I’m not a fan. The direct turned me off even more from the game. Sorry.
This game doesn’t seem like Donkey Kong. I don’t like Donkey Kong’s new look. It seems like the game is designed for executions but not for content. There is just too many ‘executions’ going on here. I couldn’t keep track of it all. You have RPG lite shit going on. You have BOTW open world type stuff going on. Pauline reminds me of Midna. I don’t like it. I HATE the vocals. I don’t like voice acting in the game especially with Pauline’s chirping.
It seems like this game started with the idea of digging through the ground in 3d. And it all morphed into this convoluted mess.
I play games for their content, not for gameplay. What this means is that Ninja Gaiden NES is not just ninja mechanics in some themed levels. Everything makes sense in its little story. Why am I on this mountain? The game tells you why. With Super Mario Brothers 3, I like how it is an expansion of the worlds concept. Giant World is not a one-time gimmick but an actual place. Pipe World is a place. It has variety of gameplay in that place. It is a world of the Mushroom Kingdom.
I really don’t like how Nintendo developers their games today. They do random gameplay elements and everything else is incoherently tied into it. I call this ‘slop’.
So this is not the game for me. I suppose others may think it is great. But I didn’t like Mario Odyssey either so go figure.
Note the forced multiplayer elements. THERE WILL BE NO SINGLE PLAYER GAMES ON THE SWITCH 2. Watch out for it. The Switch 2 Zelda will have multiplayer mechanics either bolted on or be multiplayer itself. Nintendo is very hard pushing their ‘player networking’ strategy. And I hate it because I am a solo gamer.
Master Malstrom – another fun mod has come out in the last month for a venerable old game. The original X-Wing was Star Wars’s excellent attempt to capitalize on Wing Commander’s popularity, and while the sequels (TIE Fighter, X-Wing Alliance) are better in every possible way, the original with its pixel-art cutscenes has a ton of that old-school Lucasarts charm, and is still a blast to play. They were released on the major digital sites maybe 10 years ago, but since they’re in DOSBOX they can be finicky. I never finished the B-Wing campaign because a ship I needed to disable never showed up in a mission, for example.
Anyway, some modders have released an alpha version of XWVM, which is an engine designed to bring the game up to modern hardware and OS standards, while also adding a bunch of QOL features from the later games. There’s also an HD pack which updates (almost) all of the ships with highly detailed models from the X-Wing Alliance Upgrade project (which is also awesome and worth checking out, especially TIE Fighter Total Conversion).
I’ve played through all the historical missions and the first 3 tours, and I have no idea what kind of black magic these guys worked, but the game plays exactly the same as it did in 1993, while looking like it was just released this year. I’d highly recommend it if you’re into old-school space sims. All you need is either the Steam or GOG version of X-Wing (your original floppy and CD files will work too, if you have them). All 3 versions of the game are supported (original DOS, Collector’s CD, and the 1998 Collectors’ Series which is the one redone in the XvT engine). They’re also planning to support TIE Fighter and XvT down the line.
If you want to relive a time when Star Wars games were made with love and care, and when the IP wasn’t just a vehicle to push leftist propaganda, you can’t go wrong with the 90’s Lucasarts golden age games, and X-Wing is one of the best of them.
Guys, don’t send me images inside your emails. I’m not going to host them on my site for your email. Link them.
My relationship to Star Wars is a little odd. I’m a Star Trek guy, not a Star Wars guy. I like the original trilogy because their special effects have that cool model era that could only be done then. The prequels are all digital slop. And the sequel trilogy is woke slop.
If I was more of a Star Wars fan, I’d imagine I’d have gotten into the games more. Wing Commander was really a Top Gun In Space type game complete with the pilots having their call signs.
Like Iwata, I’m more of a fan of IPs that originate in gaming.
So… Steam Next Fest happened again, and the number of folks that have been disappointed by their game's performance seems to be growing higher and higher. I looked at the number of demos launched on Steam in the window of each Next Fest the past five years, and…. 🤯
Game Awards 2019 44 Steam Game Festival – Summer 2020 188 Steam Game Festival – Autumn 2020 201 Steam Game Festival Spring Edition 69 June 2021 206 October 2021 249 February 2022 226 June 2022 316 October 2022 283 February 2023 282 June 2023 344 October 2023 444 February 2024 507 June 2024 622 October 2024 1079 February 2025 1710 June 2025 1994
The competition is going up! That is what is happening.
So what does this mean in the broader appeal of gaming in comparison to other mediums such as music, books, television, etc.?
Whenever someone said, “Gaming has gone mainstream,” what they really meant was “bigger revenue”. They never referred to consumers specifically. They are as happy to get ‘bigger revenue’ selling gacha games to whales than they are making a mass cultural event.
And the real reason for all these indie game developers existing is because they do not want to work a real job. I am in the soup of indie game development. I know it. You cannot hide it. This ‘indie game developer’ mentality also is in every other entertainment medium like a rock band wannabe musician or a ‘creative writer’ who writes books no one reads.
In all entertainment fields such as acting, writing, musician, artist, etc. there is a craft element to it. It takes years to learn the craft. This is why I believe the game developer is closest, in nature, to the musician. Like the musician, the game developer must be very technically minded and know math. Like the musician, the game developer’s craft largely revolves around vibes. The writer or actor can make totally serious content and be fine, but not the game developer. There still are no ‘serious games’ outside of simulators made for the military.
My hypothesis is that video games still have no seen a ‘true genius’ in this field. What we have seen is ‘people who got in early’ and, with their initial experience, that gets labeled as ‘genius’. Here is why I say this:
Game development is NOT mainstream… yet. Each day it is becoming more and more so though.
Writing IS mainstream (everyone knows how to write).
Musician IS mainstream (most schools teach how to play a musical instrument).
Video making IS mainstream (everyone knows how to make videos).
But game development has never been mainstream. Why is this?
The technology behind game development keeps radically changing. I don’t mean 8-bit to 16-bit type radical (which that is a major jump). I mean technological changes such as going to 3d or Internet type gaming. Game development was changing as radically as the end product during the 1980s and 1990s through the 2000s. Only recently has it slowed down. You don’t see these giant leaps in gaming. It seems the bigger innovative leaps in gaming will be in game development efficiencies. How can smaller teams do more? And this is where the indie game developers come in.
You are seeing classic disruption here. These indie game developers will be going the same way as the rest of the game industry. Here is what I mean.
In order to compete against other game companies, what happened? They embraced technology and upped the technological arms race. This created the ‘generations’ of both PC gaming and console gaming. If the industry was still making 8-bit games today, the Game Industry would be destroyed by everyone today being able to make 8-bit games. Lucky for them, they are higher up on the tech chain.
So in order to compete with indie gaming, what the indie game developers are doing is the same exact thing the game industry did. They are increasing their production values. Indie games are no longer 8-bit monstrosities making Ultima 3: Exodus clones like back during the flip phone days. Indie games are moving up tiers. I see this on even the most basic game editor tools. You’ll even see RPG Maker developers invest tens of thousands of their own dollars into ‘assets’ like art and voice acting to make their little RPG ‘stand out’ among the crowd. Whether or not it works isn’t the point, it is the mindset and action I am focusing on. It is happening everywhere.
Since the big Game Industry can’t go up higher tiers, and the indie game scene is moving up these tiers, eventually they will cross paths. The Game Industry, who has been relegating indie games into some underground ‘box’, will find themselves surrounded by them.
Imagine Mario Kart. Now imagine 30 Mario Kart competitors. I think that is going to happen for every major game. The competition will come because they will go where the money is at. I can see this happening in twenty years… in 2045. 2035… not yet.
When it does happen, which it inevitably will, the legacy IPs will have nostalgia and communities to keep them afloat.
There will always be games selling. But I think the days of the ‘Game Industry’ as currently structured are over.
I played only the PS5 demo when it came out. I thought Stellar Blade delivers on spectacle, but I really do not like the gameplay. I also found Eve to be *too* distracting. I became more interested in putting Eve in poses than I was in killing monsters.
So why is Stellar Blade keep being thrown around by certain gamers? I think the reason is very simple.
“It’s because she is hot, and the fans are all incels!” says a reader.
Hot babes have always been in gaming. I always had a crush on the Dark Queen from Battletoads.
Above: She can rule over me.
Sakamoto turned Samus Aran into ‘Zero Suit Samus’ for Metroid: Zero Mission. I was and still am very much against this creative direction. Samus’s identity is part of her suit. Taking away her suit turns her into a ninja which is stupid. And we don’t need butt shots of Samus. That’s not Metroid. The appeal of the ‘bikini’ reward in Metroid is similar to the princess kiss at the end of Super Mario Brothers or Legend of Zelda. Woman’s affection as reward. Men are very familiar with this concept. So are women. But having a woman be a thot and run around in a sports bra killing everything is just… manly, not womanly. It’s fine for a Sonya in Mortal Kombat, but not for every game.
The big video game babe was Lara Croft. Her character design market tested better than Santa Clause.
So what does this all have to do with Stellar Blade? It isn’t because it is about Stellar Blade. It isn’t because of waifus or sexy girls.
It is about flushing out faggotry.
This is a saying of, “This game is gay.” ‘Gay’ used to mean something else entirely back in the 1990s or earlier. It just meant ‘lame’ or ‘dumb’ or ‘not fun’. It meant a bad game. This is not how the term is being used today.
When someone says the game is ‘gay’, what they mean is that the game is ‘flaming’. There is a ‘cringe’, a ‘disgust’ element that fills people up when they see something like gay behavior. When they feel it, they then declare ‘this is gay’. Something is triggering their disgust.
So many games feel gay today. And the reason why is likely because there are too many developers who are either gay or gay sympathizing that is injecting gay content into the games. Normal people, who work real jobs, then become disgusted by the content. Hence the commentary of ‘this game is gay’.
Gayness does not celebrate fertility or examples of fertility. For example, beautiful women are depicted throughout history as voluptuous, not as skinny boy-like characters. When gay men became judges at female beauty pageants, for example, they never liked the traditional voluptuous woman. They always would like the skinny boy-like caricatures.
Despite her doing all these masculine things, Stellar Blade’s Eve is definitely designed to look like a fertile woman. It is well known that sexually healthy men find marks of fertility to make up the beautiful woman. For example, a woman past menopause is not beautiful to a man (unless it is his wife). The wide hips, the large breasts, the curved back- all of these are marks of fertility to the male mind. And the male mind responds. All ages of men respond to these indicators.
Praising Stellar Blade is more about putting Eve on the pedestal. The reason why isn’t because she is ‘hot‘, it is because she depicts a fertile woman, a woman that straight men will respond.
Game journalists who praised the bear sex in Baldur’s Gate 3 but scream in terror over Stellar Blade’s Eve’s outfits are committing hypocrisy of the highest order. They are declaring one person’s sexuality is good, and the other is bad. The ‘bad sexuality’ is always the straight male’s sexuality. Straight men know this, so they keep pounding on Eve (pun intended) to make this point.
The Game Industry is demonizing straight male sexuality and pedestalizing deviant sexuality. THAT’S THE POINT OF IT ALL.
Stellar Blade’s Eve is a non-story. There has always been sexy women in movies, TV shows, advertisements, and so on through history. They also were in video games.
It is only of interest if you are trying to normalize sexual deviancy. The sexualization of Eve is normal because that is what a fertile woman looks like.
The reason why game journalists are so offended by Eve in Stellar Blade, but love things like dating butt-plugs and sexualized microwaves, and f*cking bears, is because they are militarized against regular sexual norms.
The only kind of love or sex they approve of is either…
Grummz dances around the real issue. The pedestalization of Stellar Blade’s Eve or even the waifus is a declaration for sexual norms. The idea that saying men find Eve ‘sexy’ to be a degenerate act is absurd as that is the basis of wholesome sexuality.
Fertility is the basis of proper sexuality.
This is not an opinion. Our demographic future depends on it.
One future trend we might start seeing in gaming and entertainment in general is family building. We already have ‘relationship simulators’. Family simulators are the next step. We have games based on being dog simulators (hello Nintendogs). We have games based on being dating simulators (which has spread to all genres). Family simulators are going to be next.
His name is Sunjay Kapur. He is 53 and a billionaire. He is the heir of Sona Group and the managing director of Sona Comstar.
His ex-wife is a Bollywood star: Karisma Kapoor.
What a charmed life Sunjay has. He is a billionaire, married (and divorced) a famous actress, and he was doing all the things rich people do. Such as polo matches.
Billionaire businessman and Chairman of Sona Comstar, Sunjay Kapur, collapsed during a polo match in England on June 12. The sudden death of Mr Kapur, 53, has sent shockwaves through India’s corporate circle and beyond.
Oh no! What happened?
Early unconfirmed reports speculated that he may have suffered an anaphylactic shock after allegedly swallowing a bee. While playing polo, a bee is said to have flown into Sunjay’s mouth and stung him, which triggered a heart attack.
He reportedly complained to the umpire that he was choking and may have swallowed something. However, individuals at the match denied such reports and said it was a bee sting.
Sources close to the family and eyewitnesses believe the likely cause of the death was a massive heart attack.
So he swallowed a bee which stung him. This triggered his heart attack. And he dies on the polo field.
The end.
All this money, all this fame, all this polo, and you still DIE.
Yes, even The Reader will die one day. It’s true! Your day is coming for you, Reader.
In this case, the Grim Reaper was creative. I suspect being in the middle of a polo match didn’t help as his body would be fatigued.
Remember, Reader, that rich people die in the just the same way as poor people. The difference is when a rich person dies, they get a news story written about them.
This is big: a mod for the original DOS Wing Commander which overhauls the game’s programming. The most important part is that it fixes the game’s timing.
The biggest problem with the first two Wing Commander games is that they were meant to run at maximum speed on the hardware of the time, but if there is too much going on it slows down. This means either the game runs fine for small encounters but turns into a slideshow when there is too much going on, or it runs fine when there is much going on, but it’s too faster in normal scenes.
Until now the best solution has been to manually adjust the CPU speed via key bindings in DOSBox during gameplay. This mod caps the speed of the game, so you can crank up the CPU settings in DOSBox and be done with it. With that said, this is still Wing Commander 1 for DOS, so it’s still going to be janky. There is only so much a mod can do. But at least the speed is correct and consistent now.
I’m just realizing how old I am. THIS news makes me excited. I am an old man playing old games. Have I turned into my father who would only watch the old movies (and keep telling me how much better they were)?
“This isn’t your father’s Mario Kart,” Reggie Fils-Aime said when announcing Mario Kart Wii. I suppose Mario Kart World would be the grandkid’s Mario Kart.
I was just thinking today of all games that need to be remastered or remade, it would be the Wing Commander games. They are so bloody good but difficult to play on modern hardware.
Above: 1990 was a bitchin year!This game came out before the Super Nintendo!PC Gaming was god-like during this time. Didn’t need Steam or other bullshit.
You have more guts than I do for actually trying out that game and even liking some of it. I probably couldn’t even stand what it might hold in store for me! I’ll only anticipate things like half-hour long cutscenes, most of which likely having the sad anime robot people just expositing how they’re, well… sad anime robot people, the flashy, Platinum-tier QTE combat etc.
I’ll openly admit I’ve haven’t tried the game out for myself, but I’ve been familiar enough with this pattern that a lot of other 3D hack n’ slash-type games follow, that it already puts me off of the thought just by acquired instinct alone! Maybe they’re just on the fritz, I dunno….
Eh, I should just fire up some NES Ninja Gaiden (I know it’s not a h&s, but eh) instead.Maybe even try out SEGA’s Golden Axe for the first time!
I have no problem with trying games out. I do go through a cycle of generations where I don’t try out games for a generation to trying out every game. You don’t know what you like unless you try out the game.
I’m finding out many things I do and do not like. And it takes a while for me to have the courage of my own conviction. If a game feels like a chore, I declare it is not for me.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom feels like a total chore. I can’t see how anyone can like that game. However, I did really enjoy Breath of the Wild… the first time I played it. Second time, the experience was much less. Third time, complete blah. While Zelda games have aged like wine, these open world Zeldas will likely be aging like milk. For example, do you have any interest in collecting the Korok seeds again? I hated doing them the first time!
I try out popular indie games as well and end up not liking them (which pisses people off). Celeste? Reminds me of a Commodore 64 game. Seems very boring to me. Enter the Gungeon? Hate the art and game is annoying bullet hell. Dead Cells? Got bored of it quickly. Seemed so formulaic.
It’s better for me to talk about the games I liked rather than the games I didn’t.
I think all the ‘classic collection’ games are worth getting especially FF Pixel Remaster Collection. <3 that. I thought Harvestella was an interesting ‘woman’s perspective’ of Final Fantasy.
I have some beefy RPGs I want to get into. I need to get into Xenoblade because I have all the Xenoblade games (including Torna). Be shame if I can’t get into them. Same for Atlerier Ryza games.
I believe my own game development is warping my consumption of games. I want to play less games because of my development. I also want to study more retro games just to see how they do so much with so little… all the little graphical tricks they do (like Ranger-X on Genesis).
I couldn’t get into Bayonetta games either. I suppose Platinum games aren’t for me. Oh well.
I wrote to you before about my plan to get a Switch 1 since I had been buying physical carts for a while. I bit the bullet and bought one since Capcom Fighting Collection 2 came out. CFC2 has a game I played a bit in the arcades growing up (Capcom vs SNK 2), and I felt buying it at launch meant this would be the time with the largest online player base for it. Yes, I had to pay for the online service too, but I’ve just done it for the short term for now to play this game.
So far, I’ve played Streets of Rage 2 on the Genesis Collection, a game on the Marvel vs Capcom collection (Marvel vs Capcom 2), and Capcom vs SNK 2. I also find it funny that I’ve bought a Switch and I haven’t played any of the NEW Switch games I bought like Smash Ultimate or Mario Kart 8; I’ve only played games that I grew up with hahaha.
The Switch was easy to set up and get started for me, which is always nice. I don’t like needing to download updates to play a game console. Fortunately it didn’t take too long. I’ve only played it in docked mode so I can’t comment on the handheld mode. I bought the OLED model and stuck an ethernet cable from my modem into it in order to have the best connection I could. My online connection with Capcom vs SNK 2 has been great 95% of the time, unless I run into someone with a bad connection. More on this game later. Something I noticed compared to the Wii, or lack thereof, is the complete silence when you’re in the menu screens. In the past I wouldn’t have said I LIKED the Wii ambient music in the various menu screens, though I found the Wii online shop music charming. But somehow I miss that ambient music with the Switch.
For Streets of Rage 2 on the Genesis Collection, everything felt smooth. Maybe there actually is an input delay compared to a real Genesis. It’s been so many years since I played the original that I didn’t notice anything, if there is an issue. BUT. There’s a glaring issue with the Genesis Collection: I bought a used version of one of those official Switch Genesis for relatively cheap on eBay. I tried using it and realized the buttons don’t map correctly. The C button does nothing in the game. I searched around online, and apparently the issue is the official Switch Genesis controller is only mapped to work correctly with Genesis games on that premium Nintendo Online Service. I looked around in the Genesis Collection menus and it didn’t seem like I could change or remap the buttons. From what I saw online, there’s no solving the issue with the official Switch Genesis controller for the Genesis Collection. The Review section of this YouTube video shows this person trying out the buttons and encountering the same issue with the Genesis collection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ira87CCvXxE.
I can’t believe Nintendo let this happen. So, I used the Switch Pro Controller I had also bought to play Streets of Rage 2. It worked well and I still have the skills to beat it on Normal difficulty at least. It’s when I played the two fighting games that I made my horrifying discovery: I am indeed getting older.
See, I also bought an arcade stick to play these fighting collection games. I enjoyed these games with my arcade stick for about a week and a half. After that I felt pain in my hands, wrists, and arms after playing sessions. In order to keep playing, I had to rest for at least a few days. After resting, I could play for maybe 60 minutes at a time. And then another period of rest. I CAN play the fighting games with a regular controller, but it’s just not the same (I do much better with the arcade stick), and again I still can’t play too long without pain. I played Capcom vs SNK 2 online just enough to reach a particular rank, and then decided to call it quits with playing online. I might play arcade modes of the fighting game collections once in a while in the future.
I know you’ve written that you got into some RPGs during times when you were sick with the flu or whatever, and you didn’t have the energy to play other types of games. This could be the catalyst for me to try new, less-intensive genres I didn’t play much in the past. My inability to play these fighting games as much as I wanted to isn’t really a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But it’s disconcerting to me that I can’t play games the way I used to be able to growing up. I’m younger than you, but I’m old enough to remember the majority of the 90s.
On a somewhat-related note, I haven’t bought Warcraft 3 Reforged (yet). Warcraft 3 was one of my favorite games. I know all about its issues since it launched, and that still not everything is solved either. If I get around to buying it in order to relive old memories, and can’t play THAT without these physical issues either, then I’ll feel that my Gaming Ship has set sail for good.
When sick in the 8-bit generation, it was hard to play the NES. Games were too intense. But the RPGs were perfect. Games like Dragon Quest were so perfect because you just wander around grinding. You can be half conscious too!
I don’t think I play RPGs so much for their slow nature but for their single player nature. What has changed for me as I got older was the death of multiplayer. I cannot have people over for local play. And Internet play doesn’t work because our schedules are so different. My brother wakes up at 10 AM. I wake up at 4 AM. He goes to bed at 2 PM. I go to bed at 8 PM. You can see how this would create issues.
Outside of making my own game, I find it harder and harder to game. The new games aren’t doing it for me.
For example, I just played Nier Automata. And while I liked the vibe of the game, really liked the shmup parts, I set the game aside and will never touch it again. The game revolves around bullet hell action sequencing but via different camera angles. I just got bored of it. I don’t understand gamers today. How can anyone play such a boring game!?
I have a huge Switch backlog to go through. But I expect I will encounter the same issues again and again.
I dunno if someone else pointed you to this program in the past, but if I had to go with one of the more ‘blatant’ choices for a game kit, especially considering the scale of your new project, it would probably be, of course, Game Maker. The indie critic darlings like Undertale were made in it, and it has decent enough features that one that even if one isn’t that well versed in programming, they could get the hang of it after a while. I think you’ve brought up one time you’ve had some experience in coding, so I think GML might be up your alley, though there’s a ‘visual’ rendition you could also use as well.
The manual, especially the GML section, can get kinda detailed at some points, yet it’s mostly also to the point enough that you won’t have to take aspirin after a half hour’s glance (take note, other programming manuals). Link’s right here for convenience:
You can download it either for free or purchase the Professional version for around 100$.
Damn… I’m aware I’m sounding like I’m being paid by Yoyogames (they still own it, right?) to shill it and all, but trust me Master I haven’t even touched the damn thing in YEARS. I’m just going by the reputation it’s managed to garner this past decade, and the little experience I’ve had with it myself all those eons ago.
It is not a bad idea.
What does the maker of Minecraft have to say? Let us listen.
My cynical side is saying that Notch is saying real programmers should be programming like he has always been doing. How convenient. But who uses Java? Meh.
In terms of discussing the game engine, the issue isn’t ‘what is a real engine’ or ‘you must use a real engine’. It isn’t even ‘what gives best customer experience’. The issue today is ‘do you own what you make?’
One thing the Toys of Bob developers are doing for Children of Infinity (Star Control 3) is that they created an engine called ‘SIMPLE’ and use Godot on top as a ‘graphical shell’. The code is all in SIMPLE but Godot just amplifies it. That might be the future of game development.
You create your own engine and use another ‘engine’ as a wrapper.
“But why would someone do this, Malstrom?” asks the plucky reader.
Well, consider the variety of platforms and changing standards. It is hard to program your game to everything. This is where these wrappers come in handy.
But no way will I make an engine from scratch. This is a little project.
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