David Thatcher

The front cover of Looney Tunes Space Race for the Dreamcast. Daffy Duck rides a space bike away from Yosemite Sam, who is firing rockets at him.

The back cover of Looney Tunes Space Race for the Dreamcast, showing four screenshots of various characters in the game: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Wile E Coyote.

It's #RandomGameSaturday. Looney Tunes Space Race for the Dreamcast!

🚨HALLOWEEN SURPRISE DROP🚨
INTRODUCING THE BRAND NEW DEMO (and keyart) FOR TÖLT - THE NEXT GAME FROM ENIGMA|STUDIO.
DEMO AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD RIGHT NOW!
enigma-studio.itch.io/tolt
OÍCHE SHAMHNA SHONA DAOIBH, A CHAIRDE CAPALL🎃

Save 80% on The Sirena Expedition on Steam The Sirena Expedition is a short PSX-style horror-platformer in which you explore a mysterious underwater facility.

Steam Scream IV is now live, so you can pick up The Sirena Expedition for 99p, which is probably cheaper than a Mars Bar these days! Check it out on Steam and Itch:

store.steampowered.com/app/1957300/...
giraffecat.itch.io/the-sirena-e...

Save 80% on The Sirena Expedition on Steam The Sirena Expedition is a short PSX-style horror-platformer in which you explore a mysterious underwater facility.

Steam Scream IV is now live, so you can pick up The Sirena Expedition for 99p, which is probably cheaper than a Mars Bar these days! Check it out on Steam and Itch:

store.steampowered.com/app/1957300/...
giraffecat.itch.io/the-sirena-e...

It's been two years since the release of The Sirena Expedition on Steam, and to commemorate this, the game will be 80% off in tomorrow's Steam Scream IV sale! What better time to pick up the game that the most recent Steam reviews have described as 'Nice' and 'deu mais raiva que vontade de jogar'?

Ah, interesting! Yeah, I do remember the jump timing being really forgiving back when I played it; interesting that it wasn't originally that way! There wasn't a lot of time between the Japanese and US/EU releases either, so they worked quick.

Nice! I was looking for the PAL release for ages, but kept finding copies that were missing the manual or in poor shape, as the price went up and up. The Japanese version worked out a lot cheaper!

Love this little guy!

Two pages from the manual from the Japanese release of Jumping Flash! 2, showing all of the enemies in the game.

Two pages from the manual from the Japanese release of Jumping Flash! 2, showing all of the enemies in the game.

Two pages from the manual from the Japanese release of Jumping Flash! 2, showing the remaining enemies from the game on the left page, and the game's credits on the right.

Some more pages from the manual, including some excellent renders of all of the enemies in the game.

Two pages from the manual from the Japanese release of Jumping Flash! 2.

Two pages from the manual from the Japanese release of Jumping Flash! 2.

Two pages from the manual from the Japanese release of Jumping Flash! 2.

Two pages from the manual from the Japanese release of Jumping Flash! 2.

Some pages from the manual. Love the little drawings of Robbit!

The front cover of the Japanese release of Jumping Flash! 2 for the PS1. It features Robbit in the foreground, with Baron Aloha behind, above a planet.

The back cover of the Japanese release of Jumping Flash! 2 for the PS1. There are six screenshots and some art of the characters, but nowhere does it say that the first game is included.

The inside of the Jumping Flash! 2 case, showing disc 1 with the main game on the right, and disc 2 with the European release of the first game on the left.

The manual and case inserts for the Japanese release of Jumping Flash! 2 on the PS1. There is a large sticker featuring a MuuMuu from the game, a flier explaining the controls for the European release of Jumping Flash!, and a flier for PoPolocrois.

It's #RandomGameSaturday! Did you know the Japanese release of Jumping Flash! 2 came with a second disc containing the European release of the first game? I didn't! I also can't find any reference to it online. Was the European release so different from the JP one that it warranted re-release?

Doesn't get the same kind of attention as Prodigy, Chemical Brothers or Fatboy Slim, but it's definitely one of the defining Big Beat albums.

Starfriends: The 5-Star Game About What Everyone Else Thinks A party game where you get into your friends' heads. Kinda like a blend of Wavelength and Letterboxd that fits into a deck of cards.

Looking for a party game that combines social deduction with the pleasant absurdity of rating animals, films, and the weather on a scale of ★ to ★★★★★? And it's just a simple deck of cards? AND it's live on Kickstarter now?!?! Guess what, STARFRIENDS has launched! www.kickstarter.com/projects/bra...

I don't know if you've read this article, but it's the most in-depth look at the game and its development that I've found: www.filfre.net/2015/12/dung...

A good YouTube documentary would be great, though, to bring the story of such an influential game to a wider audience.

...but at least critical thinking had been applied at some point. But now 'woke' and 'DEI' are such integral parts of the culture war that they don't have to do that; they're just signalling to people like them that this is a game they can steer clear of.

...and b) while they weren't copypasta, there were enough recurring themes that they were clearly getting them from an Angry Joe review or something. So, the point of those reviews was to convince the average person that the game wasn't well-made or well liked...

...and the combat mechanics were oversimplified to the point where something was lost, that kind of thing. It felt transparent to me, because I'd been paying attention and I knew that a) it was very unlikely they'd have had time to form those opinions so soon after release...

Bit of an aside, but I worked on DmC Devil May Cry, and was closely following the fan backlash throughout that game's development. On release day, the game received a whole raft of low-scoring user reviews talking about how the story didn't respect the themes and characters properly...

This feels like a crucial difference to me. There was a time when they would have at least tried to dress it up as critique; maybe talk about how the character in the hijab felt out of place within the setting or some shit.

The front cover of Croc 2 for the PlayStation. Croc is holding a Gobbo and surfing on a mine cart, looking '90s-cool.

I'm away from my games collection at the moment, so here's a photo from my phone for #RandomGameSaturday: Croc 2! This one fixed a lot of the original game's control issues and introduced larger stages, but ended up being more punishing, in spite of (or perhaps because of) giving you infinite lives.

Most of the Sega 3D Classics/Archives ports are great, but Power Drift and Galaxy Force II are SO good! The 3D really makes them come to life.

The contents of the box for the Atari ST release of Corporation, laid out on a wooden floor. The front and back of the box are visible, along with disks 1 and 2, the Agent's Manual, and a 'company profile' which features backstory for the game. Amusingly, it is set in the year 2020.

Here's my ST copy. Not shown here is a form you could fill in and send to Core Design with a photo of yourself, and they'd send back a disk with a personalised profile for use in the game with a low-poly recreation of your face. By the time I bought the game, in the mid-90s, this had expired.

The front cover of Corporation for the Mega Drive. It features an extreme close-up on the face of one of the green aliens from the game.

The back cover of Corporation for the Mega Drive. There are four screenshots of what look like a fast-paced first person shooter, but don't be fooled; it's slow and awkward!

The front cover of the manual and the cartridge for Corporation on the Mega Drive. Featuring the same green aliens as the front cover.

This #RandomGameSaturday is the Mega Drive port of Corporation. I've not played this version, but I played it on Atari ST a lot as a kid. It was ahead of it time, but kind of in a bad way; a first-person-shooter with weird mode-switching controls for movement and shooting that felt really clumsy.

Save 30% on Axyz on Steam Axyz is a retro gravity switching puzzle game that asks the player to use their environmental and spatial awareness to beat every level. Soak in the vaporwave, switch gravity, collect tapes, and more ...

And Axyz, which I've had in my library for a while now, and have been waiting for A Year of UFO 50 to end so I can play it. Well, it's over now, so what am I waiting for?! store.steampowered.com/app/2850490/...

TÖLT on Steam YOU ARE A HORSE - DESTINED TO RUN AROUND THE ISLAND WITH YOUR FRIENDS - JUST AS YOU ALWAYS HAVE - BUT SOMETHING HAS CHANGED - IS IT SOMETHING INSIDE YOU - OR SOMETHING INSIDE THIS LAND?

Like TÖLT! How have I never heard of TÖLT before? That one's on me! store.steampowered.com/app/3812490/...

Steam Curator: Games From Ireland Games developed in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, from Irish creators, or playable in the Irish language (Gaeilge).

Hey! The Sirena Expedition is on IMIRT's Steam curation list of games by Irish developers: store.steampowered.com/curator/4145.... Lots of really cool stuff on there!

EARTH MUST DIE

Featuring a load of my favourite comedians - too many even to fit on the trailer! Joel Fry! Martha Howe-Douglas! @alexhorne.bsky.social! Tamsin Grieg! @5teviem.bsky.social @mrholness.bsky.social! @misterabk.bsky.social! @rosieisaholt.bsky.social! MORE

Please RETWEET and WISHLIST

The former! I bake a sprite sheet of the car from 256 different angles, and I then choose which one to display on a billboard based on the view angle. I do remember seeing a shader that did a similar thing in realtime (including reducing the frame rate of animations) but I don't remember who made it

bsky.app/profile/gira... It's basically only a tech demo at the moment, as I've been trying to get the rendering looking how I want it (and it's on hiatus for the time being while I try to sort out job stuff), but the elevator pitch is 'looks like Power Drift, plays like Ridge Racer'.

Ah, nice! I did pick up a copy of Sega Rally Championship 2 for Dreamcast recently, so I need to play that at some point. But yeah, should figure out a way of playing the first game too (I never had a Saturn).