KingMike

@Jumwa But they want to make the "online services" as much of the functionality of the console as possible. Including being able to access much of those "GameKey" cards you can buy in stores. Therefore, it is "bricking".

@NFrealinkling But the person who committed the offense often isn't the one paying for it. That's the problem.

Once the original user has their console banned, they're just turning their problem around on another unsuspecting victim.

@Lone_Beagle That is indeed how math works.

I'm not certain of the difference between Air Combat and Air Combat 22.
Was it the first game where I hear it was more about the experience that the physical cabinet itself brought? Something like I've heard about G-LOC, which Sega released on the Sega Ages series. No idea how well that game itself played on Switch, and how well it held up once the risk of vomitting (hopefully not worse) from the original machine was removed.

$70 for all that and it doesn't get you a copy of the game at all?

@obijuankanoobie Playing GC games on Wii gives you the higher quality graphics mode without having to buy the insanely expensive cable that you'd have to on an actual GC. (the GC cable had some proprietary component in it that prevented cheap third-party cables from being made. But on Wii, component cables were easily found during its lifespan.)

@Bl4ckb100d The more console-makers go towards digital-only, the more the two terms become synonymous.
The day you won't be able to do more than turn a console on without needing an online connection, that's where consoles are going.

@MirrorFate2 That's probably applicable to almost every popular game, though. It's pretty much a statistical guarantee you're going to have to some bad-mannered fans everywhere.

@LexKitteh That's right, disabling a console's online access would only significantly impact the console's usability if the manufacturer were to implement some kind of system emphasizing physical cartridges that were to not contain the game data but a license to download the game data.

I know this sort of thing (banning consoles from online) has been going on since the 360. Though then I heard it more for inappropriate online interactions.
But that is something companies should think about. You think when you bad a console, especially for those who buying flashcarts. Do they really think those kind of users aren't going to just try to unload the console an another unsuspecting owner?
I suppose the scammed owner could try to contact Nintendo and ask to unban it. I hope they would, people pirating games, especially on active hardware, probably aren't going to make such a call.

I know Reggie has said something before about Nintendo being the only company with fans passionate enough to care about talking about its former or current employees enough to argue whether or not they were "execs".

@Toastmaster Nintendo couldn't stop a Sony port anyways at this point. Whatever rights they had to the game expired years ago.

Using unauthorized backups while the system is on its active lifespan is just inconsiderate and dumb.

Getting the N64 versions included as well would've been nice but probably also asking a bit much.

Though I don't understand how the PS1 versions are more appropriate for a widescreen update than 3DO. I thought both consoles had the same resolution. Weren't they both 320x240? @Tom-Massey

@SpacedDuck I'll have a spine to saw grow some manners for those who are a little different. I don't imagine you will but there's some "grow spine" for you.

@Truegamer79 YouTubers have been whining and complaining about Nintendo going to fail since before there was YouTube.

@Blofse Old code not working on new platforms isn't something unheard of.
I do remember that the original PC (Windows 95 CD) version of FF7 (admittedly not the best-written software in the world) did have one issue where the game would hard crash when loading the Chocobo Racing minigame (rendering the game unable to progress beyond a certain point) on Windows XP, and the fans tracked it down to a single program instruction. So things happen.
(Though the port had other issues that were most certainly bad design choices. I know that as of Windows 8 that version couldn't load and I wonder if it was a design choice that feels like even in the Win95 should've been addressed: I suspect it may have programmed to assume the optical media drive is drive D, which was a typical setup for the average PC of the era but it wasn't unheard of to have more elaborate setups. There doesn't seem to be a compatibility-fixing tool for such an issue, which I imagine the PC gaming community would've done if it was a common issue among retro PC gaming.)

@CartoonDan I looked it up, apparently the difference was the opening cutscene.
The bad guys are seen picking up and carrying off the women of the village. Except for the last one, in a not very sensitive "humor" of its time, because she was a very large woman she got dragged along the ground being pulled by her hair.

@mandlecreed I do like that the Game Boy version, which was ported by the European publisher Elite, didn't rename the port Caveman Ninja. They left the name as Joe and Mac, even though as you might guess from the nature of the hardware, Mac is not present. I guess Joe Only didn't have that same ring to it.

@CartoonDan The only thing I know of being "censored" was that you could steal a life after Game Over in 2P mode in the Japanese version.
MAYBE the cave babes showed me affection after rescue (I can't remember exactly how they compared, NoA had a thing about hugs and/or kisses in that era).
Nothing serious, but I've seen some retro fans that'll flip out over the tiniest edits. They'll probably even angrily bash out a response to this comment!

Since the European version was released by a different publisher, that version lacked the DAY VICE Data East logo and its voice. (well, that's what that logo screen in the Japanese and USA versions sounded like to me)

I mean, I don't online game much and even I already know I wouldn't really want to hear every nobody in a game chatting. I can only imagine the streamers I watch only game and voice chat on stream with their friends for reasons including this.

@ThaBEN Nintendo's not going to pay someone to have nothing else to do with their time but sit and listen to random strangers' conversations.
It's like any other online service, they're not going to care what you're talking about unless they get a notice from the police who think you're talking about doing really illegal things, like the stranger danger I'm sure the TV news wants you to believe people are using Nintendo's chat services for.

@FlyingDunsparce Crazy idea, but if you can connect an actual GameCube controller, why not could they not support connecting an actual GBA with the actual link cable?

Actually, I know why: this is Nintendo. The GBC games on NSO reportedly can't support GBA connection features, even though they would be as simple as an option to patch a single byte in the console RAM (for each game that had a GBA bonus).
If they can't get that, asking for actual GBA link support would be too much to ask.

@SBandy1 That is very true about the D-Pad being too small. I think the only device of that era Nintendo made with a sufficiently big D-Pad was the OG DS.
The Metroid Fusion boss "Nightmare" was aptly named because of the experience it gave me fighting it with those tiny D-Pads!

@Duncanballs Indeed that is true. Stuff these days is all made with a disposable mentality.
Not just game consoles either.
I had gotten a new Levi's jacket and couldn't believe how much you could tell a quality difference from a vintage '90s one (liked the newer color, but you could feel the old one was going to hold up better, thicker and more rugged texture. For a "jacket" the new one felt barely distinguishable from a "shirt". Thin and flimsy feel.)
One of the YouTubers I watch fixes old computers. He found a bunch of dirty and weather-damaged Apple IIs that after just a bit of clean-up still worked fine, just one floppy drive I think might've been the extent to what couldn't be fixed. Are we going to be saying that about a current Apple product in 40 years?

@dartmonkey Well, you can pin it on Nintendo for using cheap cardboard to pack their boxes. If it can't survive a staple without damaging the contents, how is it to do its purpose of keeping the contents secure?
But I guess cheap packaging is how everything is done these days. I guess these days packaging is meant to look nice and not to secure the contents, unlike in my day.

@Metazoxan "Honestly what I'm relaly hoping for is that fans, or maybe even Nintendo, release blank cartridges made for storing singular Switch 2 games on. Meaning since it wasn't sold physically you just put it on physical yourself. It should be possible in theory so I'd like to see people really step up and create their own solution."
Well, copying a digital game to SD card is technically that.
The other way of interpreting that would be to suggest Nintendo do exactly what they did for the Super Famicom and Game Boy in Japan (which was itself a recycling of the Famicom Disk System idea). They had kiosks set up in stores in Japan for exactly that purpose. They pulled them just after the Wii was released. The former had the limitations that you could only fit enough games to fill the cartridge memory capacity and that, since there was no "ownership" system put in, once you delete a game you have to pay for it again if you want it back another time (which is what Nintendo would do if they followed your idea).

@MrGawain We can stop Game Key Cards like we stopped UMD Videos!

But you can 100% complete this at any time if you want?

They didn't pull any Pokemon Company marketing shenanigans, did they? No need to go out to each of Best Buy, GameStop and Target all for code cards?

@PKDuckman I'm told the European version fixed the level design to make it a finishable game.

As much as we'd like to see something dethrone Mario Kart, and as much as I love Garfield, there's no way I'd expect Garfield to be the game to do it.
Way too many Garf games that feel like the Garf himself wrote them!

@The_Nintend_Pedant Well, in Super Castlevania IV there is a secret room where you can kill the guy's dog and then he weeps.

@Quarbit Because it's harder for the company to one day take that game away from you when it's on a hunk of plastic.

@Jeronan Sony also makes other electronic devices, but is also one of the major music publishing labels and owns one of the largest film studios, so they still have many other sources of revenue besides the PlayStation brand.

"Dating everything"?

So they took the premise of Hyperdimension Neutopia and made it weirder?

@Anti-Matter What Xbox "kids" first-party IPs can anyone even name off the top of their heads?
People everywhere know Mario and Sony had their PS1 rented mascots Crash and Spyro, but I don't know if the Xbox brand was ever quickly associated with "kids" brands. (I mean I know the OG was marketed towards the "20s FPS frat boys loaded with Mountain Dew and Doritos" image, and later gen they sure had a wider variety of third-party offerings for all ages.)

@Zufolobelisk Sorry, the rental stores I went to as a kid always asked me to rewind but I could never figure out how to rewind the SNES carts before returning them.

@MamaSymphonia Because Sony came up with the brilliant idea of making console owners register their disc drive before it can be used.
Because users sharing the physical drive with others hurts Sony how...?

@RupeeClock The most basic "rewind" feature of 20+ year old ZSNES versions was implemented by making frequent auto savestates. Something like every 10 frames for the last 10 seconds. Then pushing the button repeatedly just loads them in order of most recent.
It just takes a whole lot of memory to keep a history.

Remapping controls shouldn't be a new feature. That's something Nintendo should've been doing in everything since the Wii Virtual Console.
Even in 2006, it was already a standard in all but the most primitive of those fan emulators Nintendo keeps berating.

Thanks, Nintendo for in 2025 adding a feature out of 1997!

@awp69 Back then Kemco was making platformers and often swapping licenses between regions.
Then in 1989, they made a little game called Roger Rabbit for the Famicom Disk System and turned it into a little game called Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle for the west and then they made a ton of them. It's almost a rabbithole (that was not an intentional pun) how many licenses got attached to that franchise like a katamari.

@Samalik It was in late 2003 that Nintendo updated the "Seal of Quality" text to state that. I recall that from comparing my Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and "Fire Emblem" GBA manuals.

@Olliemar28 "we can definitely see the fruits of Nintendo's labour" Would that fruit happen to be long and yellow?

@Metazoxan At least twelfth, since there were two arcade games developed with Namco.

@sanderev The two arcade games are also excluded from the official numbering.
At least part being that it was a joint production with Namco (who added Pac-Man and one of the ghosts as playable characters).

@BirdoDidNothingWrong I remember booting up that 3DS port and I knew it was modeled around the FDS version as soon as I booted it up and heard the title theme in the very distinct "farty" sound of the FDS' FM synth.

@SirLink The Famicom Disk Writer. It was how you bought games "digitally" on the Famicom Disk System. It was a kiosk set up in game stores in Japan in the late '80s and early '90s. You bring a blank disk, or an old game you don't want, and you can pay to load the disk with a ROM of a different game.
It was cheaper than buying a packaged game.

Nintendo set up a similar thing with official flashcarts for the Game Boy and Super Famicom with devices of a lifespan a decade later than the Disk Writer.

Glad to see them working together, 30 years after Nintendo sued Samsung over manufacturing ROM chips used in counterfeit Donkey Kong Country cartridges (though Samsung chips were also in legitimate copies, such as I think my Super Donkey Kong had one when I checked).
Historical trivia.
Samsung's defense was that they can't be liable for the legality of the data ordered by the customer, and compared it to a floppy disk maker being used over the contents it is used for.

Only NES, and not the FDS version (which I believe the 3DS "3D Classic" version was based on)?
Didn't they include both in the Legend of Zelda update?

@Uncle_Franklin Maybe if the game actually did something with its characters, it would make more sense to cover over half the image with them.
Are they even relegated to at least the instruction manual like the original game? (I don't know as my copy came with only the box and cart from the local Blockbuster after it retired them from circulation.)