Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Stuck On A Whole Different Planet
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2482 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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Since you mention Kanon and Steins;Gate in the tidbits, the visual novel Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (aka, “Rumbling Hearts”) is finally available in English after 23 years and three last-minute Steam review delays: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1777440/Kimi_ga_Nozomu_Eien_Enhanced_Edition/
Caveat: as previously reported, several entire routes have been removed from the original 18+ release to placate Steam. One route got a restoration patch, but it’s only in Japanese and was only available to crowdfunding backers through October 31. |
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malvarez1
Posts: 2113 |
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Xenoblade Chronicles X is definitely a day one purchase for me.
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medicinodestiny
Posts: 47 |
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The idea of a legal archive of every game ever that anyone can have access to for free seems both optimistic and unrealistic. If it ever happened, sure, that'd be neat, but it's no surprising companies don't want it. At least not until video games become old enough to enter public domain like books and movies. I also have to wonder what counts as being "preserved". The new "Definitive Edition" of X is going to have different art, story tweaks, and probably other gameplay changes. How much does a game need to resemble the original release to classify as authentically preserved? True video game preservation - legally at least - seems like a pipedream given the amount of changes always have to be made for modern re-releases for copyright, modern sensibilities, or just companies and creators choosing to do something new and insisting it's better than their old work like George Lucas dying on the hill of making the Special Editions of the original Star Wars trilogy the only ones out there.
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4640 |
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Some of the decision to not give that DMCA exemption referred to how it could impact publishers who do maintain those old games in the form of bringing the up to modern hardware. The thing is, that usually involves either buying a new copy, or paying for a subscription. I also don't buy that it would significantly impact sales, assuming a company even bothers. Books and movies sold just fine despite being available in libraries. Any decreases there are attributable more towards things the publishers did to themselves, like pushing streaming because it makes more money.
An application process where somebody explains what they are doing that gets reviewed would be a way to cut down on people just hopping on purely for fun. The inconvenience alone would mean that anybody looking for a way to just play games for free will just go pirate it on their own. Maybe there would be a deposit, and anybody who uses the game or distributes it outside the stated purpose loses the deposit. Again, somebody looking for a free alternative isn't going to bother after that. |
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 548 Location: PA / USA |
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Gonna have to quickly ready the guns and cannons for March 2025.
I was a massive Xenogears/Saga fan back in the Playstation days, Xenoblade on the Wii felt like a bit of a misfire to me (the newer Switch version tidies some of my complaints up), but Xenoblade X is where I feel the series always should have been. Seamless travel between on-foot and mech, minimal Nopon & anime children, and a very nice existential sci-fi plot. The feeling that the planet is out to swallow you whole, and you have no other home to return to.... I really want to see the Switch version blow up. Wizardry was mentioned at the start of the article. The mobile title Wizardry Variants Daphne is actually doing really well so far and impressing a lot of players. I'm hoping ANN does a review soon. I highly give it a recommend to anyone liking anime or D&D stuff where the party is crawling dungeons. I think they'll have a slam dunk with it once the PC version is up and running. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6311 |
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If there’s anyway to glean information out of a prisoner being interrogated I can think of no better method 
But yeah Nintendo not crediting the composers of much of those songs is pretty bizarre especially for as much reverence Koji Kondo commands in there company. |
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wolf10
 Posts: 929 |
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 "z5m20i12r04a28" is my personal favorite, though, and there's even a few Aimee Blackschleger songs for extra Phantasy Star Online points. My bet is on the more conventionally-titled "Uncontrollable" and/or "in the forest" being saved for the final trailer in a bid to bump sales based on just how unconscionably hard the soundtrack goes. For the kiddos at home, this is the one where they got Hiroyuki Sawano (in his KILL la KILL era) for the music instead of Xeno-series standby Yasunori Mitsuda (or his Procyon Studio associates). It's kind of hard mode for a VGM soundtrack because all the songs were composed as suites (like an anime OST) then cut into loops for the in-game versions, so the final boss theme decides to pop in randomly two-thirds of the way into disc 1. (But really, thank Alma the database listings for those tracks were human-readable katakana.)
Anyway, I'm glad to have a reason to be excited for 2025 now. Last edited by wolf10 on Fri Nov 01, 2024 2:13 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2348 |
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Nintendo playing by their own rules so much they can just make a bunch of announcements out of nowhere. Anyway:
-Pocket Camp: Certain a better ending than a lot of mobile games get. Apparently it'll get a few more updates, but mostly it's there for preservation. Steep price, but whatever. -Nintendo Music: Certainly filling a niche that people have long wanted filled as people want to have access to Nintendo's music, but they haven't released them overseas. They've already updated it with Super Mario Bros Wonder so I expect more to come soon. -Xenoblade X: The best way to talk about X is that Takahashi's whole plan for his magnum opus had a space opera segment and a fantasy segment. Gears and Blade are the fantasy segment, Saga and Blade X are the space opera. Plus with the reveal trailer hinting at new story stuff, I wouldn't be surprised if the Switch debuts with Chronicles X 2. X is definitely my favorite due to its sci-fi bent and the Skells adding a whole new combat and traversal system. Now to see if I can take on Telethia the End Bringer this time. Also, Elma's new model didn't debut with that music video, it debuted in Xenoblade 2 |
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Bvick00
 Posts: 59 Location: Goa, India |
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That U.S. Copyright Office reasoning for not granting the exemption has got be one of the most baffling things I have ever heard. It's so strange to me that despite video games being considered as art (per the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court 2011 Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association case), their preservation is not as seriously as other art mediums like books,films,music etc. Now I'm curious about how this ruling may or may not affect abandonware games.
Oh thank you for this, truly. If you didn't mention this, I would have. I'm having a lot of fun with this game despite the buggy launch (one of the mages I obtained,Asha, didn't even render properly for me, though this and other issues have since been fixed with the latest updates) and my party getting nearly wiped out in my first foray into the Abyss after the tutorial (some encounters came out of the blue and kept me on my toes, especially as my party was woefully under equipped). There are some other aspects about the game that make it unique among other gacha which I don't what to spoil as in ties into the game's story. Sadly though I have not seen much coverage for this game on any social media (there are some gameplay videoes on Youtube though), which I will have to assume is probably due to a lack of marketing for it. Nonetheless, this game and ASTRA: Knights of Veda are giving me the Dark Fantasy gacha fix that I didn't know I needed and also serves as nice break from the usual Waifu, BL and Dress Up gacha games that I tend to play.
This comes as a surprised Pikachu face to me - I had no idea as someone who played Super Robot Wars OG: Endless Frontier along time ago. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4543 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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It would be nice if there was an option to pay to download individual music tracks for those of us who hate subscription-based services however, in the case of game soundtracks, you quite often at least still have the option to import a CD from Japan since the Compact Disc format is still reasonably popular in Japan. This isn't anywhere near the level of annoyance as Nintendo no longer offering Virtual Console where you pay one per old console game and keep them forever (well, at least for however long your console still works) instead of just renting them the way you do in Switch Online. |
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varmintx
 Posts: 1235 Location: Covington, KY |
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Didn't Star Fox Zero suck? Or was that Assault? Both? Something else? Oh, god, I really can't remember. So old and senile, anything past the first 2 games has been wiped from my memory.
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2311 Location: Online Terminal |
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There are governmental libraries (Library of Congress, British Library, etc) who are obligated to keep copies of published literature. One could conceivably suggest that these archives could include some sort of archiving for games as well. At the risk of getting popped for being political, I could easily see someone trying to convince Tim Walz to champion game preservation if he were to be installed as VP. |
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King Chicken
 Posts: 135 |
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I was hoping when people talk about game preservation they mean having a convenient way to play stuff whenever they want with relative ease rather than the literal sense of preserving old video games by locking them in a Congress storeroom that people visiting Washington DC can demo for a few minutes if they visit while on a tour. I imagine a lot of people are not willing to travel across the country every time they want to play Illusion of Gaia.
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3670 |
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That's the argument the industry is making. Preservation is not the same as availability. Using the Library of Congress as an example, publishers provide a copy, but it's not generally conveniently available for everyone, so it doesn't cannibalize their sales. A historian might need to look at a book for research purposes, but isn't going to use the LoC as an alternative to buying a book he wants to read.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6311 |
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Both games were rather divisive but Zero was the worst selling game of the two. |
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