It was John’s Birthday this week and he decided to spend it moving and chatting with Lorelai about the week in Games. John’s been playing more Mariomon and Digimon Up while Lorelai’s been playing Uma Musume, Darkest Dungeon 2, and Moonlight Peaks. In the news they chat a bit about GDQ ending an SNK sponsored event mid stream and showing how you handle moments like this.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on social media @gamesline.net, John, and Lorelai

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net!

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 98: Birthday Moves appeared first on Gamesline.

Another week, another Gamesline Podcast! This week, John’s been playing Resident Evil 4 and 7 along with Pikmin 4 Fierce mode. Nikolas has started Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and is digging into The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. In the news, Harada has joined SNK for some reason and SEGA has cancelled their mobile Super Game.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on social media @gamesline.net, John, and Nikolas.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net!

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 90: Upside-Down Pikmin appeared first on Gamesline.

John hosts Rose and Maverick on a bountiful episode of The Gamesline Podcast. This time, we learn what Switch 1 games are getting Switch 2 bumps on day one, discuss why Kingdom Hearts‘ latest mobile game was scrapped, the Marathon plagiarism debacle, and more! Plus, Rose lays out Hundred Line‘s quality, Maverick ruminates on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas‘ writing in 2025, and John keeps playing grindy RPGs for some reason.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Social Media @TheGamesline, John, Rose, and Maverick.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 52: A Marathon Run Into the Ground appeared first on Gamesline.

Workers’ Rights Issues

Bethesda‘s US branches and the World of Warcraft development teams have announced that they have unionized. Microsoft has confirmed that they are open to beginning negotiations with both unions.

SAG-AFTRA, the union that had previously enacted a strike for actors in Hollywood, have now begun a new strike, this time focused on video game voice actors. The strikers are asking for protection against misuse of AI technology, specifically compensation for using their likeness and voice for AI generation. The strike will effect games that began production after August 2023, meaning big releases such as Grand Theft Auto VI are most likely in the clear, but if further voice clips are needed, union members may decline to contribute work to games.

Ziff Davis has shuttered Humble Games, the publishing arm of Humble Bundle. The entire team was laid off on the 23rd, with reports that leadership had no idea what the process of publishing games entailed. It is unknown how this will change the release of currently scheduled games under the Humble Games branding.

Fights in the Future

EVO was this past weekend, so a variety of new characters were announced for a good amount of games. San Diego Comic Con is also happening, so there’s a few announcements from there, as well.

Guilty Gear Strive‘s next season was detailed at Evo. The roster sees returning favorites Dizzy and Venom, new character from the recently confirmed anime Unika, and the first guest character in the series, Lucy from Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners. A new three-versus-three mode will also be added, with an open beta for the mode happening as this is posted.

Multiversus has announced two of their season two characters, with Samurai Jack available now and Beetlejuice available later. Warner Bros. also acquired Player First Games, developers of Multiversus.

SNK had a big showing this week. The studio announced two new DLC characters for The King of Fighters XV, Vice and Mature (due out in December), then revealed that they are working on both a new Art of Fighters and a Samurai Shodown action RPG.

Later, they released a port of SNK vs Capcom: SVC Chaos on Steam, with console versions available later. The port adds rollback netcode.

Finally from SNK, two new characters were confirmed for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. Kevin Rian, a SWAT team member in South Town, and Billy Kane, former Geese crony and new leader of the Howard Connection, will be in the launch roster.

The last two season one DLC characters for Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising were announced. Versusia will release August 20th alongside a large 1.50 update to the game, and Vikala is due out in October. A second season of DLC was also confirmed, starting with Sandalphon.

Somehow, Heihachi has returned, and he’s the next DLC character for Tekken 8. He’s due to be added to the game some time this Autumn.

Mortal Kombat 1 had to wait for Comic Con to announce their next round of DLC, alongside a story expansion and the return of Anamalities. Noob Saibot, Cyrax, and Sektor are returning, and three new guest characters will be added. Ghostface from Scream, Conan the Barbarian (as portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger), and the T-1000 from Terminator 2 are the new action figures you can slam against Omniman and Homelander. The story expansion and returning MK characters will be added September 24th, and the guests’ release will be announced later.

Other Assorted Announcements Abound

The first teaser for the Like a Dragon/Yakuza live action show has been released.

Former Skip Ltd. developers have announced a crowdfunding campaign to make a spiritual successor to Chibi-Robo. Titled koROBO, the Kickstarter has already reached about two-thirds of its initial goal.

Katawa Shoujo, the visual novel developed by Four Leaf studio about romance at a school for disabled girls, is coming to Steam and Itch after twelve years on August 16th.

A remaster collection of the first two Legacy of Kain games has seemingly been confirmed by a logo shown with Legacy of Kain action figures revealed at Comic Con.

A remaster of Tales of Xillia has seemingly been leaked through Czech and Slovak retailer listings. If the listings are real, the remaster will release on all major platforms.

The entire catalog of The Behemoth’s games will be getting updates:

• Alien Hominid: Invasion and Alien Hominid HD will be released on PS5 and PS4.
• A quality of life update for the Steam version of Battleblock Theater will release, as well as ports of the game to modern consoles.
• Castle Crashers is getting a new DLC called Painterboss Paradise, in which players can create their own skins for the playable characters and upload them to Steam Workshop. All of the games’ sprites have been redrawn as well, and a new character, Paint Jr., will be added.
• Pit People will also get a quality of life update, and their next title is confirmed to be in the prototype phase.

And finally. Michael Bay, of live-action Transformers and the first two Bad Boys films fame, is currently in talks to direct some form of Skibidi Toilet movie or television series. No word on if the Half-Life characters’ faces will be used for these ventures.

The post The Bulletin: Workers’ Rights and a Weekend of Fights appeared first on Gamesline.

Nightdive Studios will be remastering the The Thing game, originally from 2002. Based on the John Carpenter movie, it has updated graphics and quality of life upgrades. There’s no specific release date for it yet, but it will be released on PC and all current consoles.

The Big Catch, the game from former Yo! Noid 2 developers Filet Group, has a standalone demo available now. (For transparency, friend of the site Myles does the UI for this game.) The game will also be published by XSEED.

Lego Horizon Adventures from Studio Gobo. A mix of the style of Horizon and goofy Lego jokes. Out on PS5, Switch, and PC holiday 2024.

No More Room in Hell 2, a sequel to the Source mod. Includes permadeath and eight player co-op. Early access Halloween 2024.

Harry Potter Quidditch Champions. Out September 3rd on everything. JKR go to hell.

CuffBust from the creator of Choo-Choo Charles. A team of prisoners attempt to escape from jail while another team of guards try to prevent it. 2025 projected.

Star Wars: Outlaws trailer. More shown at the Ubisoft event. Coming August 30th.

Neva from Nomada studio, creators of Gris. Sidescrolling platformer about a lady and her wolf. Very gorgeous! Due out in 2024 for everything.

Civilization VII, the big 2K Games title this time around. Coming in 2025, gameplay reveal in August. Developed by Firaxis, coming to consoles and PC at the same time.

New trailer for Black Myth: Wukong. Out August 20th. There will be a bunch of preorder bonuses and special editions as well.

Once Human, out July 9th. There’s a little white guy in the trailer, they didn’t focus on it at all????

Metaphor: ReFantazio new info. Went over character archetypes, which assign abilities to different characters in your party. It’s Personas. You can equip guys to get abilities. The game is due out October 11th.

Meta Quest game Batman Arkham Shadow. From Camoflaj. About Batman fighting the Rat King. Fall 2024.

Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui are getting added to Street Fighter VI! Returning characters Elena and M. Bison as well! They will be DLC for Year Two.

Tears of Metal, a hack and slash game. No date.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, with a new story mode with “what if” elements. Father-Son Final Flash!! October 11th release. The first season pass is confirmed to have 20+ characters as well!

Delta Force: Hawk Ops, team based extraction shooter. Looks bad. Who cares. There’s gonna be a Black Hawk Down mode based on the movie?

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves new trailer! B. Jenet and Vox Reaper announced. Due out 2025.

Blumhouse is publishing a bunch of horror games. Quite a few all in a sizzle reel.

Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind from Digital Eclipse. Side scrolling beat em up. No release date.

Deer & Boy, an indie game from a first time dev.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. Looks very similar to the original, a lot of focus on story. Due out 2024.

Slitterhead gameplay. From Bokeh Game Studio, ex-Silent Hill folks. You can jump into people to control them and fight a bunch of crazy monsters. Looks way more character action-y than expected? November 8th.

A Killer Bean game. First and third person, slo-mo, what you’d expect from this kind of game. Early access this Summer. It’s a roguelike? Wild.

The new game, Cairn, from The Game Bakers, creators of Furi. A mountain climbing game, inspired by people who lost their lives trying to summit K2. Northernlion will be saying insane things while playing this.

Ivy Road, the creators of The Stanley Parable, are making a cozy tea shop running game, starring a character who would rather be in an action game. It’s called Wanderstop, and is due out this year.

Unknown9: Awakening is out Fall 2024.

New trailer for Italian Soulslike Enotria: The Last Song. Demo available now, will be out on PS5, Xbox, and Epic Games Store.

The First Descendant trailer. Out July 2nd.

Innersloth, creators of Among Us, announced Outersloth, a new indie game fund to help smaller developers get more funding. There’s a variety of games already funded from this, Mars First Logistics, Battle Suit Aces, Mossfield Archives, ONE BTN BOSSES, Rogue Eclipse, and Project Dosa. There’s also a new trailer for the Among Us TV show.

Sonic x Shadow Generations new trailer, with the official release date of October 25th. Shows off new Shadow powers and stages, including freaky wings on Shadow? Includes a costume of Terios, a cancelled beta version of Shadow that became famous in the fan community.

Dune game, alternate reality where Paul wasn’t born. Dune Awakening, a survival MMO.

Uncapped Games, a new studio, revealed Battle Aces. It’s an RTS, focused on making is “less tedious”. Beta test soon.

The Finals‘ new season was revealed.

Alan Wake II physical release! Also, the Night Springs DLC, three episodes based around three characters in what if scenes. Play as Rose the waitress in her fanfic, Jesse from Control, and Officer Tim Breaker in the Dark Place. Releases tomorrow.

New World expansion. Out October 15th.

Honkai: Star Rail‘s next chapter starts soon, new characters. I don’t know anything about this sorry.

Dark and Darker, a first person dungeon crawler. Looks very Elder Scrolls, but is also apparently an extraction shooter at the same time. It’s already out.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, Capcom’s new hack and slash, is due out July 19th.

Hyper Light Breaker‘s early access will be late Summer.

skate. has a trailer with Tim Robinson. Then they showed a batch of new gameplay, and said console playtesting will happen this Fall.

Palworld has a new island with a bunch of new Pokemon rip-offs. You can build oil rigs now. June 27th.

Valorant is coming to Xbox and PS5, with a limited beta June 14th.

Very long SuperCell game trailer. It will not be linked. It sucked.

Monster Hunter: Wilds showed off a new monster, a sand worm, and will release in 2025. Gamescom will have more information.

Phantom Blade 0 has a new gameplay trailer to wrap the show up.

Day of the Devs revealed that UFO 50, the collection of games from Mossmouth Games, is releasing September 18th.

The post Bulletin+: Summer Game Fest 2024 appeared first on Gamesline.

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Starting off the conference with a Q&A section, the panel covered the issues inherent in releasing and making a new fighting game such as roster selection, crossplay possibilities, and the idea of accessibility in fighting games. Some of these answers were surprising coming from Japanese developers, like the fact that most devs seem to be big proponents of crossplay, wherein previous inquiries regarding adding crossplay to games, it was generally considered diluting the experience since there was a perceived introduction of cheating from PC players. Additionally, on the issue of balancing accessibility vs. difficulty in keeping legacy players, virtually no one on the panel had a solid answer, but the representatives all agreed it was quite a difficult challenge, especially balancing the simplicity of both the gameplay and visuals. The panel also touched on some topics regarding the current state of affairs of fighting games looking to the future, including talks on where arcade sticks fit in modern games, and what the user experience of future games would look like. The stream gave valuable insight to the community, and with all the publishers together in one place, it was an especially unusual opportunity to witness.

After the Q&A, each publisher presented some features on what fans of their games could expect soon. With Street Fighter V already planning to have their big announcement stream on August 5th, CAPCOM was pretty tight lipped with new news, but they did mention a trial mode coming up soon with access to all 40 current characters for about two weeks, a great opportunity to try out some new characters if you didn’t already shell out the cash.

SNK was pleased to announce some news for Samurai Shodown including Gongsun Li from Honor of Kings as a new DLC character for Season 2. Samurai Shodown players will also be pleased to hear the game is getting a third Season of DLC, which if anything, suggests SNK has enough faith in developing their new fighting games that they’re willing to support the game through three seasons. Arika, developer of Fighting EX Layer noted they were working on greatly improving FEXL, with a new beta and improvement to netcode which should provide a nice bump in player base for the small game.

Bandai Namco and Arc System Works closed out the show with the larger announcements of the night. For Soul Calibur VI, Bandai Namco showcased the new character Setsuka and a new costume DLC pack including crossover TEKKEN 7 character costumes. Tekken 7 came in with big news of its own, including a whole new season of support, with a much needed balance patch, more new moves, online play improvement in the form of a wifi/ethernet connection indicator (and hopefully some netcode improvements) and a teaser for a new character likely to be Kunimitsu.

Finally, Arc System Works came up big with announcements for ArcRevo America and ArcRevo Japan online tournaments, in addition to two character trailers for Guilty Gear -STRIVE-. Surprising many, Leo Whitefang made his appearance, with a lot of old moves, including his signature Brynhildr Stance, and some new tactics to…make his opponent block for the whole round. Additionally, the cyber samurai we have been waiting for finally got showed off and finally has a name. Nagoriyuki got a trailer of his own, and showed a teleport dash with invulnerability, and a pretty damn cool sword. With all the great news for -STRIVE-, it was also announced that it will be on PS5, making it the first fighting game announced for the next-gen console. Responding to the excitement generated from the conference, the publishers mentioned they looked forward to another, although the suggestion was definitely tentative. Hopefully, depending on the reception of the news from the current JFGPR we’ll hear more from developers in upcoming conferences in a time where in-person events are scarce.

The post Fighting Game News: Japanese Fighting Game Publisher’s Roundtable appeared first on Gamesline.

No more details have been revealed beyond the fact that it exists, so SNK instead went into the details on Samurai Shodown‘s future. Starting in August, a new character will be coming once a month for the rest of the year. Rimururu kicks it off, followed by Basara in October, Kazuki Kazama in November, and Wan-Fu to round it out in December. September will bring Shizumaru as a free character.

Finally, the second season of DLC was confirmed, with the first of four characters, Mina Majikina, arriving thanks to winning a popularity contest.

With new KoF, SamSho support, and some SamSho guesting in Soul Calibur, SNK is in a great place. Who knows what else they have in store! (PLEASE GIVE US GAROU 2 SNK)

The post Samurai Shodown’s DLC Detailed, King of Fighters XV Confirmed appeared first on Gamesline.

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SNK’s 40th Anniversary Collection contains a lot more than what you’d expect from an old game developer’s catalog. It is more than a simple check-off list of old arcade games people might want to see ported to current-gen consoles. When we think of archival work in video games, it’s usually companies like Namco or Sega putting a bunch of games with mascots in them on a disc for advertising purposes, or if we’re lucky it’s an HD upgrade of an old game that you aren’t sure if it ever really existed like Lizardcube’s incredible 2017 remake of, “Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap”. The worst case scenario for game preservation are those plastic joysticks that you get at the department store for fifty bucks that just have a bunch of old games like Pole Position or Centipede or Star Fox 2 loaded on to them. Look, those are essentially trash toys whose only practical preservational use is to turn one corner of your local bar into a barcade for a few weeks until folks get bored and go back to playing darts. With SNK’s 40th Anniversary Collection, Frank Cifaldi’s team at Digital Eclipse have put together something more than a games collection, but a digital archival format that should be absolutely inspiring for all of us who are asking: “how do we preserve the history of video games for future generations?”

so SNK 40th is legit and there is a lot happening here. Let’s get the features list out of the way: It has a complete timeline with museum-esque notes on the context of each work, each emulated game has some simple emulation functions (save state, load, etc) but also has a rewind button that undoes your moves (especially helpful for all the quarter-sucking technical shooters), also there is a longplay of every game that you can just watch and scrub through at your leisure, including all 151 minutes of SNK’s rarely developed brand of RPG: Crystalis. You can run the Japanese & Western versions of almost every game. Any of the games that had a console release also has that version available to play which helps compare and contrast how development worked between arcade and console. And on top of it all there are changeable resolutions, including an arcade cabinet-esque portrait mode! Did you see our video showing off Fangamer’s Flip Grip for the Nintendo Switch? We are watching a games collection swag on the very hardware it was built for!

Currently, there are fourteen games in the collection, and each game not only feels like an important piece of the historical journey of SNK’s early development but a lot of them are dang fun! My personal highlights were getting to play Vanguard, Alpha Mission, and Prehistoric Island and getting to see SNK’s space shooter evolve. Also, Athena has aged really well and was incredibly impressive for how much is going on in such a small space. Then you get to jump from that to Psycho Soldier and get to see them start using their mascot characters to do some cool experimenting! Also, all three Ikari Warriors are on here in both arcade and console version, which not only show how SNK improved technologically over a short period of time but also just how dedicated they were to worldwide markets with these heavily Western-coded Hollywood style War Hero Games.

Everything curated in the 40th Anniversary Collection is SNK before the Neo-Geo in 1990, which means no Fatal Fury, King of Fighters, or Metal Slug; but that’s actually a good thing for a couple of reasons. One, all of the games curated from this era were designed and built on similar philosophical and historical foundations: games designed for coin-op arcade machines that were planned towards being translated to English and usually ported to NES for western home markets. Two, you get to see the roots for all of SNK’s bigger franchises in isolation. When you combine the tank from TNKIII, the dual weapons and co-op from Ikari Warriors or P.O.W, and the hostages from Guerilla War, you basically get Metal Slug.

—

Also, hey this is a big aside, but SNK made a game where you play as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to overthrow the US’s Bautista regime in 1950s Cuba with the exact same engine and style that Ikari Warriors used to represent Rambo-esque flaming romps through fascist-occupied jungles. I repeat- it’s a game where you are Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, as super soldiers, liberating Cuba! They made this entire game after having read and been inspired by “Guerilla Warfare” Guevara’s treatise on warfare and revolution within the Americas. The dev team had never been to Cuba even though at one point a trip for the team was planned. So like, late 80s SNK was real in to Communist theory or maybe just really heavy on some kind of 1950s jungle warfare kitsch. Either way SNK saw Che Guevara as real-life Rambo, games history is wack and SNK, welcome to the resistance?

—

Sorry, back to before I interrupted myself- So in the 90’s the Neo-Geo abruptly changed arcade development as we knew it with multiple games in one mass-produced arcade cabinet, and this SNK collection is like the moment right before all of that happened. So, I’m glad Fatal Fury and KoF aren’t in this collection because it more concisely tells a story in isolation about Japanese Game Development in the 1980s. Hopefully, this also allows for a Neo-Geo collection to come out later as a second volume based on this collection. And if it is anything with the level of detail that this archive has, that would be incredible! Just like a second volume to an encyclopedia series, but interactive!

There continues to be a desperate cry for multiple formats of games archival as games that are the fundamental building blocks of the current generation are getting lost to time. The best that we’ve got right now is Nintendo condensing eras of history into fifteen games and putting them on a proprietary plastic emulator box like the SNES Classic. The best we’ve got now is begging Sega to port Dreamcast games to the Nintendo Switch (some of which can’t be ported because that data has already been lost). The best we’ve got is any ROMs that can still be scraped off the web after Nintendo is done trying to destroy all history of games. (Is that weird that Nintendo is kinda the hinge on all games’ history? That’s weird right? I feel like that’s weird.) None of that is archival or historical preservation because of how it has been perverted by commercialism without adding any kind of context about where, when, or how it came to exist. Nintendo especially tries to make it feel like their games just magically appeared one day, divorced from any kind of human labor or historical context. This SNK 40th Anniversary collection can’t fix all of that, but at least it provides a strong formula for putting archival work up front-and-center and giving everyone context for how these games came to exist. Historical context and concise curation are the forces that help differentiate SNK’s collection from an average commercial release like the Megaman Legacy Collection

Okay I’m gonna blow your mind right now cuz all of that stuff is cool, but there’s something in here that is some like Doc Brown “You’re about to see some serious shit” kind of shit because you see these longplay videos? At any point in the longplay video I can just **BAM** I’m playing now from this point in the longplay.    That’s right, this isn’t actually video at all but an emulated series of inputs! IT’S A GODDAMN TOOL-ASSISTED SPEEDRUN THAT YOU CAN TAKE DIRECT CONTROL OF AT ANY POINT! That’s just incredible.

Anecdote time: I got stuck in Athena fighting a late-game boss that was impossible to kill because I didn’t have the right item from a previous level, so I went to the video, and it taught me how to kill that boss and a lot of the cool things I missed while playing, so I scrubbed the video past the boss that killed me, hit [Start Playing] and then started from there to beat the whole game. Later, I was watching Psycho Soldier but the game got so cool that I had to play it and beat it myself… You turn into a phoenix and shoot people with psychic lasers! This rules so hard.

Other highlights from playing through this include: Prehistoric Island the game where you kill gigantic, beautiful dinosaurs like a mega tyrannosaurus takes this sudden and wild twist ending…   Where everyone DIES? Okay! Thanks, F.B.I. director William Sessions. There is also Streetsmart whose ending is very American… Did you know that the world is going to end on October 1st, 1997? Crystalis did. They predicted that lightning bolt that smote the world. I love that even SNK’s Zelda clone has absolutely no chill. And I can’t forget mentioning Vanguard’s lazer-beam-eyeball man or any of the games’ end credits “Congratulations” screens. These really are special and lovely.

What’s amazing about all of this is that there is more coming in the form of DLC. And usually I’d be pretty derisive around games attempting to commodify their own histories, but due to how much good faith has already been built into SNK’s 40th that goodwill becomes respect and in the context of an archive this actually becomes a different beast altogether. With DLC in the works that continued support makes this into what historians call a “Living Archive”. The Sega Mega Collection that is currently on Steam also takes a similar approach where you can download the gamehub for free while the developers continue to add as many Genesis and Mega Drive games as they can to that digital platform and then you buy them in packs. I’m interested to see how long both of these formats can maintain their games collections for. The SNK collection currently exists only as a Switch game which means its lifespan is limited by the Switch’s hardware, meanwhile, Sega’s game hub is only a Steam application and thus is limited by… Steam. *shudders…* Digital purchases are always… fickle.

If you are studying game design then this game is a textbook for you. The curation of all of these games provide a framework for SNK’s design practices in the 80s:

1. The player is fragile and normally dies when an enemy touches them
2. The player can find power ups throughout the world that usually upgrade in two dimensions (offensive/defensive buffs and debuffs).
3. Players are rewarded for exploring (and usually destroying) the environment
4. Points are constantly and trivially tossed around for most any action that the player does.
5. Each game is overwhelmingly difficult but in a way that can be either assuaged by a second player or by collectible powerups that exponentially increase the power of the player. This is easily seen in Athena where you can upgrade all the way into getting a GIANT GODDAMN FIRE SWORD. 

All of these fundamentals make for a really satisfying core game loop regardless of the genre of game. Even if it’s one of SNK’s classic half-baked NES ports that look like pac-man vomit. Even those still play passably enough to be a good advertisement for the quarter-sucking arcade versions.

SNK’s 40th Anniversary Collection is chock-full of important lessons to teach us about Japanese game design from the 80s, it contains interesting and new ideas for preserving games, and it shows us one hell of an escalation in quality and technology from just 1981 to 1990. I’m excited to see how development proceeds going forwards. Will they try to squeeze in the big-name flagship properties like Metal Slug? Or will they maintain their course to archive as much of the 80s as possible and add games like Touch Down Fever? Also, what if this team Digital Eclipse expanded into more companies and we had a collection like this for every game company of the era? We could have a really strong set of encyclopedias exploring this period of games development! For now though, I’ll just take this as a sign that the 80s were entirely dominated by fantasies of Rambo, magical girls with swords, and Communism.

The post Videogame Preservation In 2018 & SNK’s 40th Anniversary Collection appeared first on Gamesline.