Game News 2.0

Varik

A bunch of ISOs or propriety archive/compressed file type that contains compiled code and the released assets doesn't do much if you've do do anything with them more than run them on original hardware or emulated equivalent.

pixelburp

It has been something I've thought on, if not related to Games. Everything's on the cloud now; if humanity went extinct in the morning, what would future archaeologists find to chart our history? The cloud would be gone, alongside the infrastructure to maintain or run it, so there'd be no record of our daily lives. This era could become utterly unknown by dint of a lack of physical chronicles.

Ok, hardware can become unusable through being archaic, while items like books rot & decay, but they're all still physical. Tangible and recoverable with the right know-how. Can the same be said of cloud-based software? It doesn't feel that way. And bringing it back to the here and now & games; the idea that the very existence of IPs are down to the magnanimity of corporations deciding to publicise something, is potentially scary.

Varik

pixelburp wrote: »

It has been something I've thought on, if not related to Games. Everything's on the cloud now; if humanity went extinct in the morning, what would future archaeologists find to chart our history? The cloud would be gone, alongside the infrastructure to maintain or run it, so there'd be no record of our daily lives. This era could become utterly unknown by dint of a lack of physical chronicles.

Ok, hardware can become unusable through being archaic, while items like books rot & decay, but they're all still physical. Tangible and recoverable with the right know-how. Can the same be said of cloud-based software? It doesn't feel that way. And bringing it back to the here and now & games; the idea that the very existence of IPs are down to the magnanimity of corporations deciding to publicise something, is potentially scary.

A data centre somewhere in a better state than the couple of hard drives and burnt disc lying around my skeleton remains.

BloodBath

pixelburp wrote: »

It has been something I've thought on, if not related to Games. Everything's on the cloud now; if humanity went extinct in the morning, what would future archaeologists find to chart our history? The cloud would be gone, alongside the infrastructure to maintain or run it, so there'd be no record of our daily lives. This era could become utterly unknown by dint of a lack of physical chronicles.

Ok, hardware can become unusable through being archaic, while items like books rot & decay, but they're all still physical. Tangible and recoverable with the right know-how. Can the same be said of cloud-based software? It doesn't feel that way. And bringing it back to the here and now & games; the idea that the very existence of IPs are down to the magnanimity of corporations deciding to publicise something, is potentially scary.

If humanity went extinct I don't think we'd have to worry about what future archeologists, presumably alien, find of our civilization.

Maybe we should go back to recording in stone. That's the only way it will last any meaningful time. Or maybe the aliens recover a bunch of hentai from a preserved disc and come to the conclusion that we were a bunch of perverts.

Retr0gamer

I can deal with the only human legacy being hentai.

Just as long as it's not kingdom hearts.

gizmo

https://twitter.com/Nibellion/status/1377312988990955524

plz.

Lucky Jack

Deleted User wrote: »

Oh I know they might be archived in that sense. But public availability would be more my concern...

This is the thing that annoys me most, the HASSLE of trying to continue to engage with what are both artworks and cultural relics.

Like, I can walk into any bookshop in the country, never mind online, and find multiple copies of books or stories produced 100, 500, even 1000 years before my time. If I go with the Wordsworth editions, I can probably get them for less than a euro!

But if I want to experience the beginnings of the Final Fantasy series, for example, it's all "Oh well, that came out on physical hardware so you might find it on that but then there's also a port that came out later on more recent hardware but actually those carts are quite expensive now and the save batteries can be tricky but then again there's an even more recent port but it's not as good because of xyz but at least you can get it digitally oh wait you can't get it digitally now because they've shut down that storefront but oh well you can still emulate it though its technically illegal unless you already own a copy and thus requires hoop-jumping so just get yourself one of these systems and then follow the yellow brick road to ROM town but make sure you've got the right firmware and you should be good to go. Oh, the battery is dead in your handheld emulation box? Well if you just get your screwdriver out and..."

I know it's a function of the medium, and these electronic artifacts were never going to be as timelessly reproduceable and transferrable as paper and ink, but its the APATHY in the industry that's so annoying. It's like the custodians of the Louvre are going around every few years and whitewashing all the canvases to make way for the next batch, and if anyone says 'Hey, maybe it would be good for later generations to be able to see this stuff too, the building blocks of where we are now" they just shrug and go "Oh, well actually you can still see these images because we used to sell postcard versions now they tend to go for quite a bit online these days but you can also find some of them on old promotional leaflets which aren't as good but at least..."

So those of us who are interested in digging into the history of the medium are left scrambling around fighting one another over postcards, and the images are fading due to UV rays, and they eventually turn to dust, and eventually we all turn to dust too, and before we finally blow away in the solar wind we just have time to think "I'm still really annoyed I was too young to buy my own N64 and now I'll never have one"

Varik

Don't think this can all be just applied to games.

X-raying paintings has found a number of famous paintings were actually reused canvas.

Animation studios would wipe and reuse animations cels.

Film reels would just be abandoned after a while, especially things like news reels ( which historically would be extremely important)

Tapes get reused, there's a mass of broadcast TV that's gone and never coming back with some instances of just someone involved keeping a copy and that being the entire reason we have it now (monty python)

BloodBath

I wouldn't feel bad about pirating some old generation games that aren't even available to buy anymore.

It amazes me that many great classics were never re-released on other platforms over the years. The only way to play many old arcade and console classics is piracy.

If the developers or owners of those IP's have no interest in making money off of them anymore then they shouldn't care that people are pirating them either.

A proper retro front end setup is a great time machine to explore old games. Over 3/4 of the companies that developed these games are long gone anyway.

Retr0gamer

Well film went through this as well. Lots of early films have been lost and destroyed. The same has happened to videogames. Companies didn't put any value in the games they made. They sold for 18 months and then forgotten about. Only now they are discovering that their old back catalogues have huge value and are archiving their work.

Thankfully videogames are a digital medium and 'pirates' have actually curated the vast majority of videogame content since the 70's. Not a whole lot of it has been lost.

And emulation has come a long way. It used to be a bit wonky but now you have very accurate emulators like BSNES and recently I've been majorly impressed with how far PS1, N64 and Saturn emulation has come. I just had a quick go of radiant silvergun and you couldn't be able to tell the difference between the beetle emulator core and a real saturn.

There are ways to play these games thankful due to archivists. Videogames have been luck compared to the other arts in that its format has lent it to being archived.

Grumpypants

Interestingly Microsoft went with the preserving gaming history angle with their latest announcement of back compatible games for X Cloud as part of game pass.

"Members will be able to play a range of games on mobile, from original Xbox titles like Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, to 360 hits Banjo-Kazooie, Fable II and Fallout: New Vegas. Touch controls, which makes it easier for gamers to jump into a game without a controller, will also be enabled for titles such as Jetpac Refuelled, Viva Pinata, and Viva Pinata TIP. Bringing these titles to the cloud is another big step in our continuing journey to preserve gaming’s history."

Retr0gamer

Give us Jet Set Radio Future please.

Potential-Monke

Ah it happens in every industry. I'm sure there's people out there mad at the world because it's impossible to get a certain 8-track, cassette or mini disc, etc. Vinyl has somehow survived, thanks in most part to proper DJ's still preferring them (digital DJ's are not DJ's). But it's also because there's not enough people interested. I'm totally honest with this, I have spent money on the PS3 digital games and loads of other mediums, but I'm under no illusion that I own them, nor do I expect to have access to them forever. I buy them knowing this, and if it is something I want to keep, I'll buy a physical version of it. Also kinda why I don't really get into online games that much, because no matter how much you love it, eventually it will be gone.

Preservation should happen for historical purposes, but aside from genre changing or game shaping examples, most can be forgotten. We don't need to remember, let alone have access to, all 3800 PS2 games!

BloodBath

Very few "proper DJ's" still using vinyl outside of hobbyist collectors. Far more creative mixing can be done with digital with a far cleaner sound and 0 issues with degrading vinyl with your entire collection storeable on a 2.5" SSD instead of needing a room to store it and a van to move it to play a set.

Not to mention the cost of having a big digital collection vs a big vinyl collection.

Potential-Monke

BloodBath wrote: »

Very few "proper DJ's" still using vinyl outside of hobbyist collectors. Far more creative mixing can be done with digital with a far cleaner sound and 0 issues with degrading vinyl with your entire collection storeable on a 2.5" SSD instead of needing a room to store it and a van to move it to play a set.

Don't really care what you can do with it, because anyone can be a digital dj using beat matching hard/software. Proper DJ's use vinyl because it actually takes some skill. And all those negatives you say about vinyl are part and parcel of being a vinyl lover/collector (which I am not). But I do have about 100 vinyl left from my days.

wes

Retr0gamer wrote: »

And emulation has come a long way. It used to be a bit wonky but now you have very accurate emulators like BSNES and recently I've been majorly impressed with how far PS1, N64 and Saturn emulation has come. I just had a quick go of radiant silvergun and you couldn't be able to tell the difference between the beetle emulator core and a real saturn.

Also, the advances in FPGA tech like mister, which can do a lot of older systems including arcade boards and can do perfect emulation.

BloodBath

There's a lot more to djing than beat matching. That's the most basic element of mixing and the less time you spend doing that allows more time to do something more creative. There's even more skill involved when you can get really creative with the mixes instead of simply mixing some intro and outro together.

That old school snobbery of digital vs vinyl should be long dead by now. Digital is far superior in most ways.

quokula

Lucky Jack wrote: »

Like, I can walk into any bookshop in the country, never mind online, and find multiple copies of books or stories produced 100, 500, even 1000 years before my time. If I go with the Wordsworth editions, I can probably get them for less than a euro!

The thing is that for every book you can still find, hundreds of others will have been lost to history, or only exist in the form of rare copies in private collections nobody else will ever have access to. The ones that you can still buy are available because there is still some profit in them for publishers, and they haven't been kept around out of some specific preservation effort made by the original author. The same can be said of your other examples mentioned like paintings, music or movies.

It's not that different to games in that way, the stuff that is popular enough gets remade, reprinted or remastered. That which isn't is left to private collectors and enthusiasts to be kept around as there is no obligation for game developers to do it.

Games have some specific disadvantages, like being tied to actual hardware that can run them, and existing in physical formats that are prone to degrading, particularly earlier stuff on floppies and cassette tapes. But they also have advantages, like the ability to make 100% perfect digital copies, which can often be run on emulators of the specific hardware they were designed for.

Potential-Monke

You can't say:

BloodBath wrote: »

That old school snobbery of digital vs vinyl should be long dead by now.

Only to immediately say:

BloodBath wrote: »

Digital is far superior in most ways.

We'll agree to disagree! If someone can't get the beat matching right, a "basic" skill as you put it, then they shouldn't be near them in the first place. But totally my opinion, and I don't want to take away from other skills but being able to consistently and perfectly match the beats using vinyl is a true sign of a good DJ to me.

Potential-Monke

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Ah it happens in every industry. I'm sure there's people out there mad at the world because it's impossible to get a certain 8-track, cassette or mini disc, etc. Vinyl has somehow survived, thanks in most part to proper DJ's still preferring them (digital DJ's are not DJ's). But it's also because there's not enough people interested. I'm totally honest with this, I have spent money on the PS3 digital games and loads of other mediums, but I'm under no illusion that I own them, nor do I expect to have access to them forever. I buy them knowing this, and if it is something I want to keep, I'll buy a physical version of it. Also kinda why I don't really get into online games that much, because no matter how much you love it, eventually it will be gone.

Preservation should happen for historical purposes, but aside from genre changing or game shaping examples, most can be forgotten. We don't need to remember, let alone have access to, all 3800 PS2 games!

Thing is, if games end up off market. I think it becomes a pretty fair justification for piracy tbh. I also would very much so expect to have access to any games I purchase indefinitely provided I have the hardware. PC users are in such a scenario and I think it's reasonable for console users to expect that.

Retr0gamer

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Preservation should happen for historical purposes, but aside from genre changing or game shaping examples, most can be forgotten. We don't need to remember, let alone have access to, all 3800 PS2 games!

They do all need to be preserved. We will never know what games will be historically important or will be rediscovered in the future. We have already lost a lot of highly influential games on japanese home computers because people didn't realise their historical significance.

OptimusTractor

Retr0gamer wrote: »

They do all need to be preserved. We will never know what games will be historically important or will be rediscovered in the future. We have already lost a lot of highly influential games on japanese home computers because people didn't realise their historical significance.

Put them in a Retro Art and Gaming Emporium.

Sephiroth_dude

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Don't really care what you can do with it, because anyone can be a digital dj using beat matching hard/software. Proper DJ's use vinyl because it actually takes some skill. And all those negatives you say about vinyl are part and parcel of being a vinyl lover/collector (which I am not). But I do have about 100 vinyl left from my days.

Vinyl ftw, It's even harder if you use a modular mixer.

Gunmonkey

EDF: World Brothers has been given a worldwide release date of May 27th on PC, Switch and PS4.

https://kotaku.com/the-beautifully-blocky-earth-defense-force-world-broth-1846597048

Retr0gamer

Gunmonkey wrote: »

EDF: World Brothers has been given a worldwide release date of May 27th on PC, Switch and PS4.

https://kotaku.com/the-beautifully-blocky-earth-defense-force-world-broth-1846597048

That game looks so interesting and EDF is such a blast, even more so in co-op.

Great that the series is getting a simultaneous release on PC, hopefully EDF6 will be the same and not the year long wait for a PC sku.

Shapey Fiend

Potential-Monke wrote: »

You can't say:

Only to immediately say:



We'll agree to disagree! If someone can't get the beat matching right, a "basic" skill as you put it, then they shouldn't be near them in the first place. But totally my opinion, and I don't want to take away from other skills but being able to consistently and perfectly match the beats using vinyl is a true sign of a good DJ to me.

Check out the Community Skratch Games (generally hosted in Galway the last 15 years) this weekend they've got a 3 day event online. People come from all over Europe compete at it. Main organiser DJ Jimmy Penguin is also quite involved in Irish eSports.

From what I see most people like Serato. Then they've got the feel of vinyl decks without having to lug the vinyl. Maybe that's just in hip hop circles though. The CDJ to digital transition is a bit more straightforward.

BloodBath

Potential-Monke wrote: »

You can't say:




Only to immediately say:





We'll agree to disagree! If someone can't get the beat matching right, a "basic" skill as you put it, then they shouldn't be near them in the first place. But totally my opinion, and I don't want to take away from other skills but being able to consistently and perfectly match the beats using vinyl is a true sign of a good DJ to me.

I thought that after posting it myself but it's not just a matter of opinion. There are a bunch of factual reasons for that. I know this ain't the thread for it but last post about it.

GL getting a large vinyl collection compared to digital. Digital comes out on top with Cost / storage space / library access / sound quality / durability / portability / Visual digital representations of the track so you can see the music / Cue points / Soundpads and a bunch of other features that you can't do with vinyl without recording a sample first using digital equipment on the side.

The ability to mix any music you want is also huge. You will be lucky to find half of that stuff on vinyl at all.

You're acting like modern vinyl equipment doesn't have bpm counters on it anyway. A bad DJ will use it as a crutch, a good one will use it so they can concentrate on doing other things.

Mr Crispy

A virtual version of E3 has been confirmed for June 12-15. Nintendo, Xbox, Capcom, Konami, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros Games, Koch Media have been confirmed as "participating" so far.

Retr0gamer

I expect most of the big hitters will have their own streams.

Konami? What are they announcing, more pachinko?

Mr Crispy

Silent Hill (mobile game).