BirdObserver
@BirdObserver@lemmy.world
- Comment on Lara Croft is a Sociopath 3 weeks ago:
It’s just making a joke about the game being challenging (he’s only the hero if you win). Game media used to be a lot more playfully antagonistic back when many games weren’t necessarily designed to be won.
(And while I’m here, that manual has other odd stuff in it that predates Nintendo setting global standards. It has multiple uses of the word “kill”, and it has an “ask your parents” bit about the domino effect).
- Comment on Virtual Boy: Nintendo Classics - Announcement Trailer 5 weeks ago:
Like everyone else here, I’ve got no love for Nintendo’s business practices, but the owner of the software having officially endorsed ways of playing their stuff on modern devices (let alone replications of original hardware, like with their old controller releases) has basically always been a good thing, both for average Joe consumer that’s interested in game history and doesn’t know what a ROM is, and for the emulation community who wouldn’t ever pay for this stuff but can often build off the tech (or educate us on the problems with it). Is any of this the ideal? Of course not, locking ancient games being a subscription is typical megacorp horseshit. But a kid being able to pick up a brand new Switch 2 and play Game Boy Arkanoid and Virtual Boy Teleroboxer on it is something.
Art of all forms shouldn’t be virtually inaccessible to the masses outside of methods of questionable legality (although, make no mistake, I think those methods are good too, and these things can coexist).
Whether or not the games are objectively “good” or popular is totally beside the point. Just because I can easily download a pirated version of some forgotten 80’s b-movie doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing when it finds some form of new life through an overpriced official boutique blu-ray release.
- Comment on Virtual Boy: Nintendo Classics - Announcement Trailer 5 weeks ago:
Wario Land is still a really great game on it even today that doesn’t deserve to be locked on flawed hardware (the motherboard disconnects one of the lenses over time and it’s a pain to repair), and Red Alert is one of those games in which the limitations actually, probably accidentally, give it a really unique hypnotic style, and the dual gamepad controls (also used to nice effect in Teleroboxer) ensured it didn’t just feel like a regular Nintendo game of the time. I don’t doubt it inspired actual classics like Rez.
I get the hate for the Virtual Boy - most games on it barely feel complete, it was uncomfortable to use, it made your pupils dilate - but it is a fun and important piece of weird gaming history, and Nintendo acknowledging it as such and finally officially allowing people some way to play those games again (knowing full well it’s going to get a lot of hate) is still a good thing overall for classic game preservation.
- Comment on Nintendo Announces Free Switch 1 Games Upgrades for Switch 2 5 months ago:
It would be, if this wasn’t passing off old news from right after the Switch 2’s big reveal trailer as something new: ign.com/…/nintendo-switch-games-free-switch-2-upg…
(The games that weren’t free to upgrade then still aren’t now).
- Comment on That was a great 17 minute wait 8 months ago:
Uhhhh if someone is asking for a randomly generated authentication code you might want to double check who you’re talking to and make sure you’re not being scammed.
- Comment on Crypto bros have discovered idle games, and the results are incredibly boring 1 year ago:
I still have two stuffed monkeys I “won” from that site, from when I was young and stupid and didn’t realize I was probably paying for them with my personal data.