Inzoreno

Gamecube went completely insane during the pandemic. I don't know how you feel about the console personally, but I would look at the Wii library. A lot of great stuff that is still affordable.

Oh boy, I hate to say it, but you kinda of came back at the wrong time. Covid-19 sent prices on a lot of things through the roof and are only slowly starting to reset a bit. I wish you the best of luck in the hunt.

I don't live too far away, but my damn car had to get some pricey work done on it this weekend, so I couldn't attend. Were Josh or Doug there at all?

SNES has Chrono Trigger, GBA does not. That's enough to put SNES over GBA for me.

My main problem was the lack of either save points or teleportation. The game can be a bit of a slog when you have to run through the same areas over and over again after a death, especially if you die to a boss.

I finished up an evil playthrough of Sundered on the PS4. I didn't really like that game too well, so don't know if I will try a to get the good ending later. Moving on to Return of the Obra Dinn.

Excuse me, but it's "Where did you learn to fly?".

Advent Shadow Full Fat Majesco PSP 2004-2006 As an industry that pulls in billions of dollars annually, video games is a significant force in the word of entertainment and in many cases outperforms classic forms of media such as movies, television and literature. Yet, despite how profitable the industry has become, you still do not see much in the way of collaboration with significant figures from other forms of entertainment. Sure, every year we receive a new game plastered with Tom Clancy's name on it, but setting aside the fact that the author had passed a number of years ago, he basically had no involvement in the games bearing his name. We have a high-profile collaboration with famed author of A Song if Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin, releasing in 2022. But by far such collaborations are rare. One of these collaborations was the game Advent Rising, which involved famed science fiction author Orson Scott Card working on the screenplay and dialog for the game. Regardless of Card's political and moral views, he is still a talented author, with Ender's Game his most famous. Advent Rising showed some promise with it's interstellar sci-fi story, and was planned to be the first part of a trilogy. Due to misfortunes that we will discuss shortly, the trilogy never came to be. While little is known about any of the planned Advent Rising sequels, there was also a spin-off game planned that was caught in the fallout. Planned for Sony's PlayStation Portable, Advent Shadow unfortunately was dragged into the recycle bin due to no fault of it's own. Advent Shadow was first announced in late 2004, with a planned release date sometime in 2005, potentially as a launch-day or window for the North American release of the PSP. Based in an article from IGN about the game, it appears that when the game was announced in 2004, it had already been under development for some time, thus the suggestion that the game would release sometime around the launch of the PSP in early 2005. Interestingly, had it actually been a launch window game for the handheld, it would have actually landed before the arrival of Advent Rising on the XBOX, as that game released in May of 2005. The game was to be set within the same universe as the console game, but there would have been very little direct connection between the two games. The focus of the game would have been Marin Steel, a female mercenary pilot who does make an appearance in the console game. Although you would have the opportunity to cross paths with the main character of Advent Rising, Gideon Wyeth, the story would be a separate tangent from the console game. It would, however, follow some of the same themes and sub-plots introduced in the console game. The game would also cover many of the same beats as the console counterpart, including stealth gameplay and the use of vehicles, though of course scaled down to work on the less-powerful PSP. Little else about the game was made public, though we do have access to very early gameplay footage that has been included. Unfortunately, the failures of Advent Rising would draw down the rest of the franchise. Upon it's release, Advent Rising only received middling reviews, a disappointment considering how much hype had been built up by Majesco for the game. While not a terrible game by any means, it released with a significant amount of bugs that, at it's worse, could cause the game to freeze up. A PC version released shortly after the XBOX debut received higher praise due to a number of fixes that reduced the amount of bugs in the game, providing a better experience overall. The XBOX game also released with the ill-advised 'Race to Save Humanity' contest that asked players to locate a series of hidden symbols across multiple levels in the game in order to win 1 million dollars. The contest was cancelled in August of 2005, with Majesco claiming the reason was "no technically feasible solution that would allow the contest to continue in a fair and secure manner". At the time, I remember rumors circulating that the real reason the contest was cancelled was that Majesco lacked the cash to back up the promised reward. It is certainly possible, though there is no way to prove that hypothesis. Majesco did end up in a financial hole following the commercial failure of Advent Rising and the cult-classic Psyconauts. Although the company was able to survive this, they turned their back on big-budget games and instead turned to the casual and handheld market, where successful games didn't require a huge budget. Advent Shadow would be one of the game cut by this ordeal, which also saw the death of Demonik, a game based on the Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver, and a PSP BloodRayne game. Unfortuantely, since Majesco still owns the rights to the Advent franchise, there is very little chance Advent Shadow, or any other game in the series will ever see the light of day. Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20051013071103/http://www.xbox.com/en-US/promotions/adventrising.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20090827152816/http://chairentertainment.com/community/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28/ https://www.ign.com/articles/2004/11/23/advent-shadow https://www.ign.com/articles/2006/01/19/majesco-sees-red-titles-dead-4 http://psp.gamespy.com/playstation-portable/advent-shadow/568153p1.html

In at least North America, I think Atari would be the one to rise to the top, assuming no one else decides to join the fray. They had the name recognition that neither NEC or 3DO had, even if it was a name from almost two decades before. But I think it's easier to believe a parent would pick one of those up for their child just off the name alone. Especially if Atari positioned itself as the cheaper alternative to the expensive 3DO and whatever else was out at the time. Without Sega, Sony or Nintendo, they probably could get a much more impressive library of games than they ended up with.

The late-2000s reboot of Alone in the Dark, I just loved how your inventory was literally just in your coat, so you just have to look down rather than go into a separate menu to access your stock. Rest of the game was a mess, but I always loved that mechanic.

This is really interesting, maybe someday that little booklet can get translated and we can learn even more about the game.

For all of you who keep regular tabs on the value of the game sin your collection, I am curious as to which item has had the biggest increase of value from the price you paid to what it is worth now? Out of my own collection, it's probably would be Dark Souls Trilogy for the PS4. Most of the valuable games I own I ended up buying after their value had already ticked up, such as PS4 The Messenger, the first two Shantae games, or YS VIII. But I was able to purchase Dark Souls Trilogy back when it was still new at GameStop for I think the $59.99 or so it went for at the time. It looks like now that game has easily double in price since then.

I use to be really into Collector's Editions and had a bunch of them. But I eventually came to realize that A. I didn't have space for all the statues anymore and B. They stopped including my favorite thing: behind-the-scenes documentaries. I find game development so fascinating, but very few CEs include any of that anymore. I still remember watching the Halo 2 documentary that came with the special edition so many times back in the day. Now the only CEs I own are because I could buy them at the same price or cheaper than the standalone game. There is one excpetion, Ori and the Will of the Whisps. I bought that because I loved the first Ori and had a rare opportunity to purchase one at GameStop out of nowhere.

I did, and this is someone who already bought it on PS4 and got all of the trophies for it. I absolutely love Castlevania and not only did I want the compilation in my collection, I wanted to show Konami that there still is a demand for the series. I will be doing the same thing when Castlevania Requiem goes up for preorder.

Just to give my two-cents, I generally believe that a console's library consists of all games designed specifically to run on that system without the need of any additional peripherals. So, the SNES library doesn't include Game Boy games as they weren't specifically developed for the SNES and only work with the use of an adapter. In fact, I even consider PSVR games a separate library because you cannot play the PSVR-only games without the VR headset. Or Sega CD and 32X games aren't part of the Genesis set as they require additional peripherals. It's not a perfect system, of course, since it would technically disqualify Majora's Mask and Donkey Kong 64 from the N64 library due to the requirement of the Expansion Pak. But there's not enough of those exceptions to make make rethink my categorization yet.