Game News 2.0

Well, you could have wheelbarrows filled to the brim with funko pops 😄

Weirdly enough I remember Mulveys in Dundrum selling Amiga games when I was young! All small enough games that were usually about £5. Used to drive my dad mental because he loved going there at the weekend and couldn’t be left in peace as I would constantly badger him to pick up whatever I found interesting that day.

And I think that was the only place I got to use the Atari Lynx. It had on California Games, and I was blown away.

Definitely one of the biggest impacts of Gamestop closing will be when it comes to console releases. Obviously it'll be 4-5 years before the next generation of consoles starts coming out, but a new iteration of Switch or even a successor to it could be within the next few years. With a possible Xmas rush and no Gamestop or Argos, it could be absolute chaos for parents trying to get one. Getting PS5/XBX was difficult due to supply shortages, but at least you had various outlets to try get one from. Now you'll be limited to Smyths, Tesco maybe, and then the likes of Currys etc.

Yeah CEX were able to gouge desperate parents pre-Xmas with second hand consoles because they can pretty much charge what they want. Whereas if they started selling new consoles/peripherals, they'd have to sell them pretty much at RRP. Wouldn't put it past them to arrange for somehow selling to themselves or family at RRP, trading into CEX for less than the RRP, then selling again for way over the RRP.

I think they were selling second hand PS5s for about 800 back in 2020.

And now in game's news Atari are acquiring Night Dive Studios.

For the PS5, I ended up getting three of them. My original pre-order in Smyths which I ended up giving to my brother because my nephew wanted a PS5 for Xmas, one in Tesco (which went to another family member), and I ended up having to go with a diskless PS5 for myself, which I got from Game in the UK and had to have delivered.

There are definitely options, but even though I ultimately ended up with three, it was a struggle and more down to good timing than anything else. It was probably as much due to shortages as well as demand, but even ordering online is not without its troubles. They don't always announce when pre-orders are going live, then you have website crashes, payment issues etc. At least with physical stores like Gamestop, a lot of the time you can walk in and pre-order and you're given a position on the list. Once you do it early enough you're all but guaranteed your console.

It's a sad enough story. The Atari brand and associated ip's were bought by infogrames interactive who rebranded themselves as Atari and pretended to be the original company. They went as far as getting their shovelware crap and rebranding them with Atari's well known games, so their **** moon-crafting game became an Asteroids sequel and their awful Alan Wake/left for dead rip off became the new Alone in the dark.

There was even talk of releasing hardware at one point but I never really knew what happened to that. It's a sad ending to a one-time giant of the industry.

I always loved night dive for their work on game preservation. Their crowning achievement was bringing beck the two system shocks. But I'd hate to see the studio ruined.

Huge shame about GameStop closing. Was a really excellent spot for trade-in deals and I remember getting a great deal to upgrade my PS4 to PS4 Pro.

Hopefully the customers that use GameStop migrate to Smyths because we're really down to the last bastion of (serious) physical gaming stores in Ireland.

Sonic Origins Plus announced

Even Smyths is gone bad for their selection of games. They have the chart games if you want something new, and that's about it. You do often get a decent deal of the week though.

But gone are the days of looking through the shelves, picking a 2 year old game based on the box art for €20 and stumbling on a gem.

I do think there is a market there to stock weirder games, but it would become pretty specialised. More like the board game shops that sell war hammer and the likes.

Cool, I already have Origins and you can buy an "Expansion Pack" to upgrade to this.

Hope it's not too much :D

It's already part of the standard Sonic Origins. You can play as Knuckles in Sonic 2 and even Sonic 1. And Sonic 3 & Knuckles is one game on its own.

I think this new Plus edition allows you to play as Knuckles in Sonic CD now as well, and Amy Rose in all 4 games.