Amnesiac

Thanks for covering this; it’s heading straight to my cart. I generally skip over games whose titles are illegible on the PS Store. Nifty font designs are nice and all, but not if they completely sacrifice readability.

It’s a really fun fighter. There was a pretty solid beginner mode for doing special moves to begin with, but if these additional assists get more people to try it, great. Also, the battle passes are pretty low pressure. I’m fairly bad at the game and have breezed through the couple of passes I picked up.

@Oram77 13’s soundtrack is absolutely loaded, and Saber’s Edge is a masterpiece. For me, it’s definitely a case of the music outshining the game.

@GamingGod Losing half their staff after the buyout was awful. I just hope things have stabilized so that no other shoes are dropping in the near future.

@Tintin I have a wishlist ready to go for the next Bandcamp Friday on 12/5. And I agree with you that listening to most game soundtracks out of context isn't compelling, with a few exceptions of course. I have a soft spot for the soundtracks for Katamari Damacy, Child of Eden, Lumines, and a few others. Oh, and a few Final Fantasy tracks and the music from the first Dr. Wily stage in Mega Man 2, which never fails to amaze me.

Even after the sale to Epic Games and the somehow even more worrying sale to Songtradr (sic), Bandcamp remains my music platform of choice by a country mile. I’ll be picking this up to go along with the Tetris Effect soundtrack. Good stuff!

Just got the notice that Death on the Nile and The Mortuary Assistant are on sale. Time for a little Poirot and a bit of post Halloween horror.

The first half of the trailer is so promising! Beautiful underwater scenery with colorful designs and what looks like a fun swimming mechanic but then…you’re on land in a world of brown. Still might be worth a try, though.

I love the Arcade Archives series, but I just can’t get past the new pricing for what are pretty bare bones ports. Include an art gallery or a few developer interviews and I’d be all over it, but for now it can go on my wishlist, next to Ridge Racer, waiting for a sale.

@IkeCrane “The reaction to refunds perplexes me”
It’s a bit like ordering escargot and then sending the plate back because “eww, snails!” These games are as they were, often punishingly unfair. But, once you realize that you can fight cheese with cheese, they are all beatable and still fun for players of a certain age.

It’s always kind of neat to see consoles shrink with age. Sadly, I seem to be doing the opposite…

Thanks for the great read! I never knew that I had Tetris licensing issues to thank for such a wonderful game being made.

I myself have developed significant lag over the years, which is probably why I’m enjoying this collection so much. If you don’t remember seeing the Mortal Monday commercial on TV, and have no idea what ABACABB does, this collection is probably not going to do it for you, and that’s OK! There are other ways to play these games. As an interactive piece of history, it’s pretty incredible though.

Sooner or later they’re going to bring one back that pushes the nostalgia button for me. I played quite a bit of Time Gal, Microcosm, and Silpheed back in the day and would happily revisit them.

@nessisonett I think most of the job losses are in the US, so the only impact on the welfare state will be the number of bootstraps handed out for people to pull themselves up with.

It feels like management types view AI as something of a religion, where the promised rewards are in the distant future, but it needs money now, and a lot of it.

@nessisonett Yes, companies seem to be desperate to remove the cost of expertise. I can use a LLM to create lines of code to complete a task, but since I have no coding expertise, I can only judge the outcome, not the code itself.

In my limited experience, using AI to complete tasks at work creates as many problems as it solves. For every job it does well, there are several where it introduces strange, hard to spot errors or adds things out of the blue. Those who are diving head first into the AI future might find the water a bit shallow at present.

Oddly enough, I read this while listening to Radiohead’s Spectre, which is my favorite Bond theme even though it wasn’t chosen for the film. Must be a Bond kind of day. Oh, and Lana Del Ray is pretty fantastic in her own right.

When these things happen I always wonder if there’s a mobile gaming equivalent of PushSquare on some dark corner of the internet where people get annoyed when games are announced for consoles instead of smartphones.

Feels like he got his shareholder presentation mixed up with his TGS presentation. Generally, talking about a large number of units sold makes people feel like they backed the right horse. Talking about record revenue/profit makes them feel like they’ve been taken advantage of (but makes shareholders giddy!)

A fantastic game, but I have to agree with the nitpick about the controls. It’s early goings, but I’ve accidentally exited to the home screen half a dozen times. Curse you, muscle memory!

I bought it at launch as a freshmen in college. Took many trips to Electronics Boutique before release to pay down my preorder. Really felt like it was leaps and bounds ahead of any other home console. Used to bring it to parties and show off Ridge Racer. Eventually modded it to play imports. Great times.

@Jrs1 Fine choices. I’m looking forward to seeing the chaos that Ratts of the Capital generates. Happy Songs for Happy Shooters?

@Jrs1 Push Square is on a roll with the Smiths content. Just a last week there was an article about changes being made to the Tekken 8 character models. Apparently Katsuhiro Harada had just discovered that some girls are bigger than others, and some girl’s mothers are bigger than other girl’s mothers.

Great unrelated picture! Suda51 should make a game where you break into palaces with a sponge and a rusty spanner.

@gbanas92 As a side note, the music in the museum section of the game is really impressive. I stumbled across a piano arrangement of the original Gradius score last night that’s just amazing.

@Jrs1 The easy modes for each of the games has been excellent so far. It maintains much of the challenge while avoiding some of the cruelty of the original releases. It was always frustrating when one death in the wrong spot meant things were over because you lost all your weapons and speed. Also, I never realized up much I relied on home console slowdown to make it through some of these stages!

This looks promising. The environments and creature designs work nicely together. It does make me wonder why these beasts need herding though. Hopefully the game doesn’t end at an abattoir…

Spending 20 years doing what you love, creating things that bring people enjoyment, and then leaving on your own terms is pretty remarkable. Regardless of what the next chapter brings, the last was well spent.

A humorous take on existential dread? And 10% off at launch? Sold.

I’ve enjoyed these games going back to the Game Boy Color cart that Capcom published. They vary in quality a bit, but all have that Way Forward charm.

This looks great! I remember playing Ms. Pac Man on a friend’s 7800 and being really impressed, and also jealous that I could only afford a 2600. Looking forward to the documentaries as much as the games.

I picked up Gourmet Warriors as a stand alone release from QUByte, but the additional titles are enough to make me do a partial double dip.

All in all, I thought it was a pretty good loyalty program. If you engaged with it, it gave you an incentive to revisit older titles to earn coins or collectibles, and if you couldn’t be bothered, you still earned coins for purchases. As with all loyalty programs, the aim wasn’t to give money away, but to tweak customer behavior by getting people to spend just a little more. My guess is that they couldn’t move the needle enough, so it’s back to the drawing board.

I loved hanging out with Ryza and the gang, especially in the first two installments, but it took me a while to get into three. Partly from Atelier fatigue, and partly because it was just so wide open. On the plus side, three lets you turn your party into an indomitable killing machine through alchemy before leaving the first map. Good times!

@Northern_munkey It used to send notifications through the app when a wish listed item went on sale, but that seems hit or miss now. Still, I’ve had things sit on there for a year or more before they hit a price I was willing to buy at. Your level of cheapness may not reach my own though!

@Northern_munkey I add games that I’m interested in, but not interested in enough to buy at launch price. Then I do a quick wishlist check when a new sale pops up. Saves a lot of hunting and pecking.

The description of the pre-order bonus alone is making me want to buy this just to reward the grade A snark.

“Pre-order now and get the following bonus content:

• Early Bird DLC
  Our Early Bird Edition will have an incredibly profound effect on gameplay!
• Player Character wakes up one minute earlier each day – all clocks will be set to 8:59AM!
• Cute birdy comes by and whistles songs! “

Thirsty Suitors was a fun game (with a somewhat off putting name) so I’m excited to see how this pans out.

My tired eyes read the title as No Man’s Sky Bacon, and now I’m slightly disappointed. Still, given the outrageous amount of support this game has received post launch, a breakfast related update probably isn’t entirely out of the question.

This approach has been successful for Criterion and Arrow with films, so I’m hopeful it will work with games. I love that they include an essay, but I do wish they could add interviews or additional features on the disc. Even still, it’s nice to see so much thought and care go into these releases, and I hope it catches on.

I’m enjoying it quite a bit, and the REV system is pretty fun. I don’t know that it was ever going to be a mainstream breakthrough for the series, but it’s worth a try for anyone who likes fighting games.

That being said, the Saudi connection hangs over it like a cloud, and the guest characters, while not overly present in most of the game, have created a perception problem that is proving hard to overcome.

I’m mildly interested, since I enjoyed the VNs and some of the other Quintessential Quintuplets media, but I’d be surprised to see this in the West anytime soon. The story may translate well, but that ¥8,690 launch price for the base game won’t. Maybe it will make its way over after the Japanese launch window with a reduced price.
And I know the Special Box comes with an OVA Blu ray, but the ¥25,190 price is still stunning. Games in Japan have been priced higher for as long as I can remember, but that’s quite a chunk of change..,

Ah well, things just don’t work out sometimes. Glad I read this to steer me clear of an impulse buy regret. This just makes me want a remaster of Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat all the more.

I needed a laugh this morning, and reading the title Sir Whoopass provided it. Thanks!

Why are there so many animal based detective games? And more importantly, why do I love them so?

@AinsleyE I had no idea there was such a thing. Thanks! My first place vote has to go to Roger Stern’s Avengers, though.

@AinsleyE As the kids say, that pic is fire! Am I dong it right? I’m too old to know…

Slightly more seriously, I’d pick up a MSS Omni in a heartbeat. Not sure how they’d handle the different page dimensions, but I guess it wouldn’t be too different from converting the 70’s mags.

Nice to see the good folks at Udon publishing more nifty art books. They’re always worth a look.

I would think some of the frustration comes from choosing a launch week that suits your game based on whatever else is projected to release, and then watching a surprise drop suck up a lot of people’s gaming budget.