KingMike

@Late @ear_wig @Spider-Kev Sega published the two Sega console games.

@KayFiOS The two Sega console games were published by Sega (though not developed by them, I don't think).
All of the Nintendo-console games were published by THQ (which if you know your gaming era, do not expect high quality gameplay from them here).

So glad to see Dragon Hopper finally get out.
There has been a review on Planet VB, as we know at least one collector has been hoarding a copy.
It's good that people outside that one cart owner will finally be able to play it.

@PJOReilly Xenoblade came to North America through a deal with GameStop. It ended up with a lot of complaining about that, first people whining about having to go to GameStop to buy the game, then the resulting scalper pricing. Then a couple years later, GameStop suddenly has a surplus of "used" copies which is highly suspicious they ordered a reprint but sold as "used" so they'd look nice charging just half of the reseller markup (the thing was at the same time they also had copies of Metroid Prime Trilogy, another game that had been going for high prices for North American copies without Nintendo supplying more. That was the giveaway it was a reprint: it had previously non-existent standard packaging.)
It was also revealed, through a Nintendo Treehouse member who got fired for NDA violation after, that Nintendo Europe spent A LOT of money on the PAL localization, so I suppose it was natural the entire company wanted to do what they could to get it back.

When I saw mention of FF4 The After Years, and mention of value for its price... did they remember that was one of the more expensive WiiWare games since like each character (chapter) was DLC. I forget how much exactly it cost but I'm pretty it was over $30 to get the entire game (when you could).
I guess you can say at least the PSP version gave it all in one package (with the original game).

@rjejr Well, FF15 was a game that had already been announced many years ago (but under a different name).
So how bad could another delay have been?
I mean, I recall like four years before its original announcement they even showed gameplay footage (not just cutscene stills).

I know Australian Target is a different company that American Target, but I don't know how related Australian K-mart is to the American company. Do those still even exist anymore? I know they were bought out by Sears so many years and even they have closed rapidly in the past decade or so.

@Kilamanjaro Buying more physical games so they can be shared easily.
Sounds like what gamers had been doing for decades.

@PanAndrzej YouTube clickbaiters want it.

@LikelySatan I do remember the touch screen support was odd. From what I remember, each tap on the touch screen would only direct a member to take a step towards that point during direction. They wouldn't do the natural thing and move to that spot.
Not a surprise that the first DS Fire Emblem got that part down when it launched half a year after FFTA2.

@RadioDog Consider where the Game Boy software catalog was in 1990.
A lot of puzzle games and rather simple arcade ports (I mean, like the Japanese version of Space Invaders. The one had just the core SI gameplay without the frills they added to the western version four years later.)

It certainly wasn't a "simple concept" by 1990 standards.

What I remember about that launch was, one of the message boards I had visited regularly to discuss fan translation, the language side (with an interest in Japanese of course). Like much of the scene, it wanted to emphasize fan translation of video games unlikely to receive a Western release officially. That was summed up in one rule "No Pokemon" (as it was said at that time to be the franchise with the most requests to try to beat out the official localizations, which was not what most scene members wanted to do).
So one or more people, like a week before the US launch, spammed the crap out of the board with requests for Ruby and Sapphire. (especially given it was one of the REALLY old message forums with very little security. Web 1.0 infrastructure.)
Both funny and sad to see someone go after such an obscure forum. Enough that the owner took the forum down.

@Tyranexx "It definitely shows the characters and text better." One of them shows the characters better, you don't say?

The North American cover is dark and sinister. And nostalgic.

But as soon as I saw the comparison, I knew where the results were going. People are going to choose the cover where they can actually see the art.

@SurprisedRobinChu I'm pretty sure as long as there has been home video, it has been cheaper than theaters. And yet theaters have not gone RIP in those decades.

I was about to think "adding Namco arcade games? Wasn't Namco generally one of Sega's biggest arcade rivals back in the day?"
I played just a bit of Game Gear Galaga '88/'91/2 and finding it surprisingly lacking in content. Like were the power-ups missing? Including the dimensional warps that was one of its major features.

They really asking $39.99 for a Rosalina now? I'm glad I have my original run from when they were only $12.99 apiece.

@the_beaver Sega made a line of Disney games themselves.

@tektite_captain I'm guessing as time goes on, there will be that grew up with physical games having stopped buying new games because they realized they've already amassed an endless collection of old games to play.

@sportymariosonicmixx Sounds like you probably just had a few bad people at your store.
That tournament thing... that's pretty bad. No doubt that staying there all night is what the manager was being paid for. I wouldn't have felt bad about reporting them for breaking the rules of the event. I wouldn't like to tell on employees and get them in trouble, but I know at least one (unrelated at all) situation I probably should've ratted out a business manager to their corporate superiors for being a lazy sleeze, when it's something major.

@mlt 120 FPS feels like a point of diminishing returns to what a human brain can even interpret.

@HalBailman The western cover has more "stuff" going on. However the "stuff" happening does not seem conductive to an actual game in progress.

I chose Japan just because on the western cover Mario is HITTING THE BALL THE WRONG WAY!
And the others are trying to escape the game.

The Japan cover might be dull but at least Mario's in a correct playing pose.

@Spider-Kev I would assume it's like older consoles like the Wii or PSP where they put the firmware update within the physical media as a backup.
I can remember when my friend's friend invited us to play Brawl when he first got it and after maybe like 10 times of the console failing to connect to the Internet, it installed an update from the disc.

@niner Hey, renting Ninja Gaiden Trilogy was how I played the NG series as a kid.
The twangy SNES remixes of the soundtrack have more nostalgia to me than the proper NES renditions.
The button mapping should've been criminal, though.

I remember the days we used to get excited over playing new Nintendo games.
Now these days it seems Nintendo fans would rather spend their time arguing over every promotional piece Nintendo throws out.

Can't wait for The Thumb to show up in a Nintendo game some day.

@Serpenterror Not much they could do about the Sega button layout given the space they've given themselves to work with.

And wouldn't the SNES/PS button layout just be the standard Switch controllers? Like, you would just use the official Switch controllers for that.

@Glassneedles I've already had one thing spoiled in SMT2 that could be a reason alone that Atlus wouldn't have wanted to touch even the iOS port of that game. The final boss might upset a person or two.

@AussieMcBucket GBC-exclusive games still had to have warning screens programmed in since the cartridges could still be turned on on a GB Pocket or Super Game Boy 1 or 2, which were all also monochrome GB hardware.

@Kiz3000 Exactly it. On the original model Game Boy, the power switch would slide into that space in the corner so the switch would block you from pulling out the cartridge with the power turned on.
They switched things around on later models. Such as my GBC. The power switch is on the side, where the link port and volume control were on the OG. Those were moved to the other side, which originally had a contrast dial that was removed completely. Maybe it wasn't applicable to the later LCDs?

@Glassneedles The very little I know about Persona is that I have to play them at some point but that Persona 2 was split into two games and that only the second part on the PS1 game was localized originally. Then with the PSP remakes, they only localized the first half and then resigned to releasing the PS1 version of the second on PSN. Will be very confusing once I ever get to playing through the series.
That and I've heard Atlus themselves didn't really like the PS1 localization of the first game much (I heard of a not-too-insignificant subquest being cut. That and also the characters being renamed from Japanese names to westerner names. Present Atlus surely would embrace Japanese names?)

SO LONG-A, BOWSER!

Now I can't remember if that unreleased HAL Laboratory port of Galaga was a new addition (though they only had the PRG ROM, so they had to recreate the CHR to make a playable game).

I do remember a few years we saw an upload of a very unfinished build of a Namco port, separate of a version Namco produced themselves. Can't remember which game, but maybe that was it. I think it might have been from the collection of former EGM editor Ed Semrad when he let Frank rummage through and digitize his collection.

Certainly unreleased because of Namco's own port.

Not sure if we should be glad or disappointed that modern Square-Enix has said nothing about Chrono Trigger during its 30th anniversary year.

@LightSpirit He's famous for blocking nearly everyone who messages him (but especially if you reply in English). I do recall he once even ran some kind of promotion you could win a congratulations from him... and then probably a block.

@Thomystic I should've remembered that one but didn't.

Got nine right, and a lot of those were guessed.

I guess I wasn't paying much attention.

User asks for Pokemon Gen 1-3 and remakes.
"Can you imagine how much greedy Nintendo would charge for that?"

I don't know, would it be more or less than what Taito charged for some of their "limited" collections on Switch?
But a lot more people talk about Nintendo games than Taito games.

@DemonKow "the graphics weren't great even for its day". That was the funny thing. I've read it was meant to be a throwback to the first game (which we didn't see back then because Nintendo withheld its official release for 24 years) which was itself inspired by Peanuts (for which they even edited a few sprites to make that less obvious).
That was unfortunately one of the multiple ways its own marketing worked against it in North America in 1995. These days I think we can respect a game going for an art style, but back then, when it was squished between DKC, Cruis'n, and Killer Instinct as all Nintendo-adjacent games wanting to blow our minds with graphics tech of its day, that was a contrast.

Still, I have great memories of renting EarthBound (with the guide, amazingly) multiple times from Blockbuster that year. A really enjoyable game (and the guide really added to that. Not even for the tips, it just had a nice artistic flavor of its own).

"CAPCOM PRESENTS"
Wait... wasn't SF2 one of the earliest games to have the Capcom 16-bit jingle we of that era remember so fondly?
Like the jingle made it to the PAL version of Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, so I heard. But the Japan and US had the earlier static "PRESENTS" logo (probably also UN Squadron/Area 88).
I think before SF2, on the SNES, there was Final Fight, those two games above, and maybe Magic Sword.

I only see a hint of climbing in the North American art.

@PinchedCake6 The NES market was so behind in Europe (I'm less surprised each time I see or hear of a PAL version game being three or four years behind its US counterpart). I've heard they barely got FIVE by the end of the market life (though to be honest 5 is the scarcest game in the physical NA set so I imagine the PAL version of it is even rarer), so it's too not surprising that #6 wasn't officially seen over there until the 3DS VC.

@Olliemar28 It's worth noting that Knight Man and Wind Man, two of the three Robot Masters presented on the American boxart, were created by Nintendo Power readers. At least I'm pretty sure I got that right.
It is speculated that the contest was one reason that Nintendo chose to publish the game in North America.

Though I think Freeze Man (from 7 on the SNES) was spotted among the entries showcased in NP. I also remember a Clown Man, but I'm not familiar enough with 8 (Saturn and PS1) to know if it was necessarily the same design.

@Teksette It's not that LJN didn't hire competent developers to make games (they hired developers such as Rare and Atlus) but they surely didn't give them an adequate time or resource budget.

Like 32KB program ROM wasn't a whole of space by 1985 standards, yet by the 1989 Back to the Future game, that's what LJN gave Beam Software to produce something. Not uncommon for games of that year to have four times as much space for less famous IPs.
Then again... the sequel I've heard called an American (technically Australian?) Atlantis no Nazo.

@Pianomanfreak YouTube reviews? "back in the day"? For a 1987 game?
I don't think I'm understanding.

@Max_the_German But the point of these games was that you'd have to play them for a long time to figure out how to be good enough at them to be able to finish in 10 minutes.
Watching videos was something very much not possible in 1987.

@ROMhaiku I'm sure that making rare cards is something the collectible card business has been doing even before Pokemon existed. I'm sure it's what drives business.

It's just that eBay and such didn't exist in such old days to encourage some people to act like maniacs.

@RiasGremory If their behavior pattern escalates, that's exactly what they get. Banned from stores, and if they don't comply, they get arrested for trespassing.

@Yosher The only thing they don't like to see is it being done to them.

Voting North America because even though it lies about "All the arcade action!" (which it shouldn't, many argue what the NES game has is BETTER than the arcade).
The Europe cover looks like same artist as the "Patrick Stewart holding a bowling pin" Mega Man 2 cover.

Japan however... should we feel unsettled voting for that one, given the significant content difference of that version?

@Dee123 Did Sega not hire M2 for the Genesis emulation as they did for Game Gear games on 3DS (I believe)?
Who they did hire sure put a lot more effort on presentation than Nintendo did? I recall it having a blur option as well as multiplayer which Game Boy on 3DS did not (only for Pokemon because they couldn't not),