It's a thread! (Games discussion, etc.)

[Moge]

My very late GOTY 2023 list. Sorry, meant to post this way, way earlier

10. Metal Max 3 (DS) -- B

9. Blaster Master Zero (PC) -- B
8. King's Field with mouse control hack (PS1) -- B

7. Gimmick! (NES) -- C
6. Conker's Bad Fur Day (N64) -- B

5. Private eye dol  (PC-Engine Super CD-ROM²) -- A
4. Jet Set Radio Future (X-Box) -- A

3. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Switch) -- A
A pure delight to play from start to finish. Every level having some sort of new gimmick meant I never grew bored. Now, the problem with this is that it scales the game to not be difficult at all, with each level serving as a mini tutorial. Personally, I didn't have a problem with this design and was fine with it being a game i can blast through (final bonus level notwithstanding; it's brutal, although it felt great once i conquered it). That aside, the graphics and animation deserve special mention. I'm happy to see the polygonal Mario universe evolve to be more expressive with its visuals.

2. Street Fighter 6 (PC) -- A
Fighting games usually feel like a beta for at least the first or second year, but SF6 feels like a complete package from top to bottom, and more importantly, has been relatively controversy free when it comes to its game mechanics, the character balance, and the network code. You can't really say that for just for any other new fighter in 2023 and 2024. Capcom has reclaimed its crown as the king of the fighting genre.

1. Wild Guns with mouse control hack (SNES) -- A
A controversial pick for my first choice 'cause it's a game i already played in previous years, but a recent rom hack to add in mouse control completely transformed how i enjoyed the game. No longer being restricted to a dpad for aiming feels incredibly liberating. Despite the huge control upgrade, the game is still very difficult, so it strangely all balances out.


Honorable Mentions:

Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge -- F
Kaizou Choujin Schbibinman Zero -- D
Armored Core -- D
The Amazing Spider-Man: Lethal Foes -- D

Michigan: Report from Hell -- C
Jumping Flash! -- C
Kick Master -- C

Gaiapolis -- B
Sega Ages 2500 Series Vol. 27: Panzer Dragoon -- B
Treasure Conflix -- B
Streets of Rage Remake -- B

Anticipated Games:
Shadow of the Ninja - Reborn
Stray Children
Victory Heat Rally
Dragon Quest III remake
Perfect Dark

Biggest Worry:
Game industry layoffs

Favorite New Gadget:
Logitech Lift Vertical Mouse

Best Anime:
Onimai - Onii-chan wa Oshimai!

[JG]

Was Tears of the Kingdom not played in 2023?

[Moge]

Decided to pass on Tears due to being so close to SF6's release. Still plan to play it, perhaps when it's enhanced on Switch 2.

Forgot to mention that the games on my list that have a mouse hack, i was able to play with gyro controls. That's the secret sauce that makes me come back to them again and again.

[JG]

I have to agree with you on the SF6 bit as well. I don't really follow fighting games, but typically, a month or two after release, there's a bajillion posts online about tiers, or which character is busted, or how the recent patch nerfed some overpowered character so they aren't fun anymore, and what not. I didn't see any of this for SF6 so the character roster appears to be very well balanced.

[JG]

Microsoft and SquareEnix are taking opposite directions to arrive at the same non-relevance goal.

A short time back, SquareEnix sold off all their western studios, in part to pay for debt incurred by major flops in Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Balan Wonderworld. This has robbed SquareEnix of any insight into western player's likes and dislikes, and as a result their games have generally gotten worse. They are now so Japan-centric they are making bad management decisions based on a Japan-only sales plan, instead of the actuality of a worldwide sales plan. Dragon Quest X Offline being the prime example: a game designed with intent to sell outside of Japan to complement the Online version only available in Japan but yet hasn't left Japan because they don't want to localize it, even though they'd supposedly had it in the original development budget. As a mainline DQ game, its sales are expected to greatly exceed the localization and distribution costs, so no one really knows what the holdup is, except SquareEnix's own admission that it didn't sell as well in Japan as hoped (and expected by everyone else) and hesitant to pull the trigger on the action that would make them money, on the fear of losing more money because they no longer understand (or listen to) their fans in the west.

Microsoft just shuttered a number of their smaller studios, including their lone Japanese studio, TangoGames. So Microsoft Gaming division now has no presence in Japan. They've always had trouble selling Xboxes there, in part because their games are typically for western audiences and don't always get localized to Japanese, but to pull out entirely seems unwise in the wake of SquareEnix's similar troubles in the reverse direction. Microsoft, if they have any intention of continuing to compete in the hardware space, absolutely has to get their Japan sales problem solved. They can't be running at just 1-2% of market share and expect to get the Japanese third party studios to continue to buy-in to making Xbox ports (and recent trends are showing that they indeed aren't.) This worked in the prior two generations because they had a healthy 30-40% of the worldwide market, but now they're dragging at about 10% and I don't think many studios (Japanese or western) think its a worthwhile investment anymore. The real kicker is that one of the highest rated exclusive games for Xbox in the last year and change, Hi-Fi Rush, came from TangoGames, and it was widely assumed it would be one of the previous-Xbox exclusives coming to Switch this year (having just ported to PS5 in March) and was, until this announcement, a favorite to appear in the upcoming June Nintendo Direct. Why Microsoft would close a studio immediately after it's made a hit game that can potentially port to the most popular console is absolutely bizarre thinking.

It seems SquareEnix doesn't want to care about anything but Japan, and Microsoft Gaming doesn't want to care about anything but the west, to the detriment of fans and shareholders. Maybe, just maybe, if SquareEnix continues to flounder and finally goes into bankruptcy, Microsoft can buy them and together they can figure out a solution to each other's woes. (I personally don't want to see Microsoft buy SquareEnix, but can't deny they would make curious bedfellows.)

[Moge]

SquareEnix released so many games with little to no marketing or poor quality control. Now that there's news that further layoffs are planned (this time at the internal NA & EU branch of Square), it's looking pretty grim, especially the prospects of DQX Offline ever getting localized. It's madness there'll forever be 1 mainline DQ going unlocalized. All that money being thrown around and they couldn't at least localize the game with an installed fanbase in the west.

What even is the point of Xbox anymore? With every exclusive going third-party and Game Pass becoming less of a value with each passing internal studio closure, there's little reason for anyone to have faith in the Xbox brand anymore. Microsoft's only concern lately is seeing their numbers go up, and the only reliable way to do that is to just buy an already hugely successful publisher. It's crazy they couldn't accomplish that with their own ip.

[JG]

SquareEnix released so many games with little to no marketing or poor quality control. Now that there's news that further layoffs are planned (this time at the internal NA & EU branch of Square), it's looking pretty grim, especially the prospects of DQX Offline ever getting localized. It's madness there'll forever be 1 mainline DQ going unlocalized. All that money being thrown around and they couldn't at least localize the game with an installed fanbase in the west.

The decision not to localize DQX Offline immediately confuses the hell out of everybody paying attention to SquareEnix's actions in the west. The game was the answer to bring DQX to the west without the heavy investment of servers required for DQX Online. I'd still love to have DQX Online and all of its additional story chapters, but understand why SquareEnix can't do it. There isn't enough of people like me in North America or in Europe to justify the cost. But Offline affords the opportunity to bring it west - and with expected sales in the 2 to 3 million range it should be a no brainer to localize. We're talking between $50 and $80 million in net profit, at a localization cost under $10 million (closer to $5M is my guess.) Why is SquareEnix not going after this money? Its really dumb to say they'll lose $120 million when localizing DQX Offline for the west solves half that problem. (Though maybe they are localizing and have been very tight-lipped about it.) The only excuse that works is that they've got the localization teams at 100% translating DQ12, but that game still isn't expected until at least second half next year and doesn't explain why they couldn't have hired part time help to get DQX translated in the interim. So where has SquareEnix been on this for the last three years? Its inexcusable. When companies willingly turn down the ability to make money, and everyone can see it, that's a sign bad management.

Take my money SquareEnix, and stop tripping over your feet trying to grab it out of my hand.

What even is the point of Xbox anymore? With every exclusive going third-party and Game Pass becoming less of a value with each passing internal studio closure, there's little reason for anyone to have faith in the Xbox brand anymore. Microsoft's only concern lately is seeing their numbers go up, and the only reliable way to do that is to just buy an already hugely successful publisher. It's crazy they couldn't accomplish that with their own ip.

I've always thought the decision to have all Xbox games on Windows as well was a short-sighted idea. Why pay $300-$500 for hardware to play games I can already play on my PC? I guess it works for people who don't own gaming PCs (an ever-decreasing size of the market), but it slices into your hardware sales. And if your hardware sales are lacking, third-party companies jump ship. And frankly, if you're going to go PC, Steam is the preferred method over GamePass - Microsoft never could overcome this hurdle. Phil Spencer is still running the Microsoft Gaming division into the ground and frankly I don't know why he hasn't been shown the door already. I guess he's able to keep his job because they make a lot of money, but they've also spent many fortunes buying up all the studios under their umbrella, so their profit margin over operating expenses is terrible compared to their competitors in the gaming industry.

[JG]

In other really dumb gaming news, Sony Interactive Entertainment has really dropped the ball on their own PC ports of late. The Steam versions of Helldivers 2 and Ghost of Tsushima both require a PSN account to play all features. But Sony themselves apparently didn't realize that PSN is not a worldwide system like Steam is (minus a few purposely blocked regions), which means the games are being sold in regions where PSN doesn't operate. Sony will, curiously, neither offer a fee PSN account to players in more than 100 countries and numerous additional territorires of countries they do nominally support; nor will they transmit PSN data to those regions (under assumption that the latency for such regions will result in poor multiplayer prformance.) Thus, these games are not actually fully playable in those regions but are being priced as if they are. Players are buying these games under the assumption they can do multiplayer over Steam network and earn Steam achievements, which they couldn't do with the native Playstation versions, but becuase the Steam games actually tied to PSN's multiplayer and achievement system, it doesn't close the gap for them all. Sales have cratered in the unsupported regions with Steam having to offer no-questions-asked refunds (which they aren't fond of doing)

So Sony either needs to disassociate their popular PSN service from the PC platform (thus breaking cross-platform support) or get off their ass and make it a worldwide system (and figure out how to deal with latency from slow regions, and pair them up with other slow players.) The current lazy approach to just support regions where internet access is fast is not acceptable if you want to grow your brand. This is the same problem Microsoft and SquareEnix are having: not thinking worldwide but instead trying to solve your problems by doubling down on the region(s) you know best, even though it doesn't expand your brand recognition to new prospective clients.

[JG]

It's Nintendo Direct day!

Hopefully see more than the multiple levels of blah that Sony State of Play, Steam Next Fest, and Xbox Showcase delivered. The Xbox show was particularly bad with 25 of the 30 games shown featuring first or third person combat involving guns or swords, including the first seventeen straight. Overkill. (Literally.) No platformers, puzzle games, or co-op/competition games at all. They've pretty much retreated from everything but the action genre. Nintendo will certainly show a lot more variety.

[Moge]

Nintendo has won this year's not E3

A new Mario & Luigi with a big budget, Zelda: Echoes with playable Zelda, Metroid Prime 4, and the Dragon Quest trilogy HD got me very pumped.

Tangentially related, but it's been fun watching the fighting game scene lose their minds over the Marvel vs Capcom franchise being resurrected quietly through this Direct.

[JG]

Nintendo has won this year's not E3

Mostly yes. I'll get to that.

Sony's presentation was quite tame except for Astro Bot, which really doesn't look like it would push PS5 graphics that much further than PS4 so not a big win there, and still too much focus on VR2 games despite VR2 not being even remotely priced well enough to compete with Quest 3.

And Microsoft continues to not have any idea what the market wants, opening their show with 17 straight games featuring guns or swords, almost all of action genre, and finishing the show with 25 of their 30 games with this formula, without a single platformer, fighting, puzzle, or co-op competition game. There is no way they catch Sony if they continue to focus almost entirely on the action genre alone. It was nice to see Fable and that Winter Burrow crafting-survival game but most of the show was blah. The Indiana Jones game looks like it could be fun if its more game than cutscene. And I like seeing Dom return in the God of War: E-Day prequel.

The Summer Game Fest shows had maybe the best presentation of trailers, with something like 50-60 as I recall. Alot of these are indie level games with only a small chance of having a big following, but that was a lot of variety. The Dragon Age game really underwhelmed me.

Steam Next Fest just decided to show demos, and when I tuned in I couldn't figure out what was being shown because they had no on-screen labelling and they spent more time interviewing the players than actually showing the demo. So I quit after a couple of hours. An hour or two on each demo is way too long, and with only live feed and no way to rewind or watch previously recorded segments, it really hurt them here. They needed to package this better so demos shown in the wee hours of the morning don't get missed by the people interested in seeing more of some game.

Nintendo won by having the biggest heavy hitters. They've brought back Mario+Luigi which most people thought was dead after AlphaDream's bankruptcy - though I very much dislike the art style, where they've taken the blue highlights from earlier games and concept art and badly overdone them to the point that Mario's hat has more purple than red now, and the bros' wrists have a blue aura for no good reason. They had a new 2D Zelda that focuses on puzzling solving which BotW and TotK mostly neglect in favor of combat and adventure. They had the Dragon Quest HD-2D remake, though splitting into two releases and asking $120 for the trilogy as opposed to the current prices of $17 for mobile and $24 for current Switch seems to potentially be outpricing themselves. They had the only fighting game in the Marvel vs Capcom collection. They had a new Mario Party game, though I'm not sure why they didn't sit on this for new hardware release. And lastly the Metroid Prime 4 trailer.

What really hurt Nintendo, especially for the western direct, was how many games they didn't show. We know from release dates, Twitter news, and trailers previously shown online or at Summer Game Fest that they left about 25 minutes worth of trailers out of the show. SCHiM for example was in both SGF and State of Play as I recall, but only made the Japanese direct. Other games on the near horizon like Ace Combat 7 and Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus made the Japanese Direct, but may now entirely miss Western directs because their release date falls before the September Direct (unless the release date is changing.) The Japanese had three quick-look sections to briefly cover the shorter trailers while the west had none - and I don't recall them ever not having one before. So now Nintendo is in a bit of a bind, with twelve games, some of them unique to Switch, scheduled to release before the next Direct that haven't yet been advertised in any Direct to this point. A mini-Direct or Partner Showcase in July is almost needed to cover all the things they neglected to cover this week. And if they were waiting to show off the new hardware in a September Direct so they could then have it on floor for players to test at Tokyo Game Show (September 26-29), that's going to take a healthy chunk of the September show, which means now all the Q3 and Q4 games that weren't covered this week are now at risk for being bumped off, too unless they have two Directs in September, one for games and one for hardware. So it seems like a bad time to be releasing Switch exclusive games because Nintendo isn't going to help you sell them. (But is willing to help sell the non-exclusive stuff that's going to be cheaper on other platforms, like Dragon Quest HD-2D.) Ultimately, if Nintendo has enough material to make 4 or 5 Directs in a year, why the hell aren't they?

I was also let down they did Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, which I thought to be the worst of the DKC games. Its been 10 years since a new DK game, and another port is not what fans want. And with the sequel movie arriving April 2026, they still need a new Donkey Kong to improve his image. (Of the five main characters, Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser, and DK, guess which one is the least well known to children?) So now its two Donkey Kongs in 2025 to early 2026 or else they go into the movie failing to prop up DK back to hero status, or else the movie should just totally drop him (which probably wouldn't be popular with fans either.) With a 10 year hiatus since the last new game, DK seems to have joined the likes of Kid Icarus (12 years) and F-Zero (20 years!) as forgotten series.

[JG]

The umpteenth reason why Nintendo will add GameCube and maybe DS/3DS functionality to Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pak on new hardware: Running out of NES games!

With the addition of Urban Champion and Donkey Kong Jr Math, North America is down to only two first-party games that don't require extra hardware (Zapper light gun, R.O.B., Power Pad) or have peculiar licensing issues (Popeye.) Those games are NES Play Action Football and StarTropics 2: Zoda's Revenge. Notably, they are a pair of the very few Nintendo games that never had a Japanese release.

Europe now has all its NES first-party games covered thanks to the addition of Donkey Kong Jr Math, though its unique version of Mario Bros is still a possibility. I'm less sure of the Japanese state, but they're probably also close to running out.

[Moge]

I'm absolutely dying for Gamecube NSO, not for the games specifically, but to get a modern GC controller. All the exclusive NSO controllers have been absolute bangers which improve upon the originals. Recently imported an NSO 6-button Mega Drive Controller. The build quality on that thing surpasses every 3rd-party Sega controller knock off i've ever used, even the official ones. Never thought i'd ever say this, but Nintendo makes better Sega controllers than Sega.

The NES library is so massive that i find it hard to believe they'll run out. If the tap ever runs dry, then I would like to see other platforms explored, like the PC98 or the PC-Engine. The former is likely to never happen, but the ladder is a strong possibility someday.

Picture of my NSO Sega Controller. I'd post the image here but it's way too large as-is.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/678802826914168843/1250184400746844180/20240608_174548.jpg?ex=668f9734&is=668e45b4&hm=8dd90ccda2290d61a5ea8cdd9b3c269ec464bfb13080fa7987e3a039ccf606d7&

[JG]

The problem with TurboGrafx16 is that if they added it, the Japanese fans would push for all the PC88 and PC98 stuff, for which there isn't a good North American or European analog.
To be honest, I'm surprised they haven't pushed for Sega Master System/Game Gear games yet. (Or if they are it doesn't seem to be very vocal.)

Controller image link doesn't work - says no longer available. If you can't resize to be able to attach it to the post, then I'd recommend posting it to imgbb instead.

[Moge]

Sorry, there's the correct image.



Been using a Google Blogger for over a decade to host my images. Not many people know that it's free, has unlimited image hosting, and allows hotlinking.

Master System would be an interesting pick, since a good chunk of its library are Brazil exclusives.

[JG]

Master system is also very easy. The Z80 cpu is no great secret and emulators for Z80-based arcade games, Master System, Game Gear, and other consoles were among the very first video game emulators.
But the real reason I brought up Master System/Game Gear is because they already have Genesis games, so it doesn't seem like a big contractual leap to get some 8-bit Sega content.

[Moge]

Not sure if NSO subscribers would care for Master System. I'd like to be proven wrong, but I don't think there's enough nostalgia for the system.

With the recent double whammy announcements of the cancellation of the HALO tv series and the massive layoffs at 343, i'm just dumbfounded at how far the series has fallen. HALO was the game that gave Xbox relevance in the console space.

Saw a recent sentiment that Phil's reign has been much more damaging to MS than Don Mattrick. If you asked me this question a few years ago, i'd laugh at the mere suggestion, but now? Yeah, I'd prob agree that Phil has done much more damage at this point, especially with everything pertaining to Game Pass. It has only weaned their audience into waiting for games to drop on the service, effectively killing interest in purchasing games traditionally.

[JG]

I think there's enough good games there to work. Some late Sega 8-bit games also got Genesis/Mega Drive 16-bit versions so I'm going to try to leave them off and list only games for SMS and Game Gear (which was same basic hardware). But if they opted not to choose the Genesis version the SMS versions would then be viable. Phantasy Star in particular would be great to show off what the SMS was capable of.

Master System:
Afterburner
Alex Kidd series (4 games, though the best in Miracle World had a recent remake)
Fantasy Zone I and II
Ghostbusters (if licensing could be worked out)
Hang-on
Penguin Land
Shinobi
Space Harrier
Wonder Boy series

Game Gear:
Defenders of Oasis
Phantasy Star Gaiden
Shining Force Gaiden
Sonic the Hedgehog I and II (which play quite differently from Genesis/Mega Drive versions)
Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble
Tempo Jr (not many music-oriented games in the current NSO selection)

[JG]

Very unimpressed by today's Directs, following the wow factor of June's.

From a fan standpoint, there wasn't anything new to get exciting about. The Plucky Squire is still on my radar but had seen trailers for it a few times already. The truly new announcements were devoid of anything that gets money out of my pocket.

We still don't know what's beyond Brothership from tentpole title standpoint. There's Donkey Kong Country Returns in January, but a remake (and apparently lousy one at that) of a very old game that already had a 3DS remake might not fit that two million plus sales mark that Nintendo considers as a marketable monthly title. I was expecting to see a Kirby game announced for February or March to sort of close out the major Switch 1 lineup. If the new hardware isn't arriving until May, pulling the plug after Brothership in early November is introducing a six-month gap that you're counting on smaller developers to fill. Risky. If its not Kirby in February or March, those Zelda Wind Waker or Twilight Princess rumors will likely get hot again. (Or something else from the Wii U stable like Star Fox Zero or Xenoblade X.)

With no Pokemon game this year, I was expecting there to be a couple of extra kids games advertised. We only got one, the Patrick Star Game, which is as much physics simulator as true kids game. This is not the formula Nintendo has used in the past to win the holiday season. They were bullish on selling 13.5 million units in the fiscal year April 2024-March 2025, and were only to about 2 million by end of June, meaning they needed a BIG holiday season to make up for down sales the other three quarters. But a holiday season with a dearth of kid-oriented games? Nintendo is not reaching their goal without a major price cut to hardware. And I mean $100, not $50-ish.

The Sonic 3 movie trailer dropped overnight (introducing Shadow as the main villain) yet Sega failed to capitalize on the synergy of having Sonic x Shadow in the Direct. Yet earlier this year they paid to have Monkeyball show up in two Directs. So they just watched tens of millions of dollars in likely cross-media sales evaporate. Lack of coordination has always been Sega's Achilles' heel - its why they aren't a big player in the video game industry anymore.

Japan Direct settled Hundred Line's release date as all the way out to April 24. That is terrible news for a successor hardware launch in April. Late April doesn't seem like the kind of date for an action game to land on if new hardware just hit the shelves or is just about to do so. New hardware probably not arriving until mid-to-late May or June now.

[Saika]

Very unimpressed by today's Directs, following the wow factor of June's.

From a fan standpoint, there wasn't anything new to get exciting about. The Plucky Squire is still on my radar but had seen trailers for it a few times already. The truly new announcements were devoid of anything that gets money out of my pocket.

We still don't know what's beyond Brothership from tentpole title standpoint. There's Donkey Kong Country Returns in January, but a remake (and apparently lousy one at that) of a very old game that already had a 3DS remake might not fit that two million plus sales mark that Nintendo considers as a marketable monthly title. I was expecting to see a Kirby game announced for February or March to sort of close out the major Switch 1 lineup. If the new hardware isn't arriving until May, pulling the plug after Brothership in early November is introducing a six-month gap that you're counting on smaller developers to fill. Risky. If its not Kirby in February or March, those Zelda Wind Waker or Twilight Princess rumors will likely get hot again. (Or something else from the Wii U stable like Star Fox Zero or Xenoblade X.)

With no Pokemon game this year, I was expecting there to be a couple of extra kids games advertised. We only got one, the Patrick Star Game, which is as much physics simulator as true kids game. This is not the formula Nintendo has used in the past to win the holiday season. They were bullish on selling 13.5 million units in the fiscal year April 2024-March 2025, and were only to about 2 million by end of June, meaning they needed a BIG holiday season to make up for down sales the other three quarters. But a holiday season with a dearth of kid-oriented games? Nintendo is not reaching their goal without a major price cut to hardware. And I mean $100, not $50-ish.

The Sonic 3 movie trailer dropped overnight (introducing Shadow as the main villain) yet Sega failed to capitalize on the synergy of having Sonic x Shadow in the Direct. Yet earlier this year they paid to have Monkeyball show up in two Directs. So they just watched tens of millions of dollars in likely cross-media sales evaporate. Lack of coordination has always been Sega's Achilles' heel - its why they aren't a big player in the video game industry anymore.

Japan Direct settled Hundred Line's release date as all the way out to April 24. That is terrible news for a successor hardware launch in April. Late April doesn't seem like the kind of date for an action game to land on if new hardware just hit the shelves or is just about to do so. New hardware probably not arriving until mid-to-late May or June now.

No Atelier Ryza.....  ._.

I LOVE Reisalin Stout....... and NOT seeing her as the main character breakes my heart so much.......Yumia DOSENT look bad but... Reisalin Stout had the SPUNK, energy, and so much of a growth (Also GIGA HOT) that I saw as the FACE of the games.

WILL give Yumia a chance but dont think she would match Reisalin at all.