WadeMcG

@Solid_Python Modern Warfare 2 was, in mind, the last legitimate entry in the Call of Duty series. It was the last one to have actual creators of the series involved, before West and Zampella got forced out of Infinity Ward, resulting in a major chunk of staff leaving Infinity Ward en masse to form Respawn.

When you consider that Activision was originally founded by people who left Atari en masse due to them only getting a base wage, regardless of little things like the number of units sold, the Infinity Ward to Respawn thing is more embarrassing.

On another note, the only thing I remember about Black Ops 1 was the all expenses paid review event that Activision hosted for critics at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa over three days. In my mind, that put a giant asterisk on a lot of reviews.

Bandai Namco Entertainment are no strangers to this sort of thing. I remember Dragon Ball FighterZ, which they published, getting a bumper balance shifting patch the same week that Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection got released.

Yoshi's Island hardly had anything in the way of download re-releases for previous Nintendo consoles or handhelds, and when it was re-released, it was the GBA version.

I'm still kind of annoyed that the SNES version on Switch is part of the Nintendo Switch Online subscription, and it's not available as an individual purchase to keep.

@Raifteiri That it did. Really, Activision. You put micro transactions in a game after it's been out for at least a month. Worse, you did so to a remake of an game that originally didn't have micro transactions, and a game that you didn't create the original version of.

CTR Nitro Fuelled should lose 3 points off the mark out ten for that.

One question I hope get answered concerns whether certain Switch 1 games will load quicker when playing through Switch 2. There are some games that take a bit long to load on Switch 1, even from the system memory.

@Vyacheslav333 Gradius V on a Switch OLED screen would've been quite a few sorts of awesome.

Don't tell me. Let me guess. The games that Platinum have struck from their record were mainly created by the people who have left them.

We're not quite talking Sonic Colours Switch category bad, but it's generally considered a cardinal sin when your version of an existing game is technically inferior, and two hardware generations later. I mean, when a game takes longer to boot up from a cartridge than the over a decade ago version did from a disc. ... Well, do you really need me to complete that sentence?

In no particular order:

• Osu!Tatakae! Ouendan.
• Chrono Trigger.
• The World Ends With You.
• Animal Crossing: Wild World.
• Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.

Resident Evil 6/10 is what I call it. See also: Driv3/10er.

The more truthful reviews gave 6/10 to Resident Evil 6.

I've noticed that no-one has mentioned Street Fighter X Tekken. A version of that with all the DLC actually available from the go, and not just hidden in the main game code behind a paywall like it originally was, might go some way to apologising for the original release.

Having said that, the likes of Ultra Street Fighter 4 , Tatsunoko vs Capcom and a Capcom vs SNK collection would be my preference please.

Who was it who owned Atari when the 1983 videogame industry crash occurred?

Who was it who owned DC comics when the 1990s comic book industry crash occurred?

Who is it who thinks that this games industry business model is a good idea?

I think you can see a pattern.

I felt the urge to buy MK11 Switch with the DLC when it was discounted recently. I deleted it from my memory card when I found that there was an online requirement for unlocking single player content.

There are individual entries in Capcom Fighting Compilations that look better and are better balanced. There are also ACA Neo Geo entries that beat this, and not just the three most obvious examples (KOF 98, KOF 02 & Garou).

I remember a major chunk of SVC Chaos' roster being notoriously overpowered and banned from tournaments.

Basically, SVC Chaos was a year earlier SNK equivalent of Capcom Fighting Evolution. They were both considered lazy efforts from both companies, and that was only highlighted by the glaringly superior efforts that both companies came out within the five years before SVC Chaos and CFE were released.

@Blofse The XBOX 360 version had all characters unlocked from the start.

I'm glad to see this is finally happening. The fact that Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects existed on PS2, but this didn't exist until now made me sick.

Advance knowledge of Mass Effect 3's ending saved me from buying it. It also made me trade in my second hand copies of Mass Effect 1 & 2.

Great Gianna Sisters for pulled from the Commodore Amiga for a lot less.

The people who give me stick for playing video games are the same people who watch reality TV dogshit like Big Brother, Married at First Sight, the Batchelor, Beauty and the Geek, etc.

These people have the audacity to say that video games are rotting my brain when they think that the above examples are legitimate contributions to television? Piss off.

@SpringDivorce Original style or Extra style?

For those far less familiar, there was a later arcade version of Rainbow Islands that mixed the sets of bad guys and put them on different islands to their usual. There was also a Japan only Megadrive Rainbow Islands version that allowed you to choose between the two styles.

I have Rainbow Islands Extra as a part of Taito Memories Pocket Japan version on PSP.

There's a glaring lack of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem among the nominees. Also, The First Slam Dunk is arguably more deserving of nomination than Wish. Kick Super Mario Bros and Wish out of the nominees list for credibility. Hell, even that average Ukrainian animated movie (Mavka) was more deserving than Wish, Super Mario Bros or Elemental.

Elemental simply wasn't as good as Pixar's earlier movies, and the inclusion of that Up related short in Elemental cinema sessions only served as a reminder of this.

We all know that Wish was released at the end of the year for the express purpose of keeping it fresh in the minds of as many Academy members as possible.

Also, you know things are bad when a lifelong gamer like myself was hoping to God that Barbie would overtake the Super Mario Bros movie. That's how angry I was about wasting my birthday cinema freebie on the Super Mario Bros movie.

Will we ever see Jeanne d'Arc get a release on something other than PSP?

@SwagaliciousJohnson I'm still hoping for a Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door 20th Anniversary special.

The worst example: Strider Commodore 64 version. This has review quotes and accolades for the Commodore Amiga version all over the box.
The fact that the much lower C64 version reviews weren't published until the game was out for a month or two should probably tell you something.

I've just been on the end of a game crash bug on level 16 of Survival Mode playing as SOR4 Adam. Twice in a row. Has anyone else had this problem?

Edit: Three times now.

@FatWormBlowsASparky About Fricking Time. That was amongst the PS4 Arcade Archives Stuff for the last few years. Now I can banish the disappointing Bubble Bobble 4 Friends from my memory card.

Also, I hope to finally see Bubble Symphony and Bubble Memories get an official home consumer release outside of Japan. I remember the arcades versions from one of those arcades that used to be on George Street Sydney back in the 80s and 90s. I've got Symphony and Memories ROMs on the RG351P, but I'd be quite happy to fork out for Arcade Archives releases of those two.

I'm also surprised that the file size of Skullgirls has shrunk significantly. Seriously, the PS Vita version of Skullgirls is now larger (if you include the patch for that version).

@Poodlestargenerica Dragon Ball FighterZ, anyone? Like Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 Vita, It performs well, but suffers a bit in terms of load times.

@Ewaldus Xenoblade 3 and Bayonetta 3 especially. There are two less than credible inclusions ahead of these:

• The Last of Us Part 1. Didn't anyone learn anything from the outcry against Final Fantasy VII Remake being broken up into multiple parts for the remake. I also remember similar shrieks of protest about The Hobbit movie trilogy.
• Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. Really? Considering Travellers Tales proud history of ruining established franchises (they were responsible for Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex, which Activision quite noticeably didn't remake), and the fact that none of their Lego games have ever legitimately deserved more than 7 out of ten, this is a bit of a joke.

The inclusion of these is kind of like picking Green Book for Best Picture in a year when the likes of BlacKkKlansman and Roma were released.

These guys put more effort into freely updating and expanding on Dead Cells than EA has put into updating the Switch FIFA games.

Virtual Pro Wrestling 2. That had the All Japan Pro Wrestling rights attached to it, and from my observation, it was released shortly before or around the time that Pro Wrestling Noah happened.

There were also a lot of not quite likenesses of past legends and wrestlers who were active back then in companies like New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michinoku Pro, RINGS and a host of others.

@Buizel One of the main reasons why people thought GTA4 was overrated can be summed up in four words: "Cousin, let's go bowling".

I'm referring, of course, to Roman Bellic. The greatest video gaming burden since Slippy.

It's not the first time that a lab coat and glasses wearing female character has found herself banned from fighting game tournaments.

Kokonoe from the Blazblue series was notoriously overpowered when she first popped up as a DLC playable character.

It's down to WWF No Mercy or Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 for me. Sadly, the game save battery in my Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 cartridge has died.

Not just F-Zero. There hasn't been a Wave Race game since Blue Storm on GameCube. That series needs to return (both at all, and to form). Pretty much the same kind of thing for 1080.

I have the Darkstalkers games in a number of forms. There's the Japan only PS2 collection that includes all the stuff mentioned here. There's the XBox 360 game that consists of the second and third games. Lastly, there's Vampire Chronicle (both Japan only Dreamcast and Worldwide PSP).

Having said that, this is getting a wishlist entry at the very least.

Besides that, I'm personally hoping for a collection of Capcom games that were made for the NAOMI arcade hardware or Sega Dreamcast. Problem is that two of the most wanted games under that blanket are crossover licence jobs.

The PS Vita and New 3DS have had folders (bubbles in Vita's case) for the last five years or so.

@mr_somewhere cough ... Sky News Australia from 2016 onwards ... cough

Anyway, remember when Activision was founded by Atari employees who resigned en masse due to things like only getting a base wage for their work, regardless of things like number of units of their work sold?

Years later, there was the West & Zampella saga, where they sued for unpaid bonuses. That case ended with a confidential out of court settlement, which I couldn't help notice occurred shortly after the Project Icebreaker fiasco (Activision staged false fire alarms for the express purpose of getting West and Zampella out of the offices, so that Activision could get some dirt on them) became public knowledge.

Totally unrelated question: How much did Activision pay for the All expenses paid, three days COD Black Ops review event at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa years ago?

I've made my feelings about this abundantly clear in the comments section of a previous article about this. The price is merely another reason that I will boycott this.

Thanks to the pricing of this, Final Fantasy: All the Bravest no longer holds the title of being the most notorious predatory ripoff that Square Enix has ever published, and that was a shameless microtransaction fest.

@River3636 Same here. I've got them both among a whole lot of ROMs on the memory card in my RG351P, and I still felt the urge to spend Aus$12 to get them for Switch. I didn't feel anywhere near the same urge for the Zombies and Ghoul Patrol package.

Sonic 2006 no longer holds the title of being the worst game that Yuji Naka had a hand in? When you remember what a disgrace to the videogame industry that Sonic 2006 was ... that's pretty damning.

@gazamataz I can point to the fact that the original PS2 versions worked better out of the box fifteen or so years ago. Just look at some of the side by side comparison videos on YouTube. e.g The PS2 versions did a better job with the cars hitting the water effects (that's just for starters).

There are good reasons why this didn't get the Three covers, extended preview and a guaranteed minimum score of 95% treatment (that's what the Official Dutch PlayStation 2 accused Rockstar of demanding back then for Vice City).

The outrage is quite justified. I won't pay Aus$79.95 for the privilege of beta testing fifteen years later and technically inferior versions of existing games. Oh, and Knights of the Old Republic didn't come across as inferior to the original version. I can also point to the PS Vita versions of other PS2 games that don't defecate on the legacies of their originals.

Silent Hill HD collection no longer holds the title of Most Botched compilation of games that originated on PS2.

Does GTA: SA still have that potshot at Driv3/10r in there? You know, where one of the characters asks how Refractions (read Reflections) could stuff up so badly?

What's the definition of hypocrisy again?

May I remind everyone that the last Square Enix Marvel based game kind of sucked? It was so glaringly bad that it actually scored less than 7 out of ten from some people. When you consider that 7 out of ten is the minimum score you can give a "AAA" game without getting your editorial support and/or advertising cut off, that is quite damning.

Bonus demerit points for being a cloud game. On the plus side, Square Enix won't have to bury any Switch version copies in the New Mexico Desert next to ET Atari VCS.

The soundtrack part is the big question. None of us want a Crazy Taxi Xbox 360 minus licenced parts situation here.

I pre-ordered Metroid Dread during the earlier stages of the NSW Covid Delta lockdown. I'll be returning to work next week before it arrives 🤬.

United Passions. Just type that into IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes for some interesting results.

Thou shalt not make a single player game that requires an always online connection or an online check-in.

It's like Sim City reboot's failure, Diablo 3's error 37 fiasco, the Ubisoft PC version always online idea and the backlash against the XBox One's initial plan for online didn't send a clear enough message to the industry (It can be summed up in two words).

There is not a single game in my collection that requires an always online connection. I will NOT spend money on something that will become a frisbee or a plastic chip the moment a server get closed.

I do not see any difference between what I've mentioned above and cloud games. If I want to play the earlier Kingdom Hearts games at home, I can buy physical copies for PS2. I'm a Switch Lite owner who does a lot of my Switch gaming on public transport (where always online is not exactly an option).

Are you trying to save Final Fantasy: All The Bravest from being your worst idea, Square Enix?

@CharlieGirl 7 out of ten is traditionally the maximum score a game can be given without a wholehearted recommendation, and the minimum score a game can be given without risking getting the advertising revenue and/or editorial support pulled by the game's publisher.

From the look of things, Sega has pulled a Sonic 4 and has buggered the in game physics of an established series.

I didn't excuse this sort of thing on PS Vita. I won't excuse it on Switch.

How many of us remember World Cup Carnival ZX Spectrum from 1986? That was an infamous example of a publisher taking an existing game and trying to pass it off as a new product.

I hope ISS64 gets added to the N64 section of Switch.online.