Episode 695: Attack of the VC

Life By You looks promising, Armored Core 6 is kicking all sorts of butt, and NBA 2K24 gets more and more predatory and dismaying.

The news this week includes:

  • NBA 2K24 players say new badge regression system feels like a “second job”
  • Nintendo reportedly gave private Switch 2 demos to developers
  • Atari acquires massive Atari archive after revealing a new 2600 that takes cartridges
  • Starfield mod tools are coming in 2024

Let us know what you think.

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Episode 303: BioShock Infinite Giveaway TimeEpisode 303: BioShock Infinite Giveaway Time

This week we’re giving away a free copy of BioShock Infinite for the Xbox 360! How do you win? Well, simply post a good comment! The contest winner will be announced two weeks from now.

In the meantime, the Gaming Flashback this time is the PlayStation One classic Chrono Cross, while Paul tries desperately to avoid listening to BioShock Infinite spoilers.

This week’s news includes:

  • THQ’s UDraw failure “invalidatedSaints Row: The Third‘s success
  • Levine: BioShock Infinite cost $100M to develop, and $100M to market
  • American McGee doesn’t “see anything meaningful” in the PS4, SimCity players “need to relax”
  • Schafer’s Double Fine Adventure project from Kickstarter is now Broken Age
  • Capcom announces DuckTales Remastered, developed by WayForward

All this and some Reader Feedback.

Episode 228: Two Thirds ShowEpisode 228: Two Thirds Show

This week is a shorter-than-usual show as Paul S. Nowak is away on a birthday vacation. Instead, Jonah and Jordan discuss the Sega Saturn game Burning Rangers, and the following news topics:

There’s also reader feedback and the Question of the Week: What do you look for first in a game’s bullet-point features? Also, check out some of the outtakes after the show ends.

Retro Gaming: Mega Man 9 Get’s Flicker and BugsRetro Gaming: Mega Man 9 Get’s Flicker and Bugs

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.