Sean

If we had inflated HP pools like the enemies did we wouldn’t need to use all our healing so often (it’s especially unforgivable when bosses with a million bajilion hp start casting cure on themselves )

Sir, is this post intended to soften the blow when we find out soon that you’re a superman 64 mega fan? Hehe

I have recently played through Prince of Persia Lost Crown and Metroid 1(remake),3 &4 the last few months so my action-platforming skills are currently quite sharpened so that may affect my perception lol)

I didn't think it was too bad until the end of demo boss where I was like “what!?” It demanded a lot of the player. At least for the main path, I played some optional parts the other day and those were challenging for sure

When I see photos of how the night sky looks in remote areas in do wish we had some mandatory lights-out periods each year in cities to experience it myself

The wait for more Ash awesomeness has been suffering (hope Ash hasn’t forgotten everything and how to play after two weeks)

Jon, you do know that the Hague and crimes against humanity are a thing right?

And have them actually look like SNES-style graphics (too many “retro indie games” would be found lacking if they had been released in the 16-bit era cos they go too basic and blocky with the look when artists were making marvels with pixel art back then)

That's good cos it would be hell to eat with your fingers if they were liquid instead.

Oh god I need to spend a week with just wholesome entertainment, my cos my first thought was “what other spines would you like this 10 to bend instead!?” lol

Maybe not the best context considering why Ireland has a small population now.

But analysts are just dumb and want cancerous number explosions even if the product dies a year or two after all that growth

I saw this get panicked about on Resetera. People then read it closer and said it sounded more like Sony wants to leverage its multimedia status and use all the IP across divisions, like movies or anime based on game IPs or Sony music for soundtracks, etc.

I don’t really feel the “oh I’m old now” stuff from these posts. More annoyance at how the industry is run these days compared to yesteryear

Also so many lost game styles due to chasing fads/trends and received Wisdom about what’s out of date design

Sadly Xbox being a Microsoft subdivision it has a larger USA-style corpo culture so “Will it make infinite profits? No!? Kill it now!!!”

Other publisher have the issue too but not to the extreme degree Microsoft have

No worries. Obviously, as a Brit, it's just something I notice more when games media talk about the 8 and 16-bit eras cos it has little relation to my local reality.

Still happening now when podcasts still get shocked by Xbox’s poor global sales cos it does okay in the American market.

Definitely, highly regional tastes affecting perspectives making the global reality a surprise

In my circles, the Xbox mostly got written off as “the American box” full of dumb shooters. In my uni, most would have a PS2 with a GameCube as a second

That's still an American perspective, I don't know if they even acknowledged Nintendo in their European marketing where Nintendo only did alright until the WII while Sega and then Sony bodied them hard

I do think remake’s Midgar is close enough (unlike Crisis Core). Square was just trying to manage expectations on PS3 era tech and it got a life of its own of “towns are too hard!” lol

Honestly, I’d love modern ore-rendered. It would be so advanced and PS5 would only need to worry about characters

The thing is that it isn’t even what they said in the interview. Just that doing it at the quality of the PS1 pre-rendered towns in fully 3D real-time HD was an extreme task.

We only really got there with remake and rebirth as most JRPG towns over the last twenty years had been copy-paste affairs.

It’s never helped that for some reason games media tends to get filled with American hyper Nintendo fans (the 16-bit gen gets super distorted to the point you’d think Sega were barely there. I hear Sega was super competitive in the USA but in Europe, the Megadrive trampled Nintendo)

In my circles the GameCube was reasonably big among the gamers in my uni (pretty much all of us had a ps2 too) so I was shocked to find out years later it wasn’t that big overall

Yup. Even good games “hey I can’t wait to plat the 3 JRPGs out this month! That doesn’t sound exhausting and soul destroying at all!!”

Oh good cos I see some ppl online who say they have a need to platinum everything and I can't imagine a more miserable experience.

How about charmy bee from Sonic!?

Couple of things. What is the user distribution between hemispheres? If there's a heavy Northern Hemisphere bias, any recent trends would be affected by summer activity.

Also the guy's credentials as former social media consultant for the UK gov give me pause cos I know our govs tech literacy lol

Oh dear. I can’t imagine doing that. Most games would make me no longer like them going for all trophies.

That's cos it was made for an actual TV network, by ppl who knew how to make TV shows as an actual TV show, not as a weird cut-up movie

And financially they knew how to do things the right way cos they knew TV (adverts and viewing figures bring in more cash), not £8 for everything on ABC each month

Honestly, it feels like something that should have happened already since the Prime 1 remake. With MP4 coming this year (or 2026 if it does get delayed) there isn’t really room for 2&3 to come out and not cause fatigue

During this period I kinda jokingly believed that the new outsourced games were just a Trojan horse conman act to allow Akira to make music albums at Konami’s expense.

I know I did it once on Megadrive but I don't think I'd ever try again lol

Good luck dude it's a task and a half