an aspect of indie games that doesn't get called out enough. Take the time. Polish your creation. The fans will be fine to wait. It's the publishers short chain to shareholders that wrecks it all.

Take your time. We've got plenty to play, or even replay, while you're making sure it's fully baked. --The gamers

I hope Relic can get its act together now. It seemed like they didn't take enough feedback from fans on CoH3. I was so looking forward to that game. I still play CoH1; just so, so good.

As for Sega. I'm sure this is basically the result of a string of underperforming games. Simple as that. However, I just can never seem to shake the feeling that Sega's ultimate play is to be bought by MS. I thought that was why they shed their arcade chain business originally, and they've made a few other moves that looked like it was to prepare for a sale, but then it never happened. Sega needs to invest into some smaller titles to build up a new IP as they don't seem to know how to consistently make good Sonic games. Of any developer out there, Sega is sitting on such a treasure trove of legendary arcade IP to draw from. We've seen they're trying to make some moves on this finally. But, so far it hasn't seemed overly promising. I hope it's not because they have their eye more on the mobile market. It does seem like that though. Overall, I assume these cuts are so they have enough cash to focus on those revitalized IP projects. Let's pray they have the right producers and directors to deliver some wins. I want a quality game, Sega. Not some mobile crap.

I'm super torn with this article.

On the one-hand, DUH!!!! We've all known for a long, long time that GS is dying. And, probably should just die a painful death.

On the other hand, this is from Michael Pachter. If he's saying it, we all know it's at least mostly partially inaccurate.

So, this ends up being, I guess you might call it an oxymoron? Can both statements be true?

This just does not need to exist. Pure cash grab and Aspyr further tarnishes their name. You'd think after doing this enough times they would be near financial ruin, but that hasn't made the news.

@LikelySatan No, but I keep looking at it wondering if it would be as good as SoR4; which is near perfect in my eyes. "Nearly" lol

@Justaguest Right there with ya. If there's a MP game like Diablo and there area few others playing, it work for us to get together and play for 20min, then throw down some food. But, outside of that it's a mental struggle. Gaming should be relaxing and it's hard to hit the unwind mode of playing a game while at work. It's a little different if you remote, but if you have a steady stream of meetings/call/deliverables, even that can be a challenge.

I enjoyed the game quite a bit. Had solid vibes of the old arcade games. But, for publisher Dotemu, I think I would rather them do something new. We got the near perfect Street of Rage 4 (which I still play), and this game. There are some other beat 'em ups that could get this same kind of treatment before we go down the sequel road. Or a new IP like that GI Joe game which looks not unlike a reskin of the TMNT game - and it also looks like it needs help.

Still, I wouldn't say no to a sequel of it had enough new things to do rather than just be different levels. I would guess at this point it would also be a Switch 2 game.

My wife and some of my daughters would like them. But, they're on the Lite. Maybe it's time to get them some kind of tabletop stand so they can also use joy cons? Or, maybe upgrade my wife to the OLED and a pair of these. Although, that would be a pretty sizable investment.

I've been itching for an After Burner style game for a long while. This also has a bit of super scaler ala Space Harrier. Not sure it's a day one for me, but it looks like it could be good fun.

You know what we need? A Robotech game that "transforms" between After Burner and Space Harrier modes. Most of the games out there haven't been great. But seeing MD2 gives me hope it could work with that kind of concept. Too bad the IP rights are a mess.

Aspyr lost my respect many years ago. This is not the first time they've let their customers down. Totally not surprised by their handling of the IP, game port and this particular PR situation. Nope. Not shocked at all. Time for another work-for-hire company to step up and replace them as the go-to for this kind of thing.

Oh man. I backed the kickstart. Been painfully waiting for this game. For dumb reasons I didn't get to play Suikoden when it came out. The trailer on the kickstarter was enough to show me I missed out on what could have been a fav from the golden era. Backed it so hard so that wouldn't happen again. I did agonize for a long while if I should get this on Steam or Switch. Feels like it would be right at home on Switch, but there's some edge to it that kept tempting me to go Steam. It's not impossible I end getting it on both eventually. Can't wait!

I thought everyone knew that "Sponsored" listing on Amazon only means they paid money for the listing to be up higher and highlighted. It's purely a marketing transaction and no one at Amazon is looking at anything other than if the company buying the listing pays their bill to Amazon on time. Amazon don't give a wet slap about the quality of product being pitched.

@Spider-Kev DOH, should have been "first issue". The comic was just bad. It was like an extremely weak telling of the original story written by an armature teen writer who won a bet so he got to write a comic.