Sumez

As a kid I'd always play on easy because I had the presumption that I just sucked at video games. Or rather, back then a video game was considered a challenge that you have to beat - very different from nowadays where a developer is typically afraid that any player might not see the ending. And as a kid, how could I be up to that challenge? The problem with playing on easy of course, is that you're never gonna get any better that way. When I play "retro games" nowadays I always leave it at the default, including dipswitches on arcade games (though some times the jury is out on what "default" is there). If I can't beat it, I'm just not good enough, and there's nothing wrong with that. But I think any really good game deserves to be played on hard. If the game is super well designed, then the gameplay should be more pronounced when the stakes are higher. IIRC the "hard" setting in Shinobi 3 does nothing outside of making your life bar smaller. But it's a game a good player might be able to beat without getting hit, so it's a perfect solution. Contra III feels like it's designed around the arcade-like Hard mode, with Normal added in as a way to better appeal to the players, rather than immediately scaring them away. Ghouls n Ghosts on MegaDrive defaults to the easier of the two difficulties, but slams a huge "PRACTICE MODE" label over the bottom of your screen. On the other hand, if the game has issues, that might also be more obvious when the stakes are higher. IMO the Super Star Wars games are terribly designed. I loved them as a kid, and I still have a soft spot for them due to the cool graphical style and all the crazy setpieces they managed to cram into the game. But they are also just absurdly unfair and punishing. Most segments of the game will reward rushing through them an tanking damage rather than trying to stop up and fight anything. Enemies will come at you straight from outside the screen giving you no time to react, and shooter sections has your hitbox take up like 25% of the screen. I have no idea what they were thinking. (that Indiana Jones game with a similar graphical style, but made by Factor 5, however. That's a real gem IMO)

I'd take all of those PCE games if I didn't already have most of them. Suggested price for the whole lot?

I'd like to go on record and say that I have absolutely zero against AVGN. I loved the show when it first started, and I still have a fondness for James' character. I'm glad he's starting to make more videos against after the big break around the making of his movie. When I do have issues, it's when it's being put on a pedestal as something it's not, and when people get their "opinions" on video games from watching internet shows like this. Mike of course, is a different matter. Cinemassacre would be better off if he wasn't involved.

Even as a kid I never had any problems with the water level, why wouldn't you be able to beat it? Sure it's not a particularly well designed stage, but even if you screw up you can just switch out turtles and tank the damage with someone else. It's also so early in the on that if you don't get through it you've barely seen the game. As a kid me and my friends would usually get stuck hiking around the city trying to look for Splinter. I have never once heard anyone complain about that stage until AVGN made that video, and suddenly everyone was talking about the same thing The Technodrome, that's where the game completely falls apart.

I preordered this months ago, but I also ordered the regular version of the game since that preorder was up earlier, and came out nearly a month ago. I'm a huge fan of Bubble Bobble, so I might actually keep the SLG order around for all the swag, but honestly - the new game is so terribly bad that double dipping for it will probably end up making me feel so bad that I should just cancel the order now. It really understands absolutely zero of what made pretty much all the classic Bubble Bobble titles great.

I have no issue with James in person, he's a likable and modest guy. (Mike, however is just about the opposite, both obnoxious and cringeworthy) But you really gotta take these guys for what they are. Their primary output nowadays is just videos of them playing random games and discussing them, unscripted, and it really shows they don't really have much of an idea about anything. And that's honestly fine for what they are doing - but when people following them start seeing them as some kind of authority on video games, it gets embarrassing fast. For a particularly awkward example, look at the video of them trying to play Indiana Jones And The Infernal Machine and universally deciding that it's a terrible and broken game, when the only thing that's terrible is their ability to grasp three dimensional videogames EDIT: Just checked out the Chex Quest video, and it's pretty good, and James clearly did his research a lot better than he did in most of his older videos, and doesn't feign ignorance too bad. He's definitely a lot better when he's scripting his content, he really should just stick to that.

It's a fun and original platform game, and I never met anyone who had any issue with it until secondhand opinions suddenly started spawning from that original AVGN video. Of course, the game does have its slew of issues. The fact that all the other turtles are clearly inferior to Donatello (and end up serving as HP fodder) is silly, and the final stage is just a study in absolutely awful game design. Stop up and actually try to fight anything and you'll be punished much harder than you do if you just hightail it through the chaos. But as with most other semi-janky NES games, there's a consistent way to approach those issues that actually works in the context of the game, and although it clearly could have been better, there's no way I could ever call TMNT a bad game in good faith.

I'd probably be on the fence about anything that has the AtGames logo on it.

What the How

I never even heard of BattleSport before this. I'm surprised to see any non-Japanese Saturn titles fetching Japanese-style price ranges.

"cinemassacre" and "deep analysis" are two terms that I have a hard time combining in my brain But since AVGN is the primary source of the modern interpretation that TMNT was a terrible game, it's at least good to see them try to make good on it. I've heard James on multiple occasions say that he never disliked the game. AVGN is just a fictional comedy character, and people tend to forget that.

Romancing SaGa 2 is one of the biggest pleasant surprises I've had from any RPG in probably over a decade. I knew RS3 did a lot of the same stuff, but I never realised that RS2 was as fantastic of a game as it is. It does have its share of jank, and some of its elements can get really tedious, but I absolutely love its world design, sense of exploration and adventure, and the incredible open ended design. There aren't a lot of other games like this, and it makes me really sad to think of. I think Octopath Traveller wanted to be it, but it ended up being something else entirely.

I'm sure you know what the right choice is. The practice of intentionally giving every non-degradable consumer product a much shorter lifespan than it needs is downright detestable. Yeah, there's a bit of a common misconception that CRTs are "low quality". While there are obviously a lot of things modern HD (and especially UHD/4K) TVs can do that they can't, I think the crystal clear image and ability to display images like they are generated by the source, rather than having to digitally process them is an underrated quality. Of course, in practice this quality has very little application outside of "retro games".

I'd assume you're familiar with the Nesdev Wiki? There really is no better resource. A lot of it comes across very confusing when you aren't really into the tech behind it, but once you start understanding it, you'll see that it's kind of impossible to explain the details in any better way. That said, in the context of NES programming, the only hardware you really need to be familiar with, is the CPU (obviously), the PPU, the APU, and the controller interface. I'm not sure what a hex bus buffer is either. The APU is probably the most confusing part, especially if you aren't familiar with computer music as it is, but it's also the part that's most easily ignored in the context of creating a basic game (and lots of plug-and-play sound engines are available). The PPU meanwhile is the bread and butter of the NES, and pretty much what defines what it can and can't do. In the eyes of the public, the NES PPU is what most people think of when they hear the term "8 bit". It should be the primary focus of any NES programmer.

I didn't assume they were talking about pointless cosmetic stuff like character costumes. The DQ8 outfit wasn't downloadable for PS4 though, it's built into the disc, though it's just assigned to your inventory from the beginning as if it were.

CRT revivals will definitely happen - I've been claiming this for a while, and I want to stand by it until disproven. Existing ones are gonna break sooner or later, and there is no current productions of new ones. I think making CRTs without mass production will cause them to be extremely expensive however, but I'm also expecting to see top notch quality and compatibility, similar to PVMs or MS9 monitors. Just like modern vinyl records are much higher quality than the ones you'd normally see in consumer stores in the 80s. Alternatively someone will invent a cheaper alternative to CRTs with the same advantages and ability to stream analog signals.

That was never available for the PS4 version. I believe either all or most of it was in the original 3DS version however, that never got translated to English.

I won one in a competition, and I think it's alright, but maybe I just didn't expect anything from a controller I'd never heard of before. One thing I kind of hate is how it really tries to look like a SNES controller, but feels absolutely nothing like one. Like others have said, the D-pad is really weirdly stiff. Meanwhile the SNES Mini controller feels just like the real deal.

DQ11 never had any DLC

That was a bit of a unique situation, as the X360 came out around the transition from CRT to LCD or Plasma TVs. When I got mine in early 2007 (1½ year after its release), I still had a CRT - and despite obviously using RGB video, the text in Dead Rising was still completely unreadable. And Gears of War was actually a significantly worse game because you couldn't spot pickups on the ground, and it was impossible to tell friendly soldiers from the enemy. I got a 42" plasma HD TV very shortly after, but even at the time those were still really expensive, and having a TV like that was a rare geeky thing - by far the majority of everyone would keep their CRTs for quite a bit longer. It's kind of crazy to think of just how recent and how quick the transition actually was though. That was really two completely different TV standards, not just a question of some people using "low quality" cables (I still used analog video for my X360 in HD because the launch model didn't support HDMI), and I think by the latter half of the system's life cycle, there are probably games that would have been even more laughable on CRTs, but no one ever played them on one XD

Oh yeah, I remember hearing about that, but had forgotten it! There's an interview about it somewhere out there.

Colors look different, but the artifacts are roughly the same. But NTSC colors already look different on every TV (and every emulator) as it is, so there's that.

Why even consider TG-16 when you have the PC Engine? Exactly the same hardware, but a much bigger, more expansive game library. One of my favourite console platforms for sure, but what they saw released in the US was an embarrassingly small subsection of what it had to offer.

Absolutely. I'd say you gotta be appreciative of NES jank, or a big fan of the game in the first place, but that also goes for the US/Jap version. They definitely feel like very different games. Personally I'm a huge fan to the point where it's my favourite arcade game of all time, and I have yet to play a home port that accurately represents the game (jury is still out on the PCE port - I own it, but most of my consoles are hidden behind a construction mess at the moment). So with that in mind I find it more interesting to play something that is drastically different.