Which is a bit ironic, considering all of these are in two compilation packs.
They’re probably going to have a new compilation pack that costs about the same price and has a few additional games…but they didn’t want to just sell DLC/standalone games for the Collections that already exist.
And actually, a lot of these games that are getting delisted can be purchased separately. And maybe even have ROMs that are easily extracted. So maybe they just want to lock things down into an all-or-nothing ROMs-hidden collection or 10.
Exactly, they announced earlier this year that they were working on reviving a bunch of licences, including Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and hinting at a longer list. We don’t know yet eactly how many titles that includes, and which of them will get remakes, remasters, or brand new games, but it was hinting brand new. Early dev footage was leaked at some point for Crazy Taxi and Shinobi.
They already did this with the classic Sonic games (Sonic Origins) and removed them from any new Steam copies of the Genesis/Mega Drive Classics collection. I doubt they’re working on all the games in their library, but it may be enough of them that they just decided to pull the whole collection rather than leave it so gutted out. Sucks, but yeah, that’s the way it goes. That said, Shining Force remaster please? That would be awesome.
I wonder if it's a licensing thing. I know a few of these games had heavy use of licensed music, like Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxy. At least, the original versions did, I'm not sure if that's the case for the Steam ports.
Sometimes they’re not on gog and I want to play them. Other times it’s 4$ on steam and 50$ on gog. I’ll buy it for 4 on steam so I can play it, then wait for the sale on gog down the road.
That’s games that you can and do buy of Steam. Delisting changes nothing except that you won’t be able to give them money in exchange for not owning the games.
Dystopika (Steam, Windows) is a city builder in maybe the strictest definition of that two-word descriptor, because it steadfastly refuses to distract you with non-building details. The game is described by its single developer, Matt Marshall, as having “no goals, no management, just creativity and dark cozy vibes.” Dystopika does very little to explain how you should play it, because there’s no optimal path for doing so. Your only job is to enjoy yourself, poking and prodding at a dark cyberpunk cityscape, making things that look interesting, pretty, grim, or however you like. It might seem restrictive, but it feels very freeing.
That’s great. But how long until I can play Balatro on my iPod Classic?
(I love that indie devs occasionally port their games to nonsensical or obsolete platforms)
Edit: I actually think Balatro would translate fairly well; assuming the iPod Classic has enough ram and CPU to run a visually stripped-down version. When I had an iPod Nano I played solitaire almost obsessively. The controls were a bit slow due to the limitations of using a clickwheel, but they actually worked really well.
On a side note: does anyone know if capacitive clickwheels still under patent, trademark or whatever was keeping other companies from using them? I loved the way the iPod clickwheel felt and it sucked that no one else had a 1:1 replication of it.
iPod mini was the first with the capacitive touch wheel with integrated buttons. It came out in 2004 and patents usually only last 20 years, so it should be fine to use the tech as long as you don’t use an apple logo, or any of the advancements they made in 2005 or later.
I had completely forgotten about iPod games! I think there was one called Vortex that I liked a lot and there was also game version of the show LOST that I only played because I was a mega-fan of the show that was otherwise very frustrating.
Oh wow, I totally forgot about doing that as well! I think I spent the better part of a day getting it work, then “played” it for all of two or three minutes.
arstechnica.com
Aktywne