In modern terms, this game would be called a "demake", taking what was considered cutting edge on the Super Nintendo, a game only possible on that generation and simply saying "nope, the NES could do all this too".  Donkey Kong Land was a sort of spiritual "demake", but in truth that game wasn't the same, with it's own distinct levels including new themes and enemies.  This was the real deal, a true port to a console that, based on advertising for the SNES game, shouldn't have been able to run it.  Oh, and by this point the source code for the SNES originals had been lost.  So, they modified the Donkey Kong Land engine, with notable physics changes as a result.  This would be a recurring trend with ports of the orig trig, but that's for another time, during the Microsoft era of Rare.

It's the visuals that most struck people playing this version.  On the one hand, it's technically impressive that they managed to get everything working and recognizable.  Credit must also be given for making sure everything is identifiable and that it's easy to tell sprites from background, or landable terrain from mere background art.  This can't be said for the Donkey Kong Land series, due to limitations of black and white or even the Super GameBoy mode those games are designed to run in.  That splash of color to differentiate is critical, however, because the decision to keep using the CG assets and downgrade them to this level means everything looks rather messy and noisy at this level of resolution.  There is, simply, too much detail to work with, so scrunching it down means things tend to blur into each other as opposed to hand-crafted sprites.  As a result, the game is not colorblind friendly any more than the Donkey Kong Land games were.  Further, the decision to use those assets and try to maintain the same "size" results in a smaller viewing area, meaning some secrets need more telegraphing to avoid being overlooked.  Fortunately, clever use of the camera helps to make sure few can be overlooked, but many obstacles still jump out at the last moment.

The audio is notable as well for borrowing heavily from Donkey Kong Land, taking tunes that were already demade into tone generated form from their MIDI style originals.  In a few cases, whole tunes were out and out replaced, and one brand new song was made, but not for the brand new level.  All in all, they're enjoyable versions, even if half the tunes had already been done in games previous.

The controls are serviceable and familiar to anyone who's played Donkey Kong Land.  While reduced, no sacrifices needed to be made due to the first DKC not having things like "animal special moves" or a "team up" mechanic that needed their own button.  What's much more notable are the altered physics.  Platformers are particularly sensitive to changes in physics, since every single level in a game, all it's jumps, enemy patterns, bounce pads, tricky items meant to be reached at the very extent of risky moves, all of it is specifically calibrated around the game's original physics.  This means even a slight change can have pretty drastic repercussions.  Giving credit where it's due, the Donkey Kong Land physics did get altered just enough to be pretty close to SNES values, but it's not just those values.  Hit boxes are a lot looser, more like pure boxes than the more form fitting boxes in the original.  Further, certain behaviors linger on.  The "camera death" glitch (wherein if a camera has a fixed high vertical position, it might not scroll in time to prevent the engine from killing off the player interpreting it as a bottomless death pit) has been mostly resolved from the Land series, but still occurs from time to time.  Further, the "bounce" behavior has some odd inertia for players to get used to.  Oh yes, then there's the timing of the "3 card monty" style mini-game, which is now far harder to see the final barrel the item appears in.

The game's save system was overhauled.  The game now auto-saves level completions and secrets found, which necessitated giving Candy Kong another purpose entirely.  Further, new difficulty modes were added.  The game allows you to disable either all Kong partner barrels or all continue barrels, but not both at the same time.  Notably as a boon to completionists, the game will track progress in all three "modes" on the same save file.  So, you only need to unlock stickers and find all bonus levels once, saving some time when you're playing through all the levels three times in a row.  Further, the game's old "101% completion" now requires completing both of these new harder difficulty modes.

Back to map design, most of the maps are very accurate to the originals with very few changes.  Necky's Nightmare was introduced as a new near-final level in the last world of the game.  It's appreciated to see some additional content, and this level is pretty well made, if short.  It's a test without being nearly as frustrating as the actual final level in the game.  Notably this level would be scrapped from the GBA port later on, but the GBA port's failings are again for another time.

Beyond that, there's a few other notable additions.  There are "stickers" hidden in many levels.  All of them require giving the ground a hard smack which will stir up a fluttery 8 bit sticker to quickly grab.  These can all be viewed in a "sticker book" and printed.  Notably the GBA port also added a lot of "photos", but these are not just completely different images, they're all hidden in completely different places.  There are also three new mini-games.  Candy Kong now has a mini-game barrel.  These are a series of unique "bonus levels", much like the ones normally found hidden inside levels but with some unique mechanics.  This is honestly my favorite new "mini-game" as it uses the existing game's mechanics instead of tacking on something else entirely.  It's certainly better than if they'd decided to have Candy do a dance rhythm game or some crazy thing.  This is also part of full completion percentage as well as helping to unlock the other two mini-games by winning unique "coins".

The other two bonus modes exist outside the main game.  One involves a series of escalating "shooting gallery" stages... on the Gameboy... without a lightgun...  It's serviceable, and even the hardest level at the end isn't too difficult.  It's much like a similar mini-game in DK64.  The second is a "fishing mini-game", because this was an era when EVERY game had to have a fishing game hidden in it.  It's a little more complicated than the Link's Awakening fishing game, but also involves a lot of luck.  Beating the high score will be a test of patience more than anything, as no matter how good you get, you can get a string of garbage instead of the squid you so desperately need to extend your time.  All in all, these mini-games don't enhance the core experience and in the case of the fishing mini-game can really drag out that full completion time way longer than is enjoyable.

All in all, for the most part the new additions were well thought out (certain mini-games aside) and the demake looks and sounds good enough to at least be playable.  However, this is one case where it's hard not to recommend the original simply because the whole package with original graphics and sound really complete the experience.  Add to that certain frustrations brought on by the smaller viewing area and the altered physics, the original edges this version out.

The little bastard was just working last night. I had an impulse to play an N64 game. You ever get that vibe like old 64 games are like fever dreams? There's a kind of beauty in their imperfection, in the same way that certain weirdos like listening to record players or cassette tapes. I think that's part of the reason the first Silent Hill is the favorite (I know, PS1, but you get the point). The primitive graphics and gravelly sound all lend themselves to a nightmare world.

I rummaged through a bunch and settled on Rayman 2: The Great Escape. Nothing was amiss. I thought I might try to see the game through, as I've never been able to in the past, for one reason or another. Damn it, the game is actually pretty good, albiet the controls and camera are meh. But I like the overall aesthetic it has going for it.

So anyway, every time I turn on the system, it just flashes a black screen. The power is on, but there's no audio or video. It's something that's pretty typical, honestly, but it usually works after a few tries of removing/reinserting the cartridge. I've tried several games, and games that recently worked, but this is the first time that I can't start any of them up. I even tried swapping rubbing alcohol on the cartridge and in the system itself.

Y'all are smart. Any idea what the issue could be?

Now, when it comes to peripherals, they've already closed shop.  They also fired large numbers of people from the physical distribution team.  Those two things are true, but here's the yet unconfirmed rumor (but rather highly corroborated with recent leaks).  The rumor is they're going multiplatform, porting all their exclusives from Gears of War to Sea of Thieves to PS5.  They've already been porting their games to PC, and not just in their own exclusive Microsoft Store but on Steam as well.  Not all of their XBox One/Series exclusives are there yet, but they're getting closer year by year.  Combine that with recent leaks about the Switch 2 that say that MS has dev kits for the next Nintendo system, there's a good possibility they intend to do the same there too.  They've already ported a handful of their former exclusives to the Switch 1.

If they go this route...  well it would mean that MS has been buying up all these companies to become a games development house bigger than EA.  It would also mean that what I currently have sitting on my shelf is a relic.  I mean, MOST of my consoles are relics yes, but this would be a relic like the Dreamcast, the last hurrah.

Interesting to think about.  There's positives and negatives to this of course, namely that Sony gets just THAT much more control over the console market, but what it could ALSO mean is that MS is going to make hardware more like the "Steambox", just a PC in a box that runs a normal version of Windows and just... plays whatever PC game you want to stick on it.

But it's got a plot hole in the beginning that is almost two stupid and obvious to believe.

Okay so son and grandpa get attacked by this assailant. Typical finding a better life.. Did the war, made enemies bla bla bla story...
Now this holy night attacks in the first scene making it very clear he's there to kill them both, because they possibly grow up to challenge their king.
So we kill the grandad, obviously it was a killing blow, but the child is up and tending grandad. The grandad asks are you okay, he says yes, it will take way more than that to kill me.
And the assailant is like the child is done for (I assume) because he just walks away. I'm like aaaah what... LOL.
He literally just said he is okay.
I mean did he forget why he was there? Is he really that stupid..
It's basically how the how whole story is allowed to be.
I mean the rest of the story is great. Good homage to the fans of the original. But I'm like.. WTF..

that's aged like rotten cheese.

GENTLEMEN, allow me a sliver of your time to go on a Rolfean rant about this turd.

I put this game on my list a few weeks ago when I remembered that it existed and is probably available on the newer consoles. Never played it, have seen it praised as having a good soundtrack, seemed to be a generally-agreed-upon classic, yadda yadda.

Alright, I fire it up, not bad, pretty solid Castlevania. First craw-stucking was when I died and the game said GAME OVER LOL, back ye to the title screen Beanjo! Eh, okay? I guess this is what they were doing back in the day. Pretty annoying to have to wait for this game to slowly and deliberately load, as though it were some meaningful ritual and not a waste of my time and child-like impatience.

But it got even more annoying when I realized that my items, exp points, and map progress were all wiped. Well, that's annoying! Save points aren't exactly plentiful, so even if you stop at each one, there's a pretty good chance that something like 15 minutes of progress will be thrown down the toilet*.

But what REALLY bites my nuts is that after the third time or so this happened and left me incensed, I realized that a big part of the problem is that there's no fucking way to get health between save points. I got a turkey... once...? in the two and a half hours that I've played. 20% of which was from wasted progress on an outdated saving system, from cavemen that didn't have the robust imagination that with the powerful technology of PS1 and save cards, it's trivial to move beyond NES limitations and record a bit more information beyond a snapshot in time. We're not confined to passwords anymore here, people!

Not only do turkeys and hot dogs or whatever Alucard eats not drop, you can't even fucking buy them. ??? what ??? You could even do that in Castlevania 64, and that game was hot garbage gobbled down by gremlins and shat into Mordor. But respect to the librarian shyster, 'cause it was pretty funny to watch him say "why gosh Alucard I could NEVER betray the master!" and quietly rub together his thumb and forefinger under the table to tell Alucard to cough up his gold that, for yet-unspecified reasons, is hidden inside candles.

Oh, and by the way, what the bloody flying fuck does Quick Save do? I thought "ooh, here we go, maybe this will smooth things out," but nah it still erases your progress. Not sure how much exactly but enough to make it pointless. I got in a few good rooms but the progress still disappeared, this time immediately, instead of having the courtesy to wait for me to die. BACK YE TO THE TITLE SCREEN. **

Anyway, this game sucks shit but I'll probably suffer it a bit longer because it's maybe just fun enough play.

BUT LET IT BE KNOWN BY THE AUTHORITY GRANTED TO ME BY ME AS A WHINY LITTLE CRUMB-BUM THAT I AM NOT IMPRESSED

* that's how you guys poop right? No flushy, just hurl the feces into the bowl in the hopes that it hits its target and makes its way down the pipes

** Okay after a bit of googling (done through duckduckgo because google is hot steamed sausage links out my ass) it seems that you can use this in the marble rooms as a make shift save spot, otherwise it's kinda pointless. And it's still irritating to disrupt gameplay and, for reasons beyond my limited comprehension of cavemen culture, go back to the title screen any time you have to do this. Verdict is, this game's save system still sucks my smegma.

https://www.polygon.com/24050311/microso...ard-layoff

Yep...  I knew it was coming.  I literally predicted that a giant acquisition was going to lead to massive layoffs, and so it has happened.  These mergers are steadily monopolizing the whole industry, and this is the result, inexorably, inevitably.

That weird glitch pokemon just got official artwork.


You know what that means, new movie incoming!  Pokemon: The legend of item duping

Well, in a couple months the Pokemon Bank's online component is going to die, killing off the ability to trade 'mons between every one of the 3DS pokemon games (including virtual console emulations of the gen 1 and 2 games).  I said back then I hated that Nintendo went and made the bank program require an online component instead of having a local save storage option, and here we are.  Here's hoping some hackers put together a homebrew app to replicate Bank's features, but offline.

But, I have a different bit of good news.  It seems there's now a way to alter Gameboy games to use nonvolatile chips so they no longer require a save backup battery.  In most cases, that's not a mod I'm too pressured to implement, but this would be especially useful for Gold/Silver/Crystal, which use the battery for both save storage and time keeping, draining it far faster.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/non-volatil-...ld.346288/

Note that because of that duel usage, the mod is more complicated on those games, requiring a few extra components to keep the battery you'll still need from frying the new chip.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/covers...-series-xs

One of the biggest annoyances of the XBox Series design is the use of a proprietary connector for adding NVME speed storage to the system.  It's a problem MS had with the XBox 360, again with the XBox One (where technically you CAN upgrade the drive, but only to specific sizes that were originally officially supported) and again now.  As the only company that pulls this nonsense, it can be annoying.

Fortunately, a company has put together a functional adapter to allow very select m.2 drives to function.  Specifically, the m.2 NVME speed drives using firmware already preapproved by the XBox Series' OS.  This appears to work and work well, but the fact it works at all means there's nothing special about MS's connector protocol.  It's literally just a lockout tool.  In any case, it'll be important to have converters like this in the long run when external support and production of these custom drives stops.