Game News 2.0

One thing I would be surprised at with the GTA remasters is if they're able to get all the music.

If they are doing all three at once, I'd be very surprised if it's anything more than a HD upgrade. A full remake from the ground up would be a huge operation.

I can see them using the old "we wanted to retain the original experience line" and slightly improve the visuals. Even though if you wanted the original experience you could just play the originals!

Getting all nostalgic, decided to look up the intro for GTA 3, man, the music, setting, voice acting, just superb. I was thinking which one I'd play first and thought I'd do them in order but might actually start with SA. Saying that, the temptation to jump back into Vice City might just be too strong. But then, I remember how blown away I was by GTA 3 and would love to try it again.

San Andreas Intro:

Vice City Intro

GTA III Intro

I still recall buying gta 3 vividly, I was going on a school tour for midterm break on the Saturday heading off around Belgium France and Switzerland, went into town to pick up my last few bits and strolled into games world ( i think) on liffey street to have a look for no real reason. It must have been just after the game was released

There it was on a display case and I knew nothing about it so I picked it up and went home to play it read the book all the way home on the bus and got home around 4, sat there for the next 12 hours before I had to walk to school to get a coach to the airport absolutely shattered, the holiday was ruined all I wanted to do was get back and play it. Longest week away in my life and the worst part was only 1 other person had it and nobody could understand why we we were so excited about this game

So following on from this, the schedule briefly included this info before it was quickly removed;

"Revitalized" edition doesn't sound too promising in terms of a complete reboot á la Doom 2016, but we'll see.

I always used a cheat disc when playing SA on my PS2. :o

Also, it was one of the few games in my Steam library that my ancient Intel i3-2xxx with HD4000 onboard graphics could run at a double digit framerate.

Japan’s entire weekly top 30 is Switch games, first time that's happened in 33 years - https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/japans-entire-weekly-top-30-is-switch-games-the-first-time-a-single-format-has-done-this-in-33-years/

Goes to show just how dominant Nintendo is in Japan. There's the Switch and there's nothing else. Would love to think that this and the, hopeful impending successful launch of the Steam Deck, would make Sony think again when it comes to handhelds.

Doesn't help that Sony moved their clearing house for allowable content to California and started clamping down on content that usually sells pretty well in Japan seeing quite a few Japanese developers abandon the platforms.

I remember playing GTA 1 for the first time and even though it wasn't the nicest thing to look at, it was an amazing experience. I remember my 14/15 year old self left open mouthed when one of the first missions was "i need you to wack my brother cuz i caught him banging my wife" :o

That game was tough as nails though, don't think i ever finished it.

I loved GTA 3 and Vice City. GTA 3 was amazing, I had never played a game like it. You were set a mission and did it whatever way you wanted, if you replayed a mission it could turn out totally different. I still remember playing the mission at the start were you had to pull over a pimp in his car and kill him with a bat and he had an uzi. Loved it.

I've been wishing for ages they would remake these games with a modern update, I hope they don't just do a rush job 'remaster'.

I think most people preferred San Andreas the most, but I didn't take to it and gave up early on with that one.

I liked GTA V but it isn't the same as the old ones, they were more chaotic, funny and fun.

The article doesn't make it clear, but this is just physical copies and doesn't count online sales, which would be way higher on other consoles. In that top 30, the number 1 game sold less than 15 thousand copies and the number 30 game barely sold more than 2 thousand, which are pretty miniscule numbers in a country the size of Japan. I also have no idea what impact that week being the week they were hosting the Olympics, and a covid state of emergency being announced in Tokyo, would have had on people making visits to physical stores.

If you look at hardware sales, the PS5 has been doing about 25k units per week in Japan, basically that's as many as they can supply. So for no PS5 game to be on that list it would mean that 90% of people who just bought a new console didn't bother buying a single game. While the Switch is absolutely the number one console in Japan, the competition is far from dead and the reality is that the chart just reflects how far behind the times Nintendo continue to be when it comes to digital distribution.

Does Nintendo have the voucher system in Japan, just as a matter of interest?