This is astonishing, mainly because this doesn't involve the 32X or SVP addon chip at all. It's all being run directly off Sega Genesis original hardware. There's no sound effects, and the music is a scratchy recording of the original music done in a loop, AND the frame rate isn't any better than what you got off the SNES, but it's still impressive it's performing as well as it is. Near as I can tell, this is a port of the original reverse engineered code so it should control as well as that game. I'm sure down the line sound effects will be worked into it and the music will likely get converted to FM synthesis at some point, but it's amazing how well modern designers can make these old systems run.
This is from a month ago, but it's interesting so why not make a thread about it?
So, in a Japanese interview Miyamoto said that basically Nintendo needs to have one game sell 30 million copies every three to five years, they will be fine as a company. They are currently well over that marker. Meanwhile, 1 million sales is now not a huge hit anymore. Also, he says that nobody (in development) likes it if a game only breaks even financially; instead you want your game to be successful, not only financially neutral. "Miyamoto: Is that so? But if there's no profit and we're just breaking even, then it's just tiring, right? I'm sure the people who worked with me would think that that's not what we worked for . So, the reason why I don't praise my co-workers half-heartedly along the way is because, anyway, the reason I think it was good to work with them is because "we sell a lot."" How capitalist of him... I don't know, breaking even seems fine to me. But sure, being successful is better, if a game is successful it gives you revenues to make up for other projects that are less successful for example.
His concluding message is quite good, too. The idea is that Nintendo is a company that is always looking for the next big hit, and that he likes emphasizing to new employees that Nintendo's goal is to find that next hit game. " Miyamoto: That's right. For me the most dangerous thing is to overlook something that could turn into something big. I think the good thing about our company is that we have been able to nurture these kinds of buds." That makes sense.
It's interesting to see that this is how he and Nintendo think, but considering how successful Nintendo has been for a long time, obviously they are good at capitalism. Nintendo's focus on profits and rarely losing and never borrowing money is infamous, after all. 30 million every three to five years? The current Nintendo can easily cross that bar several times over. What we don't know is if Nintendo will continue being able to do that in the future, after Miyamoto retires... I hope they do, that they've set up a company that can last, but we'll see.
Remember Chibi-Robo and how heartfelt that game was? How the game was about a little robot cleaning up a house, but what it ACTUALLY was about was a crumbling marriage and how that affected the whole family, and how through the game you eventually resolved their marriage issues and gave the daughter pretending to be a frog a voice?
Remember the two sequels that had NOTHING to do with that heartfelt premise?
Well, turns out the original developers had nothing to do with the sequels, but have everything to do with this kickstarter!
For the longest time, I had no clue what the song from my ancient 3M branded CD Laser Lens Cleaner was using. Finally, modern "song recognition" algorithms have solved the problem. According to my various consoles, this is the most played song I have just because I like to keep that lens clean. So without further delay, Here's "Opening Up" in all it's synth glory by John Devereaux.
Not that prices haven't been going up, of course, but it looks like we have some concrete evidence it wasn't tied to anything natural, it was literally just CEOs jacking up prices to see what they could get away with until we, the public, finally squealed, and then suddenly it stopped.
It really was "greedflation".
Biden's "soft landing" plan actually worked to help end this nonsense. Credit where it's due.
And it's going on right now. If you have any digital-only content you want to get, now's the chance before the store shuts down for good. This one's going to take even more content down than the 3DS did, so now's the time to move.
Or you can hoist the colors once it's down. Frankly that's an understandable move I can't see a moral fault with.
More Doom, this time "The Dark Ages". I mean it's still set in the future, but it's got a very gothic feel to it. Also metal. I mean it's got a flack canon fueled by crunched up skulls.
Take a look at this thing. I noticed a lot of changes this time around. First of all, the massive number of enemies is finally approaching what the original DOS games were capable of. Secondly, far more open levels which apparently devs are indicating will involve more exploration, looping back and changes to previous sections of levels. Again, a mark of the old Romero designed levels of the original game.
The ammo and health piñata effect is gone, so they seem to be totally rethinking how health and ammo get restored. Maybe it'll just automatically be filling those UI bars instead of bothering with animating a bunch of little glowing powerups that get sucked up, or maybe they have something else in mind.
And that something may tie into the brand new parry mechanic. So, it seems they decided that instead of having a shield AND a chainsaw, why not just make controls a little easier by combining them? The new shield is meant to enable directly approaching heavy fire, parrying it for a stun, and going in for massive damage. Speaking of massive damage, I didn't see any "glory kills". It looks like they're rethinking that as a mechanic too, which dramatically opens up finishing enemies any way you like. In fact, Hugo Martin went on to say that they were apparently listening to complaints about how Eternal locked in very prescribed playstyles and weapon rotations, so that now it allows a much more free and open method of using whatever weapons the player might like. To that end, an enemy that reminded me of those much maligned marauders moseyed on my... by... and now they seem to have many more strats available for tackling their barrage of attacks and defenses.
All in all, as much as I'd have liked to see either a brand new property or a revisit to, say, Quake or even Catacombs 3D, if they're going to do Doom again, this is the way to do it. I love that Id aren't just sitting on their laurels.
