#they keep getting all the new weird sega games

[dowotdashdotdot]

is there an antonym for cooking bc jesus fuck that was the worst game of SDVX i think ive ever played

server maintenance just started right when i put in my cred so i had to play offline and dear god. the valk was taken so now now im playing a guest game on an old cab and oh my god the springs

it felt like the mushiest mess ever. the right FX button kept ghosting and would make the song select nearly uncontrollable. the knobs? those werent knobs, those were… indescribable

they were both too loose and tight at the same time, they jiggled so much and boy howdy

sdvx cab from hell

passed a 14 tho 👍

[foone]

AAA games? Pfft. Indie games? Double pfft.

I only play games from the alternate history where Hillary Clinton was elected in 2008 and banned all video games. You can only imagine how weird their underground gaming scene is. People like to call unlicensed games "bootlegs" but they've got actual bootlegged games! I've played games about helping your grandmother in hospice care realize she's a lesbian by reading Sappho to her, at 2am in a speakeasy in Baltimore. The cops raided it the next night, hundreds of Gamers were arrested. They posted pictures all over Friendster of the Baltimore PD destroying the arcades with axes.

I nearly got busted once because I was imaging old disks from a 386 and someone tipped off the gaming cops that there was a copy of Commander Keen in there. I had to prove that I didn't know it, I was imaging the disks blind and then indexing them later, and I would of course turn over any contraband to the proper authorities.

I was already on a watch list because I'd been known to have some gamedev-related activities pre-ban. They can't arrest me for making games back in 2007 when it was still legal, but they do want to keep an eye on me since I have the skills to break the law.

Anyway that universe's bootlegs are mainly PC games. Can't really have console games if there hasn't been a console release since the Wii/PS3/360 era. At one point Nintendo threatened to release the Wii SDK so game devs in the US could make unlicensed games, but that didn't happen as there were quickly no functional Wiis left in the US, except for very rare holdouts that never move. PC games are easy to distribute samizdat and hide on a USB stick or CD-R labeled "nickelback".

Japan's games industry is still going, so the later Nintendo and Sony consoles still exist, but Microsoft got out of the business of course. They sold the franchise to Sega who were hoping to release the 360 successor (the Xbox One in our universe) as the Sega Phoenix but it never materialized, either through their own financial incompetence or because of pressure from the US. There's a lot of international treaties that the US has pushed "and this aid only goes through if you ban games" clauses into. That would have been an official UN resolution if the USSR hadn't vetoed it. For once, thank God for the security council, eh?

I mainly get my gaming news through Japanese gaming sites (through a set of VPNs, since they're blocked at the border firewall), and some tor onion site run by a weird guy in Minnesota who is obsessed with documenting all the underground US games.

There's a lot being worked on, but it's always a tricky trade off. Too much attention and the police might be able to track down the creators, and it's basically impossible to fund underground games, as the VISA/PayPal etc funds get seized immediately. There's a whole task force for that.

Anyway one of the weirdest differences between our two time lines is that they've gone back and edited out gaming from a bunch of movies. Those that they can, of course. War games was just banned because they couldn't remove the tic tac toe ending. The Net just removed the scene at the beginning where she's playing Wolfenstein 3D, by recording some new screen footage and a new voice over. She's fixing a spreadsheet in the new edition.

(Yes, I've seen The Net from this alternate timeline. On Laserdisc, of course. I'm just that kind of person!)

They even edited Star Wars. You know that scene where R2-D2 is playing holochess with Chewie? They edited it to be a board game instead of holograms, because that made it too "video gamey".

Technically it's not illegal to show gaming in a movie, but it needs to be an 18+ film and you have to show the deleterious effects of gaming and/or the gamesters coming to a bad end.

This has affected films less than you'd think, to be honest. They were never great about showing video games even before they banned them.

Anyway, go have fun playing your AAA games with hundred-million-dollar budgets. I only play indie games made by people under a constant threat of arrest for their art.

[jayessar]

Instead of fully being an annoying boomer loser who isn't happy about the new things, I'll make some sort of a masterpost about cool JSR and JSRF information sources and other neat thingies. Probably will be updated if i find anything else worth including.

So, first of all:

•Official websites for JSR and JSRF. JSRF website has an English version, but it's barely archived and doesn't have much information on it anyway. JSR one is really awesome though, a lot of cool tidbits, character bios(they include one new trivia for some characters ) and game tips!!

•A whole bunch of guidebooks, meaning JSR Perfect Guide, JSRF Perfect Guidebook and the JGR Sybex's Official Strategies & Secrets . Only one of them is in English, but they're still useful for maps and Graffiti Soul collecting. If you can read these then even better lol. Keep in mind, that the JSR Perfect Guide only covers the original Japanese release, which is different from the later one's.

• Sexy as hell manuals for JGR, De La JSR, JSR for GBA and JSRF. Always good to know about these.

•The JSR and JSRF articles on Sega Retro. You probably noticed me linking them for the manuals and whatnot. If you want to find out stuff about these games, this is second best source for it (first one is playing the games lol). But it has some weird statements like saying that Beat is the leader of the GGs, even though it doesn't make any logical sense, and claiming that JSRF is a sequel game, but then also saying that it's not in the actual JSRF article.

It's probably the obvious thing that could've been noted, so now to less obvious one's.

• Jet Set Radio Wiki. Okay, this website had a bad reputation and all and was filled with creepy comments and lies, now it's all good. I swear. New admin didn't just remove all the misinformation, but also regularly writes new articles! Like how we have Ollie King related pages there now(while it's a different game, making a separate wiki for it would be kind of an overkill so it's there). Anyways yeah, it's good now. But still always check the sources! It's good to do no matter where you are.

While these little things suck, they're completely overshadowed by the sheer amount of fucking information included. Scans, art, documentation of which magazine had articles regarding the games and on which page AND EVERYTHING IS WITH SOURCES AND IMAGES. This is really strong and you'll be there for hours just staring in wonder at all this compiled info.

• JSR Archives. This is a community dedicated for archiving and categorising all the stuff JSR related. One of their members was the one who posted the Sybex guide on the internet.(whoahaaa they got a tumblr FOLLOW THEM!!)

• TCRF article on JGR. While this article wasn't updated in quite some time and is missing a whole bunch of stuff (like the leaked prototypes), it's still a very nice read.

• A whole bunch of prototypes. I included only those i consider noteworthy, if you wanna get the other's, they're there as well.

• JSRF Inside. A certified hood classic if we're talking about JSRF modding.

• Best source for JSRF speedrunning information.

• An extremely really detailed playthrough/guide of JSR. Includes cool trivia like regional differences and instructions for character unlocking.

• Less detailed, but still very useful video guide for unlocking all of the secret JSRF characters.

• Playlist of JSR/JSRF music, and anything related to them, like different remixes and stuff. Read the description for more details. It also has a link to a text document containing a lot of cool trivia about the artist featured in the games and other JSR related media.

• Video with all the dialogue and special interactions in JSRF.

• Kind of a joke entry, but also Hideki Naganuma's twitter account is worth checking out. Not his new tweets, but really old one's. In the past he was more involved with the fanbase and shared some neat trivia. Not related to him but one of the Castle Logical ppl confirmed that the lyrics in Mischievous Boy say "chameleon machine" and it fucks me up so much.

• This goofy ass official IGN guide for JSR. Why i didn't put it with the rest of the official guides? Well, the reason is that the writer for this thing, Aki, is a real silly goose and they decided to spice up some of the character descriptions. While these are probably based on some legitimate information, like Beat being from Fukuoka(which was confirmed by a Beat TUBBZ figurine of all things), you can't trust these due to its silliness. Like they gave DJ K a backstory, which just ruins his whole deal AND contradicts the game manual. They also consistently get the names for locations wrong. As a game guide it's pretty good?? You can use it. Just don't go around calling Gum a "brownface girl" after reading it.

That's everything i can remember so far, hope this helps.

[skaruresonic]

“I also think maybe ST is pushing for more overt depictions of Sonic and Shadow's dynamic and offering more explicit explanations of Shadow's character precisely because something about it isn't clicking for people? Like, maybe the problem isn't so much that ST is pigeonholing the two characters as much as it is that they feel the need to dumb it down for the folks who aren't getting it?

I wonder if that’s the main purpose of SXSG. A way to sort of show writers how far Shadow has progressed from his SA2 self so that they’re not stuck thinking his SA2 characterization is all there is to him. A way to sort of explain the mandates they keep putting on him in a clear and concise way that doesn’t make it look so strict as people constantly say they are.

I personally don't believe Shadow mandates exist.

For one thing, it'd be weird to place these supposedly super-strict restrictions on just one character and not any others. While you could argue Shadow's mega-popularity is a reason for his shorter leash, that just invites questions of why they're so protective of him and not Sonic or Eggman. What I believe is happening, instead, is that ST is characterizing Shadow as he's always been, perhaps in a vain attempt to help a bad-faith crowd understand him.

Folks have exaggerated the frustrations of third-party writers (who are not credible sources because of their lack of understanding of the character) via a premade, ad-hoc explanation that gives them the excuse to say "See? Sega doesn't know what they're doing."

There is no hard evidence, no statements from ST, to support the existence of Shadow mandates. The only source we have comes from a Reddit post that recounted a story secondhand and created the concept of the mandates from pure conjecture.

---

I wonder if that’s the main purpose of SXSG. A way to sort of show writers how far Shadow has progressed from his SA2 self so that they’re not stuck thinking his SA2 characterization is all there is to him.

It could be. But then that begs the question of why spend all this time and resources spelling things out for people when you could craft an entirely new adventure for Shadow and show them how he's moved on that way. He spent three to four games moving on from the events of SA2; do we really need another nail in this coffin? Because that bad boy was already shut pretty tight.

It's a weird feeling too, being an Adventure fan and getting sick of constant lukewarm Adventure-era rehashes. At this point I'm completely immune to the hype. Like diminishing returns or something.

[gstdaisuki]

Part 2: A Discovery with Paul Hutchinson

In the middle of asking some questions via email, Paul discovered the source files for several modules that we had both assumed were lost. This was quite an exciting moment, so I wanted to share it separately.

the previous interview was formatted to remove the interleaved blocks of quoted text. this is presented in a more raw format, as I think that shows the discovery process better.

from anosci, Mar 11, 2024, 7:01PM

I had some more music questions.

The first two X-Men games had 33 and 45 RPM options for all of the music. Do you remember how that made it into the game? Because after hearing your tales of pirate radio and record shop digging, I feel pretty confident that this speed-select design was your idea!

Also, you previously shared the Amiga modules from X-Men 3, before the conversion to Game Gear data. I believe that X-Men 3 was your final Game Gear game. Was the "Amiga -> MIDI data" technique a new process, or did you do that for every preceding Game Gear game?

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 11, 2024, 8:51PM

Yes, the 33/45 rpm option was my idea. :) Ed liked it. He keeps saying we should do a game together again, "before we die". And he said it should have a retro flavour, and have weird dance music in it. Maybe one day we will do that, I am up for it. (I am considering doing a Pico-8 title at some point here.)

Hmm. I don't think X-Men 3 was the only Amiga to MIDI data music I did. However, I don't remember when the cross-over was. I would have to go back and check over everything. I'll have a quick look and let you know if I actually find out, eh.

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 11, 2024, 9:12PM

Ok, so I checked the ASM files. X-Men 1-3 all have music derived from Amiga MOD files. There is text denoting the MOD title, and names of the samples which were used in the MOD. If you are interested in more on that I can dig a bit more, and get you those names. They are samples from records I had at the time (Art Of Noise, Linx, etc.). Obviously, the Game Gear instruments were not the same sound.

from anosci, Mar 11, 2024, 10:12PM

I'm curious, at least! I'd love to hear the original MODs but I assume you were only able to find X-Men 3

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 12, 2024, 9:04AM

Music! …

Ok, this is getting interesting. I see "babybeat" in the list of MODs used in X-Men 1. I found a playlist on YT with 10 tracks. In the menu of the game there are 8 tracks to preview. Track 10 on the playlist is 08 on the menu. Given the heartbeat type sound I hear, that is the most likely candidate for "babybeat". Obviously, since there are 10 tracks in the playlist, and there are 10 references to MOD in the code, all of the tunes in the code were used in the game. Now I am not certain about the connection of this particular tune to "Midnight (Live)" by Orbital. It could be that it is another track that I posted, because I posted quite a few. Hmm. It's what my memory says, but I could be wrong? In any case, it means that "babybeat" as a MOD was transferred from Amiga to PC. There is a chance I have it on the CD from 1999. I just need to find that, again. The MODs do sound quite different from the GG tunes, because it is samples vs sound-chip noises. I just tried to make something that sounded good enough when converted to GG format. There are no samples, for one thing, and the tempo is different. I had made some tunes on my Amiga, and then decided to present them as potential tracks for X-Men 1, and they were accepted (for subsequent X-Men titles I made tracks specifically, as denoted by the titles of the MODs). Normally, Sega would have a musician compose tracks for a game (in MIDI).

In-browser play of X-Men https://archive.org/details/gg_X-Men_1993_Sega Key 1 to start, arrow keys to navigate, and left-CTRL to play tune

Silence = 00

X-Men playlist, 10 tracks, (at 45 RPM?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUmRxFtMhfI&list=PLw5ZGhvK7sSLqfx4HdldmkLPdFpM3pqFY Track 1 = 01 Track 4 = 02 Track 6 = 03 Track 5 = 04 Track 7 = 05 Track 3 = 06 Track 2 = 07 Track 10 = 08

So, Track 8 and Track 9 (in the playlist) are not playable via the GG menu. Hmm. Title Screen and Ending Theme. Maybe we left off the Ending Theme because it was supposed to be a reward for finishing? Unless you just get it anyway, at Game Over (I do not recall). The Title Screen theme is just there. Oh, well.

In X-Men 1 … ;MOD Title is: renaissancegg Samples = adamski2.raw ;chahihat.raw ;ahh.raw ;drum7 ;19hat ;tr909snare ;bassdeep.raw ;minor4 ;MOD Title is: babybeat Samples = shaker ;animate-bass ;aon-bongo1.raw ;GGbdrum.raw ;AoN-drm3.raw ;moog2 ;drumwack.raw ;SoSbass1.raw ;SoSstring2.raw ;SRdrm2.raw ;CHAhihat.raw ;MOD Title is: outgg Samples = drum7 ;BHbass1.raw ;BHbass2.raw ;cymbal-crash ;chahihat.raw ;crash.raw ;jb-hhmed.raw ;hypnobass.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;BHacid2.raw ;BHacid3.raw ;out_there.raw ;MOD Title is: itchgg Samples = linxvox.raw ;AoN-perc1.raw ;AoN-drm5.raw ;AoN-drm3.raw ;dancer-vox.raw ;dancer-synth1.raw ;scratch.raw ;KRAYScratch.raw ;cymbalong.raw ;hihat1 ;organ.raw ;drumanvil.raw ;MOD Title is: fishgg Samples = Freq5.raw ;crash.raw ;DT4AAdrum2.raw ;DT4AAdrum.raw ;Freq1.raw ;SBpiano2.raw ;cymbalong.raw ;model500-cymop.raw ;futuresnare2 ;wavehi.raw ;N-JOImindflux.raw ;MOD Title is: trouzgg Samples = DT4AAdrum.raw ;hihat1 ;DT4AAbass2.raw ;2U-4.raw ;hihatop1 ;DT4AA6.raw ;zoo7.raw ;where'smytrousers.raw ;zoo8.raw ;ere.raw ;yaseenem.raw ;theretheyare.raw ;MOD Title is: joygg Samples = N-JOImf1.raw ;N-JOI-5.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;N-JOI-2.raw ;JBdrum2.raw ;N-JOIrz1.raw ;N-JOIrz2.raw ;N-JOIrz3.raw ;jb-hhmed.raw ;MOD Title is: ramgg Samples = N-JOIph1.raw ;aon-drm5.raw ;model500-cymop.raw ;model500-cymcl.raw ;model500-clap.raw ;drumwack.raw ;2U-6.raw ;hold ;hold (offset tone) ;MOD Title is: turbogg Samples = beep1.raw ;beep2.raw ;beep3.raw ;beep4.raw ;gunshot ;2U-3.raw ;chahihat3.raw ;spliffclap2 ;snare ;stick.raw ;zoo1.raw ;2U-2.raw ;DT4AA6.raw ;MOD Title is: xravegg Samples = EBputv.raw ;JBhitme.raw ;shamen-guitar1.raw ;shamen-guitar2.raw ;SoSbass2.raw ;s&pcots.raw ;mtxpling.raw ;orch.hit ;bassdrum16 ;bassdrum7 ;breaksnareclap ;closehihat ;cymbal-crash ;tap.raw

Naming of samples … Adamski, CHA = Crown Heights Affair, AoN = Art Of Noise, BH = Bassheads, JB = James Brown, Linx (David Grant), KRAYScratch is a sample from "The Krays" film ("Stop all that scratchin', you're making me bloody itch!", "Where's my trousers?" is another sample from same, I think), N-Joi, Model 500, Shamen, SoS = S.O.S. Band, zoo = "Zoo Rave" compilation CD, 2U = 2Unlimited, DT4AA = "Don't Techno For An Answer" compilation CD

Bassheads - Is There Anybody Out There Adamski - NRG Model 500 - Sound Of Stereo

In X-Men 2 … ;MOD Title is: level1b Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;MOD Title is: level1 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;aon-vox6.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;MOD Title is: level2 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level3 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level4 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level5 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level6 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level7 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level8 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level9 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;808synth.raw ;amaski1.raw ;N-JOIph1.raw ;BHacid1.raw ;MOD Title is: level10 Samples = bassdrum28 ;animate-bass ;koto ;closedhi ;hihat-2ud2 ;snare25

In X-Men 3 … ;MOD Title is: x3l1 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;BHbass2.raw ;amaski1.raw ;eurostring.raw ;MOD Title is: x3l2 Samples = akaiclosedhh ;bassdrum7 ;snare1 ;hihat-2ud2 ;BHbass2.raw ;amaski1.raw ;eurostring.raw ;MOD Title is: x3l3 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;polysynth ;strings6 ;tubestring ;tricky.raw ;MOD Title is: x3l4 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;shamen-keys.raw ;tttt-bass1.raw ;goodpling ;inner ;funbass ;MOD Title is: x3l5 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;animate-bass ;sequencer ;pizza2 ;N-JOIph1.raw ;tricky.raw ;MOD Title is: x3l6 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;bassguitar.funk ;digdug ;exbells ;reflex ;MOD Title is: x3l7 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;polysynth ;strings6 ;bell11 ;digdug ;growl2 ;MOD Title is: x3l8 Samples = 909.ophi ;drum7 ;comadrum ;cymbal1 ;comasynth1 ;comasynth2 ;ex800bass ;hitbass ;MOD Title is: x3l9 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;dang ;dbassic.raw ;dbassic2.raw ;d-50.res1 ;d-50.res2 ;d-50.res3 ;d-50.res4 ;d-50.res5 ;junob3 ;sequencer ;synth1 ;MOD Title is: x3l10 Samples = 909.ophi ;hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;koto07 ;bass37 ;Sample10_04 ;perco ;hitbass ;licks ;MOD Title is: x3l11 Samples = hip.snare ;breakdrum ;cymbal1 ;strings3majfl ;sinecz ;shamus ;pling ;tinewave ;synbrass

Probably more info than was necessary, eh. But I learned something! :D

from anosci, Mar 12, 2024, 4:57PM

this is interesting!

First of all, it's rare that game music has titles! They're not quite matched up with the order of the songs in the sound test, but that's still neat to know.

plus it confirms my interpretation that these were rave / dance inspired tunes!

I could believe that 08 in the sound test menu is "babybeat". It has a pretty soft melody, befitting of the title and theme, I think.

This also paints an interesting picture. Tell me if this lines up with your memories:

You had to write the music for Spiderman vs The Kingpin, so you hunkered down and used whatever tools you had.

Then when you learned you had to do the music for X-Men as well, you wanted something easier to work with, 

so you proposed converting the MODs you'd already written.

...and then you stuck with that process for the next two games

>  Unless you just get it anyway, at Game Over (I do not recall).

I checked, and you get the the (presumed?) "babybeat" track at Game Over

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 12, 2024, 8:41PM

Yes, that's about it, as best as I can remember. I got pretty used to ProTracker.

Yes, at Game Over.

I listened to both tracks to try and compare. It's difficult, because the tempo is very different, the waveforms are very different, and the instruments are totally different. I really need to find that disc, because if I can hear my original MOD it will help clarify if my memory is correct.

from anosci, Mar 13, 2024, 12:31PM

I suppose the obvious follow-up question would be: do you remember how you wrote the tunes for Spiderman vs. The Kingpin?

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 13, 2024, 3:07PM

Joergen Bech wrote the sound subroutines, we worked together at Inner Prise (I think he is Swedish). I am pretty sure that the music was just composed using those subroutines. As in, just typing it all up, into the assembler file. It was a bit laborious to say the least. There are no other tools to write the music. I looked at the code, and there is no mention of anything other than the code itself. Less than ideal, eh. But then, I am the type of programmer that will convert a C64 loading screen to an Amstrad loading screen, by typing in all the numbers defining each pixel (and getting it right). I did that for Druid (or Druid II, I forget which). Just brute forced it. I got Firebird to provide a print out of all the numbers for the C64 screen, and I converted them myself, and typed in the Amstrad equivalent. I think I got 250 quid for that, it was not fun, but maybe worth the cash, eh.

For Chakan, there was a composer who provided MIDI files. I wrote a conversion program to convert the MIDI into the format that the sound subroutines could use. Much easier, and I did not have to come up with the music myself.

Then for X-Men I added a MOD to MIDI converter, I think. Then ran that through the MIDI to sound subroutine format.

I am looking through the code some more ...

Breaking news ... I just found a bunch of MOD files inside the Sega > TC > Prog folder. OMG! Stand by for those ... (BabyBeat!)

from anosci, Mar 13, 2024, 6:17PM

Typing music straight into an ASM file was shockingly common back then, so I believe it.

> I just found a bunch of MOD files inside the Sega > TC > Prog folder.

!!!!

excitedly but patiently waiting to hear these!

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 13, 2024, 7:43PM

Hallelujah! :D

Okay, we have the original pre-conversion MOD files for X-Men 1 & 2. They are not the original MOD files. These have been modified to fit the conversion process, in order to get a decent sounding composition on the Game Gear. I have removed some samples from being played, even though they are probably still included in the sample set. I have substituted some samples for others, in order to get a better result. However, you do get a decent idea of how it all worked. This might be as close as we can get, but I will keep looking, eh. I also included some MODs that were in the same folder, but are not mine. A couple from the "Jesus On E's" Amiga demo, as well as the "Coma" demo. Figured you might find them interesting too. I might have borrowed samples from those MODs to make my own.

I have to say I was quite emotional when I saw those MODs in the Turbo-C++ folder. Never expected them to be there this whole time. Hearing "Babybeat" again after all these years. Man. Thanks for getting me to look into all this, I would not have known they were there otherwise. Cheers! :)

3 attachments:

Xmen-Extras.7z

Xmen2MODs.7z

XmenMODs.7z

from anosci, Mar 13, 2024, 9:52PM

I cross-referenced the songs with the titles as they appear in smspower.com (here and here)

X-Men baby    -> Mandripoor fishgg  -> Brood Cave itchgg  -> The Savage Land joygg   -> Boss outgg   -> Morlock Tunnel ramgg   -> Game Over renaiss -> The Hellfire Club trouzgg -> Avalon turbogg -> Ending xravegg -> Title

X-Men 2 level1 -> Arctic level1b-> The Danger Room level2 -> The Hellfire Club level3 -> Genosha level4 -> Avalon level5 -> Egyptian Base Part 1 level6 -> Egyptian Base Part 2 level7 -> Stryfe's Moon Base level8 -> Boss level9 -> Ending level10-> Title

critically speaking, I think most of these start with a solid idea that then gets a bit buried. but it's an amazing piece of context. a lot of the rave timbre was lost in the gamegear conversion. it's amazing to hear it put back, so to speak!

I can see why you fondly remembered babybeat. I think that might be your strongest tune here. that and "OUTGG" (or at least, those two are my favorites)

I love seeing that you got something cool out of my barrage of questions and curiosity, too :)

digging around some more... "JOYGG" is an odd one: the pitch bends didn't transfer to the Game Gear. though I'm not sure my own playback is accurate... there's a lot of out-of-key samples that sound fine after the Game Gear conversion. Strange.

comparing babybeat to orbital's "Midnight (Live)"... the two have a similar push-pull rhythm rhythm in the bass, but I wouldn't call them the same. 

though I could easily imagine the similarities causing a fan of one song to raise their eyebrow at the other. 

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 14, 2024, 8:26AM

Cool.

Yeah, the "missing link" MODs do not sound as good as either the originals, or the final GG version.

Oh, and I actually wrote a Pro-Tracker to GG format conversion program (DOS), no in-between conversion. I think there was, at some point, a dual set up, but I decided to make it simpler. The dual set up would have been a legacy from when I had to write a MIDI to GG format, for Chakan. I only have the final set of tools in my Turbo-C++ directory, none of the tools I used previously.

I agree with your assessment of the tune similarity. I think at some point I got it into my head they were more similar, and then that just became what I remembered. I am getting older too, so that is a factor. I am only human after all.

from anosci, Mar 14, 2024, 7:02PM

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right? ;)

from Paul Hutchinson, Mar 14, 2024, 8:39PM

Well, I am kind of big on telling the truth, tbh. I do acknowledge that I can (and do) get things wrong though. I remember when I was a kid, I swore that the words on a TV advert were "It's full of peppery goodness", when in fact, it was "It's full of Cadbury goodness" (the ad was for Cadbury's Finger of Fudge). I really believed that was what it said, and it did not matter what everyone else said it was. I was honest about my position, I was just completely and totally wrong. :D

[blazehedgehog]

I heard some weird allegations that Ian Flynn supposedly lied about mandates from Sega which in reality were just his preferences or something? Maybe these rumors are what sparked some hate on him?

We're on the internet and anybody can say anything. Unless this is coming from a source I know and can trust, this is meaningless to me. You could say "I've heard rumors that Ian Flynn wears a hotdog hat, which is a hat made out of hotdogs" and it would have the same effect.

One thing being on the internet for a long time has taught me, and in particular being on the borders of proper games media "journalism" (if you want to call it that) is that people can and do misinterpret things all the dang time. A person will connect the dots in their head and think it makes so much sense but be miles and miles and miles away from the real (and often very boring) reality.

I've talked about how sometimes I would be the "the hoax-buster" for TSSZ, somebody who would come in and explain why rumors were fake or whatever -- and more often than not the thing that stuck out the worst was plain ol' sensationalism. When a fan makes up a fake rumor or hoax, they always shoot for the moon, with the spiciest takes, most outrageous gameplay features, or the most dramatic rumors. Because that's what we want real life to be like. We always want the story to be interesting enough to be worth telling.

A hotdog hat makes for a much more stimulating story than if he just wore a baseball cap, after all.

I've also run in to more than one person who is so deep inside their own conspiracy over who they think Ian Flynn secretly is that they believe all kinds of weird, outrageous, nonsensical stuff. Maybe because they're gullible, maybe they have a bad actor feeding them false information, or maybe because it's confirmation bias and they blame him for "ruining" something about Sonic the Hedgehog and the related comics he is associated with.

For a man who wants to keep his job, lying and favoring his ego isn't a great way to maintain paying gigs. People may rebuke "isn't that what Ken Penders did?" but...

It took ages before it truly became a problem (early Penders stories are "fine").

Ken was eventually fired (something I recall he himself saying was "a long time coming.")

The fact that Ian Flynn's talents seem to be in significantly more demand and he keeps moving up in the world, compared to Ken "I've spent the last decade orbiting around a single self-published graphic novel that still isn't done yet" Penders says a lot.

But hey, I do believe weirdos will get riled up over misinformation, if that's what you want me to say. Entire 24/7 news networks have built billion-dollar industries out of such things.

[joker2019]

some stuff I'd want in a new jet set radio game:

- expand on the open zone type of style that future had, make it even more expansive, while still having the arcade styled missions from the original

- have customizable settings for controls, I think this would be a great way to fix more finicky control issues that the past games have had

- new character designs are a given if we're going by the leaks, but I think it would be awesome to be able to switch between new/future/original designs. I would kill to be able to play as yoyo with his original design

- make the radio station itself more dynamic with segments in between songs with dj professor k talking, maybe about events that are going on in the game. I think that would be fun. the radio station is such an important part of the game

- speaking of the radio get naganuma on the soundtrack obviously. 2mello would be a great pick as well. I would love the OST to be similar to the other games but with some modern twists. I think the series' funk, techno, hip hop, shibuya kei and so on roots is important to keep in mind when making the OST. in terms of more modern stuff hyperpop and trap could be fun picks. just make sure all the songs are weird and not boring. also in terms of the music player in the GGs base please please please put a shuffle feature in there

- a more customizable GG's base would be really fun and tie into the game's themes of self expression. also expand on the graffiti designer and make importing image files for graffiti easier

- if they end up making this a game as a service model like rumored I will hunt you down sega

I'll reblog with more ideas if I think of them

[channeleven]

The History of Sonic’s Schoolhouse

Sonic’s Schoolhouse is an enigma. While educational games based on popular video game icons aren’t uncommon, they happen to be the weirdest offerings in their respective franchises. Sonic’s Schoolhouse needs no introduction, all we know is that it’s a weird Sonic game that served as an inspiration for Baldi’s Basics.

But there is one thing nobody ever really looked into. Why does this game exist, and what led to it? Tying together what info I could find through basic searches, hopefully I can offer an explanation.

History

The year is 1996, the Saturn is SEGA’s principal console at this point, and they were without a mainline game for their flagship franchise, due to stress and other factors halting the development of Sonic X-Treme, but that’s a tale told by someone who’d know more about it than I do. They managed to keep the series afloat with auxiliary titles like a remake of Sonic 3D Blast, the compilation Sonic Jam and a dumpster fire of a racing game.

So SEGA’s goal at this point was to keep the property relevant, and it seems they would take any offer they could at the time. Two of the three games I mentioned were outsourced to Traveler’s Tales, so it seems they were willing to experiment in order to clip along. It seems this game was among those experiments, and given it never landed on SEGA hardware it was likely they had nothing to lose.

Major gaming franchises are no stranger to edutainment, albeit, gaming franchises that appeal to young and old like Mario, Rayman and Sonic. At the time, a combination of both would be beneficial. They could throw a stake into the edutainment market and gain new fans who’d be enticed to check out the mainstream counterparts, and be used by parents and maybe teachers to educate people. A win-win as far as anyone’s concerned.

With the exception of Rayman Brain Games, these kinds of edutainment titles would be outsourced to third-party developers while the first party would continue to develop yet to be new installments to the main series. Outsourcing is used as a cost-cutting measure by bigger publishers, so without any competition among developers it’s anyone’s game to get involved with edutainment titles. But when you take into account Sonic’s Schoolhouse’s developers have quite a limited backlog that goes well against what was asked of them here, you’d have to question if SEGA just wanted something done as quickly and cheaply as possible.

We’ll get back to SEGA in a while, for now, I wanna go into the developers.

The game’s development is credited to two studios, BAP Interactive and Orion Interactive. Both companies were only involved in two games, this included, but their other titles are more adult, with the former’s being a game based on a horror slasher movie, and the latter’s being an adult mystery game. These developers are different, but they all share one connection, two men by the name of Brad Krevoy and Steve Stabler.

For the uninformed, these are two unknown game developers, but no, they are fairly known… in the film industry. Krevoy and Stabler ran a production company known as Motion Picture Corporation of America, dedicated to more unconventional independent films, but they do have some notable titles to their name.

They produced classics like Dumb and Dumber, Bio-Dome, Dracula 3000 and Kingpin, as well as disasters like Bloodwings: Pumkinhead’s Revenge. You may be thinking, well of course this game turned out bad, they have no experience with game development and this is starting to sound like a front. Well yeah, they didn’t develop games, they just helped publish them.

MPCA managed a video game label in the mid-90s, mainly joining the then thriving FMV market with games based on their own movies, well two of them, Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead’s Revenge and Soldier Boyz (whose game is an early directorial role for Darren Aronofsky if you could believe it.) The former game, was developed by Sonic’s Schoolhouse’s other developer BAP Interactive, or Bruce Austin Productions for a fuller identity.

Bruce Austin had no experience with game development before Bloodwings, but simple programing tricks would suffice as long as you make a functional game. What sufficed at the time was a DOOM-like corridor with basic sprites, secondary 3D environments and other cosmetics. Though Bloodwings sucked, by then Krevoy and Stabler had access to a functional game engine.

So, BAP provided the engine for Sonic’s Schoolhouse, along with other details I will address later on. But where does Orion come into play? First things first, just want to make it clear that this was during Orion’s pre-bankruptcy period. You may be thinking this was an experiment by Orion to expand into new mediums, but through a stroke of bad luck were only able to land trashy titles, and you’d be wrong.

It was important I brought up Krevoy and Stabler, because they actually became co-presidents of Orion after the latter’s parent company Metromedia acquired MPCA in 1996, the same year Sonic’s Schoolhouse would hit the scene. MPCA’s gaming label would be temporarily replaced with that of Orion Interactive. It checks out, Krevoy and Stabler are listed as producers in the game’s credits.

So to sum up, BAP Interactive produced the game’s engine, while it was funded through Krevoy and Stabler via Orion Interactive. To also clarify, MPCA’s last game title Soldier Boyz was released in 1997, the same year Krevoy and Stabler were removed from Orion upon its sale to Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

Before we go on, let’s discuss unused assets. Supposedly, the game was gonna be something entirely different, featuring a talking clock as the main character and the game being called Answer Hunt. Based on portions of the gameplay, I can see where the connection lies. I imagine Answer Hunt was scrapped early into production due to most assets not really fitting with what it could’ve been.

Now for how SEGA got involved in this. I’d like to mark an important distinction between SEGA and SEGA Entertainment. The latter was a short-lived edutainment subsidiary, otherwise made as an off-shoot to handle the publication of this game. A key figure behind this label was Greg Suarez, who had previously and afterwords worked on two titles for Delphine Software International, Fade to Black and Shaq-Fu.

Either he had little funds to procure bigger developers to work with him, or he was willing to take whatever pitches were offered. Orion very likely got to Suarez first, and after landing a successful pitch worked to reconvert what they had to fit the Sonic essence. One obvious factoid is that it uses assets from the cancelled Sonic X-Treme. As this was developed at an in-house SEGA studio, it was easy to obtain these. It is easy to determine which assets were provided, and which were made by BAP/Orion, like, really easy.

The limited educational games owed to what they had completed at that point, hunting for answers… to math and counting problems, and combined it with Sonic elements like ring collecting and owing to Krevoy and Stabler’s background in FMVs, educational videos relating to animals. For the title screen, call it something made on short notice.

Why was Sonic played by a girl even though he had a male voice in the cartoons? Simple, the cartoons are not cannon to the game, so Sonic’s main voice hasn’t been determined at that point. They probably had the actor on hand, so they worked with what they had. The dialog is specific enough to imply so anyways, especially with the talking clock detail.

Anything else can be owed to the mild experience the programers had, trying to make something cartoony, but minimal experience in model work leads to some unintentionally creepy results.

Conclusion

And there’s an idea for why Sonic’s Schoolhouse came to be. It looked to be an experiment helmed by an off-shoot SEGA subsidiary who wanted something as cheap and quick to produce as possible, allegedly, and accepted a pitch by a third party developer. It never saw a release outside of the PC, so SEGA themselves would not face any drawback (if not it’s a misunderstanding on par with DICE and their former Canadian subsidiary in regard to the development of Shrek).

No longer seeing the benefit of educational titles, SEGA never bothered to try it again. Sonic’s Schoolhouse continued to float around with a budget re-release by Expert Software, who also handled Sonic & Knuckles Collection and PC re-releases of Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic CD and that dumpster fire of a Sonic racing game previously released for Saturn.

So now let’s do a little “where are they now?” bit.

Greg Suarez left the gaming industry after this game was released, returning only in 2014 to aid in producing a Halloween special made by Lloyd Kaufman. Bruce Austin had taken up cinematography as late as 2011, and interesting fact, he served as an on-line editor for two movies Brutalmoose covered time ago, Invisible Dad and My Magic Dog. Yep, Bruce Austin had involvement in b-movies like Krevoy and Stabler.

As for Krevoy and Stabler, both are still active, but have since split. Stabler formed his own production company, but both he and Krevoy would return to produce Dumb and Dummer To. Krevoy is the lone operator of MPCA, and had recently carved a niche for making holiday movies for Hallmark.

Once you take into account the factors behind the development of this game, it puts a lot of things into perspective. It was a cheaply made game made by people with minimal experience with programing, with connections to the b-movie industry.

[sonic100]

Knuckles' Chaotix - 1995 - 32X

One of the last 16-bit games before Sonic Adventure in 1999, Knuckles' Chaotix stands as one of the few games in the entire franchise to not feature Sonic as a prominent character. Instead, we can play as Knuckles, Mighty from SegaSonic the Hedgehog, the Chaotix, and the Metallix. It was intended to be a showcase of the SEGA 32X, but was the only Sonic game released on the platform.

The 100% requirement for this game is; to collect all 6 Chaos Rings and beat the game as any character.

---

After Sonic 3 & Knuckles, with the Master Emerald returned, Knuckles witnesses an island form out of the ocean. He decides to investigate and finds that, as quickly as it popped out of the sea, Eggman has taken it over and built a theme park, dubbed Newtrogic High Zone, using the power from the rings seen throughout the franchise.

Knuckles meets Vector, Espio and Charmy, members of the Chaotix Detective Agency, and Mighty, a lone wanderer and friend of Sonic. They agree to work together to work out the mysteries of the island, all while tearing down Eggmans' park and removing the Ring Energy he was using. Heavy and Bomb, two rogue badniks, also help as the Metallix.

After going through each segment of Newtrogic High, Knuckles fights Metal Sonic, who was fully repaired after CD and Triple Trouble, and fitted with new technology such as a laser cannon in his chest. He gains a super form with the power from one of the Dark Rings Eggman had been using, and transforms into Metal Sonic Kai, a giant red mecha, but is destroyed anyway.

---

This game gets a lot of flack still, which is surprising! It is certainly buggy, but by Sonic standards it's as clean as can be. The chain gameplay, which has you and another character strapped together, at first seems to slow you down, but once you work out how to pull it off, you can go so fast the screen struggles to keep up!

An interesting feature of this game is that the order of progression is very asymmetric. Rather than going through 3 acts in each zone, there are 5 acts in each zone you are sent to in a random order. In addition, the game features a day-night cycle that changes bits of the level layout! It's very cool.

A quick point I'd like to make is that Sonic, Tails and Amy do feature in this game, just not as playable characters. Amy is in the sound test, and Sonic and Tails appear in the credits scene (although Sonic seems to have some weird tan legs here). Also, Metal Sonic Kai makes a partial reappearance in Mania! Just something cool I wanted to mention.

[true-deru]

I couldn't sleep, so I got up early to watch Nintendo's livestream~

A couple things I took away from both streams was....

"I should play Belatro~"

"A dating game where all the products in my house are dateable? That's weird.... Sign me up!" I don't know why I'm surprised. I've played dating games with way more weirder premises than this, but this just looked so cool!

"Coffee Talk Tokyo! I need that!" Honestly, I liked the first quite a bit more than the second one but I'm fully invested in the world of these games, so I'm all for it~

I'm pretty sure I had one of those Castlevania games for my 3DS. I might have to dig that out later, just to see~

Yay! I have a way to play Trails in the Sky now! I loved Cold Steel and I was thinking of grabbing Daybreak but I've heard great things about Sky, I just might have to pick it up!

Okay, what type of Blackmail does Nintendo have on Sega (more specifically, Nagoshi) to get a Yakuza game on Switch?! It's probably going to look terrible, but still! A Yakuza game on Switch! I know Nagoshi isn't with Sega anymore but he was always adamant on keeping the Yakuza games off of Nintendo stuff~ (something about how he views Nintendo consoles more for kids)

.... Also my friend texted me the new Sonic the Hedgehog trailer. I know what I'm looking forward to in December!

[eziojensenthe3rd]

Midnight Gaming: Working Man Roguelikes

So last night I played both Immortal Redneck and Ziggurat past midnight, checked socials later to find....nothing notable to talk about it, though the countdown for the new nintendo direct is up as I write this so maybe I'll talk about something there after.

Ok directs over lets talk now.

Balatro has a crossover with several properties such as witcher, dave the diver, vampire survivors and amogus. Power wash simulator has a shrek crossover where you clean shreks swamp. Star overdrive looked to be cool with you travelling across a planet on a hoverboard. Goat simulator 3 on switch looks choppy and terrible. Stalker trilogy is coming to switch... why. I know these games came to console last year I think but these games are kinda janky on pc, not sure how they ran on xbox or ps5, can assume it'll run like DOGSHIT on switch, should be fun. FGC is eating good since Capcom Fighting Collection 2 is announced and it'll have POWER STONE 1 AND 2 INCLUDED! Never really played those games but i've heard a ton from people who were pining for that series to come back, so thats cool. DS Castlevanias are coming to switch in Dominus collection very cool. Mysims is back in cozy bundle that has the first game and kingdoms included. I enjoyed them for what they were on wii, an attempt to do a chibi sims game. So thats cool. Yakuza Kiwami is ported to switch, thats crazy and weird. Last yakuza game on Nintendo console was the 1 + 2 hd remaster on Wii U and it sold ass, so sega never bothered with yakuza on nintendo for a while. Why they decide to bring Kiwami 1 which is considered questionable in quality for some people and not port zero instead is beyond me.

Ok thats done, lets cover roguelikes

So I decided to a double feature of two games for this post today, talking about a couple of roguelike fps games that I liked. Some folks do reckon that roguelikes are a bit too common nowadays. In fairness, I can see how it may feel like a cheap way to stretch content in a sort of "play it again, it'll be different woooo" vibe but there are cases of games that utilise the randomness well and actually have a compelling base for a game that a roguelike approach adds to. Take Enter the Gungeon and Streets of Rogue for example. Here I'm gonna talk about two Roguelike fps games I played last night.

Immortal Redneck has you playing as a redneck who drove into Egypt and died. And then he became a mummy. So you have three pyramids you need to go in and clear out, each having some bosses you gotta fight and they are scripted bosses so once you figure them out, you can beat them easy. Progress works kinda like Rogue Legacy where you need to spend on passive upgrades and unlocks before you enter as you'll lose all your gold starting each run to prevent you from just banking it.

IR's combat loop of exploring the map and dealing with enemies is nice. The guns do feel punchy though there are some guns that feel more practical and some that feel more gimmicky such as the infinite ammo ankh that doesnt do a whole lot of damage but is infinite which can be helpful if you run out. You get ammo back when enemies drop a blue box or from a chest and there have been a couple times were I was low on ammo so discretion with your aim is important to keep in mind.

You can choose a god from your sarcophagus in the main hub which gives you some different stats, a starting weapon loadout and a power that recharges overtime such as a grappling hook, a decoy or a power that can turn dropped gold into healing items. You can even choose the redneck himself and he has dynamite bundles and an infinite ammo power. Like the game enough, I say give it a go when you find it on sale.

So Ziggurat is another Roguelike with you as a student wizard needing to clear a challenge to graduate. You have 4 magic groups that you can only carry 1 for each, your starting wand which recharges, spells, staffs and an alchemical weapon. Progress in Ziggurat is 5 levels to go through with unlocks tied to score so regardless if you win or die, you'll eventually unlock every perk, character and weapon in the game for the random table to choose from. Another thing to note is that theres multiple endings depending on difficulty and how thorough you go through so if you find the portal key and go straight to the boss then you'll end up with a worse ending.

Speaking of bosses, while IR had scripted bosses, Ziggurat has random bosses which honestly seem more like souped up big versions of the regular enemies that usually tend to spawn in those regular enemies during the battle. The exception is the end boss Cephaus who is the same in every run. You can choose from several characters to start a run with, each having different stats and starting perks such as a vampire that loses health slowly but gains it back from enemies, a cleric who has healing abilities and can't get divine punishment from offering to gods but more enemies spawn for them and etc.

Rooms in Immortal Redneck had some verticality so you do need to platform at times to get to enemies while Ziggurats rooms are mostly flat. Another to note is that each level has a hidden room with a free perk inside that you can find by looking for a cracked wall. Once you notice how all the rooms are layed out in a level, it become trivial to know where to look. Just know that all the rooms are connected via a grid and any spot where a door is likely to be placed will likely have a cracked wall. During your run you'll need to grab knowledge stones dropped from enemies in order to level up so you can select a perk but since they can despawn, you'll often need to run in and grab them during combat.

I liked Ziggurat enough for the variety in the perks and weapons you can get even while the levels are all rather samey. Theres a sequel already out that I should one day try out to see what they've done for that. Another game worth checking out when its on sale.

Thank you for reading this, feel free to leave feedback and game suggestions. Anons are currently on.

[jaythelay]

Really is nuts to think gaming is no longer this boys only, nerds only thing anymore. I can say a title and miles from here I'll hear some nerd excited to find another fan.

Before it'd be drowned out in adults shitting on it and proto-maga types hating the specific game, or christ, politicians. Remember, it wasn't unlikely for R's/Dems to (try and) ban The Simpsons if they wanted to back then.

Don't let people take this away by pretending it was always normalized. It wasn't marilyn manson devil fear mongering, but it felt like everyone wanted to put and then keep it in that space of public consciousness.

Remember that one lawyer? I don't. Jack tomphson? Singlehandeldy normalized gaming to regular people by being Maga about gaming.

You can thank republican-like behavior for one "weird" thing becoming normalized simply by watching them cry at the existence of something they deemed an afront to god without recognizing how ridiculuous they look in comparison.

Gaming is cool because R's tried to kill it. Much like with metal music and DnD before it.

Fact is though, they finally recognized those aren't indentities but hobbies, so of course they switched to minorities. That's why calling them weird works so well.

They are the people who think Rage Against the Machine was conservative afterall. They don't know shit outside their dying farm's bubble. Electricity was considered hipster amongst these outdated ghouls when that time came too, I assure you.

So whatever weird thing you're into? V-tubers? (shame upon thee) Reaction channels? (Believe it or not, straight to hell) Mr. Halo telling you to clean your room? (Do it bro git er dun) guess what's no longer weird?

Ansnthe reason? We've seen R's squirt liquid shit at DnD, spit cum at heavier than normal music. Blow chunks at beating up a virtual prostitute. All of which the device turned off, and the R being covered in all sorts of bodily fluids they themselves exhaled at the existence of something.

Solely because it's a hobby, not an identity, is what caused the shift for R's.

This means...You're Safe.

Go forth! Be fucking weird. Enjoy that dumbass new music genre that I hate in old man. Make yourself an anime gorl while discussing world events. Because the truth is, "who cares" includes you. Do you care enough to try, or do you care about people's opinion enough not to?

You should care enough to try. Because that's why gaming got past every hurdle the world threw at it. Even germany loosened it's Laughable, Embarrassing, Deeply Troubling censorship laws because it was so pathetic to censor art on the grounds of interactivity of digital only content.

What seems insurmountable now will become an innevitability in the future. People speak from hindsight about gaming all the time, but the reality is, much like now, we didn't know if anything would get worse or improve. Gaming could've been an outdated banned topic in all our minds back then.

The only reason it improved, is because we spoke up.

Like...very nerdily and cringely, and very poorly, but by golly we spoke the fuck up.

Now you can play gay furry dating sims. You can thank Me specificially for fostering the genre since ram came in GB. Took aloooot of time sending floppy disks to strangers to start the furry fanbase those decades ago. This is a lie.

Make sure you "discover" that the existence of something doesn't corrupt any, but misinformation unfettered absolutely throughout every second of history most definitely has!

Fuck Republicans and their historical anti-new anything stance. The amount of artistic genre's the world could've lost because some old idiots think frogger makes you murderously gay.

And as a little aside, rememeber when Sega and Nintendo were in court over mature games and Nintenso tried to throw the ENTIRE GAMING INDUSTRY UNDER THE BUS, just to potentially cost Sega some in legal costs? Deadass not even slightly joking go look uo how the ESRB was made and watch Nintendo try to censor and control the industry themselves?

I'ma tired. HHHRRRAGGPHPGHPGGHP

[trustzebra]

E3 day one recap

#E3 DAY ONE RECAP FULL#

#E3 DAY ONE RECAP PC#

#E3 DAY ONE RECAP SERIES#

There are still a few more days left in E3 2021, so stay tuned to Tom’s Guide for all the latest news. Songs of Conquest mixes fantasy city-building with turn-based hex combat.Hello Neighbor 2 looks delightful, weird and a little scary - like the first game.WarTales is a strategy/RPG where a band of medieval mercenaries goes from town to town, taking on quests and getting into scraps.Mario and the Rabbids are joining forces once again in Mario+Rabbids Sparks of Hope Gearbox revealed a behind the scenes look on.

#E3 DAY ONE RECAP SERIES#

Extended scene and teaser for a Far Cry 6 season pass that will put players in control of various series villains.

Lemnis Gate is a hybrid multiplayer shooter/real-time strategy game, where players fight each other asynchronously in 25-second bursts First-look at Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, an immersive, open world game.

Vampire the Masquerade: Swan Song appears to be a third-person adventure game set in the intriguing World of Darkness.

Humankind is a strategic simulation game from Sega, where you build up a human civilization from scratch.

Dodgeball Academia is a dodgeball RPG with a cartoonish art style and a sense of humor.

If you’ve got a gaming PC, keep an eye on these - and even if you don’t, many of them will be out on consoles, too.

#E3 DAY ONE RECAP PC#

You need every bit of the three days the conference takes place.Since we can’t list every single game that showed up at the PC Gaming Show, we did want to take a moment to highlight a handful of other potentially interesting titles. There’s far too much to see in one day, after all. Here’s a brief look at just a few of the coolest booths and structures I spotted today while roaming the floor free time was limited, so more is coming. I can’t yet share some of the titles I saw on the first day, but there were several impressive sights and sounds peppered throughout my sojourn through the holy mecca of gaming on Day 1. It’s always a powerful sight to see those who share such a powerful passion for gaming gathering in one place like this, and so simple to get swept up in the excitement, which I certainly did.

#E3 DAY ONE RECAP FULL#

The momentum from the previous days’ excitement was still chugging ahead at full speed, and gamers of all stripes eager to see more from some of their favorite games milled about at the Los Angeles Convention Center. While most of the year’s biggest announcements actually took place ahead of the show, the energy on the floor was positively electric. The first official day of E3 2019 was a cacophony of sights and sounds. Check back all week to see her dispatches from the trade show, including the coolest upcoming games and big announcements from major developers. We interrupt your normally scheduled podcast to talk about anything and everything that is happening during day one of E3 2021, which includes Rainbow 6 Extraction, Rocksmith+, Rider’s Republic, Rainbox Six Siege, Far Cry 6, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, and Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora. Among expected drops such as the new Tomb Raider trailer and a Just Cause 4. Gaming expo E3 is halfway through, and boy did day two deliver the treats. Popular Mechanics gaming correspondent Brittany Vincent is on the scene this week at the 2019 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. Catapults tear the earth apart as players lay siege to castles, set fire to villages and slaughter filthy peasants in the return of grand Team Objective maps. E3 2018: Here's What Went Down on Day Three.

[trustsports]

Sonic r super sonic racing

#SONIC R SUPER SONIC RACING FOR FREE#

#SONIC R SUPER SONIC RACING TV#

Everybodys Super Sonic Racing, try to keep your feet right on the ground. I really like the setup of this, since it lets you have what is ostensibly a 6-man race without any of the problems of. it is just sitting in the Saturn, my friend is holding a hammer and begging me to let him destroy the disc, I think I will let him. Sonic R is a Racing Game starring the spiky blue speed demon and his friends. Like its parent game Team Sonic Racing, Sonic Racing is a team-based racer, where you and two bot-controlled racers made of iconic Sonic characters go head-to-head against another player’s team of racers.

#SONIC R SUPER SONIC RACING TV#

We went back to the TV, but it showed a picture of the Tails Doll on the screen, and it said, "Thank you for playing with me" The TV then turned off by itself. "I have set the Saturn to do an emergency crash in case you do anything reckless in the game: like tagging four characters." My friend and I were panicking and we checked the box that the game came in. The Saturn immediately began to smoke and pretty much crashed. Then the screen turned very black only to see a pair of red-glowing eyes and a red-glowing gem. He then began to bleed and his guts started spilling out, which shocked my friend and I, we stared at the screen in a real jaw-drop fashion. We saw Egg-Robo`s front, but there was a knife stabbed through him. It wasn't a race, but it was like an adventure field.Īfter walking around a bit, there was a weird cutscene. When I got it, I invited my friend over and we decided to play the game.īut as soon as I booted up the game, there were a quite a few graphic glitches, and as soon as I picked the first race, I was playing as Egg-Robo, in some sort of hellish world. The price was $35.67 counting the GST, so that`s not so bad. I searched for a copy of the game on Ebay with a SEGA Saturn to go with it, and I found one from a seller named "BuyMahStuffplz". It sounded really fake, but I had to try it out. In another few incidents, some people have said that their Tails Doll character is missing from the character screen. Apparently, if you tag Super Sonic with the Doll, he`ll turn around and come out of your TV to kill you.Īnother curse says that if you play the songs "Can You Feel the Sunshine?" or "Livin` in the City" in a locked bathroom with the lights turned off, you`ll see a red light. What`s creepy is that someone, who is unknown, began an internet fad of curses that will cause you to see this dreaded demon and will get you murdered. He`s an orange doll with Tails' tails, he has stitches, lifeless black eyes, and a blood-red gem attached to a piece of wire. Obviously, the metal Doppelganger of Knuckles the Echidna. Metal Knuckles is a neat character introduced. Sonic R is a racing game featuring the cast of Sonic along with two new characters: Fast and cool, who didn`t love him? Well, there was still something odd about one of his past games. Sonic the Hedgehog was my favorite Video Game character of all time. You are probably being watched right now. Race, and Ethnicity Ethics and Philosophy Fashion Food and Drink History.

#SONIC R SUPER SONIC RACING FOR FREE#

This tale comes out of the cartridge and deeper into the knowledge of Video Games. Play Dark Super Sonic in Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Genesis) for free in your browser.

[latin-dr-robotnik]

Suddenly I'm reminded of the old Sonic AU where Sonic as a character, SEGA and the entire series as something they worked on all existed in the same universe (I think it was Mayra's fic, right?) and I'm also kinda thinking back on where I left Celebrity Life (that weird AU I wrote a bit of over the past two years.) I can't help but think about Sonic being interviewed​ right at the beginning of his 30th anniversary celebrations...

–Mr. Sonic, can you tell us why did it take you four years to return to work on the main series? Were there any tensions between you and SEGA?

–(Chuckles) no, not at all! It's just that, after we wrapped up the production for the last game, Amy wanted to go on a big trip around the world, and so we did. Pretty neat, huh?

–A trip around the world for four years, you say?

–Well... we also got married during summer two years ago, so there's that...

–Excuse me, you what!?

–Oh, hey, don't look at me like that! We've been working together for almost three decades, it felt right.

The interview was cut short right at that moment, and just five minutes later it was everywhere. Every single media outlet, scrambling to get the news posted.

Once again, the TailsBook SonAmy community managed to crash the entire site in less than 15 minutes.

Amy instantly regretted leaving him talking alone about details they were keeping secret for a reason.

[blazehedgehog]

Do you know any DS/3DS hidden gems that actually are not well known and not the few same games people allways bring up?

Probably not, no. With the GBA, I was deep in the emulation scene for that system. It was fascinating to me that there was a functional emulator before the hardware was even on store shelves (somebody just emulated the raw chips inside the handheld itself). So I was keeping up on new releases via GBAtemp and basically playing a little bit of almost everything.

With the DS, I ended up getting a cheap R4 flashcart near the end of the handheld's lifespan, so I ended up playing a bunch of stuff there, too, though not quite as much as I did with the GBA.

With the 3DS, I didn't come in to it until 2-3 years in to the system's lifespan and though I have a fair few games for it, I never really went deep diving in the indie download scene or anything like that. I've done a little more of that on the Switch.

Like, I dunno. Steamworld Dig is one of my favorite games ever, but that's sort of on everything now. The Mighty Gunvolt games are cute and maybe the best use of Mighty No. 9. Pushmo is great and a lot of people have forgotten about it because it's old news now. All of the Sega 3D Ages games are amazing and legitimately great uses of the 3D slider. I heard okay things about Citizens of Earth. But some of these aren't exactly indies, right?

I suppose the problem is, if you skim something like Metacritic's top 3DS games list, a lot of the indie games are just ports of things that are on everything, like Steamworld Dig and Citizens of Earth.

Skimming the list... I remember hearing okay things about HarmoKnight. I have a friend who is always yelling about how amazing Yokai Watch 3 is and how it totally eats Pokemon's lunch and how everybody ignored it. Lots of people seemed to like the Dillon Rolling Western games. There are enough of these "Witch and Hero" games on the eShop that somebody must like them (but some of them are also on the Switch, too.)

One game I always wanted to try and never got around to was something called "Crash City Mayhem."

There was a DS game called Sideswiped that I absolutely loved to pieces. If you remember a game called Runabout on the PS1 and Dreamcast, Sideswiped was by the same developer. It was different than Runabout, and was basically a Japanese take on Burnout. It was insane and ridiculous and INCREDIBLY fun. Deeply, deeply underrated game.

Crash City Mayhem seemed to be the team's next game, and looking up footage of it now, it seems to be a port/remake of one of the Runabout games (which are basically GTA style open world games but weird and silly). Reviews make it sound very short, though. One review says it would be "their favorite 3DS game" if it was longer.

Super Runabout on the Dreamcast was pretty short, too. I think there was only like, 12 missions in the whole game? So Crash City Mayhem being lean makes sense. The Runabout series were borderline arcade games.

Unfortunately, that's about all I've got.