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Post by gazz on Jan 29, 2015 21:42:46 GMT
just to keep my brain working Seriously though... ...
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Post by gazz on Mar 28, 2015 13:50:40 GMT
You can now play Super Mario 64 in your browser:Super Mario 64 is still an amazing game, but nearly 20 years after it first launched on the Nintendo 64, it looks pretty dated. But with a little love, it can look amazing. Computer science student Erik Roystan Ross recently decided to remake the first level of the game while experimenting with the Unity game engine, and the results are impressive — the game looks almost as good as more recent games in the series, like Super Mario 3D World on the Wii U. And you can even play the remake in your browser right here — but don't expect to see the rest of the game rendered in HD. "I currently do not have any plans to develop this any further or to resolve any bugs, unless they're horrendously game-breaking and horrendously simple to fix," says Ross.Link to gamewww.theverge.com/2015/3/27/8301843/super-mario-64-hd-remake
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Post by bigfudge on Apr 2, 2015 19:26:41 GMT
Cheers, Gazza!
Very impressive work!
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Post by gazz on Apr 11, 2015 12:17:29 GMT
Now this could be an interesting legal battle... Publishers are fighting to keep abandoned games dead:The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group that defends civil liberties in the digital world, is facing off against the Entertainment Software Association, the organization that represents most major video game publishers in the US. The EFF wants to allow players to put abandoned games back online and has asked the US Copyright Office for an exemption from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This would allow players to legally modify the code of online games that are no longer supported by publishers, in the hope of reconnecting these titles to new, third-party servers. This includes games like Battlefield 1942, Star Wars: Battlefront, SOCOM 4, Resistance: Fall of Man and Mario Kart Wii. Many modern games rely on servers to function; if Activision pulled the plug on Destiny, for example, even its single-player campaign would disappear, since the entire game needs an online connection.
"This exemption would serve player communities that wish to continue using their purchased games, as well as archivists, historians, and other academic researchers who preserve and study videogames and are currently inhibited by legal uncertainty," the EFF writes.
The ESA opposes the exemption, arguing that modifying game code is "hacking" and would encourage piracy. Plus, in order to make some of these games work on systems like the Xbox 360 or Wii, users would need to jailbreak these consoles. "Granting the proposed exemption would enable -- and indeed encourage -- the play of pirated games and the unlawful reproduction and distribution of infringing content," the ESA says.
Note that it's not up to the EFF or the ESA to decide this issue -- that will be handled this year by the US Copyright Office, which examines exemption requests every three years. The EFF has since responded to the ESA's arguments against its proposed exemption, noting that the gaming industry was built on "tinkering" and hobbyist-style hacking.
As the EFF puts it: "Games abandoned by their producers are one area where Section 1201 is seriously interfering with important, lawful activities -- like continuing to play the games you already own."ArticleThe 'Destiny' argument is a strong one, and it'll be interesting to see how this pans out!
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Post by gazz on Apr 21, 2015 20:58:54 GMT
GameStop set to offer really old consoles with brand new warranties:GameStop will this weekend launch a new pilot program that sees the store embrace retro gaming on a massive scale. Stores spread across New York City and Birmingham, Alabama will start accepting old consoles, games, and accessories for trade-in. From April 25, these GameStop stores will start accepting consoles that date back as far as 1985. That means you can trade a NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, Dreamcast, or PlayStation along with any of each platform’s games and accessories. So if you have some old hardware lying around gathering dust and can get to one of the stores taking part, you could grab yourself some store credit or new hardware/games.
It’s unlikely GameStop will be offering a lot of cash for these old systems, so the more exciting side of this equation is actually buying them. GameStop is giving itself 2 months from the April 25 launch date to build up stock, carry out any repairs, and offer these classic systems for sale along with a brand new warranty. So come August, we could be buying guaranteed working condition very old consoles. That’s great news for someone who say, has just had their NES or Genesis die on them, or is missing a game or accessory from their old platform of choice. The only caveat here being that the refurbished stock will only be offered online, not in-store.
If all goes well and this pilot program proves popular, GameStop intends to roll it out nationally to thousands of stores, with the number of games on sale expected to surpass 5,000 titles. I can see a few console and game bundles appearing too, and for much less than the cost of a new PS4 or Xbox One.
You may notice that the Sega Saturn is missing from the list of consoles being accepted. GameStop hasn’t explained why, and hopefully it’s just an oversight on their part and it will get added to the pilot.ArticleI really hope this takes off and they introduce it to over here, I might just be tempted to bag myself a Super NES! Emulators and ROMS are ok, but they just ain't the same.
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on Apr 21, 2015 21:05:51 GMT
i've always fancied that atari jaguar...
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Post by bigfudge on Apr 21, 2015 22:36:56 GMT
Anyone on here a fan of the Championship/Football Manager games?
Sports Interactive have re-introduced Hockey Manager for Early Access download. It is unofficial but there is a great website called the blueline what has simple downloads with facepack and logos etc.
If you like FM/CM its definitely worth a try even if you dont fully understand ice hockey they have pop up tutorials to explain it as you go.
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Post by jamesgill on Apr 22, 2015 6:23:47 GMT
I was going to bring this up a few weeks back as I know you like your hockey, Fudgey.
This guy has some decent content for the game:
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Post by bigfudge on Apr 23, 2015 6:41:01 GMT
Cheers James, I've had a look at a few of his videos, he does some good stuff!
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Post by gazz on May 5, 2015 14:27:01 GMT
The absolute kings of the Snes and N64 were Rare, but they've been seriously hampered since they were bought by Microshaft. However, some of the Rare team have now left and teamed up to form 'Playtonic Games'! Nintendo veterans' Yooka-Laylee game reaches £1m on Kickstarter:On Friday, Midlands-based game developer Playtonic launched a Kickstarter funding project for its opening title, Yooka-Laylee. The studio was looking for £175,000 – enough to fund an initial release on PC and Mac, with a console version to follow. The company reached that target within 40 minutes. A few hours later, it hit £1m.
“It’s so unexpected, we’re overwhelmed,” says studio head Gavin Price. “We’ve not really slept much in the last few days. With £175,000 we knew we could definitely launch on PC and then follow up on console, using the funds from initial sales to keep us going. All our fans wanted a console version – so that was very important. The whole campaign has been based on feedback from the community.”
There is, of course, some vital background history here. Playtonic was set up by six veteran developers from the legendary UK studio Rare, responsible for some of the most revered and successful titles on the Nintendo SNES and N64 consoles. These guys worked on Donkey Kong Country and then masterminded the seminal 3D platforming hit Banjo-Kazooie – to which Yooka-Laylee is a spiritual successor. Their forthcoming game follows the eponymous lead characters – a chameleon and a bat – through a colourful 3D world, highly reminiscent of those 90s classics. It’s a love letter to the sort of games that developers Chris Sutherland, Steve Mayles and Steven Hurst used to make together.
But with Rare now owned by Microsoft and concentrating on the Kinect Sports titles, the group left to re-discover that creative energy. They knew there was still some affinity and nostalgia for the Banjo-Kazooie series: when Playtonic was officially announced earlier this year, the company’s Twitter account gained 40,000 followers in a matter of hours. So Kickstarter funding for their first game always seemed like a good idea.
“We wanted to work in a particular way on games of a particular style – this was the only solution to do that,” says Price. “Fans were asking us to do it. So we thought, let’s do this as a big event and let’s make sure it allows us to deliver the game we want. We’re really happy with what we have planned for it.”
But despite building a large, highly vocal community around the game, the reaction to the Kickstarter has still left the team somewhat stunned. “We all stayed in the office and watched the page go live. We thought it would take 20 minutes for people to digest the page, read through it all and then make a pledge. But straightaway the number started shooting up. We thought: ‘What’s going on?’. One of the lads went out – he was like: ‘I can’t watch, I can’t watch.’ Then we got a call from him saying: ‘I’m coming back! I’m bringing my daughter!’ He just wanted to be with the team.”
Now, from the reasonably modest target of £175,000, the ambition has widened slightly. The company had in place a selection of stretch goals – additional game features that could be added if funding surpassed the target – most of those were ticked off within 24 hours of the launch, including local two-player co-op and four-player competitive modes. At £1m, the studio confirmed that it would be able to simultaneously launch the game on PC, Mac, Wii U, PS4 and Xbox One.
From here, according to Price, it’s all going to be about adding polish rather than major new features. One thing we’ve seen from several high-profile Kickstarter projects is the addition of ambitious new features, which slow down development and ratchet up costs. Double Fine’s Broken Age adventure, eventually released in two parts, has been a widely discussed example of Kickstarter hubris.
“We didn’t want to fall into the Kickstarter trap of adding more stuff to the game, which adds risk and bloats it,” he says. “We weren’t thinking about it from a business perspective, it was as fans of Kickstarter itself. We don’t like it when other people over-promise. If you take our stretch goal to add an orchestral score – that doesn’t add risk to the project. Any more that we add will just be giving specific features to the fans, we don’t want to make our lives worse by adding stuff that may well mean we miss our release date. We’re going to try to do the opposite of what a lot of people have done on Kickstarter – if a stretch-goal feature is vital to the game, then why wasn’t it in there to begin with? It’s important to learn from the lessons of others. We’ve had a lot of first-time Kickstarter backers, it’s our responsibility to show off the platform.”
With launch slated for October 2016, Playtonic may well find itself in the nostalgic platform adventure market with its old employer: Rare is highly likely to announce a new Banjo-Kazooie title (or at least a game in the same genre) at this Junes’s E3 event in Los Angeles. Although it seems diplomatic relations are still good.
“The creative director of Rare shared a link to our Kickstarter on Facebook,” says Price. “I’ve also had [senior Rare designer] Gregg Mayles jokingly offering to sell me unused Banjo-Kazooie assets. We’ve had tons of support from loads of our old colleagues. And I’m looking forward to what they announce this year, as well.”
At the time of writing, the Yooka-Laylee project had reached just under £1.4m. The biggest UK games success on the platform was Elite: Dangerous, which closed at £1.5m in January 2013. “It would be a sort of honour to beat that,” says Price. “But really, by the time Yooka-Laylee launches, the Kickstarter will have been forgotten. All that will matter is how good the game is.”Guardian article hereI really hope this takes off, the gaming world needs a Rare team back on its, erm 'game'. While this game may not be a blockbuster to excite everyone, with the heart of the team now with Playtonic and running their own show once more, we could well see Rare mk 2 get their mojo back and set to work on another list of classics!
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on May 5, 2015 18:39:10 GMT
do a shooter. DO A SHOOTER!!
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Post by gazz on May 5, 2015 19:13:36 GMT
do a shooter. DO A SHOOTER!! A new 007 game, pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaase!
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Post by jamesgill on May 14, 2015 17:52:47 GMT
My most recent save on FMH 2015. Winning the league, I will now apply for the County job in real life. I have experience of this league!!!
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Post by Deleted on May 14, 2015 18:25:48 GMT
What platform do you play FMH on James? I had an older one (2012 maybe) on PSP back in the day, but I didn't really like it as it felt a bit superficial and not very detailed... I found FM on computer was more more detailed/immersive. Just wondering how much it has changed since then and the differences between playing on say an iPhone or one of those PlayStation Vitas. I imagine it's a good time killer (if an expensive, memory consuming one) on phone though.
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Post by jamesgill on May 14, 2015 18:27:37 GMT
I have it on Android. I've been playing for years and love it. Plus, its only £7 in the Play Store!!!
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