something that i think gets lost in the sauce in thrse discussions is whether fun is derived from playing or winning. people are comparing Silksong- and to get ahead of it right now i haven’t played and am not criticizing either of the Hollow Knights- to old arcade and early console games and their legendary difficulty, but a lot of those games were meant to be complete and fun experiences even if you game over very early on. they also didn’t have levels full of bespoke Stuff in them, it was the same few tiles and entities in different configurations., so being stuck on level 1 didn’t mean you were missing out on a narrative and worldbuilding. with how the lines have blurred between games and narrative art forms in the last few decades, there are different incentives at play and someone stuck on world 1 of SMB isn’t missing out nearly as much as someone stuck on whatever the first stage of Silksong is. it’s all ultimately apples and oranges

anyone interested in this should also check out Star Garden, which combines elements from the original Air Ride and the a-life features in the Sonic Adventures, a very dangerous combination for gamecube kids

what’s the difference between an Action RPG and an ARPG to you?

interesting read. usually when people lay out the history of the series, they call 20 years ago the dark ages and 10 years ago as when things started to turn around. the thing for me is that 20 years ago we were still getting amazing side games that kept the lights on like the Advance series, and it was only when those stopped and Sonic Team had to stand on their own that things really fell apart. but now here we are with then collaborating with others and getting gold like Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog and Superstars, and meanwhile Sonic Frontiers is the first Sonic Team Sonic game i’d call genuinely good since… Adventure 2? Which speaking of which just got a brilliant movie adaptation. we’re so back

not for nothing, the one-standard-multiple-manufactuters thing has been done before with sony and microsoft both involved. the real truth of this article is that the people yearn for MSX

joking aside i’d love to see something like that come back, because you get the convienence of a set standard that makes games Just Work like they do on consoles while offering way more options to consumers. i guess once the floodgates open on third party steamOS machines we’ll be halfway there

i’m pretty excited. i was disappointed by 8 and disapointed even more when we got it again on Switch instead of a new installment, with . one of the main things that bugged me was the kart customization that felt more like picking nerfs than buffs. having that eliminated alone makes the game 10x more appealing, and then this new rally mode seals the deal for me

…aside from the price like everyone else is saying. i’ll gladly get it used, but if we all wait for it to go on sale used, there won’t be any used copies to buy used! the comments in the gameplay streams nintendo did today where flooded with demands to drop the prices so i think everyone is on the same page. it’ll be interesting to see in the coming months if nintendo budges

Sonic 2 or Sonic CD depending on the day for me

Attention all Balatro players

this post was written by Gul Dukat

as it should! long live spinners and paddles!

very cool to see how many people chose OSTs that are super different from their own work

while i think “old bad new good” is an overly simplistic way to look at things, i do appreciate this fire in SEGA’s eyes again. i hope they can find a way forward to expand their horizons creatively without alienating their existing players

do you have any examples? i can’t think of any Coromon that resemble Pokemon aside from sharing a base animal, whereas a number of Pokemon look closer to specific Pals than they do to their own regional or gender variants

Coromon is only a ripoff in the same way that any scrolling platformer is a ripoff of Super Mario Bros. building off the basic chassis of existing games to make new ones is a practice as old as videogames itself and why genres exist. the difference is that Palworld is full to the brim with monsters that can be difficult to tell at a glance from existing Pokémon- look at this article’s embedded image, that’s just a Wooloo with horns on it’s hind legs- whereas Coromon, Digimon, Dragon Quest Tamers, Yokoi Watch, Cassette Beasts, and anything else in the genre aren’t ripoffs and are even available on Nintendo consoles

i know that’s not the angle Nintendo is using in court, but it’s certainly the reason why they’re in court in the first place while ignoring the plethora of older games that would also clearly violate those patents

the article is more about AAA games than consoles, and i agree with the article’s takeaway. graphical improvements have been an Emperor’s New Clothes situation for about a decade for me now. the reason we have those hundred hour AAA games is because with today’s technology, the only advantage big studios have over indies is sheer volume of content. people are starting to wise up to that more and more and those studios will have to find a different way to justify those massive budgets and price tags or simply go under

as for consoles, though? i think the average PC gamer underestimates the value of things Just Working to the vast majority of customers. PCs themselves are having a tough time against smartphones and chromebooks and computer literacy is decreasing from gen z to gen alpha as a result. the seeming failure of the newer xbox and playstation has more to do with the aforementioned dying AAA market and the fact that they’ve become dumbed-down gaming PCs themselves instead of Just Working. the Switch successor will probably not be great but still sell gangbusters because Nintendo is monopolizing the market on Just Works, even if just barely!

i am a diehard for old school SEGA sprite-scaling racers. OutRun, OutRunners, Super Hang-On, GP Rider, and Power Drift are all must-plays. they all run great in MAME and have also had a number of high-quality console ports. later polygonal titles like SEGA Rally and Hang-On GP are also great but will be less impactful if you’re already used to modern racing games

i see a few comments mentioning different F-Zero games and would like to throw F-Zero 99’s hat into the ring. the sheer chaos of that game is really something you have to experience for yourself