WTF is with the DRM on Final Fight: Double Impact Capcom?

No Comments »

So, Capcom recently added what I previously thought was a great release of the arcade versions of Final Fight and Magic Sword as a two-game pack on PSN and XBLA. Owning a PS3, I was tempted to grab it as I really like both games and thought it would be fun to play them in the main living room of the house.

However, I just found out that the game pack has DRM built into it, part of which requires you to have an internet connection at all times when you want to play the game (thanks to Kotaku for the great writeup).

What… the… #$%@?

So let’s get this straight – I’ve bought the game, I’m using it on my PS3, my internet connection drops out (very much a frequent thing in Australia, despite the hard work of ISPs like iiNet and Internode, there’s only so much you can do given the infrastructure), and BAM – no game for me.

Or what happens if my ADSL modem kicks the bucket and I have to wait a couple of weeks between grabbing a new one – I can’t play a game I legitimately downloaded?

Or, as one of the comments left by a reader on Kotaku pointed out, in 5-6+ years time and PSN changes or whatever (or for the sake of retro gaming, 10+ years – the PS3 won’t be Sony’s primary platform forever), I can’t play the game?

It’s… beyond rational.

For the record, I have Final Fight on Mega CD, have previously had it on the SNES, enjoyed playing it on the Capcom Classics Collection releases on the PS2 and even own an original CPS1 Final Fight PCB. Despite this, I was still happy to launch more money over at Capcom (and I am a big Capcom fan) to grab this so I have the convenience of being able to play it in my living room with Wifey, who loves a good scrolling fighter.

But not now. No way am I supporting this kind or behaviour from a company that should know better.

The worrying thing is if this viral attitude that presupposes every user is a pirate starts to infect other PSN releases – I actually have quite a few titles I’ve happily purchased over PSN and think it is such a fantastic service, and as a platform it is fulfilling a niche market of simpler, old-school and retro-inspired titles that aren’t commercially viable via a packaged release.

But this is the wrong way forward.

I respect the rights of a developer and publisher to protect their IP. But in return, I expect the developer and publisher to respect me as a consumer. I also expect that, despite the game being a digital release, that I’ll still be able to fire up my PS3 in 10 or 15 years time and play it. I figure that if I can still fire up my Atari 2600, where some of the carts are probably around 30 years old, why shouldn’t I have that same expectation of a game I have purchased for my PS3?

Capcom have some interesting titles on the way, one of which includes a new entry in the Bionic Commando ReArmed series. I bought Bionic Commando ReArmed within minutes of playing the demo because of impressed I was with it, and thoroughly enjoyed playing through the game. The sequel will potentially be a day-one purchase. However, if there’s even a hint that this kind of draconian DRM is going to be present, I’m walking away.

Shame Capcom, shame.

The Rocket Knight Adventures revisit looks promising (new trailer!)

No Comments »

Rocket Knight Adventures on the Mega Drive was/is awesome. When I was reading up via 1up and heard via their awesome nerd podcast Retronauts earlier this year that it was getting a revisit via PSN/XBLA, I was mildly excited. Some of the early promo artwork looked like it had potential, but I was still sitting on the fence.

However, after checking out an update over at PALGN and watching the trailer, I’m pleasantly surprised by how it’s shaping up:

I’m really loving the visual aesthetic here – there’s a classic storybook fantasy feel to the visuals that looks great, and the animation and particle effects are spot on. I didn’t have the speakers on while watching it though, so not sure on the direction with the audio. Hopefully it’s not poxy!

The original Mega Drive game in the series featured everything that made Konami such a powerhouse back in the 16- and 32-bit eras, with loving attention to detail on the visuals, great music perfectly suited to the hardware, plenty of colour, passion, spot-on controls, innovation and even a little story to boot! While the sequel on the Mega Drive was in comparison pretty disappointing (I’m guessing a different team handled it), the concept was still fun. The only game in the series I never got a chance to play was Sparkster on the SNES. I really should track it down though, Konami made some brilliant games on the SNES.

So yes, new Rocket Knight Adventures game for May. Can’t wait

Unofficial piano nocturne – themes from Streets of Rage or Street Fighter on the piano

1 Comment »

A while ago I grabbed the piece of awesome that is Sega Piano Nocturne – as the world’s worst piano player despite loving the instrument dearly, I absolutely loved hearing a lot of my favourite Sega tracks rolled into the piano and bring out some really interesting melodies from some great tunes. I think there should be more piano renditions of classic chiptunes and game themes, I absolute love a good arranged version of a classic song from a game. Because I’m a tragic nerd

Anywho, after checking out some footage of Yuzo Koshiro doing his thing in a Tokyo night club, I did the usual click-click-click-click YouTube thing you normally do to see what other Streets of Rage stuff was on there, and I stumbled across the following – it’s from the third stage in Streets of Rage 2:

Awesome, huh? The same user (Yuzoboy) has an upload playing the ending theme to Streets of Rage 2 which was really cool… but again, YouTube/Web2.0 strikes again, and I found the following interpretation of the ending theme from Streets of Rage 2:

This one’s from mymorningjackets, and is an amazing, bittersweet piece of awesome, lead by piano with a bit of classical guitar thrown in for good measure. There are also a couple of other great interpretations in his list, so might have to come back to him in a later post after I’ve had a chance to check out his blog.

So, with all things “street” on my mind, I started seeing results for Street Fighter 2 gear on the piano! Here are a handful of videos I found that I thought were worth a look into!

First up we have Ken’s theme from SF2 – this one’s a pretty “standard” interpretation of the song without too much embellishment, but you know what? It’s still played beautifully and with more skill than I can ever dream of having when I sit down at my piano Plus, given how awesome Ken is (yes, I’m a Ken scrub!), it’s all good

The day my mate McAdam and I accidentally unlocked the vocal theme of Sakura’s song (in Japanese at that!) on the PAL version of Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo on the Saturn was a glorious day, because she has such an amazing theme song (I got goosebumps playing through Sakura’s story in SF4 with her theme recurring throughout!), and this one’s a great version of her theme. Nothing’s embellished, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Remember, Sakura is awesome. Very important fact.

If Ryu’s theme doesn’t go down in the history of awesome of chiptunage, there’s something wrong with the world. If need be we can get rid of Sephiroth’s theme, as that’s starting to annoy me, but that’s because I’m an irrational fan of Phantasy Star and have yet to play through a Final Fantasy game based purely on principle. The exception to this is Final Fantasy III on the DS, which I really enjoyed (thanks Hamez!), and Final Fantasy IX always looked fun, as did FFVI. Anywho, enough of that – Rastapulse is responsible for the above, and I’ll be referencing him again too, as his interpretation of Ryu’s theme is brilliant. There’s a deliberate slowing of the tempo and some great phrasing in there – very expressive, and the little intro/outro he’s added is cool!

Fun fact – I used the melody of Cammy’s theme in an early megamix I made when I was first learning how to program stuff in a MIDI-sequencer. It was actually completely rubbish, but good fun at the time. MIDI sequencing programs confuse me now, I was quite happy with Evolution MIDI back in the day, it was choice. Now, if I was able to program something akin to the above on the aforementioned program, I would have been much more proud of myself. Akin to the Ryu theme that Rastapulse was responsible for above, this one’s slowed the tempo and emphasised the melody really nicely – again, great phrasing and execution. I haven’t checked out the rest of the material in his YouTube channel yet, so might have to get onto that later.

Last one – Guile’s theme, and I left this until last as it has elements from each of the styles I’ve linked to, with some of it emphasising 1:1 phrasing compared to the original with lotsa piano-passion, and then there are other moments where the melody’s been played around with a bit of artistic license and takes on the languishing character of the themes Rastapulse did above with just the right amount of melodrama to make things interesting.

Raving to Yuzo Koshiro in a Tokyo club

No Comments »

A friend posted a link to this in a discussion we were having via a message board online, and since I’d never heard of this being possible, thought it deserves some linkage:

For those not in the know, Yuzo Koshiro is an absolute genius when it comes to getting the Mega Drive’s Yamaha YM2612 chip to do some amazing stuff (though to be honest, Koshiro had a habit of making the entire chipset do some amazing stuff). The music for Streets of Rage 2 is probably my favourite of his work, though big ups should go to the amazing work he did creating a symphony out of the Mega Drive for Story of Thor, and for some amazing early work on Revenge of Shinobi.

I always thought back when I was younger that the quality of the audio in Streets of Rage 2 demanded more attention. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, it’s nice to see it was a success

Sally in… Sonic 1???

No Comments »

I’m on a roll today

Whilst hunting for the footage on YouTube on Sonic 4, I started doing the whole click-click-click thing you do on YouTube when looking up related videos, and came across this little awesome Sonic 1 hack:

Isn’t that cool? I used to watch the Sonic cartoon when I was a kid that had Sally and all those other weird auxiliary characters, and this is a really cool hack of the original Sonic game! Might have to see if I can find a copy of it to cram onto the cart I use for playing imports on my Mega CD since it can also act as a quasi-gimped flash cart.

Has Sega finally got it right with Sonic 4?

No Comments »

Catching up on all things nerdy, there have been some leaked videos of Sonic 4 on YouTube:

…

Okay, I just checked and they’ve disappeared off YouTube So, thanks to the magic of Kotaku, they’ve hosted it themselves and it’s looking really good. I also agree with others that have stated his walking animation looks a bit goofy, but otherwise it looks fantastic. I’m really looking forward to this release I believe the Lost Labyrinth levels are the best demonstration of how “right” Dimps have it, as it’s fusing elements from the Labyrinth Zone in Sonic 1, Hydrocity Zone in Sonic 3 and Tidal Tempest Zone in Sonic CD with all sorts of awesome. Thumbs up.

You know, it reminds me of a great column (well, comment within a review, as I just found out thanks to Google ) over at Dave’s Sega Saturn page in a Sonic R review that suggested that if Sega weren’t comfortable doing a 3D Sonic on the Saturn, they should have pushed the 2D envelope and made an amazing 2D Sonic game. I just think it’s amusing that they’ve gone back to 2D for Sonic when there has been a push since 1999 for 3D Sonic games, and while I’ll admit that I really enjoyed Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast (and the sequel as well, though there was some douchebaggery with aspects of it), the rest of the games since have been really disappointing.

I mean, just imagine a super-awesome 2D Sonic game on the Saturn – great audio handled by the machine’s magic audio chip (shame about the lack of hardware compression though ) that continued in the electro-synth style of the original Mega Drive games, great sense of speed and massive playing fields, copious animation and colour, lashings of alpha blending (remember that the Saturn had no troubles doing transparencies in 2D [see Guardian Heroes, Silhouette Mirage and Keio Yugekitai 2] – it was applying them to 3D objects where the problems came in), the mind boggles.

Anywho, I’d better finish up this ranting as there’s one more entry to add before I head off to play some classic Mega Drive games to celebrate Easter (remember yesterday’s rant?), but before I go I’m going to add a plug for sega-saturn.com (i.e. Dave’s Sega Saturn page), because that was one of the greatest Saturn resources online when I first got the internet circa ‘96/’97, and was the place I used when I gingerly dipped my toes into the wider waters of imported games It makes me feel very nostalgic checking it out again. That, however, is a topic for another post in its entirety!

What would Virtua Fighter look like if it it went in the same direction as Street Fighter?

No Comments »

You know what? This is funny (and a joke – read up more from the source), but you know what? It looks awesome

Thanks Kotaku!

Now, Sega – where’s the announcement for the PS3 port of VF5:FS? With my nerd powers, I have the console ports of all the VF games (well, only VF4:E instead of vanilla VF4 on the PS2), as well as PCBs of VF2 and VF3, give me extra nerd love in the form of a port of this one, please!! Online play would also be nice since you added it to the XB360 port of VF5 standard

Either that or give some attention to possibly making a new Fighters Megamix game

Seasonal gaming habits and associations

1 Comment »

This one’s a little left-of-center, but I thought I’d post it anyhows.

I’ve found over the years that, just as musos will track periods of time in their lives or historical phases by the music associated therewith, I have begun over the years to do the same thing with video games. I see this happening on two levels, micro (annual seasons/events) and macro (periods of time).

The most recent/up-coming example of Micro Gaming Associations (let’s give it a fancy acronym – MiGA – yeah!) would be Easter. And it’s a completely irrational.

Back in March 1993, my brothers and I pooled our resources and sold off our Sega Master System, all our controllers (bar one or two we left behind, came in handy for 1-button games like Sonic or Sonic 2 on the Mega Drive) and all our games in order to pool the $300 for a Sega Mega Drive (original model, without the serial port though) pack that included Sonic 1 and vouchers to get Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle (boo!) and Columns (uber). I’ll leave the full, drawn-out story for a later post, but suffice to say we picked one up and come Easter, we had a Mega Drive, and it was the greatest thing to ever happen in the history of the universe to my pre-pubescent brain.

So, I still remember clearly on the morning of Good Friday, after partaking in copius amounts of hot cross buns (yum), I jumped in front of the telly and played – of all things – Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. It was an awesome game in 1993, and while it’s probably a bit on the rubbish side, is still a lot of fun today. If you’re irrational like myself.

So, for the last couple of years I’ve gone to the habit of digging out Moonwalker and give the game a crack around Easter time because of the association with the season – in fact, if you check out my 10 April 2009 gaming session gallery, you’ll find a few pics from the first stage of Moonwalker The same thing may happen this weekend

Thus, when Easter comes around, you can count on me firing up the old 16-bit beast and having a crack at Moonwalker. But what about other seasons? Let’s have a think…

MiGA list:

• Seasons -
  • Summer: Shenmue (Dreamcast), Asuka 120% Limited (Saturn), Wonderboy in Monster World (Mega Drive), Sonic 2 (Master System)
  • Autumn: Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker (Sega Mega Drive), Super Mario All-Stars (SNES), Donkey Kong Country (SNES), Secret of Mana (SNES), Sonic 2 (Sega Mega Drive), Skies of Arcadia (Dreamcast), Ico (Playstation 2)
  • Winter: Phantasy Star 4 (Mega Drive), Rocket Knight Adventures (Mega Drive), Ghostbusters (Mega Drive), TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist (Mega Drive), Zelda: A Link To The Past (SNES), Super Metroid (SNES), Dragon Force (Saturn), Magic Knight Rayearth (Saturn), Vampire Savior (Saturn), Saturn Bomberman (Saturn), Sonic 1 (Master System)
  • Spring: Road Avenger (Mega CD), Sonic CD (Mega CD), Thuderhawk (Mega CD), Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter (Sega Saturn), Panzer Dragoon (Saturn), Panzer Dragoon Saga (Saturn), Mortal Kombat (Mega Drive), Street Fighter 2: Special Championship Edition (Mega Drive)
• Holidays -
  • Christmas: Shenmue (Dreamcast), NiGHTS (Saturn), Virtua Fighter 2 (Saturn), Story of Thor (Mega Drive), Sonic 2 (Master System)
  • Easter: Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker (Mega Drive), Golden Axe 2 (Mega Drive), Sonic 2 (Mega Drive)

It’s a bit illogical and extremely inconsistent, but I thought I’d share anyhows

So what about Macro Gaming Associations (MaGA to keep things going) – for the purpose of my ranting and raving, I’ll use these to define where particular games emphasised or are representational of a period of years or within a particular generation of game systems. This one’s still a bit hazy/inconsistent compared to the former which I’ve spent more time thinking about, so bear with me for this more randomised list. Note that like the above, these are representational of my personal bias, hence why some systems/games aren’t represented and why some games that may have come out in other periods are represented out of date. Where games represent the period and were ported to numerous systems, I’ve placed them in favoured order of association. Thus, if a game came out on the C64 and arcade but I spent more time playing the C64 version, that gets preference, even if the arcade original was much better.

• Decades -
  • 1980s: Asteroids (Atari 2600), Pitfall (Atari 2600), Enduro (Atari 2600), R-Type (Commodore 64, arcade), TMNT (Commodore 64 [platformer], arcade), International Karate (Commodore 64), The Last Ninja (Commodore 64), Bad Dudes vs Dragon Ninja (Commodore 64, Amiga 500, arcade), Wizball (Commodore 64), Combat School (Commodore 64), The Great Giana Sisters (Commodore 64), Bruce Lee (Commodore 64), Outrun (Commodore 64, arcade), Afterburner 2 (Commodore 64, deluxe hyrdraulic arcade cabinet), Wonderboy (Commodore 64), Space Invaders (cocktail arcade cabinet), China Gate (arcade)
  • 1990s: Wing Commander (DOS), Space Quest 3 (DOS), Warcraft 2 (DOS), Police Quest 2 (DOS), Double Dragon 2 (NES), Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES), The Flinstones (NES), Advanced D&D Collection series (Commodore 64, DOS), Sonic 1-2 (Master System, Mega Drive), Wonderboy 1-3 (Sega Master System), Alex Kidd in Miracle World/Shinobi World (Sega Master System), Sonic 3 + Knucles (Sega Mega Drive), Gunstar Heroes (Mega Drive), Story of Thor (Mega Drive), Phantasy Star 2/4 (Mega Drive), Super Mario World (SNES), The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES), Secret of Mana (SNES), Panzer Dragoon Saga (Saturn), NiGHTS (Saturn), Guardian Heroes (Saturn), Saturn Bomberman (Saturn), Virtua Fighter 2 (Saturn), Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast), Soul Calibur (Dreamcast), Daytona 8-way linkup (arcade), Last Bronx (arcade, Saturn), Sega Rally 2 (arcade), X-Men vs Street Fighter (arcade, Saturn), Dead or Alive (arcade, Saturn), House of the Dead 2 (arcade, Dreamcast), Street Fighter 2/CE/HF/Super/Super Turbo (arcade), Metal Slug (arcade, Saturn), King of Fighters ‘96 (arcade, Saturn), Crazy Taxi (arcade, Dreamcast)
  • 2000s: Shenmue 1-2 (Dreamcast), Dead or Alive 2 (Dreamcast, arcade, Playstation 2), Skies of Arcadia (Dreamcast), Chu Chu Rocket (Dreamcast), Powerstone 2 (Dreamcast), Gauntlet Legends (Dreamcast), Ico (Playstation 2), Kingdom Hearts (Playstation), Viewtiful Joe (Gamecube), Tales of Phantasia (Gamecube), The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (Gamecube), Panzer Dragoon Orta (XBox)
• Generations (in order of preference/emphasised experience) -
  • 8-bit: Atari 2600, Commodore 64, NES
  • 16-bit: Mega Drive, SNES, DOS
  • 32-bit: Saturn
  • 128-bit: Dreamcast, Gamecube, Playstation 2, XBox

Like I said, irrational, huh?

I think a special point needs to be made on the inclusion of the PS2 and the whole 128-bit gen note above – it’s actually all to Wifey’s credit that I had a big love of the PS2 in the last generation, as I was irrationally opposed to it on principle (being a bit of a Sega fanboy ), but it garnered quite the soft spot in the end. It was also the first time I’d been in a financial position to actually get use of all the consoles in a single generation, so it’s quite interesting in that respect.

To be honest, I think I like the first list based on MiGA better than the second, as I feel like I’m making more of a randomised, generated list of games tied to extremely large swaths of time with the MaGA list, and the former seems more personal in its choices… but then again, when I think back on time periods, those are the games that stand out, at least at the moment I’m writing up this post.

I’ll have a thorough chuckle if either of these concepts get picked up anywhere else, or how many people throw on the rose-tinted glasses and look back on their classic games like this. I suspect I’m not the only one, but at the same time I don’t think I have my finger on the pulse in any way.

Anywho, I hope you enjoyed that long-winded return to retro gaming blogging. I promise I’ll start getting back into regular posting from now on!