Capcom isn’t fooling around, they know their market for Mega Man 9 on Xbox Live, WiiWare and PSN and its nostalgic gamers with a desire to be a kid again. Any retro gamer will tell you the old school experience must include some pixel flickers, slow down and 8-bit style bugs.
They have decided to include an optional feature to enable old school bugs on purpose. The limitations of early hardware like the NES caused situations where you would only see a limited number of creatures on the screen at any one time else things slowed down, flickered and got undesirable fast. What used to be undesired is now nostalgic!
“Yeah, there were some things, like you couldn’t have more than three enemies on the screen at once, so we had to make sure that that’s how it stayed in our game. In the part with the dragon with the flame, [there should be] flickering, and whatnot,” noted the game’s producer. “In the options of this game, you can adjust that, unlike the old games. We purposely put some of those old-school bugs into this game, so it does recreate that feel.” (joystiq)
Luckily these options are disabled and can be enabled to get a bit of old world feel if your little heart desires. For most of us, we should have moved on from the old times and are ready to play old school games on new school hardware to show off a bit more fluid 8-bit logic. Not so for everyone, which is why the feature was added as an optional one.
Staying true to old school computing in an emulator is extremely important when playing old ROM games because the game was coded with a certain speed and understanding of the hardware. Change the hardware without updating the game can lead to an unusable product. Mega Man 9, however, is a new game so it doesn’t have to adhere to old standards. But, it’s funny to see it try.
@Thief:
If you have Doom 3, and no patience for Thief 4:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod
@Steam forums hacked
Me don’t like this. Normally you would not depend on third party software for modules in your core application. You’d want access to the source code, so that in case a vulnerability is found, you can fix it quicker than the third party.
So, assuming Valve has access to the code powering their forums, and yet somebody managed to hack it, it means that their developers need to better cover their security holes.
No puns intended.
@Xbox 360 failure rate down to 10%
Paul, I think those 10% come from any kind of combination of the following factors: old version of the console and placing it on a rug, with no space for ventilation.
I had no piece of equipment burn out. Those ventilation holes (sorry for getting back to holes) are there for a reason. If you thought of something different than ventilation, shame on you :P.
@Sony revamps< PSN sharing policy
I actually like that kind of sharing policy, and reducing it to just two devices is quite ok.
@cease-and-desist order to NeoGAF over Mass Effect 3 spoilers
Oh man … this is still free advertising. And since the game is not yet released, it can be changed so that the story of the game remains new.
@QOTW:
Yes.
You'll say this is absurd, but think of it: a game is not a novel, that once you read it you've extracted all of it.
A game is story and gameplay. Or just gameplay. The ones that are just story usually turn crap.
My 'Yes' answer is also based on a personal experiment: I watched/listened in background "lets plays" for STALKER Call of Prypiat, and I still love (not loved, love!) playing the game.
Now granted, such a big spoiler does have one effect: instead of buying the game full priced, I wait for a nice discount.
Great… First you say I’m 8 and then you say I could be a girl. Thanks a lot. =P
@Xbox 360 failure rate down to 10%: The biggest reason I didn’t buy an Xbox 360 when I was choosing a console was that it had a very large failure rate. I’m glad that it’s finally at a point where most people can enjoy it without it failing in less than a year.
@QOTW: I like to watch trailers and gameplay footage as much as I can until I see about 1 or 2 demos from gaming conventions such as E3, so that I know the game is worth buying. Otherwise, regarding story, I like to know as least as possible because gameplay is most important to me and the story is just what holds it together.
Regarding what you said about going to a library and learning a programming language: I would like to do that after I do my GCSEs which are only in next May and I need to focus on them as much as possible first. Also, I was unfortunate that my year is the last year that my country has Pascal programming in its Computer Studies syllabus instead of Java programming. Even though I excel at Pascal, I think there’s going to be a big leap for me to write in another language.