#release it on PC already sony

[amygobrrr]

used ps4 9.00 firmware w/dualshock 4: $173

aimvice KB+M adapter for ps4: $16

usb flash drive x2: $15

goldHEN jailbreak: $0

bloodborne game of the year edition pkg: $0

fromsoft modding and pkg tools: $0

total: $204

bit bold of sony to charge over $200 for bloodborne 💀

[foone]

AAA games? Pfft. Indie games? Double pfft.

I only play games from the alternate history where Hillary Clinton was elected in 2008 and banned all video games. You can only imagine how weird their underground gaming scene is. People like to call unlicensed games "bootlegs" but they've got actual bootlegged games! I've played games about helping your grandmother in hospice care realize she's a lesbian by reading Sappho to her, at 2am in a speakeasy in Baltimore. The cops raided it the next night, hundreds of Gamers were arrested. They posted pictures all over Friendster of the Baltimore PD destroying the arcades with axes.

I nearly got busted once because I was imaging old disks from a 386 and someone tipped off the gaming cops that there was a copy of Commander Keen in there. I had to prove that I didn't know it, I was imaging the disks blind and then indexing them later, and I would of course turn over any contraband to the proper authorities.

I was already on a watch list because I'd been known to have some gamedev-related activities pre-ban. They can't arrest me for making games back in 2007 when it was still legal, but they do want to keep an eye on me since I have the skills to break the law.

Anyway that universe's bootlegs are mainly PC games. Can't really have console games if there hasn't been a console release since the Wii/PS3/360 era. At one point Nintendo threatened to release the Wii SDK so game devs in the US could make unlicensed games, but that didn't happen as there were quickly no functional Wiis left in the US, except for very rare holdouts that never move. PC games are easy to distribute samizdat and hide on a USB stick or CD-R labeled "nickelback".

Japan's games industry is still going, so the later Nintendo and Sony consoles still exist, but Microsoft got out of the business of course. They sold the franchise to Sega who were hoping to release the 360 successor (the Xbox One in our universe) as the Sega Phoenix but it never materialized, either through their own financial incompetence or because of pressure from the US. There's a lot of international treaties that the US has pushed "and this aid only goes through if you ban games" clauses into. That would have been an official UN resolution if the USSR hadn't vetoed it. For once, thank God for the security council, eh?

I mainly get my gaming news through Japanese gaming sites (through a set of VPNs, since they're blocked at the border firewall), and some tor onion site run by a weird guy in Minnesota who is obsessed with documenting all the underground US games.

There's a lot being worked on, but it's always a tricky trade off. Too much attention and the police might be able to track down the creators, and it's basically impossible to fund underground games, as the VISA/PayPal etc funds get seized immediately. There's a whole task force for that.

Anyway one of the weirdest differences between our two time lines is that they've gone back and edited out gaming from a bunch of movies. Those that they can, of course. War games was just banned because they couldn't remove the tic tac toe ending. The Net just removed the scene at the beginning where she's playing Wolfenstein 3D, by recording some new screen footage and a new voice over. She's fixing a spreadsheet in the new edition.

(Yes, I've seen The Net from this alternate timeline. On Laserdisc, of course. I'm just that kind of person!)

They even edited Star Wars. You know that scene where R2-D2 is playing holochess with Chewie? They edited it to be a board game instead of holograms, because that made it too "video gamey".

Technically it's not illegal to show gaming in a movie, but it needs to be an 18+ film and you have to show the deleterious effects of gaming and/or the gamesters coming to a bad end.

This has affected films less than you'd think, to be honest. They were never great about showing video games even before they banned them.

Anyway, go have fun playing your AAA games with hundred-million-dollar budgets. I only play indie games made by people under a constant threat of arrest for their art.

[gravitycircuit]

🎂🥳IT'S GRAVITY CIRCUIT'S ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY! 🥳🎂 Time sure has flown by, can't believe we're already a full year on from the game's release, and the reception still has us floored! To celebrate, we've got a few things in store for you lovely folks -- starting off with this wonderful group piece by @jmanvelez! Stay tuned for more! Have you played the game? What did you think? Let us know! Remember, Gravity Circuit is available now on PC, Nintendo Switch and Sony PS4/PS5!

[askagamedev]

From past responses you clearly have some experience with the console cert process. I was wondering: why do so few games offer cross platform play? Does the cert process become disproportionately more difficult when communicating to other systems becomes involved? Or is it just a difficult feature from a purely engineering pov? Thank you!

There are two major groups of hurdles to crossplay - technical and political. Both of these issues were primarily ironed out by Epic in late 2018, and then they opened up the doors for everybody else by releasing their set of crossplay tools and tech to the public for free.

On the technical side, the various walled garden networks - PSN, XBL, Nintendo Online - each have their own set of protocols, ports, technology, etc. They do not talk to each other or transfer information in the same way. There's a good reason for this - they weren't built by the same people or using the same technology, so their internal workings are all different. In order to solve this, the any third party developer needs to build a system that can take data from any supported service and translate it in real time so all players on other platforms understand what's happening in the game. This requires a fairly hefty engineering effort.

On the political side, console platform networks are walled gardens that generate a lot of revenue for the platforms. Every sale within that walled garden typically earns the platform owner a 30% cut. This is why they can afford to sell game consoles at a loss, they hope to make it back from their users. Allowing other players on other platforms to play with their users takes away from their exclusivity. This attitude permeates their certification rules, which are then enforced on all third party developers. Even now that crossplay is allowed, there are a lot of rules in place about things like communication between platforms (e.g. Rocket League was not allowed to let Playstation players communicate with PC players because of potential content ratings).

In 2018, Epic pushed to allow crossplay for their lifestyle game juggernaut Fortnite. Microsoft had already been dabbling in that arena by allowing Xbox to play with PC players (since most players ran on Windows anyway, so they were both Microsoft platforms), but Sony refused. Epic smoothed this over by paying Sony a significant sum of money to 'make up for lost revenue' and developing their own tools and technology to handle the technical issues of allowing crossplay. Sony begrudgingly agreed, so Fortnite went crossplay. Then, in typical fashion, Epic released their entire suite of crossplay tools to the public for free. Games like Dauntless and Rocket League soon followed to crossplay, and by 2019 Sony had changed their stance to accept crossplay.

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Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

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Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[mariacallous]

Earlier this week, after warping across the galaxy for 90 hours in a sentient spacecraft, Twitch streamer John Wissmiller realized that Concord was the best first-person shooter he’d played in a decade.

“The gunplay was crunchy, the movement was smooth, and the progression felt rewarding,” he says. “I was even more enthralled by the world the developers had created when I looked into the lore.”

He wasn’t alone. “One of the biggest perks about the game was the absence of toxicity within the player community,” says Kelle Dees, a content creator at KDeesGamez. “Everything about the game was positive and inclusive.”

On Wednesday, less than two weeks after the game’s August 23 launch, Sony announced it was taking Concord offline and offering full refunds to anyone who had purchased it on PlayStation 5 or PC. “While many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended,” wrote Ryan Ellis, Concord’s director at Firewalk Studios, a division of Sony Interactive Entertainment.

“I was completely devastated,” Wissmiller says. “We’ve never seen a first-party title from Sony get this kind of treatment.”

In fact, we’ve never seen any AAA video game get this kind of treatment—and that’s what could make Concord a horrifying canary in the coal mine for gamers and game workers alike.

“It’s unprecedented for a game of this scale to be shut down so quickly,” says Liam Deane, a video game analyst at Omdia. “Usually publishers keep games that struggle at launch on life support for a while, but in Concord’s case the launch was so bad there was clearly no way back.”

Like Fortnite, Destiny 2, and Valorant, Concord was meant to be a live-service game that constantly released new updates over the course of several years. But while those other games are free to play—and rely on microtransactions to make money—Concord cost $40 up front. “It's just very difficult to break into competitive multiplayer games [and] displace the existing top titles,” says Simon Carless, an industry analyst who publishes the GameDiscoverCo newsletter. “These are the kind of titles that players socialize with their friends in, and they're often not motivated to switch games.”

Sony hasn’t revealed how many copies of Concord sold between August 23 and September 3, but the number of active PC players on the Steam platform peaked at just 697 on launch day. That’s abysmally low for a major release that spent eight years in development; Sony’s previous live-service game, Helldivers 2, had over 155,000 players on its first day, back in February, and later peaked at 458,709.

Helldivers 2, though, was a breakout hit that already had an established fanbase. Concord, on the other hand, was a brand-new franchise that didn’t get much of a marketing push and drew the ire of “anti-woke” snivelers who complained about the game’s use of pronouns on its character selection screen.

“For big companies, it's difficult to work out what bets—and how large bets—you should make,” says Carless. “Some of the corporate overexuberance during Covid and low interest rates has meant that large companies overextended, and the pullback has been—and is going to be—painful.”

Over the past 20 years, the brutal blockbuster-or-bust mentality of Silicon Valley startups has spread to executives across the entertainment industry. Movies with $100 million production budgets are considered dead on arrival after a bad opening weekend and are quickly ripped from theaters. TV series are canceled after failing to meet undisclosed performance metrics in their first seasons.

Now, the quick death of Concord, which officially went offline today, points to a similar mindset in the video game industry that could kill creativity, reduce jobs, and shutter entire studios.

“If you have a stable parent company with a balanced set of single-player and [live-service] releases, you should be in decent shape,” says Carless. But “the middle of the market is disintegrating. The games industry is deprofessionalizing in many ways; games as a stable profession will be tricky for many people in high-GDP countries.”

If studio C-suites keep cutting all the buds that don’t instantly blossom, the golden age of gaming of the 2020s—a mix of AAA blockbusters like Elden Ring, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Baldur’s Gate 3, alongside smaller-budget gems like Tunic, Chants of Sennar, and the reimagining of 1997’s Riven—could already be over.

“I think innovation is more likely to come from smaller companies with lower budgets that are happier to take risks,” says Piers Harding-Rolls, who leads the games research team at Ampere Analysis. “This has really been true for many years, but the current commercial environment makes that truer than ever.” Still, even the future of indies is uncertain and may be somewhat dependent on funding efforts like Innersloth’s Outersloth initiative.

Concord may have gotten off to a slow start with gamers (most of whom hadn’t heard of it yet) and critics (who didn’t love the initial character designs), but the same could be said of Elder Scrolls Online, which has since made more than $2 billion, or the Destiny franchise, which celebrates its 10-year anniversary this year, or No Man’s Sky, which has become a cult classic.

If those games were released now, would they survive longer than Concord did—longer than the lifespan of a honeybee? The answer lies with the most ruthless beekeepers in the industry, and all they care about is the honey.

[archoneddzs15]

Super Famicom - Lemmings

Title: Lemmings / レミングス

Developer/Publisher: Sunsoft / Psygnosis

Release date: 18 December 1991

Catalogue Code: SHVC-LE

Genre: Puzzle Action

No. of Players: 1-2

Your task is to rescue the Lemmings across 120 levels of fast-paced puzzling. These creatures simply walk blindly through the world in the hope of reaching safety at the end of the level - unfortunately, these levels include steep drops, gaps in the ground, barriers, and rivers amongst other hazards.

Lemmings is a series of puzzle action games originally spearheaded by DMA Design who are these days known as Rockstar Games North. Since then, Sony now own the Lemmings franchise rights. The variety of lemmings at your disposal is just right - not too many, not too few. Just when you've gotten into a habit of sacrificing the little dudes, along comes a level where you've got to save 90% or more of them. There are hundreds of levels but amazingly, the game never gets tedious, as there's enough variety of different challenges to keep you interested.

There's literally nothing to dislike about Lemmings. As close as I can figure, it's a perfect game. The lack of Super Famicom Mouse support may be a bit of a downer though, considering that the 3DO and PC Engine Super CD ports already include that functionality. This game began life on a slew of computers, after all.

Super Famicom owners can search eBay for this strongest overall adaptation. The solutions give a great sense of accomplishment, and the multiplayer makes the SFC version a must-own for Lemmings fans. Every skill is important, and the ways they need to be used become more creative as the levels progress. It's a thinking person's game, and the Lemmings formula never gets tiring. A masterpiece of rich, compelling gameplay, great use of colors, cute little animations, and fun happy music. A must play for anyone who calls themselves and old-school gamer.

[jimquisition]

The state of mainstream games is just fucking pathetic. 

Helldivers 2 has been out for well over a week and yet it still suffers from the kind of connection issues that would be (and were) unacceptable by launch day standards, let alone days later. As if that were atrocious enough, further bugs and breakages wait in the wings to further scupper any attempt to enjoy Arrowhead's already stripped-down sequel.

[luigiblood]

GoldenEye 007 & The Future of Nintendo Switch Online

I wanna talk a little bit about the rerelease of GoldenEye 007, the little context and also something I noticed during my research.

GoldenEye 007 has finally got rereleased on January 27th 2023 on both the Nintendo Switch Online service, Xbox Game Pass and as a digital Rare Replay update.

See more after the break.

Emulation quality

Both the Switch and Xbox versions are confirmed emulated and not based at all from the leaked XBLA version, which I'm probably certain will never see a release ever, possibly due to the rights holders which are... very messy if I rely on the copyright info: FIVE. Nintendo, Rare Studio (Microsoft), Danjaq LLC, MGM and Sony Music Publishing.

Welcome to rights hell.

The emulation of it is... kinda complicated because it is mostly fine, like it is playable for certain, if you play it I think it is sort of reasonable. Both versions have 16:9 support (which by the way, was part of the original version on N64) and are 30 FPS with some framerate dips.

The Xbox version has tons of hacks to just change the controls, copyright info, and upscaling (up to 4K!) which honestly, is the imperfect part, with the slight but very visible texture warping and seams, which while Code Mystics claims it is technically accurate to the N64, and I do actually believe them about that, I don't know if we can really talk about accuracy the moment you just upscale the graphics way beyond what the original console could do.

Personally this problem would definitely bother me a lot, but from what I can see the Xbox version is still emulating fine.

The Switch Online version has not many hacks, they do exist, but not really a lot, the graphics emulation is slightly worse than Xbox with mostly too much fog than intended, repeated textures that shouldn't repeat as much, but it makes up for not having the texture warping issue in the slightest, only having less visible seams at times, as it is also upscaled in HD.

Just to talk about the specifics of the Switch version as I datamined it: The base ROM is different, and was modified to remove the face textures for Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton. This is actually kinda the first time they hacked a base ROM like this before, especially only for parts that are fully unused, they really wanted to make sure it's not there.

I also noticed tons of texture replacements that seem to be related to explosions, maybe muzzle flashes as well.

The major thing that people will talk about are the controls, which by result of the Nintendo Switch Online service being more about playing the original games as is, which I do respect personally, in fact let me say this: the default control scheme is dated but it's fine to play, but there's one thing that I really dislike: The stick sensitivity is way too high. I think this makes it almost unplayable in certain aspects, because current sticks are definitely not like the N64 sticks which I think are way more precise due to their inner workings and form factor, it does not adapt 1:1 to newer sticks.

So when you just wanna use the aiming mode in Goldeneye, it's way harder to aim properly than on an N64 controller. It's doable, but it's harder.

The online, exclusive to Switch due to the N64 emulator already supporting it, I couldn't try it but after seeing footage it is very sad that it still can't handle online with players from two different regions when on PC it is not as much of a problem.

If you ask me which version is emulated better, I'd say Xbox at first glance, but both versions are totally playable, good enough but imperfect. Code Mystics' work for their N64 emulator is I think respectable, and iQue's work on the N64 emulator for Switch is also much better than we originally anticipated with the trailers and other official footage.

And yes I mentioned iQue and not NERD because their official involvement with Nintendo 64 NSO seems to be purely on the UI integration, possibly a bit more, but the major developer is iQue.

A lot of the disappointment I noticed are on the fact that 360 XBLA port is not used in any way, and it is certainly a bummer when that version showed promise.

N64 Switch Online Issues

But I also do hear a lot of complaints about the controls, but I think it's more of a quality of life debate, I think it's playable except for the stick sensitivity on Switch. But everyone does point out the need for a way to remap controls. Instead we just use the Switch OS controller remap feature in an attempt to fit our needs, which, personally, is only a bandaid and is not a real fix.

Personally one of the most annoying thing is the fact that B and A are horizontal instead of vertical just like the original N64 controller.

WHY IS THIS NOT A FEATURE YET?

I also hate how the ZL is always Z, and the L button is always L, when most games' L button equivalent is Z since we put our left hand on the stick part.

iQue and NERD really needs to implement control remapping, PER GAME, or possibly ways to register presets per game or something, it getting urgent.

...what's the deal Japan? (Theory)

Now, if you're in Japan, you might have noticed GoldenEye 007 hasn't rereleased on Switch there yet...

Nintendo's website says that the game would be released in other regions on the 27th, as planned, but the game would be out in Japan only later in 2023, while mentioning the game's rating: CERO: Z.

This is kind of important, because this is the highest rating. Japan have strict laws about this, and you can't let kids access this game easily.

Aside from the very weird rating, this means a lot, this means Nintendo has to do something about Parental Controls about this game, there's two ways they could deal with this:

Either they just make a 18+ N64 NSO app with the game, rated 18+ instead of Teen or 16+ like in other regions.

Or they do add some parental controls check inside the app, preventing access in a dynamic way per account.

The thing is, I've seen how the application manages the game library user interface: it's very flexible in what it can show/hide, just see how it manages European games or the case of region locking, applied in Korea to hide Magical Drop2 (SNES) and F-Zero X (N64).

For me, this seems like the kind of thing that could have been implemented easily in a few months? Though I'm speaking as someone who hasn't been in a big company managing these things in some way.

The funniest part is still how the apps can access the Parental Controls OS service the entire time.

So my theory is the following: I expect a sort of refresh of the NSO retro apps in the near future, downgrading the NSO retro app age rating to a minimum, instead putting every single age rating info for each game individually, trusting the parental controls to provide information to the app to hide games that shouldn't be played by the user.

I can see the possible logic of implementing this fully for every possible age rating from Nintendo, because while you're at it, you could just as well manage it for the entire library of games, which, currently, is almost 200 different titles in total.

And this, I can see this taking time to do, because you'd need info from every single rating boards in every region, which all games have been assumed 16+/Teen just because the app is that way. I can see some logistics required and could potentially take months to make sure everything is all right.

Now I don't know if they could see this as an opportunity to refresh the UI in a way, possibly even adding new features (like custom controls, please), and maybe this is the reason why Game Boy Color NSO hasn't launched yet, I could see this as a reason to just have feature parity everywhere as a saner base.

I don't know if I'm being reasonable on my theory, but I feel like it'd make sense? We'll see how it goes, really.

[sylvyspritii]

Hey @square-enix-official I have an idea, it's a great idea that will 100% give you a lot of money (because we know that's what you truly care about)

Okay so you know that new game right?

Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2?

That game you are so proud of and want everyone to play?

Well I have some good news and some bad news dear Square Enix, you fucking sugarcube;

The good news is, a lot of people really want to play your new game! They're very excited about it and would even give you money (the thing you care about)

Unfortunately, you have made a small little mistake; you've released your game for a strange device that no one has ever owned, the "Pee Es Five", which is rumoured to be one of those strange old outdated devices sometimes revered to as a "console"

Now, Square Enix, it's okay, everyone can make a mistake once in a while, but fixing this one should--- JUST FUCKING RELEASE THE GAME ON PC ALREADY YOU MOTHERFUCKERS AND ALSO WHILE YOU'RE AT IT RELEASE FINAL FANTASY XVI ON PC TOO I WILL NEVER PLAY A GAME IN 30 FPS EVER AGAIN YOU CORPORATE FUCKS WHY DID YOU SIGN A FUCKING EXCLUSIVITY DEAL WITH SONY AND WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS SO FAR BEHIND WHEN IT COMES TO PC PORTS AND RELEASES AAAAAAA

Yes basically I WANT TO GIVE YOU MONEY but you won't LET me, I will NOT buy an underpowered console to play a game I'll love in an INFERIOR way!

[jeffgerstmann]

Do you think the PS5 Pro will have an effect on Sony's PC strategy? Im hoping to see TLOU2 and Spiderman 2 hit PC hopefully soon, but if Sony is pushing Pro upgrades for those games as possible system sellers for the PS5 Pro does that push those PC ports further out, if at all?

I think the audience for the PS5 Pro more or less consists of people who say they want the best experience they can get while still being on a console. The audience for PS5 games on PC are people who already invested in the PC and are willing to wait for games to release their rather than go out and buy another device specifically to play first-party games.

Not a ton of crossover there, so I wouldn't think that games getting updated for Pro would have a direct impact on that. Also the PC ports tend to get handled by Nixxes or another team while patching a game for Pro is probably happening internally with the original developer.

I wouldn't think there would be many technical reasons for one to delay the other, it'd be more a matter of Sony thinking that it's worth delaying a PC version specifically to market it on Pro... which is kind of a niche device either way, so... yeah, I wouldn't think they would do that, that doesn't seem like a successful approach.

[gamesception]

I've seen a lot of posts and comments and videos and what have you dunking on Sony for the absurd price point of the PS5 pro and how the screencaps of pro vs regular look exactly the same and, yeah, it's fun to dunk on a corporation for being obviously bad and dumb. People are like filling buckets of popcorn to watch the pro crash and burn like it's the second coming of Morbius, but, like, not to rain on the parade but sadly I don't think the PS5 pro failing would even matter.

Nintendo hasn't been competing in the AAA gaming space since the Wii, and XBox is actively collapsing - with the mid gen update that the PS5 pro was supposed to compete against being cancelled outright. Even PC isn't meaningfully holding Sony in check right now - between Intel's ongoing cpu disaster, AMD's incredibly disappointing new offerings, NVIDIA's own price gouging and hard pivot into AI, and everything Microsoft's been doing to Windows, now isn't exactly a great time to buy a new gaming PC. The main alternative for gamers who want a AAA experience but can't stomach the PS5 pro's price is the original model PS5.

Like, seriously, I've seen more than one person post something like 'at that price I'll just buy a regular ps5' as though giving Sony half a grand was somehow a bad for them.

Sony can eat the ill will now since they won this gen already and are only really competing with themselves at this point, and an overpriced PS5 pro - even if it fails - still primes customers to expect and accept a higher price for the PS6 than they otherwise would have.

Best case for Sony (ie the worst case) is that gamers get over the sticker shock and buy the PS5 pro anyway when GTA comes out, in which case they'll do the hard work of brainwashing themselves into accepting $700 for a console, priming themselves to pay even more for the PS6 a couple years later without all the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The more likely scenario is that the market rejects the PS5 pro, but that's no big loss for Sony. The dev cost for the pro was already sunk and, again, at this point they're really only competing with themselves. If that happens, Sony can target a slightly lower but still absurd $600 or even $650 price point for the PS6 and start the next console gen with a mountain of good will for 'listening to consumers' and 'lowering prices', despite the fact that in a parallel universe where the pro had never released people would be nearly as angry at a $600 PS6 as they are right now at a $700 PS5 pro.

[apple-pecan]

Marvel's Spider-Man (2018)

admittedly, i've been pretty apathetic about playstation's IPs since around the early 2010's. a lot of their dozens of good franchises like parappa, jak & daxter, sly cooper, and wild arms have been put to pasture solely so they can milk last of us for all it's worth, and maybe throw some other series like god of war and gran turismo a bone every now and then. i played a lot of third party games on the ps4 but rarely would i bother with any of sony's offerings.

however, one fateful day, sony announced "we're going to publish a spider-man game inspired by the absolutely GOATed PS2 Spider-Man 2. it's gonna be a PS4 exclusive, and we're having the ratchet and clank devs make it" and my instant reaction was "... yeah you fucking BET im buying that shit". i got it close to release but unfortunately for my insufferable weeb self, Dragon Quest XI came out a few days earlier on the same fucking week and i ultimately put way more time into that game and barely touched Spider-Man. 5 years later, with the """remastered""" version on PS5, i set out to rectify that and i am very glad i did.

think of the aforementioned treyarch PS2 game and imagine that with a way WAY higher budget, and you essentially have this game. it starts off with a bang as you immediately web swing your way through new york city to storm fisk tower and put a stop to kingpin. a very fun first impression, and once it's over you can just swing all over new york with some really fun movement; i know when i first got this game i spent most of my time with it just moving around from building to building, it was that much fun.

combat is essentially arkham combat, which was the style at the time, especially for super-hero games, but it feels more tuned up and engaging than what that would usually imply; my favorite thing to do is to air launch enemies and combo their pathetic asses in mid air like im playing MvC. ah, the good old days. sometimes you have to use stealth to progress, but they've made it ass simple so you wouldn't get frustrated, and in most cases it's entirely optional...

...except for the periodic times where you have to play as MJ during the main story. and maybe miles morales too. these are much slower sections where you have to sneak around enemies and distract them to get to the goal, and if one sees you, it's an instant game over. these missions aren't my favorite, obviously, and i DID groan every time one of them was about to start, but i've seen way worse mandatory stealth sections in games (suck my ass wind waker), and some of them have fun twists like MJ being able to lure enemies so spider-man can capture them and web them up on the ceiling.

tying it all in is a captivating and fun story that sure, while some parts you can see coming from a mile away even if you have even just basic spider-man lore knowledge, it still doesn't make it any less engaging. the last third of the game is particularly intense, with impossibly high stakes culminating in a tragic final boss fight and a very bittersweet ending. two scenes of the ending in particular had me on the verge of tears, something i absolutely did not expect jumping into this game. simply put, if you liked the 2000's sam raimi spider-man movies, you'll enjoy this plot quite a bit too.

all this being said, if you own a modern sony system (or now, even a PC that can handle this game), it's a no brainer, you HAVE to play this, especially if you have any fondness for the franchise it's based off of. this is the best spider-man game i've played yet, and this is coming from someone who played BOTH PS1 games!!!! play it!! or, more likely... you already have. i mean, it IS the best selling ps4 game of all time so... aw heck PLAY IT AGAIN THEN

9/10

NOTE: i dunno who's idea it was to make j jonah jameson into an alex jones-esque insane radio show host, but whoever it was, i just wanna say... FUCK YOU. at least you can turn it off in the settings XD

[foone]

ok please tell us about the tandy-memorex vis :D

OKAY the Tandy Memorex Video Information System is a hilarious console that Tandy/Radio Shack came up with in 1992.

It's called the Tandy-Memorex VIS partially to distance itself from Tandy, but Memorex was owned by Tandy at the time, and this is entirely their fault. Back in 1992, the CD-ROM was the NEW HOT THING and everyone wanted to get in on that. Arguably every console that tried failed to some degree or another, until the Sony Playstation in 1994. But the VIS failed spectacularly hard, selling something like 11,000 units, and Radio Shack was nearly giving them away towards the short lifespan of the console (1992-1994).

It got about 20 games, and another 24 releases that could charitably be called "multimedia products". Things like encyclopedias, photo albums on assorted issues, and spoken-illustrated-book things with minimal animation. Of those 20 games, many of them were edutainment games, things like word puzzles, math games, drawing tools along the lines of kid-pix (on a console with no way to save pictures or print them out, so... yeah).

On top of this, it cost 699$. IN NINETEEN NINETY FUCKING TWO. Plug that into an inflation calculator and it comes out at about one and a half thousand dollars, for a console with barely any games and the ones that it did come with are designed for the little kiddies. This thing never had a market.

But here's the thing that makes it so memorable to me: While the games available for it were not interesting, and it's just another example of a failed CD-ROM console alongside the endless failed or barely-survived ones that littered the early-90s... (Every played a CD-i, 3DO, NeoGeo CD, PC-FX, FX Towns Marty, LaserActive, Commodore CD-TV or Amiga CD32? How about one of the add-ons, the Sega CD, TurboGrafx-CD, or Atari Jaguar CD? Hell, this is what the Nintendo Playstation was supposed to be, before that deal went sideways and it became two separate consoles)

The thing is that technologically the VIS is super unique because it's an idea that wouldn't really be repeated until 2001, nearly a decade later: The VIS is a console that's a computer.

Yeah, I know, all consoles are computers (except maybe arguably some early pong units), but I mean like a desktop PC. The Tandy-Memorex VIS is an IBM PC clone running Windows!

(EDIT: Accidentally submitted too early)

It's a modular windows, a sort of embedded-windows that only runs off a ROM chip, but it's still an Intel 286 with a relatively normal VGA card, a megabyte of RAM, and a 1X CD-ROM drive. This thing could basically play a ton of DOS games, it would just be a matter of some basic porting.

And it just never happened. Instead all the games are custom-designed edutainment/multimedia things, and no one ported Duke Nukem or Commander Keen or Kings Quest to it (Actually Sierra did make a test port of Kings Quest 5, but it never came out. Reportedly it was slow as hell)

It could have been a very interesting console that let us play tons of DOS games in the living room in 1992, but Tandy mismanaged it with the ridiculous price and bad policy regarding games releases which meant it never really amounted to anything.

Anyway I've got one in my room right now, and I'm planning on building a CD-ROM emulator for it so I can easily play around with making homebrew with it. I want to port a bunch of DOS games to it and make it reach its potential, like Tandy should have done in 1992.

They already had a successful line of PC compatibles in the Tandy 1000, and the VIS is partially made of advancements they developed for that weird line of computers. If they had leaned into that angle, sold it at a better price, they could have really built something special. So many advanced DOS games (and even more advanced ones made possible by the CD-ROM format) that would blow away anything else in the console market in 1992 could have been VIS releases. Instead we got some (barely-)FMV games and a bunch of sub-par Math Blaster and Reader Rabbit clones on a console that no one wanted to buy because it was too damn expensive.

[cut-content-contest]

anti-piracy

So, there was an official program put out to convert the original Higurashi Visual Novels to a GBA rom format to either play on emulators or a homebrew cart. This anti-piracy measure was intended to trigger if it detected that you were trying this on a pirated copy of the visual novel. After booting up the rom file, the screen will just have Rena insult you and then promptly dox you with your PC user name and IP address. I don't think this works in the final release, but people did get it working again in recent years. Since it doesn't work properly I think this can be considered accidentally cut content.

Dude

Dude is an unused enemy that has 20000 HP but can only attack for 10 damage. Probably intended to be a boss considering its high HP, and is also part of an unused enemy formation called Dudetroop, which includes Dude, existing enemies Ghost, Vital Statue and Clawman, as well as the Gremlin and Gremlin Master, which are two other unused enemies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oHRI9So4Q4

meteor slime

Silly little fella. It had the ability to attract nearby items, like a magnet, potentially forcing items into places they shouldnt be if not handled properly It was scrapped because the boom slime already put stuff in bad places when not taken care of good, and as development continued, the dervish slime eventually ended up sucking stuff in instead, making the meteor slime kinda pointless I still think it was fun & cool tho

https://slimerancher.fandom.com/wiki/Meteor_Slime

SNES CD-ROM

The SNES CD was a project developed by Nintendo in partnership with Sony. Plans existed for both a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES and a hybrid console capable of playing both cartriges and discs, called the 'Play Station'. Eventually the partnership fell through, with Nintendo announcing it's end the day after Sony had announced it's existence. Nintendo then partnered with Phillips, but that didn't work out either. These events would lead to the release of the CD-i Zelda games and Hotel Mario; and, of course, to the creation of the Sony PlayStation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_NES_CD-ROM

[first-impressions-gaming]

GAMING RECAP (September 19-27) Part 2

Paradox reveals new 4X game Millennia

Paradox Interactive has finally revealed its new title: Millennia. In Millennia, players will create their own nation in a historical turn-based 4X environment. From there, players will shape the nation across 10,000 years of history starting with the dawn of humanity and stretching into the future. According to Paradox, each playthrough will be unique as you craft an epic story based on your actions.

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Cute Lord of the Rings game Tales of the Shire revealed in 2024

The scourge of Cosy/Cozy Gaming has finally come for Middle-earth, and more specifically the Shire, which I guess was pretty cosy/cozy to begin with. Wētā Workshop and Private Division have announced Tales of the Shire, a "heart-warming" experience that will release on PC in 2024.

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Resident Evil 4 Remake will cost £57.99 on mobile

Resident Evil 4 Remake is heading to mobile, but it'll cost players £57.99 to play in full.

The game's listing on the App Store has the game available for free but with in-app purchases. Scrolling down, those purchases are listed in full with "Resident Evil 4 (with bonus)" priced at £57.99.

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New Xbox Game Pass titles for console, PC and Cloud have been announced

The following titles will leave Game Pass on September 30:

Beacon Pines (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Despot’s Game (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Last Call BBS (PC)

Moonscars (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Outriders (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Prodeus (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Weird West (Cloud, Console, and PC)

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Sony has confirmed October’s PlayStation Plus Essential games

Confirming a recent leak, next month’s PlayStation Plus titles will include The Callisto Protocol (PS5, PS4) and Farming Simulator 22 (PS5, PS4).

They’ll be joined by action RPG and immersive sim Weird West (PS5, PS4), the debut title from WolfEye Studios, which was formed in 2019 by the creative director and executive producer of Dishonored.

PlayStation Plus members will be able to claim the games from October 3 until November 6.

Everything Revealed At The Xbox Tokyo Game Show 2023 Event

Two Ori characters are coming to Party Animals next Monday!

Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright Trilogy joins Xbox Game Pass on September 26th

New trailer for Palworld, hitting Xbox in 2024

A closer look at Persona 5 Tactica ahead of its November Game Pass release

New Forza Motorsport trailer with a focus on the Japanese Hakone track

Octopath Traveler 2 is finally coming to Xbox in early 2024

Altheia: The Wrath of Aferi is a fantasy adventure game "coming soon" to Xbox

Another trailer for Mineko's Night Market, already confirmed for Game Pass in October

A closer look at Persona 3 Reload ahead of its early 2024 Game Pass release

Fallout 76: Atlantic City's first update arrives December 5th

New trailer for Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's next DLC launching on September 27th

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name joins Xbox Game Pass on November 9th

Like a Dragon: Ishin will also join Xbox Game Pass at some point in 2023

In-depth trailer for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, releasing with Game Pass in 2024

The Elder Scrolls Online launches in Japan with full localisation on November 15th

New PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds "Erangel" update coming in October

My Lovely Empress is an empire management sim heading to Xbox in 2024

Exoprimal Season 2 begins October 18th on Xbox Game Pass

A first look at gameplay for Hotel Barcelona from Suda51 and Swery65, arriving in 2024

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[gamebleed]

On the last day of 2020 (!!) I posted this image outlining my favourite games of the eighth console (& PC) video game generation. Now that I think i've caught up with most of the games that I was interested in from that era, i've revisited and revised my list somewhat. There are three changes to note:

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut replaces Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Deep Rock Galactic replaces Horizon: Zero Dawn.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon replaces Firewatch.

I have included Disco Elysium: The Final Cut because the base game released in 2019. I played Deep Rock Galactic when it released on PS5 in January 2022, but it had been on PC and Xbox long before then. And similarly, Yakuza: Like a Dragon had its original release back in 2020 although I played the PS5 version which came out in early 2021.

So yeah, I think that just about settles it as far as my top 20 for gen 8 goes. We're in the ninth gen now & i've already played a few games that'd likely make the next list, such as Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring & Lost Judgment. And who knows, maybe by the time that I consider doing another one of these, i'll have seen my dreams made reality if Sony reboots Ridge Racer & Syphon Filter. And also maybe Lost Planet comes back too. (cc: Capcom).