Quoting: damarrin

Quoting: BladePupper

Quoting: legluondunetNintendo is an innovative company and produces user-friendly games, switch emulators must be costing them a lot of money.

I'm mostly curious as to how nintendo has innovated in the past decade and even since the release of the switch. Also yes bleem was definitely a thing and its legal precedent is still massively important.

The Switch was a huge innovation in itself. The Steam Deck is a complete rip off of that, as are all the Aya and other devices. Add to that that they make the best games and they don't need to be innovating any more in the near future.

I agree BTW they're a backwards and customer hostile company, but it's their IP and they can do anything they want with it.

In what way is the Steam Deck a ripoff of the Switch? It can't be the joycons, because the Deck doesn't have that. It can't be the controls-on-either-side-of-the-screen layout, because that's a long established form factor. It can't be the concept of running "big screen" software on a "small screen" device, because the Nomad already did that for consoles a million years ago, and laptops have been doing that for PC for a long time as well.

Really, handheld gaming has been chasing couch/desk gaming since its inception. It's just that now mobile computing technology has started to catch up. All Nintendo really did was skip the console this gen, and instead enable their handheld to plug into a TV.

Given their dominance in the handheld gaming market, and the fact that they had already gotten out of the console horsepower arms race two generations ago, it was a smart decision, and by all accounts well executed, but I really don't think it was a "huge innovation."

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: poiuzIf we were talking about GPLed software you'd be whining about how immoral this behavior is. It's the copyright's owner privilige to decide how anything is released. This is true for Free & proprietary software.

If you don't like Nintendo, why are you buying stuff from them & support their "anti-consumer" behavior?

The purpose of copyright isn't to protect some "god-given" right to control "intellectual property," it's to incentivize contributing to society by guaranteeing a good faith opportunity to profit from one's work. It's entirely reasonable to question how well copyright achieves this, and to scrutinize how individual owners use their copyright.

Like jarhead was saying, I already have hardware that would be perfectly capable of running their games. If they won't sell me their games without strings attached (buying redundant hardware), then I would argue they aren't really using their copyright in good faith.

If a bunch of hobbyists are able to meet a demand in their spare time, for free, better than a large, wealthy corporation, then the profit motive has failed, and the system should be re-evaluated. In the mean time, it is ethical to resort to alternative means. No one should be able to lay claim to a market they choose not to pursue.

As for the GPL, I have no idea what parallel you're even trying to draw. The entire concept of copyleft is to use copyright against itself to "hack" freedom into a system that would otherwise tend to restrict it, and would be unnecessary if copyright didn't exist in the first place.

And I don't buy stuff from Nintendo, because I think they're doodie-heads.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

If Nintendo released their games on PC, they'd sell like hotcakes. Their brand is so strong, they probably wouldn't even need to go through Steam. It's an untapped goldmine that Nintendo actively chooses to leave on the table. Why the hell would I feel bad for them when people resort to unofficial means? It's the only option they've been provided!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: CyrilI just hope there will be a AUR package...

There already is, named "soh". I've only used the appimage myself, so I don't know where it wants you to put the rom, or where it stores the otr generated from it (you need delete it so it'll generate a fresh one after major updates).

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Duke 3D is interesting because apparently it's the original Atomic Edition with all the old expansion packs that you can't get anywhere else, and not Gearbox's World Tour version with altered and missing content. Looks like this is also the only place you can get the 2D games now, too.

I've only looked at a few other games, but it sounds like they might be putting in a bit more effort than GOG as well. The reviews for Incoming report better performance than GOG, and Normality advertises both UK and US versions of the voiceovers (GOG requires a community patch for US).

Who knows, maybe they can fill a niche that GOG has shifted focus away from.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Craggles086Flippfly, who developed Race the Sun
are working on a game, Wisker Squadron
which is also inspired by Star Fox.

The demo they had available earlier this year was extremely rough. Not just stuff like unfinished sound design, the core gameplay didn't feel so great. They also decided to add Everspace-style "free-roam" levels out of nowhere for some reason, which I don't think complement the game at all.

We'll see how it turns out when it's done, but my hopes have been lowered, unfortunately.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ixnariGreat, more unneeded cruft. On a related note, check out the Steam curator named Denuvo Games [External Link]. Their list of games that use and games that have stopped using Denuvo is pretty extensive. With this, I imagine the list is going to get much, much bigger.

PCGamingWiki [External Link] also lists it, along with loads of other technical info. I always check a game's PCGW entry for potential bullshit before even thinking of buying from one of the bigger publishers.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: fleskI think nostalgia is the primary reason why everyone's being so critical of this new style.

Or, y'know, they just don't like it. I have no nostalgia for the franchise and I think it looks like ass. You can disagree, but stop using this fallacious argument to try to invalidate anyone who feels differently than you.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Termy

Quoting: NexxticCalling them lazy is disrespectful, in my opinion.

It wasn't meant to be disrespectful, sorry for that! I guess my wording wasn't perfect - I'm aware that sprites can be a whole lot of work, it's just that (at least thats my impression) sprites seem to be THE current way of "doing retro" and it feels "lazy" to jump on the bandwagon and go with it. That doesn't mean it's a bad game or no work is put into it (i love project warlock and poke around GZDoom now and then, so i'm not totally against this ^^), it's just that i tend to get "fed up" with trends like straight pixel art, low poly or sprites if the games don't put a "new spin" on it. That can be something like kingdom: two crowns combining pixel art with modern reflections or like selaco seemingly including above average amount of anmiation-steps. Of course some things are more noticable than others and videos often doesn't do it justice, but it can quickly feel like "more of the same". Project Warlock or Ion Fury are great games with a lot of attention to detail - but the first impression (at least graphically) isn't blowing me away so to speak.

I will totally try the demo and in general love oldschool FPS - my post was more a general mini-rant about repeated trends in artstyle and not directly targeted at selaco. Should have made that more clear i guess ^^

Ion Fury blows me away visually. Prodeus looks like mud. Very shiny mud.

Fancy effects like specular highlights and normal mapping are neither necessary nor sufficient for a game to look good. Design is what's important, not technology.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I think I've come to realize something. The appeal of GOG was never really about DRM per se, it was about opposing industry bullshit. DRM just happened to be the primary, most egregious form of bullshit back in the day. Over time, big publishers continually pushed the envelope. Expansions became DLC became microtransactions became loot boxes and battle passes. DRM became "live services." AAA gaming is a cyclone of bullshit now, but GOG has remained focused only on DRM. They're no longer a bastion against industry bullshit, just one specific kind of bullshit. If my only options are "full bullshit" on Steam, or "reduced bullshit" on GOG, then what's the point? I'll just buy neither. :/

View this comment - View article - View full comments