Backlog: The Embiggening – November, 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/30/22 at 04:46 PM CT
Welcome back, once again, to another look into the near future! November is upon us, and as the month when Americans are supposed to set aside time to think about all the things we’re thankful for in our lives, I can’t help but think that I’m NOT thankful for all these terrible monthly release schedules crammed with crap. Of course, gratitude isn’t the real thing the market has on its hive mind, but the rapidly-approaching advent of the Winter Black Ink-on-the-Ledger (as if anyone still uses those, or changes the color of their Excel font) holidays, starting with November’s own Black Friday, and continuing in an orgy of profit mongering all the way until the end of the Fiscal Year in March. Yeah, after two downer years thanks to COVID and ‘successive economic contractions’ marking a ‘recession,’ Games Industry players are desperate to push products out the door and trade them for buyers’ increasingly-devalued currency.
Oh, my EFFing head… we need to hire …
How Has Square-Enix NOT Screwed-Up ‘Dragon Quest’?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/23/22 at 03:17 PM CT
Recently, I started playing the latest “new” spinoff release (from 2018) in the long-running and highly-respected ‘Dragon Quest’ franchise, while also anticipating this year’s upcoming release of “Dragon Quest Treasures,” and I found myself wondering: “How is it that the ‘Dragon Quest’ series has remained steadfastly good, with only a few exceptions, over the course of 35+ years?”
While it is true that when it started in 1986, with a trilogy of 8-bit NES titles that featured grinding, tedium, and more grinding, ‘Dragon Quest’ was, like every game of the era, a bit ‘basic.’ Furthermore, in the era of localization instead of translation, Enix of America took great pains to knock all the ‘funny’ out of ‘Dragon Quest’ and turn it into a ‘serious’ RPG that would compete directly with PC-centric releases like the ‘Ultima’ series. However, the 8-bit era wasn’t a time for creating masterpieces, it was a time for laying foundations and …
Valve Steam Deck Ad Gives Nintendo Fanboys Aneurisms
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/16/22 at 03:19 PM CT
Ever since Valve launched the Steam Deck, Nintendo fanboys have been squealing and squirming at the prospect of a portable PC with a huge back catalog of games and FREE online dragging attention away from the Nintendo Switch, which they love to worship as the first handheld/console hybrid device, in spite of the fact that it is NOT. Recently, one Patreon Panhandler on Twitter (which recent Pew data revealed to be nothing but an echo chamber where 3% of the users generate 90% of the content) noticed that, in Valve’s official Steam Deck advertisement, the logo for the excellent Yuzu Nintendo Switch emulator appears on the Steam Deck launcher menu. Naturally, this Tweet was picked up by NintendoLife and turned into a story, which has its own share of delusional fanboyism going on in the comments section.
Unfortunately, Yuzu isn’t available for download on Steam. However, there is a Linux version available, which can be downloaded and installed quite easily on a Steam Deck, since …
Mario Goes Back to the Movies. Will It Be Any Better This Time?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/09/22 at 03:43 PM CT
This week, the world got its first look at Nintendo’s and Illumination’s upcoming “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” Now, with a stellar and original title like that, no one should have any doubts that this new film will be better than the 1993 disaster, “Super Mario Bros.,” a live action mess starring a number of big names that completely missed the mark, even as a wildly imaginative ‘adaptation’ of Nintendo’s flagship IP.
We’ve been hearing speculation and fake news for a while now about how Chris Pratt, better known for his roles in the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and ‘Jurassic World’ movies, where he always sounds like… Chris Pratt, wouldn’t be up to the task of inhabiting the titular role of Mario, and the few lines of Pratt’s dialog in the trailer are… inconclusive.
The question of Mario’s voice is a rabbit hole of inconsistencies. Early on in the history of the ‘Super Mario’ IP, Nintendo collaborated with both Korean animation …
Games I Wish Microsoft Studios Were Working On (But They Aren’t)
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/02/22 at 03:42 PM CT
Microsoft has been on a buying spree of videogame development studios since at least 2018, when they spent time at E3 touting their enhanced ability to produce great first-party games through the acquisition of new studios. I personally didn’t feel particularly excited about these earlier acquisitions, as the studios in question were never on my radar to begin with. However, when Microsoft reassembled the scattered remnants of Interplay under one roof again and bought-out Tim Schafer’s Double-Fine Productions, I started to care, because those studios actually made games I have enjoyed – or at least attempted to enjoy – in the past.
In 2020, when most of the world was laser-focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft was ramping up the scale of its studio acquisitions, purchasing the videogame holding company, Zenimax Media, almost exclusively for access to Bethesda Softworks and id Software – the “Skyrim” and “DOOM” people. Now, in late 2022, Microsoft is mere …
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