World

@Teksette Ooh neat! My only exposure to Colecovision was when I found the Flashback version at a thrift store. There were some good ones on it! My favorite was Pepper II (and relatedly Amidar is another one I love! I'm still hoping it comes to ACA).

@Ooyah I did not! But that sounds really neat!

@Ooyah Ooh, neat! I don't know that one! I wonder if we'll see some of those non-2600 games on Evercade?

@Teksette @Ooyah Another shoutout to the H.E.R.O. club! I love Activision games; my favorites are probably Keystone Kapers and Skiing, but most of them are great.

I've been enjoying C-So! on the Switch. All these little weirdo arcade-style Eggconsole games are instant buys for me.

I liked this game a lot; one of the (very) few I completed entirely as a kid. I have no real desire to play it again, but good it's on NSO.

This was also my first exposure to Jetpac and relatedly the ZX Spectrum, my true love.

@Teksette Nice! Well, it's definitely worth the sale price for sure! Glad you can share it with your kids, too!

And yeah, I'd like to see the Mr. Do sequels! (Those I have never played.)

@Teksette I noticed you picked up Mappy! Definitely one of my favorites and I think my most played ACA on Switch. Enjoy!

@Teksette Oh neat! I discovered it in the 2000s and really loved it and have been enjoying the ACA version (I like that it includes three separate versions too!); and ditto on the hopes for an ACA version of Ladybug!

I'm busy so probably not much of anything, but last night I did get to try out the ACA Mr. Do which was pretty exciting to see on Switch.

I also got the urge to play some Math puzzles again, so I've been playing a bit of MMC KenKen too.

I voted for Japan.
Because Bubsy's design is quite distinct on it, I wonder if we'll see it pop up in the new game in some form (kind of like how Classic Sonic or Bad Box Art Mega Man became their own characters?).

Finally getting around to Taisho x Alice: Heads & Tails because last weekend I played Primula's new game Navigatore of the Ruined World and was disappointed by how short it was (like 6 hours). I was like, "I wish there was more Primula out there for me to play" and...there was! In my backlog haha

This is a great article!! I love reading these kinds of things about how profoundly games can influence different facets of our lives.

And on a personal level, games are among the first things to go if I am struggling mentally so the power they have to heal like this is one of those things I am always very interested in reading about.

@Lanmanna What I meant is that third-parties do this a lot now. We have any number of retro re-releases on the eShop. They are just not under the Virtual Console banner anymore. I was just saying this isn't something that necessarily needs to be curated by Nintendo anymore (unless, as I said above, they were curating their own games this way).

To an extent, the market is more diverse now and although there is no VC branding, other companies have decided it is a better choice for them to sell their games rather than do NSO (and some do both).
I don't think we need VC again; the market has outgrown something like that (especially since smaller companies like Hamster are providing more niche versions of the VC with Arcade and Console Archives), but it would be interesting if Nintendo themselves sold more of their back catalogue on the eShop.

I'm have to be social today and probably again tomorrow, so likely not much but I'll be dipping into Star-Crossed Myth: Department of Wishes and lately I've been playing Demons to Diamonds on Atari 50 (supposedly developed for younger players, but it presents enough challenge for me haha).

I think this is a great choice for 500! It doesn't get more significant than this! I've never actually played Space Invaders either, so that's neat.

I really vibe with the ACA project. Tuning into the streams you can see the joy they get from playing a new title and the care that goes into these reproductions. Here's to 500 more!

I mean, a key difference is that if you buy a knife the knife company has no real control over what you do with the knife. If you make onion soup with your knife, they have no power over that output.

Generative AI is different in that it is wholly owned by whoever developed the program. Thus your outputs will only be within the parameters of what the developer of the Generative AI program wanted them to be.

A friend gifted me a couple of otome fandisks on Steam for Christmas (Taisho x Alice: Heads & Tails and Cinderella Phenomenon: Evermore) so maybe one of those along with an Arcade Archives game or something.

It definitely does. If I'm going to pay money for a game, I want it to have been made by a talented team who was fairly compensated. If a company isn't willing to invest in artists, why should I be willing to invest in their "art?"

Officially on holidays now, so catching up on my backlog. First up is Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk on Steam.

@PinderSchloss Oh yeah, that makes sense! It definitely had a look unlike anything else at the time, that's true. Thanks for sharing your perspective!

I have this on Dreamcast and played it again on the 3DS and it's one of those games I want to like more than I do. I find the controls stiff and there are some parts that just aren't fun (i.e., any level where you have to ride things). It's held in pretty high regard, as evidenced here, so I always wonder what I'm missing.

This sounds really great! Of this collection, I only knew Year Walk, so it was neat to hear about some of the other games in here!

Bad Boy Brother for me, eventually. It seems to have it all; high drama with anime pretty boys beating each other up and also there is Mahjong.

I typically would like a collection too as some have said, but I enjoy the ACA experience. They do their premiere the day before, which is cool, and then the game releases. There's even a stream after the release each week (but I don't watch those). To me, it's a whole thing; I like the spotlighting of one game at a time.

More on topic, I think it's interesting how tank games had a moment in the 90s. In the midst of all the grungy futuristic stuff, we got that.

Whether he's right or wrong, he certainly has audacity to just come out saying "people love slop." Not even trying to spin it at all.

Nothing on this list for me this week, but I did get the Namco DLC for Atari 50!

Wow, incredible energy in that stance! I'm not sure if I would play this as I don't like spooky games, but I'll certainly recommend it to friends who do!

I really like Romancing SaGa 3, but to me what keeps it from standing alongside the top JRPGs of the time is that there's no central way to switch party members. With such a diverse cast, it seems like a waste to have to switch them individually where you found them (and if I recall, switching some of them out means they're gone forever?).

If it gets remade along the lines of the other two Romancing games, that would be the one thing I would like to see.

Similar to the above, I voted EU for the pixel art!

Also I've never heard of Dragon Power, so that's neat.

@DwaynesGames They release every week. Last week was Scion and this week will be Tokyo Wars. The Nintendo Update is a week behind for ACA as well.

I just use ACA's site for updates (the ACA game updates Wednesday mornings in my timezone): https://www.arcadearchives.com/en/

(They've started selling ACA merch too, which is neat.)

@Turbotendo well i, for one, am blessed to see this image of Fry-uile

Final Formation if I have time.

Final Formation for me! I really enjoy what City Connection is doing with this "Final Series" of theirs. They are taking games that were janky and weird in their own time and reviving them to be mostly still janky and weird but more playable and with an overarching storyline. Feels like a labour of love to me.

Honestly, this seems pretty neat! At least an inspired crossover.

Also, I would eat a Street Burger(s).

I generally don't enjoy voice acting, so it isn't something I would want. But if the option to turn it off was there, I would be fine either way.

Oh, that's promising. It must have done at least decently well if they're considering putting it on the original Switch too. I'd love to see more of this type of game on either console (or both)!

I dipped into Layer Section again. I don't know what it is, but it's never really grabbed me even though it's often considered a top STG. I played it all the way through last night and there were some neat graphic effects, the soundtrack is top-notch, and the lock-on system was fun. But I don't know; I still wouldn't say it's one of my all-time favorites. Something's just not clicking; I may play through it again at some point.

I don't think I will. I know my pattern for NSO. I see a game get added and think "oh cool, I've never played that one," try it a few times and then quit forever when it gets a bit difficult.

And that's fine when the games just pop up as part of the subscription. When you have to get a peripheral in addition to that? Just seems like a bad value for me personally.

At first, I thought Amiibo was a neat idea because it meant toys of some lesser-known characters that wouldn't otherwise get anything like that. But now the concept just doesn't seem special anymore.

It seems like a baffling decision for a console that wasn't that well-liked. I don't understand why they couldn't just release a Virtual Console Mini instead or make the games available on the normal NSO but without the 3D.

To me, it just seems strange because it's not in line with how I understand people use the NSO retro games (i.e., play games when they are released but only for a short time to satisfy curiosity). This is really more of an "all-in" kind of option. It'll be interesting to see how it does.

I voted for Europe's. They're all good this time, but the lighting on the JP cover is weird and the shots from the gun in the NA don't look right. Meanwhile, Europe gets the lighting right and has a cool robot.

I dipped back into Love Story behind the Restoration and have been playing through Keiki's route.
I'm also trying to give UFO 50 another go here and there. I want to like it more, but I feel like something just isn't hitting for me. I mostly play visual novels and the occasional Arcade Archives these days, so maybe I'm just not in the headspace for it. Anyway, the game I was playing this time was Warptank.

Hmm, could be interesting! I liked Ufouria 2 and the Sunsoft Is Back Collection. Ikki Unite was never really going to be my thing, but from what I've seen it looked like a fun homage to the original.

I think a few of these look like they could be decent. The rhythm game looks like if escapeVektor was a rhythm game and Daft Punk did the music. And the snowboarding game seems promising, and not entirely because it oozes Y2K vibes. Also maybe the basketball game? Seems like it has a good mixture of things to do potentially.

@LastFootnote Oh yeah, fair enough. There's likely some differences by game/console on which UFO 50 is being played.

It's interesting that this patch fixes slowdown! While I didn't enjoy this game as much as I had hoped, I can definitely say slowdown was not something that made me like it less (i.e., I didn't notice any).

(Honestly, I do think it deserves the praise. I just didn't really vibe with as much of the game selection as I had wanted. I intend to go back to it at some point, though.)

I played the first game more recently and I think it's fine. I found it to be kind of middle-of-the-road rather than terrible.

I didn't even realize there was a Gameboy game, though? At least the collection is comprehensive for the era in that regard.

The fake-looking fire drags down the European box art, but I voted for it because it's more in line with what Acclaim was doing at this time. It gives "Aha, a new M-rated game from that company who does those."