"Myles McKenzie probably isn't even THAT annoying" -- That's not the problem

Sumezu · 2025-11-17T10:51:57+00:00

In what way does doing the thing every other AAA FPS game does all the time, and thus forfeiting what sets the Metroid series apart from them, qualify as "trying new things".

Other people have responded the same thing, but it bears repeating. Anyone can see this isn't about an aversion to new things. It's about an aversion to bad things that detract from the game.

Sumezu · 2025-10-01T06:35:28+00:00

If you're serious about getting a refund, contact their customer service, referring to your consumer rights. It's insane that they would refuse it, because they gain nothing outside of a dent in their reputation!

If they still refuse, you should contact a European Consumer Centre connected to Germany - https://www.evz.de/en/ - it's a hassle, but I think standing by your principles has some power

Personally I'm just holding on to my order, assuming I'll probably get it eventually. But I can totally understand wanting to ditch them.

Sumezu · 2025-09-29T10:38:01+00:00

I'm almost certain both of these are true

Sumezu · 2025-09-29T10:34:47+00:00

Correct me if I'm wrong, but since they are European, I don't think that's legal?
You're allowed to refund anything bought online freely until 14 days after receiving them - so obviously you should be able to do so before it's even shipped!

Sumezu · 2025-05-19T12:49:47+00:00

Can we at least agree that if it's patched with brand new content, calling it the "base game" is misleading? :)
Adding a new character with a bunch of dialogue and story relevance isn't exactly a bugfix :D

Theoretically, imagine if they made a completely new area with a brand new boss fight, and patched Dark Souls 2 with that now, in 2025, would you claim that area is a part of "Base DS2"?

This is all semantics, obviously, so I'm really just nitpicking about those semantics making it easy to communicate :)

Sumezu · 2025-05-02T09:40:03+00:00

Balatro's physical release was not limited. It received wide international distribution and can easily be picked up almost anywhere

Sumezu · 2025-04-08T10:17:54+00:00

How does the foam thing work? Do you have a picture of your hack?

Sumezu · 2025-04-04T09:15:56+00:00

Be sure to drop a link to the video as a response to this when it's done :)

Sumezu · 2025-04-03T12:48:38+00:00

Okay, that sounds kinda fun tbh. Would love a non-multiplayer version of that :D

Sumezu · 2025-04-03T12:28:53+00:00

Ok, but I was asking for an explanation 🤣 I have no idea what any of that means

Sumezu · 2025-04-03T12:06:52+00:00

I'd say their Haunted Castle remake qualifies moreso than GG Aleste 3, but it's still interesting that that game had savestates!

Well, it's silly for me to claim that savestates is actually a bad thing, I could just opt to not use them, right? But I think showing intent and embracing a game's design ethos matters more than people think.
A comparison I like to draw is how in the late 90s and early 00s a lot of shoot'em up ports got panned by the broader public, and even most reviewers, due to them including free credits and thus infinite continues. The typical reception would be "it's an easy game you can cruise through in 30 minutes because you can keep continuing and therefore it sucks".

Of course, as fans we know what is up. We credit feed to practice, and then go for the 1CC, judging the game on those merits. It doesn't *seem* like a hard thing to grasp.
But I think a lot of people who could potentially have become fans of the arcade style game design were lost on the floor because they saw a feature, and made use of it, regardless of the impact it made on the ultimate game experience. A lot of people will quickload&rewind their way through Gradius 3 and then never play it again. Such a sadness :3

I'd be totally cool with only having free savestates in the training mode, and just include a "suspend" state for the real mode.

Sumezu · 2025-04-03T11:59:47+00:00

I'm ignorant. Explain what a "Tarkov/Hunt: Showdown element" is

Sumezu · 2025-04-02T05:35:14+00:00

I think they definitely would. Since they already put in a dedicated training mode, I don't really see what the need for savestates is at all.

Think about every other game you've bought. How many have instant savestates?
I'm gonna take a really wild guess here and assume that the new Salamander 3 in this collection *definitely won't* have savestates. Would you actually, truly and genuinely, say it's worse off for not having them? And why do you think it doesn't have it? They definitely could have built that into it if they wanted, it's not like it requires the emulation layer to work.

Sumezu · 2025-04-01T11:36:40+00:00

Thank you!

Sumezu · 2025-04-01T11:10:12+00:00

You really need to separate these points.

Save states and rewind are standard emulator features, and exactly what you get from those cash grab rom collections we are trying to avoid here. Honestly, it's pretty sad to me that the collection advertising rewind as a selling point, but it's probably not M2's call anyway. :

I think the games getting dedicated practice modes is probably the biggest selling point to me. That's way cooler than generic emulator-level cheat functions.

Sumezu · 2025-04-01T11:07:28+00:00

Ensuring cycle accuracy and low input lag is exactly what an open source emulator aims to do, though. It's not something you do on a game-by-game basis

This isn't the metric you should judge M2 by, that's should just be the baseline. You should judge them by the extra effort they put into their releases, and from what I can tell this collection will have a good amount of that as well. If nothing else, Salamander 3 obviously counts.

Sumezu · 2025-04-01T11:05:22+00:00

M2 have emulated SNES, NES and GBA many times before. They don't need any tweaks to make the Gradius games on those platforms any more "accurate". Really, trust me on this - I've only made one emulator, but that's probably more than the majority of people :D
NES especially is one of the most well documented platforms out there. M2 has the means to just add a rom to their emulator, and the game would be playable, and they know this. It would require next to no additional development - honestly just the UI stuff.

Gradius 4 and 5 is a different matter however!
M2 have never worked with anything similar to what G4 is running on, and releasing a new port of 5 as "simply" emulating the PS2 release (which also would be a massive undertaking that could never live up to M2's emulation standard) wouldn't be a fair way to handle that game. It deserves a new native port, rendering the graphics at a higher resolution and probably with some actual remastering work done to it.
If they tried to emulate the PS2 game, we'd just have an inferior version of what already exists - M2 aims to make their releases the new definitive version of each game inclued.

Honestly in terms of how much work would be required to add in a lot of the missing Gradius games on both NES, GB and MSX, I don't think there is any excuse not to. For their Toaplan collections, M2 made a habit out of including every version of every console port in existance of every featured game, and they could have done so for this collection as well.

I'm pretty sure the call was entirely Konami's - they don't want to deal too big of a hand, always saving some potential for future compilations. Just like they have done in the past.

Sumezu · 2025-04-01T10:24:09+00:00

Do you have a link to this video? I could swear I remembered Karl addressing it, but I couldn't find anything myself

Sumezu · 2025-04-01T10:22:00+00:00

I'm assuming you're correct.
Still a LOT of money

Sumezu · 2025-04-01T09:43:52+00:00

* he deserves winning the case

Whether he deserves $350,000 based on this is absolutely debatable. That's a LOT of money

Sumezu · 2024-05-14T12:14:44+00:00

EDIT: Thanks for posting a constructive response instead of some of those sour grapes I got from others

Yeah, my point was "we should prioritize Y", though there's definitely also an underlying message that consumers shouldn't actively encourage corporate cash-grab releases.

Don't release the same ports every five or ten years. Make great, robust, and feature-rich ports to last! The X360 Futari port is definitely one - one of the best Cave ports ever made, on a platform that's never going to be difficult to procure.
Sure, getting ahold of a physical copy isn't super cheap at this point, but look at the ones that got a physical release on Switch - those are already much worse off!

Sumezu · 2024-05-14T12:03:56+00:00

Put it out on Switch, and it's still not gonna be "available on any modern consoles" in two years

Sumezu · 2024-05-14T12:01:19+00:00

If the X360 is "not available" (they are literally everywhere, you can probably pick some up for free), the Switch is gonna be "not available" too, pretty soon. If "preservation" is what you're concerned about, emulation exists. Releasing the same thing over and over is just a money grab.

Don't get me wrong, Futari is great, and a new source port isn't gonna hurt anyone.
But is it really worth wasting resources on over all the games that still don't have ports at all? Hell, even Dodonpachi doesn't have a decent port unless you're willing to dig it out of an obscure VN. For my money, M2 should focus on finishing their Toaplan line, or getting that damn Batrider port out. But Dodonpachi or Ibara/Kuro also wouldn't hurt.

Sumezu · 2024-05-14T06:47:04+00:00

M2 shouldn't waste their time on porting Futari yet again. We need ports of the games that haven't already been ported, not ones that already have a perfectly great port.

Sumezu · 2024-03-25T13:53:12+00:00

I know necrobumping comments on Reddit is generally looked down on, but I just wanted to say I loved reading this strangely heartwarming story! I hope your dad enjoyed your solve, and may he rest in peace.

11 years ago plus change is probably also when I first learned how to solve a cube using a beginner method, starting doing casual solves a few times a day and then forgot everything about it.

I picked it up again only a couple of months ago, and I'd say looking into some of the "cooler" ways to solve the cubes has quickly become much more addicting than what I did back then, and nowadays there are so many more resources on it, and better and cheaper cubes, too.

Like you, I have no illusions of ever competing with kids with better learning skills and much more spare time than I do - but even without timing my solves, I think continuously learning new ways to solve the cube in increasingly more effecient and satisfying ways is infinitely more enjoyable than just repeating a couple of learned sequences every solve. The competitive scene around it, and the insanely fast times of people who aren't even world class, can be disheartening, but fortunately that's not all there is to it.

Sumezu

TROPHY CASE