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.

I've started my summer of indies marathon by playing Unravel on PS4. This is such a charming little game and I think it is impossible not to get attached to little Yarny.

Finally killing a boss in any Dark Souls. I can't help but a yell a 'fuck you' when they finally go down.

It's probably my favorite genre, maybe second only to FPS. I've loved them ever since I first played Casltevania: Dawn of Sorrow on yhe Nintendo DS back in college. If a game mentions it's a Metroidvania, I am immediately on board. I just love having a huge map to explore filled with beautiful pixel or hand-drawn art. Of course, Castlevania is second to none, but my other favorites are Bloodstained (obviously), Ori, Dead Cells, Shadow Complex, and Yoku's Island Express. Strangely enough, I've never liked Metroid. I have tried the original and Super Metroid a few times over the years, but something about it just doesn't grab me. Maybe I'm more partial to fantasy settings, as I didn't really care for Axiom Verge either.

The Nintendo Switch is a huge turnaround from the Wii U, it's a fantastic little system that took the idea of off-screen play that the Wii U first introduced and made it the defining feature of the console. Nintendo completely erased the line between the handheld and the console. They have put out a steady stream of fantastic new games, Wii U immigrants and has done a great job courting third parties again so that you can have things like Doom and The Witcher 3 on a Nintendo console and has been an absolute juggernaut in the indie scene. But, having said that, I can only give the console an 8 because there are some issues I do have with the console. For one thing, it's hard to argue that the console does struggle in raw power. Many third party games have to be downgraded to work on the console, which means that unless the Switch is the only console you own, there isn't much of a reason to play a lot of the third party games on it. Second, the console sadly is a bit too basic. It lacks many of the great features from the Wii U and the 3DS, such as themes, folders, internet browser, and the Virtual Console. The free NES and SNES games you get for the online subscription doesn't cut it for me. Finally, and this is a very personal gripe, but the Switch has seen a terrible trend of companies being extra lazy and not including full games on cartridges. I don't know who is exactly at fault, be it Nintendo for not allowing larger cartridge sizes, or the publishers for not wanting to pay, but as a collector I hate seeing things like the Mega Man Legacy Collections being split between physical and digital downloads. Ultimately, I am going to give the Switch an 8/10. It's a great console, but has one too few issues that keeps me from putting it higher.

Kaio: King of Pirates Comcept and Intercept Marvelous Nintendo 3DS 2011-2015 Keiji Inafune is a legend in the video game industry, known for his work on the ever-popular Mega Man series. Although the public failure of has most recent project, Mighty No. 9, has tarnished his reputation a bit, he still has a long legacy of games he has worked on spanning over twenty years. With such a pedigree behind him, you wouldn't think it would be hard for a developer of his caliber to get a project off the ground. But game development is often a tricky business and cancellations can come without warning, even to those who are renowned for their development talent. Thus is the case for one of the first games Inafune pursued after forming his own independent studios, Comcept and Intercept. Inafune founded Comcept after leaving Capcom in 2010 and their first few titles were mobiles games available on iOS and Android. Kaio: King of the Pirates would be first announced in 2011, with the intention of releasing on the Nintendo 3DS a year later in Japan. Kaio was an ambitious project. It wasn't envisioned initially as a standalone project, but the starting point for at least a trilogy of games that would hopefully spawn a multi-media franchise. It was announced at Jump Festa in 2013 that the studio Pierrot would be creating an anime series and that two manga series were also in the works. The game would be a retelling of the classic Chinese epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which game fans would know as having spawned the Dynasty Warriors games as well as a dedicated Romance of the Three Kingdom video game series. However, the game would not be a direct retelling of the story, but would be an adaption featuring a cast of anthropomorphic animal pirates. Infaune had hoped the game could serve as a gateway for Western audiences to experience that story, much in the same way that Journey of the West had been introduced to Westerners through Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball. The main character of the game was a blue penguin named Sangokushi and would supposedly star a cast of over 300 different characters. It would have been an action role-playing game with some sort of unexplained multiplayer features. While he had put out games on mobile platforms previously, Inafune had specifically eyed the 3DS as the target platform due to his belief that people would rather player games for a longer period of time on a dedicated gaming handheld rather than on mobile devices. Unfortunately, that is the bulk of what is known about the game. Only a single trailer for the game was ever released, but the trailer did not provide much in the way of hard information about the game. There is no gameplay shown, and very little about the story can be gleamed from it. After that trailer was released, the company remained tight-lipped about the game. The only significant updates being the announcement of delays. First it was pushed to 2013, then later to 2014. Marvelous finally announced the cancellation at the beginning of 2015 and it mentioned that the company had spent around $3.8 million on the project before it was canned. The only reason given by Marvelous for the cancellation is that the marketplace had shifted and so they saw no reason to continue development on the title. What exactly that means, we may never know, but if I had to wager a guess, I would say there were some underlying issues with development that ultimately preventing the game from reaching completion and this is just the 'nice' way to explain it's cancellation. After all, 2015 was still a decent year for the Nintendo 3DS and I don't think there's any reason why the game couldn't have done well on the 3DS. Given that there doesn't appear to be any evidence of a playable build of the game makes me think they just never got to that point. Did we lose much from Kaio's cancellation? Difficult to say, but given the track record of Inafune after he left Capcom, there is a chance that if the game had come out, it may not have been that great. For whatever reason, he just hasn't been able to recapture the magic he had when he was working on the original Mega Man games and I cannot say with any certainty that Kaio would have done much better. Of course, being a fan of anthropomorphic animal characters, it is disappointing that the anime series never took off either. Even if the game never surfaced, it could have lived on in animated form. Given the popularity of One Piece in Japan, it could have carved out its own niche as an alternative to that long-running series. Alas, it was not meant to be, though assuming that Inafune still owns the rights to the project, maybe someday he will see fit to try and bring it to life one again. Sources: https://www.nintendo-insider.com/kaio-king-of-pirates-announced-for-nintendo-3ds/ https://www.polygon.com/2013/12/10/5195502/inafunes-3ds-game-kaio-king-of-pirates-delayed-to-2014 https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2013-01-14/pierrot-animates-king-of-pirates/kaio-from-mega-man-inafune https://www.destructoid.com/kaio-king-of-pirates-that-long-delayed-inafune-project-is-canceled/ https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/03/14/keiji-inafune-39-s-kaio-king-of-pirates-cancelled.aspx

Sure, I don't mind.

I have the same opinion as I did on the Series X, it is way to early to put any kind of rank on the console. We haven't even made it a year, it is impossible to objectively score a console this early in. PS5 has a slight edge in my mind due to having some actual exclusives with Ratchet, Returnal and Demons' Souls, but it is still just too early to tell.

Thank you very much! I have had a fascination with cancelled games for some time and hoped to spread the appreciation, but it never appeared to have much traction here. Thanks for the comment!

Interesting question, how to you mark the release date on limited print games? While they have a specific date when they go up for preorder, often it's not clear exactly when the earliest point a game is shipped out.

I don't think it can be rated fairly at this point, it's been out less than a year, it's still a pain in the ass to get a hold of one, and we do have much of an idea of what's coming beyond a handful of games. It could end up having some great games, or it could be another XBOX One where you can count the worthwile exclusive titles on two hands.