Quoting: slaapliedjeIt really was down the the shady practices of Nintendo. First they made any developers be exclusive with their whole "Nintendo Approved" licensing nonsense that'd fire off any anti-monopoly people's emotions! Second thing they did is convince retailers that they had to have a minimum of space for the NES or they wouldn't allow them to be sold there...

A far cry from the situation in the UK, which was like a bizarre inversion of that - Nintendo UK had a thoroughly hopeless distributor who had high prices and high minimum orders, and who wouldn't sell to certain stores, whereas Sega UK's distributor (which, if I'm remembering right, was born out of the old publisher Mastertronic) would sell to anyone and also priced their goods lower. This resulted in Nintendo being literally unknown throughout about half of the UK (which lasted until about the mid-to-late 1990s - they finally made inroads during the later days of the SNES, which remains my favourite home-console ever), and the market did the rest naturally.

Still, interesting times - the fierce competition that it led to in all countries resulted in some truly fantastic games, many of which still hold up today, and I can't quibble with that.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeKind of seems to me the only 8bit Sega game that gets a lot of respect is the first Phantasy Star. But there were so many great games on the system. Also Ultima IV on it is arguably the best looking / greatest version of the game.

Yeah, there was just so much good stuff for the 8-bit Sega systems, but because they never made an impact in the US we don't seem to hear very much about them anymore.

There were a lot of great Disney licensed games for the Game Gear and Master System during that era, too, all completely different from the Mega Drive installments even in cases where the names were shared (such as Castle of Illusion, which, incidentally, got more 8-bit sequels than 16-bit ones - great little series); As with the 8-bit Sonics, sometimes the Game Gear and Master System would differ on these between themselves, with different cutscenes and level-layouts and so on. Asterix (just plain Asterix, not any of the "Asterix and [Whatever]" sequels) was superb as well, but sadly almost forgotten nowadays. There were two completely different versions of Tom & Jerry: The Movie (if you liked one, then the other was almost like an expansion), which were based more on the cartoons than the film. Then there was Fantasy Zone Gear, which isn't really a port or conversion of the other titles in that series, but its own pocket-sized installment. And all of the arcade conversions like Pengo, Wonder Boy, and suchlike... I personally found all of these to be more solid than their 16-bit equivalents - they had some really good outside studios contracted to work on the 8-bit output. (I like platformers a lot, which no doubt shows here. There were a lot on offer that I spent many happy hours with.)

I could go on, but then we'd be here all day and all night! Time to fire up RetroPie on my GPD Win Max, I think!

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I'm not 100% sure if the game will be my sort of thing (I'll have to give the demo a look), but supporting the bees is a Very Good Thing!

Uncanny timing with this one, actually - it's been unseasonably cold, so I've had to put out the occasional saucer of sugar-water for bees who've crashed out due to the flowers blooming later than usual, lately, which thankfully got them on the move again. Support your local bees, everybody!

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Quoting: subI remember as a kid Sonic on the MD/Genesis looked just awesome.
The whole cool aesthetics and clever use of the available colour palette, the level design and the fast gameplay.
Yet, when I first played it, it was basically no fun (for me).
I can't even tell why, but the Mario games were always the by far better platformers for me judging by the gameplay.

Try the Game Gear Sonic titles, instead (Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Sonic Chaos, Sonic Triple Trouble, and the cute-and-cuddly miniature Metroidvania, Tails Adventures, are the ones that are worth a look; Sonic Blast, Sonic Labyrinth, and Tails' Sky Patrol aren't so great). If the size of the Game Gear viewport doesn't suit, there are also Master System versions of the first three, which feature some slightly different bosses, and occasionally also slightly different visuals, music, and level-names.

Though the 8-bit Sega consoles were really popular in countries like the UK and Brazil, their Sonics are usually inexplicably left out of these sorts of "Origins" collections in spite of being just as much a part of the series' origins as the much-vaunted 16-bit titles are. It's weird - it's like only some regions' gaming history is being preserved, now.

The 8-bit Sonic games have more layers to their gameplay, like exploring the normal stages (as opposed to being warped to a special stage) to find the hidden Chaos Emeralds (necessary pick-ups for the true ending in most of the games), more interesting uses of pipes (some games allow you to traverse short mazes and others use them during boss-fights; They're just one-way automatic features in the 16-bit games), and one-off curiousities like navigating a narrow underwater maze filled with sharp things whilst stuck in a large bubble and exclusive items like rocket-boots and mobile pogo-springs, and the bosses were similarly unusual and imaginative too - all stuff that the 16-bit titles never touched. The only 16-bit installment that came close to this was Sonic CD (a game which cleverly acknowledges that the world isn't built around the unique abilities of the protagonist, and which therefore expects players to carefully moderate their use of them until they discover the correct place to leverage them to jump through time and destroy evil items in the past to prevent a bad future), which, probably not coincidentally, was referenced ahead of its release via a stage theme in the 8-bit Sonic 2 being an instrumental version of the vocal theme-song from the Japanese and PAL versions of Sonic CD.

I'm not saying that the 16-bit titles are bad, by any means - just that the 8-bit versions employed more creativity to make up for having less flashy hardware at their disposal. They're quite interesting (and remain my preference of the two even after all these decades) - if you like 2D platformers, check them out!

Quoting: Purple Library GuyTrademarks have that particular thing where I'm not sure if they ever expire out of sheer duration, but they have to be actively maintained. You have to keep on using the trademark, and you have to get on people's case if they try to use it. If the courts conclude you haven't given a damn about the trademark for too long, you lose it.

Interestingly enough, according to the USPTO TESS, Sega abandoned the original "Sonic The Hedgehog" trademark in 1993, at the height of the series' success (this came prior to multiple efforts in the mid-to-late 1990s to replace Sonic with the likes of Ristar and NiGHTS, which is presumably related).



I guess that this is why they instead market it as "Sonic the Hedgehog" nowadays, without the capital "T".

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Not a lot for me in this one, but I hope that we'll see more bundles like this going forward - they'd be a good fit for my Xubuntu-powered GPD Win Max, as well as for the Steam Deck.

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I use your Humble and GOG links whenever possible (I grabbed Duck Game via your recent report on it being patched to run better under Proton), and I need to get some more stuff from the GOL merch store soon, too - hopefully that'll send a bit more your way!

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Congratulations to ConcernedApe on this massive milestone!

Quoting: kokoko3kDoes the developer earn at least a dollar from each sale, yes?

And hopefully also from the official merchandise from Fangamer and Sanshee, too.

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Wishlisting this one - looks like it's right up my alley!

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One of my all-time favourites in this very broad subgenre is currently in this sale, so I have to give it a shout-out: Blazing Beaks.

It's a cute-and-weird roguelite twin-stick (or keyboard-and-mouse) shooter with a neat risk/reward system - treasures give you debuffs ranging from mild to severe, and you then have to mix up how you play in order to cash them in for buffs if you can survive long enough to find a shop. A daily seed with an online leaderboard, a challenge mode, local co-op, and a local deathmatch arena are also available. The gameplay loop feels a bit like a top-down take on Spelunky.

It's £2.99 for this event, and though there's unfortunately no native build, it does run perfectly on Linux using Proton.

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QuoteRemember the days where you could buy tech with clear casing?

Good News: You can still buy tech with clear casings!

Bad News: It's usually only available for use in prisons.

There's an interesting video on that subject here.

Anyway, no Steam Deck here, but this skin looks fab - as does the camouflage one, which reminds me of some of the shells of the NeoGeo Pocket Colour.

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