Ankos

As far as Taiwanese game companies go Sachen has to be the most accomplished by a significant margin. Making games for over a decade is hard, and Sachen made a lot of games

What do you mean killed unlicensed collecting? There's cheap stuff and expensive stuff just like the licensed games Edit: Oh. I started typing up that response before MrWunderful's message dropped and didn't notice I was responding to a necrobump. Should I not have done that?

It sort of feels difficult to rank Sachen since they had such a long and storied career with highs and lows. I remember a time where it felt like the popular consensus was that their games were kinda bad, but honestly most of their titles were solid, especially when you compare them to what most of the NES library is instead of the equivalent of triple A devs like Capcom. I don't know if I could call them my favorite since they didn't release anything I'd call an all-time favorite for me on the NES, but 60 mostly good games is super impressive no matter how you slice it

Those are pretty neat. There are two print runs of the 4-in-1s, one from the early 90s and one from the late 90s. The earlier print run does not work on anything but monochrome machines. I think the title screens have different copyright dates if you want to check what you got. 4B-003 is the most sought after 4-in-1. It did not have as many copies made, and its games only appear on other rare Sachen carts (a 5-in-1 and a 16-in-1, both of which are unbelievably hard to find). 4B-004 is neat too since it also has games not on the 31-in-1

Yeah, that's definitely a step up. I like the cape they gave Rocman in this one. It makes him look like a superhero. I once heard a theory that the Roc in Rocman refers to the Republic of China or ROC, a name sometimes used for Taiwan

I think that it is neat but the GBC version is not as good as the NES one. Sachen appears to have outsourced the gameboy port to a less good team (here is a game by said team that appears very similar to Rocman X on Gameboy), so it wound up being one of the weaker titles by Sachen

Just won a bid on this. Sachen made the main character sprite look more like the one from the NES version and less like Megaman for the European release (probably to avoid any trademark/copyright issues). No box unfortunately. Apparently this one got released in a blister pack so every CIB copy is also new for this game

I'm not sure if I could say what exactly are my five favorite games but I'll try to name a few that I think stuck with me Pokemon Yellow I used a GBA SP to play this one. I grew up on Pokemon games on the GBA and DS and this was one of the first times I got a look at a game from an older console due to the backwards compatibility of the GBA line. I found it to be very enjoyable despite being a bit rough compared to what I played later on. What I really enjoyed was that this was a game relatively easy to pick apart and play around with glitches, something I had not really done before playing this. It was the first time I ever felt like I had an inside glimpse of a game despite that fact that I was just fooling around Retro Game Challenge I messed up my original DS so I played this with a 3DS. It was an interesting concept to me, playing false retro games and being able to comb through false video game magazines to figure out how to beat them. Magazines were not commonplace when I grew up so this was all foreign to me, but I enjoyed the experience a lot Spelunky HD (PC) This game got me to learn techniques and strategies more than any other when I tried to 100% Even after I beat it I had so much fun zooming through levels and using what I learned to overcome what I once thought was super hard that I'd revisit it just to come up with new ways to have fun with all that I learned, and to keep on learning new tricks not for the sake of beating a game, but just because I wanted to play better Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky As I said earlier, I grew up on Pokemon. Admittedly I don't think I've ever been super immersed in the mainline games. I've played a few and had fun but once I beat them that's usually the end of it. The story does not grip me and the gameplay is pretty basic. Being able to watch the TV show and play the card game as a kid however helped build the feeling of a fantasy. Playing through the games was a way to feel like you were in this fascinating fantasy world full of vibrant creatures you'd see on TV. I think that RPG games are not just games, but also something you can supplement your imagination with. The thing is, most of them have a story where the main character interacts with the world for a reason, it is more immersive. The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series does this far better than the mainline Pokemon games, and on top of that gives unlockable side stories where you can live the perspectives of would be side characters. I also prefer the gameplay in the Mystery Dungeon series, which helped me develop a love for games with randomly generated levels Game Start (iOS) Do you remember that Street Fighter x Megaman game that Capcom endorsed a while back? Yeah, the same person who made that made an iOS game. It is a platformer sort of like Megaman but with much shorter levels. Capcom supported this one too and even let the game have some playable characters from Street Fighter. The game was built to drum up support for a gaming convention of the same name out in Singapore and themes itself around it, which is what lead to the game having silly stuff like a whole world themed around Madcatz (the mediocre game accessories company) and Yoshinori Ono (the game producer) being a playable character. This is a dumb game, but it geniunely is fun to play, and is dumb in a charming way. It being an advertisement itself is 100% free and features no additional advertisements if you are curious

I should probably clarify that I do gravitate to easier strategies in video games. I almost always use flying powerups when I play Mario games. If I want more of a challenge, then I'll play a harder game

Flight powerups in Mario to me are always the lame ones because if you aren't good at platforming you can always just go back to an earlier level and pick up one of these to play on easy mode. Propeller mushroom is a particularly easy one to use. I think that having overpowered powerups is not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm not going to pretend they aren't overpowered. I don't think you even need to run or be on the ground to use this one

That would be nice but it seems unlikely at this point. DLC would be the more likely of the two though since they already released legacy collections for x and classic with no side entries like the xtreme games or megaman and bass. I heard that there are some companies re-releasing old school mobile phone games out in Japan. I want to say it was G-Mode stuff I heard about. If that is getting re-released then maybe Capcom will list those old school Megaman mobile games through a similar channel. Megaman just has so many games that it feels like there's always going to be a few that are unavailable at any given time

There is a line of Famiclones called Ending Man that have been around for a long time. Some of those are pretty high quality, so maybe it was one of those?

That's like saying half the Mario games aren't 2D platformers. You're technically right but that's sort of ignoring the difference between a spinoff and a mainline entry (though at this point Metroid has two series that could both be considered mainline). There is the original 2D platforming series, the Prime series, and a couple of spinoffs that don't in well with the previous two categories

For me it is more of a combination of gameplay and presentation. Gameplay wise I'd say that very early Megaman is simple enough that a game would need to copy the selectable levels and robot master weapons to have a high clone factor on that alone. If a game were to have a charged shot and a slide move then that would make me a little more willing to throw around the word clone. Presentation wise Bucky O'Hare is not that much like Megaman. The HUD is laid out differently and the art style is different. A game like Little Samson I would say is slightly closer, maybe to the point that I could see it having some Megaman inspiration, but it is quite different. Cocoron is a little more similar than that and even has some music that would fit in a bit more with Megaman. Then there is the Krion Conquest which is very Megaman like. To me it is all on a scale and everyone will have their own cutoff point. I would say Buck O'Hare is pretty low on the cloniness scale, with something like Cocoron maybe having some clone factor, and the Krion Conquest having a lot of it. Some people might prefer the term inspired to try and avoid sounding too harsh on a game. Me personally I don't have an issue with the term clone since we already have genres named after games like metroidvania and roguelike. If I'm willing to use some terms that have entire genres live in the shadows of their earlier entries then I may as well use a few more

That is the sort of thing sellers on eBay started doing because eBay started giving them trouble for including the word bootleg in their listing

I thought this was the code that gives you a bunch of overpowered stuff. To my knowledge it does not fit the correct format of Metroid passwords, so it was deliberately created in development. There are other codes that crash the system though

My guess is it is people who jump onto things with very little info. For an example, Korea is one of the hardest regions to collect retro games for, so someone who isn't knowledgeable might pounce on every Korean Wii game they see despite those not being nearly as rare or different since games these days don't seem to vary much between regions. Same for people who snap up everything Atlus ever made, even jumping on the more common ones like they are the really rare ones. I'd hate to see something like Cosmo Tank get a really high price tag just because some people didn't do enough research before buying, but I have to imagine that sort of thing happens. So not really nefarious collectors or anything, just inexperienced

I don't think nostalgia in collecting is a bad thing. Being able to point to something on a shelf and tell a story about it is always a plus, even more so if that story had you in it. I'd rather collect video games that mean something to me, than collect something more collectible that means nothing to me. Nostalgia is not the only way to have an experience with a game where you can tell stories about it but it is a way

Rereading your original post it sounds like you are mostly referring to why someone would want something from a different region if it isn't different, like how some people collect Hong Kong region GB games despite them only having a different sticker from the Japanese versions. I personally don't see the appeal in doing that, those games look almost identical to the JP versions from the outside, but I guess they are a little rarer so maybe some people just want an extra challenge. HK set is also a lot smaller so maybe it is a desire to be a big fish in a small pond or something

For me how it started was that companies I had an interest in published internationally (not always in the USA in some of those circumstances those games I found visiting family in SE Asia) so I got hooked on them then. Then I saw they had other titles released overseas back in their home countries so I decided I'd try and nab some of those. I got used to buying overseas and just kept going after that. Though I'm not looking to buy things overseas if they are available in the USA. Especially if they are cheaper here TLDR version: Availability

Looking at that website I am pretty surprised at how few games a lot of these publishers have to their names. I was looking at the game list for Sachen earlier and they have about 60 games. If I had to pick a favorite I'd say something like Taito or Hudson and then feel bad that I didn't say a smaller company like Vic Tokai

Ok, so we have translations that preserve dictionary definitions, and we have translations that preserve the feeling of the original, is anyone here a fan of translations that are plain bad? I think sometimes they can be a little funny, but a lot of the time they aren't that humorous, just harder to understand Depicted: a screenshot of Megaman Battle Network 4 (released December 2003) that I nabbed off the internet

I would have to go with more poetic. I don't need games to be localized for me or anything, but to me a game translation should above all else preserve the experience of the game, so if some liberties need to be made to do that then I am willing to accept that. Ultra literal translations can still feel very off even when technically correct. Reading something that prioritizes dictionary definitions over feel can make a story feel more something to be studied rather than enjoyed. I also get a kick out of reading up on how games are translated differently in different parts of the world, so I am a bit more willing to accept liberties

There are some situations where I think the burden is a little more on the seller, but if you go out and hire a sketchy agent and get screwed over, then that really isn't the seller's problem. It's not like the stuff got lost in the mail or something, the issue is on the buyer's end

The customer paid for goods and they were sent out as instructed. I don't think it is wrong for them to request a refund, but if the seller declines, then no refund should occur and that is the end of the story. That is how it works in most businesses anyways, unless the seller claims otherwise beforehand. In my experiences with proxy services I've always expected things to go wrong once in awhile and just factored that in to the cost of buying stuff. As for the whole shipping time thing, in general I prefer to have slower shipping times when buying with agents, because that gives me more time to add stuff to an order. It isn't like you made them wait three weeks or anything like that. I wish the best of luck to you with dealing with this