@Bizzyb Positivity? Sega put an EMBARGO on reviews. That's never a good sign, especially not with a Sega game. It's literally what publishers do to secure a few more pre-orders before people figure out a game is bad and steer clear.
I think that, weirdly enough, a lot of it's value comes from a pretty big flaw in how the system handles dlc licenses. If they'd actually FIX that flaw, it might devalue the higher tier.
The flaw I'm referring to is how you have to "check in" online any time you want to play a game with DLC. If the system can't ping a server to verify you own the DLC every single time you start the associated application, then the DLC doesn't work. This can literally break your saves in some games, it borders on infuriating.
The 'Plus Expansion' DLCs still require the same license check in the background, but it makes a little more sense in some contexts, because it's part of an ONLINE pass, and you don't specifically have to purchase those DLCs outright. It's still annoying, but it seems justified in the case of an online subscription. If they actually fixed the way DLC in general works on the platform, or at least alleviated it to either check in ALL your DLC when the system starts up, or perhaps only require you to check in the DLC every few times/days you access it, that would make it a lot more attractive to just buy things like the Mario Kart pass or the Animal Crossing DLC, and be done with it. But I suspect they may be intentionally keeping it that way so that the +EP method doesn't seem annoying in contrast.
@Arpie ...because complete Wavebird controllers in good condition can get somewhat rather expensive. Especially if you want them for more than one or two players. This mod means that you can use basically whatever Bluetooth compatible controller you like. I'd love to see if these work with some of the Bluetooth arcade sticks out out by 8bitdo and the like, there are some great multiplayer games on the system where I could see it being really fun to pull a couple of those out and play with a buddy.
@Kiyata "a handful" of retro games for $50? Someone hasn't looked at retro prices in a long while. Just about any game truly worth having from the SNES era is going to run $30-50 bucks minimum. Get into the truly great titles, and the prices get flat out exorbitant. A legitimate cart for games like Earthbound, Final Fantasy III/VI, Chrono Trigger, etc. are going to run you hundreds per game. None of this accounts for the fact that you need extra equipment to be able to play these old systems on most modern televisions, and if you want it to look decent without lag, that equipment can get pretty pricey.
I don't love the whole subscription model, I don't love it at all. I personally want to buy the games I want individually. But as someone who also collects legit SNES games and has gone through the trouble/expense of a nice setup for it... What Nintendo offers on their subscription is a steal of a deal for those who don't already have all the necessary hardware and game collection at their fingertips.
It's weird, and honestly kind of frustrating to me that they are now making older DLCs free with the pass. Many of us bought DLC in the last couple years, so adding pre-existing DLC to the pass is kind of a slap in the face to all of us. What's next, the SwSh DLC? Does Nintendo wanna slap all of those fans?
If they make more NEW DLC, and add that to the pass, that's fine. But these are things people purchased when Nintendo hadn't given any indication that they'd be included in a pass. Oh, hey, maybe they can put the first few waves of SSB fighters into there to piss off all the folks who bought those (but not the later ones, because people may not have bought them all already, right?)
I snagged a Carby HDMI adapter for my 'cube when they were apparently clearing them out, and have been very happy with it's handling of the signal. No lag, no issues.
That said, devices of this nature aren't super cheap, and if you've got a TV that can handle direct component format input, a nice set of component cables sounds like a solid cheaper option for most gamers. That's a solid win for retro gaming.
S-Video offered improved visuals over COMPOSITE, but no advantages over component. Tech info from Wiki: "S-Video (also known as separate video and Y/C) is a signaling standard for standard definition video, typically 480i or 576i. By separating the black-and-white and coloring signals, it achieves better image quality than composite video, but has lower color resolution than component video."
Component cable separates the video signal further than S-Video, affording higher clarity and speed than S-Video was ever capable of.
@Northwind I'm not familiar with ShopTo, I generally just end up getting PAL games either because I see them cheaper from Europe on Amazon.co.uk/eBay.co.uk, or because someone here in the USA has already imported them cheaper in bulk and is reselling them for less than standard NTSC copies. I've got about 80 physical release games at this point, and a quick glance of the cases shows that 14 of them have been PAL copies. It's not a majority by any means, but it definitely comes up sometimes. ^_^
@Northwind Such limitations aren't really "a thing" at this point, since games on the Switch aren't region-locked. We have two NSW in my household, and this results in some physical games being bought twice -sometimes getting a "PAL" copy saves quite a bit of cash. Aside from just being COMPATIBLE with NTSC systems, in many cases I've found that the cartridge/card inside the box is even the same ID in both regions -its literally 100% identical, or sometimes just has a different label with the appropriate ratings board icon.
@KoopaTheQuick The rest of the line looks like DUPLO. Kind of a bummer, since most of what they're putting into those sets is from an era decades before any audience it might appeal to. It didn't have to be this way, they could have done something better.
@Kienda I agree, it's a shame we never got to see the feature fully realized on the platform. As far as I can recall, we didn't see a feature of that nature pop back up until it was included in some of the 3DS pre-installed "tech demo" games like Face Raiders. Even then, nothing like a traditional FPS game. Obviously, there have been big modding communities around a lot of titles, but I don't really count that because it's not used by the majority of mainstream players.
@Kienda Just keep mind that this would have been released in the wake of the Columbine Massacre, literally in the same year.
People were desperately looking for something (ANYTHING) outside their immediate understanding to scapegoat. One of the kid made levels in "Doom" -he used stock game assets, and the news media had a field day playing it up like he'd created this massive demonic vision of blood and gore. He'd tinkered with a rudimentary level editor, as thousands of other people had, nothing more. Rare was partnered with, and effectively owned by Nintendo at that time. Can you imagine the financial hurt that would have come down on their heads if, mere months after the school shooting that everyone was still talking about and trying to understand, there were headlines about "a NEW game with SUPERAMAZING3DGRAPHICS let you take pictures of your classmates with a Gameboy camera, and then shoot them up in a 3D gun simulation"? Heads would have rolled, all of them.
And as much as I am frequently disgusted with the media's over eagerness to help people blindly point the finger at others with little or no actual evidence... There's more to it than that. The country was feeling from these previously unheard of events. They were feeling for a good 6-12 months afterward. Media aside, it would have been in poor taste to debut such a feature into mainstream console games at that time. Stores would have inevitably banned it due to legions of angry parents (who can't be arsed to read the "M" rating on games they buy for their young children), and the game would have faded into obscurity, along with any chance of real profits from it's development. It's not like online ordering was a big thing back then, so if a game got pulled from major chain shelves that was basically it. Hell, eBay was still a foreign concept to many Americans, so they wouldn't have driven major sales outside of brick and mortar.
Given the choice to cut the content, or keep it and likely be blacklisted... They made the right call.
There are a lot of factors to consider here, but I think this is an intriguing prospect to be sure.
First off, the crowdfunding concern. There's something very unique about this one, in that the main goal is to get the scene moving again. This isn't about getting some massive new action rpg to market, or producing an icebox with 20 gadgets attached, it's primarily about being able to design a few new games for some old hardware, and building a toolset for that hardware so that others can build on it too. Any crowdfunding campaign can fail, can vanish, but the warning signs are usually the loftiest promises from those with no prior experience. These people are promising something that's very good (tools for potential Homebrew developers), but not necessarily all THAT complicated in comparison. When you consider the fact that some of the more basic rudimentary tools exist, and simply aren't all that accessible or user friendly, or are very limited in scope, it becomes a lot less of a feat to get to those final tools that could really be used for Homebrew devs. It's not THAT far of a stretch compared to some of the projects where I see people throwing upwards into the hundreds of dollars person, with little or no track record for the devs.
Next, consider the home brew community for super Nintendo, hell, consider the Super Mario World modding community. Many of the most popular SMW hacks in recent years (and there are TONS of them) won't function on a real system without using one or more of the special chipsets (FX, etc.); many others couldn't work on a real snes at all without some serious retooling. My point is that these people obviously aren't just writing for the original system. They're writing the game they want, in the format that works for them, which happens to be the SNES (or nes, etc, depending on the game being hacked/modded). By the same token, tools for Virtual Boy development wouldn't be limited to those who own a Virtual Boy. One advantage to this system, is the idea of native stereoscopic 3D, implemented in such a simple way that you could literally just emulate that 3D with a set of red and blue 3D glasses with no real loss of fidelity. It's ONLY black and red shades, it would translate far better than any old 3D movies from the red and blue era did. We also live in an era where many gamers have vr setups of some form or another readily available to them. Whether it's something pricey like the Vive or an Oculus, or something in the lower price range like Gear VR or even one of the hundreds of different model Cardboard/Daydream centric options (if you haven't checked out the Reddit Cardboard or Daydream sections before, take a look at some of the discussion, there are a lot of very viable options for those who want to try a little vr without spending an arm and a leg or strapping recycled paper product to their face, lol). Retroarch has a very nice little config that takes mere minutes to set up one time, enabling SBS left/right images for vr, or older blue/red glasses for those who want to mix one kind of retro with another kind of retro. And of course, there are a handful of people with proper 3D television sets (though I don't know of any new units being produced since last year, I believe manufacturers completely stopped offering the feature after 2016 models).
The point is, you really don't need the hardware to play the system. It's hasnt stopped the Homebrew community in the past, and I don't predict it will stop them now -given reasonable development tools.
The system itself, honestly, did have some good along with the already virally-established bad. And honestly, the negative features were greatly exaggerated in the same way that the concept of VR motion sickness is today -yes, some people have trouble adapting, most (not all, there are always outlying cases) of those people appear to be unaccustomed to high motion games to begin with. And for every person I've heard complain about experiencing it personally in real life (as in, not on the web where anonymity often encourages bandwagons of negativity about anything and everything), I've personally met or spoken with at least a dozen that have tried it WITHOUT any side effects. I don't expect anyone to take my word for that though -internet anonymity doesn't give most folks a lot of credibility, but I'd recommend talking to gamers who've tried the tech if you really think that many people are experiencing it. People who aren't into gaming already really aren't the target market anyway.
Personally, I've been looking at trying to do a little Homebrew development for the Virtual Boy myself lately. I had one in the past, I know about the one major lens issue, and I have comfortably repaired several of these units -it takes about five minutes for someone with very little electronics experience. They didn't have a lot of good games -the (still) unsubstantiated rumors about eye damage did a lot to ensure parents wouldn't buy this thing for their kids, so there wasn't a lot o time for devs to get much software off the ground before it failed in stores. Having played it for several hours as an adult now, I'd really like to see some new games made for it. It's not all about crazy wireframe polygons like you usually see. It was great for taking otherwise quaint traditional 2D titles and giving them a nice visual flair or even a slight gameplay tweak that the 3D visuals made more natural. Warioland, Tennis, and Teleroboxer were some good examples of what the game system can do with 2D sprites on a 3D plane. I'm looking forward to the possibility of a new bigger Homebrew community, on any retro platform.
Comments 13
Re: Sonic Frontiers On Switch Will Be The "Same Experience" As Other Platforms
@Bizzyb Positivity? Sega put an EMBARGO on reviews. That's never a good sign, especially not with a Sega game. It's literally what publishers do to secure a few more pre-orders before people figure out a game is bad and steer clear.
Re: Poll: Is The Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack Good Enough Value Yet?
I think that, weirdly enough, a lot of it's value comes from a pretty big flaw in how the system handles dlc licenses. If they'd actually FIX that flaw, it might devalue the higher tier.
The flaw I'm referring to is how you have to "check in" online any time you want to play a game with DLC. If the system can't ping a server to verify you own the DLC every single time you start the associated application, then the DLC doesn't work. This can literally break your saves in some games, it borders on infuriating.
The 'Plus Expansion' DLCs still require the same license check in the background, but it makes a little more sense in some contexts, because it's part of an ONLINE pass, and you don't specifically have to purchase those DLCs outright. It's still annoying, but it seems justified in the case of an online subscription. If they actually fixed the way DLC in general works on the platform, or at least alleviated it to either check in ALL your DLC when the system starts up, or perhaps only require you to check in the DLC every few times/days you access it, that would make it a lot more attractive to just buy things like the Mario Kart pass or the Animal Crossing DLC, and be done with it. But I suspect they may be intentionally keeping it that way so that the +EP method doesn't seem annoying in contrast.
Re: This Stealth GameCube Mod Allows You To Play With Any Bluetooth Controller
@Arpie ...because complete Wavebird controllers in good condition can get somewhat rather expensive. Especially if you want them for more than one or two players. This mod means that you can use basically whatever Bluetooth compatible controller you like. I'd love to see if these work with some of the Bluetooth arcade sticks out out by 8bitdo and the like, there are some great multiplayer games on the system where I could see it being really fun to pull a couple of those out and play with a buddy.
Re: Nintendo Updates Its 'Switch Online + Expansion Pack' Trailer With New Footage
@Kiyata "a handful" of retro games for $50? Someone hasn't looked at retro prices in a long while. Just about any game truly worth having from the SNES era is going to run $30-50 bucks minimum. Get into the truly great titles, and the prices get flat out exorbitant. A legitimate cart for games like Earthbound, Final Fantasy III/VI, Chrono Trigger, etc. are going to run you hundreds per game. None of this accounts for the fact that you need extra equipment to be able to play these old systems on most modern televisions, and if you want it to look decent without lag, that equipment can get pretty pricey.
I don't love the whole subscription model, I don't love it at all. I personally want to buy the games I want individually. But as someone who also collects legit SNES games and has gone through the trouble/expense of a nice setup for it... What Nintendo offers on their subscription is a steal of a deal for those who don't already have all the necessary hardware and game collection at their fingertips.
Re: Nintendo Updates Its 'Switch Online + Expansion Pack' Trailer With New Footage
It's weird, and honestly kind of frustrating to me that they are now making older DLCs free with the pass. Many of us bought DLC in the last couple years, so adding pre-existing DLC to the pass is kind of a slap in the face to all of us. What's next, the SwSh DLC? Does Nintendo wanna slap all of those fans?
If they make more NEW DLC, and add that to the pass, that's fine. But these are things people purchased when Nintendo hadn't given any indication that they'd be included in a pass. Oh, hey, maybe they can put the first few waves of SSB fighters into there to piss off all the folks who bought those (but not the later ones, because people may not have bought them all already, right?)
Re: Retro-Bit's GameCube Component Cable Will Save You Some Pennies
I snagged a Carby HDMI adapter for my 'cube when they were apparently clearing them out, and have been very happy with it's handling of the signal. No lag, no issues.
That said, devices of this nature aren't super cheap, and if you've got a TV that can handle direct component format input, a nice set of component cables sounds like a solid cheaper option for most gamers. That's a solid win for retro gaming.
Re: Retro-Bit's GameCube Component Cable Will Save You Some Pennies
@Spider-Kev It literally, definitively, did not.
S-Video offered improved visuals over COMPOSITE, but no advantages over component. Tech info from Wiki:
"S-Video (also known as separate video and Y/C) is a signaling standard for standard definition video, typically 480i or 576i. By separating the black-and-white and coloring signals, it achieves better image quality than composite video, but has lower color resolution than component video."
Component cable separates the video signal further than S-Video, affording higher clarity and speed than S-Video was ever capable of.
Re: Online Retailer Cancels Orders For Super Mario 3D All-Stars Due To "Woefully Short" Supply
@Northwind
I'm not familiar with ShopTo, I generally just end up getting PAL games either because I see them cheaper from Europe on Amazon.co.uk/eBay.co.uk, or because someone here in the USA has already imported them cheaper in bulk and is reselling them for less than standard NTSC copies. I've got about 80 physical release games at this point, and a quick glance of the cases shows that 14 of them have been PAL copies. It's not a majority by any means, but it definitely comes up sometimes. ^_^
Re: Online Retailer Cancels Orders For Super Mario 3D All-Stars Due To "Woefully Short" Supply
@Northwind Such limitations aren't really "a thing" at this point, since games on the Switch aren't region-locked.
We have two NSW in my household, and this results in some physical games being bought twice -sometimes getting a "PAL" copy saves quite a bit of cash. Aside from just being COMPATIBLE with NTSC systems, in many cases I've found that the cartridge/card inside the box is even the same ID in both regions -its literally 100% identical, or sometimes just has a different label with the appropriate ratings board icon.
Great way to save some cash nowadays.
Re: Random: The LEGO NES Has A Cool Super Mario Bros. Easter Egg Hidden Inside It
@KoopaTheQuick
The rest of the line looks like DUPLO. Kind of a bummer, since most of what they're putting into those sets is from an era decades before any audience it might appeal to. It didn't have to be this way, they could have done something better.
Re: Perfect Dark Was Supposed To Have Push Button Cheats, But They Accidentally Got Deleted
@Kienda I agree, it's a shame we never got to see the feature fully realized on the platform. As far as I can recall, we didn't see a feature of that nature pop back up until it was included in some of the 3DS pre-installed "tech demo" games like Face Raiders. Even then, nothing like a traditional FPS game. Obviously, there have been big modding communities around a lot of titles, but I don't really count that because it's not used by the majority of mainstream players.
Re: Perfect Dark Was Supposed To Have Push Button Cheats, But They Accidentally Got Deleted
@Kienda Just keep mind that this would have been released in the wake of the Columbine Massacre, literally in the same year.
People were desperately looking for something (ANYTHING) outside their immediate understanding to scapegoat. One of the kid made levels in "Doom" -he used stock game assets, and the news media had a field day playing it up like he'd created this massive demonic vision of blood and gore. He'd tinkered with a rudimentary level editor, as thousands of other people had, nothing more. Rare was partnered with, and effectively owned by Nintendo at that time. Can you imagine the financial hurt that would have come down on their heads if, mere months after the school shooting that everyone was still talking about and trying to understand, there were headlines about "a NEW game with SUPERAMAZING3DGRAPHICS let you take pictures of your classmates with a Gameboy camera, and then shoot them up in a 3D gun simulation"? Heads would have rolled, all of them.
And as much as I am frequently disgusted with the media's over eagerness to help people blindly point the finger at others with little or no actual evidence... There's more to it than that. The country was feeling from these previously unheard of events. They were feeling for a good 6-12 months afterward. Media aside, it would have been in poor taste to debut such a feature into mainstream console games at that time. Stores would have inevitably banned it due to legions of angry parents (who can't be arsed to read the "M" rating on games they buy for their young children), and the game would have faded into obscurity, along with any chance of real profits from it's development. It's not like online ordering was a big thing back then, so if a game got pulled from major chain shelves that was basically it. Hell, eBay was still a foreign concept to many Americans, so they wouldn't have driven major sales outside of brick and mortar.
Given the choice to cut the content, or keep it and likely be blacklisted... They made the right call.
Re: The Nintendo Virtual Boy Could Be Getting New Software
There are a lot of factors to consider here, but I think this is an intriguing prospect to be sure.
First off, the crowdfunding concern. There's something very unique about this one, in that the main goal is to get the scene moving again. This isn't about getting some massive new action rpg to market, or producing an icebox with 20 gadgets attached, it's primarily about being able to design a few new games for some old hardware, and building a toolset for that hardware so that others can build on it too. Any crowdfunding campaign can fail, can vanish, but the warning signs are usually the loftiest promises from those with no prior experience. These people are promising something that's very good (tools for potential Homebrew developers), but not necessarily all THAT complicated in comparison. When you consider the fact that some of the more basic rudimentary tools exist, and simply aren't all that accessible or user friendly, or are very limited in scope, it becomes a lot less of a feat to get to those final tools that could really be used for Homebrew devs. It's not THAT far of a stretch compared to some of the projects where I see people throwing upwards into the hundreds of dollars person, with little or no track record for the devs.
Next, consider the home brew community for super Nintendo, hell, consider the Super Mario World modding community. Many of the most popular SMW hacks in recent years (and there are TONS of them) won't function on a real system without using one or more of the special chipsets (FX, etc.); many others couldn't work on a real snes at all without some serious retooling. My point is that these people obviously aren't just writing for the original system. They're writing the game they want, in the format that works for them, which happens to be the SNES (or nes, etc, depending on the game being hacked/modded). By the same token, tools for Virtual Boy development wouldn't be limited to those who own a Virtual Boy. One advantage to this system, is the idea of native stereoscopic 3D, implemented in such a simple way that you could literally just emulate that 3D with a set of red and blue 3D glasses with no real loss of fidelity. It's ONLY black and red shades, it would translate far better than any old 3D movies from the red and blue era did. We also live in an era where many gamers have vr setups of some form or another readily available to them. Whether it's something pricey like the Vive or an Oculus, or something in the lower price range like Gear VR or even one of the hundreds of different model Cardboard/Daydream centric options (if you haven't checked out the Reddit Cardboard or Daydream sections before, take a look at some of the discussion, there are a lot of very viable options for those who want to try a little vr without spending an arm and a leg or strapping recycled paper product to their face, lol). Retroarch has a very nice little config that takes mere minutes to set up one time, enabling SBS left/right images for vr, or older blue/red glasses for those who want to mix one kind of retro with another kind of retro. And of course, there are a handful of people with proper 3D television sets (though I don't know of any new units being produced since last year, I believe manufacturers completely stopped offering the feature after 2016 models).
The point is, you really don't need the hardware to play the system. It's hasnt stopped the Homebrew community in the past, and I don't predict it will stop them now -given reasonable development tools.
The system itself, honestly, did have some good along with the already virally-established bad. And honestly, the negative features were greatly exaggerated in the same way that the concept of VR motion sickness is today -yes, some people have trouble adapting, most (not all, there are always outlying cases) of those people appear to be unaccustomed to high motion games to begin with. And for every person I've heard complain about experiencing it personally in real life (as in, not on the web where anonymity often encourages bandwagons of negativity about anything and everything), I've personally met or spoken with at least a dozen that have tried it WITHOUT any side effects. I don't expect anyone to take my word for that though -internet anonymity doesn't give most folks a lot of credibility, but I'd recommend talking to gamers who've tried the tech if you really think that many people are experiencing it. People who aren't into gaming already really aren't the target market anyway.
Personally, I've been looking at trying to do a little Homebrew development for the Virtual Boy myself lately. I had one in the past, I know about the one major lens issue, and I have comfortably repaired several of these units -it takes about five minutes for someone with very little electronics experience. They didn't have a lot of good games -the (still) unsubstantiated rumors about eye damage did a lot to ensure parents wouldn't buy this thing for their kids, so there wasn't a lot o time for devs to get much software off the ground before it failed in stores. Having played it for several hours as an adult now, I'd really like to see some new games made for it. It's not all about crazy wireframe polygons like you usually see. It was great for taking otherwise quaint traditional 2D titles and giving them a nice visual flair or even a slight gameplay tweak that the 3D visuals made more natural. Warioland, Tennis, and Teleroboxer were some good examples of what the game system can do with 2D sprites on a 3D plane. I'm looking forward to the possibility of a new bigger Homebrew community, on any retro platform.