ramu-chan

My left joycon is pretty much unusable now. It drifts upwards on and off all the time. Sometimes it eventually settles after 15-20 mins or so, but I've pretty much written it off as a lost cause.

The Switch really feels like the flimsiest piece of kit Nintendo have ever made. Even when it was fresh out of the box on launch day it creaked an groaned with the slightest touch.

Oh and it's even cracked around the fan exit, despite having been well looked after. It's a piece of junk.

@vio I have to laugh when I hear this type of drivel. Are you a dev? Ori 2 pushes Unity much, much father than the original. All of the characters are now polygonal (they were sprites in the first one). There is so much overdraw and alpha in the backgrounds it's a wonder Durango can hit 60fps at all.

@Moroboshi876 That's small change for retro stuff. Anything lower than £100 is a bargain now. Big name JRPGs are now rapidly heading towards the £1000 mark.

The Digital Foundry analysis is hilarious. This game was simply to much for a long in the tooth mobile chipset. The visuals just aren't good enough.

If you want to play this then play it on your PC. It's free on Gamepass.

Very cute, but only four games per colour and the selection is very Japanese centric. A more Western tuned version will surely follow.

@KillerBOB Weirdly the CRT filter was removed from the Xbox and Windows Gamepass release.

@Dogtanian That's how opinions work.

You know what, whatever. You like French cartoon art, that's wonderful, I'm thrilled. Knock yourself out.

@scottienigma There's no need to resort to name calling. I'm not a fan of the art, maybe you are, in which case I'm happy for you. I didn't need to see Axel overweight and resembling a homeless person as seen through the lens of a French cartoonist. Again, maybe that's exactly what you were waiting for?

@Dogtanian Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Look at Sonic Mania and ask yourself- does it look like Sonic game? Then do the same with SOR4. Maybe it plays the same as the originals, I hope it does.

The aesthetics are the problem. The art style is so incredibly French, so dramatically different to not just every Streets of Rage game ever made but also everything Sega Japan have ever made. It looks alien, because it is. Whether you like French cartoon art is entirely subjective, I just don't think it should have been used for a follow up to a legendary Japanese game series. It also has the unfortunate look of resembling a mobile game, it just looks amateurish.

The music is the other issue. Some people like dubstep, great, good for them. Personally I don't, but again, it's all subjective, it's all personal taste. I'd have preferred the devs went with something like the originals, perhaps even using the same FM chip.

There were similar issues with the recent Panzer Dragoon remake, although to a much smaller degree. The foreign dev team radically changed the art and many didn't like it. At least they had the sense to use one of the original Panzer series composers to create the entirely of the new soundtrack.

@Atariboy The series began on the PS2. I had the original back in the day, and it was a technical mess.

I tried the Switch demo and was appalled at the performance. I then tried the PC demo and it was a locked 120fps. Even with a high frame rate the game still feels like a budget PS3 launch title. It's incredibly rough round the edges.

"Chucklefish then found itself embroiled in more drama after it used white actors to voice non-white characters in the free DLC expansion for Wargroove, Double Trouble – something the company promptly apologised for"

Bizarre that this is a thing. Actors act. That's their job. The colour of their skin is the definition of irrelevant.

Most "pixel art" is just bad art disguised with a very low resolution, and a far cry from the beautiful work done back in the day. This though is different. It's one of a very rare breed of indie games which use low resolution art as skilfully as the likes of Capcom did. Good job.

@TheAwesomeBowser Blimey, you need to get to specsavers. It's a ground up re-make, that should be obvious to everyone.

It has issues for sure, but this is a million miles away from a port.

Such an odd move. Sega know how critical Yuzo Koshiro was to the success of the original series. Instead of giving the entire soundtrack to him, they give him one or two guest composer slots, and give the bulk to an unknown. From what I've heard of his music, I'll be playing the game with the music off. It sounded terrible.

@mrmememan Never mind the employee infected with a potentially fatal disease, your only concern is that there might be a delay to some news about a video game.

Coronavirus is killing people. Grow up. This isn't an issue to make light of.

@Gwynbleidd Rondo of Blood costs far more on eBay, let alone insanely expensive ultra rare shooters like Sapphire (which is also on the mini).

As a value proposition, it's absurdly cheap.

Sorry to be pedantic, but this isn't a JRPG. It was developed in the US, so it's a Western RPG which is inspired by JRPGs.

JRPGs must be developed in Japan. The clue is in the title.

This series is such classic 90s Konami. Great visuals, great music, and fun gameplay. Yes the bell juggling is a bit annoying at times, but the game is so strong it doesn't really matter.

My personal favourite in the series is Twinbee Yahho!, which released after this on the Saturn. Truly a wonderful shooter.

Great team behind this. Henk is a real old school pixel art guy, who recently worked on Xenocrisis for the Megadrive. And the music is by MANAMI MATSUMAE! (Megaman composer)

I've no idea if Henk can design a game, but if it ends up as a Story of Thor clone as it appears to be, it should be fine.

@TheWingedAvenger What an odd thing to say. Yes I've played it, it's been on MAME for years. The game is superb, one of the best belt scrollers ever made. That's why everyone wants it. Or did you think they were just asking for it for laughs?

@sleepinglion The decades long lack of a Revenge of Death Adder port is one of the great mysteries of gaming. Sega own the IP. It's a sequel to a popular franchise. And the game is amazing. It's beyond no brainer territory.

Sega's back catalogue is deeper and richer than most, and yet they continue to return to the same tiny well over and over and over.

Hey Sega, you know that incredible sequel you made to Golden Axe many years back? Revenge of Death Adder was its name. RELEASE THAT ONE.

Then you can do SCUD Race, Planet Harriers, Daytona USA 2, Sega Rally 1 & 2, Super Monaco GP, Power Drift, Galaxy Force 2, Thunderblade, OutRunners, Burning Rival, SDI, Moonwalker, Stike Fighter, Sonic Boom, and DD Rival.

This is on GamePass, and has been since launch. Unless you desperately want to play this on the toilet, you can already play a vastly superior version for free.

Bit of a shame they haven't included the Super Famicom or Gameboy Kunio games.

@sword_9mm Have you worked on any AAA driving games? I have. They aren't simple.

@sword_9mm Forza Motorsport 7 is 4K/60 on an Xbox One X.

This would really, really benefit from more powerful hardware. Playing it at 720/30 on the Switch wasn't really good enough, especially for Platinum. At 4k/60, it would really shine.

Would be nice to just have a video instead of having to trawl through a lengthy, ultra low res video of some random woman in her kitchen wearing some headphones. What on earth this garbage anyway?

@Gwynbleidd It was okay I thought, but the budget was clearly far, far too low, and some of the casting was weak. Jaskier/Dandelion was terrible for example.

Plus they deviated too much from the books. Far too much sharp dialogue was cut to make way for tedious battle sequences.

@LetsGoSwitch This isn't anime. It's being run by Americans and animated in South Korea. If you don't want to call it a cartoon then fine, think of some other word for it, but it's definitely not anime.

Rendering Ranger R2 is one of the rarest Super Famicom games. Magical Pop'n is also super expensive.

Sadly pirate copies of these are all over eBay and even Yahoo Japan now. I've even heard of paste copies being found in Akiba. It's a minefield.

@honza I bet he didn't make the same mistake with Netflix.

I think it's mildly refreshing to see that success and fame hasn't changed him at all. He wrote his books and he's content with that. Whatever happened decades later is of no interest to him. It's probably for the best, as Netflix changed too much in the show for my liking. Many of the stories were robbed of their dramatic punch so the show could make time for a pointless punch up or sword fight.

I doubt Tolkien would have liked the movies or games based on his work either.

It was perhaps the beginning of the end for Konami when they ditched their classic logo and chose something staggeringly anonymous and bland. Apparently that's how logos have to look now - dull as ditch water.

At least Nintendo and Sega haven't changed. I hope Capcom will never change either. Alas Square lost their wonderful old logo years ago when they fused with Enix.

Bit of a shame SEGA didn't throw in the excellent MegaDrive sequel.

@Dezzy Visually similar, but as a game its worlds apart. And vastly inferior.

This game is rammed with in-app purchases on iOS, so much so that it destroys every last gram of enjoyment that might otherwise have been extracted. If they can disinfect it then perhaps there's a good game beneath, but I have my doubts, as in my admittedly brief time with it, it seemed to revolve around aimlessly collecting things.

One thing is certain - this is not in any way on the same level as Journey.

While I admire the risk taking and the new ideas, for me this game just felt lifeless and empty. The world was barren and fairly unatractive, the score was truly terrible, it didn't run all that well, and worst of all it was just boring.

So much running around a mostly empty world fighting the same goblin things over and over with just the occasional random piano twinkle in the background. It was dull.

For me Mario Odyssey is the best Switch game, and perhaps the best Nintendo game in a long time. It's a joyful experience, which Breath of the Wild very rarely is.

It's a nice little shooter, but the real star of the Twinbee series is the sequel to this one - Twinbee Yahho! I have both of them on the Saturn and I'd put them up there with the Parodius series (also from Konami) as the very best cute 'em ups.

Frankly, they're all absolutely terrible. I can't think of any RE box art which really worked until the EU cover for RE4. Now that was a beautiful piece of art.

What an inciteful response. Did it take you long to compose?

Death Stranding deserved the win. It's original, brave, creative, and is the type of focused vision we need. It's easily the best game of last year and one of the top 2 or 3 of the entire generation.

@Pod They're designed to be picked up by people who haven't played a NES/SNES game in decades and want a quick hit of nostalgia. If you're into retro games in a serious way then you're on real hardware or you're using Analogue products.

Both fake NES/SNES minis and official ones loaded with pirate games are all over both Amazon and eBay. I've tried flagging them on eBay as counterfeit, but they're never removed. I don't think eBay or Amazon really care.

Batsugun is one of my all time favourite shooters. The Saturn version is superb.

Also, this may mean that Tatsujin 2 may finally see a wider home release. (to this day it's only available outside of arcades on the FM Towns)

This came out on iOS years ago. It's terrible, genuinely terrible. An ultra dumbed down touch screen swipe-fest with no skill and no depth. This is the polar opposite to an Elder Scrolls game.

Meanwhile Nintendo's flagship platform, the Switch, still doesn't have an original Mario kart game.

@Zeldafan79 Maybe you should try playing it. It's not for people with short attention spans, but if, for example you'd sooner watch Apocalypse Now than a super hero kids movie, then you'll love it. It's cerebral, intelligent, original, and brave. And it works.