Since you mentioned New Vegas, there’s Menace of The New West and Titans of The New West 2.0, they change Super Mutants and Power Armor respectively to resemble the ones in FO1 and FO2, purely aesthetic but adds a lot of flavor especially for Power Armor.
It had been on my radar for quite some time. Partly because it’s gotten such great review and partly because it’s from Annapurna, they seem to release pretty sweet games.
Kinda found that the game falls away somewhat around the final third. Don’t want to spoil anything for you, but I’ll say that I found the games moment to moment a bit lacking. Real shame as the first hour or so is genuinely pretty good.
Roguebook was one of the Prime Gaming free games recently so I started playing that. Very fun. It does feel very easy to get overpowered, which is one of my favorite things a roguelike can do. I’ve already been able to beat it twice out of three attempts, so it’s probably undertuned, but I’d prefer that over the alternative.
I also dipped into WH40K: Mechanicus, which was free on EGS a while ago. That game is much less fun. The UI is kind of clunky and the upgrades and gear are very underwhelming. It seems difficult to really get synergies going with any of your characters. Probably will not even finish a run.
I got sick of Hades. Everything that happened in the house before and after runs was great, it was just I shame I had to repeatedly slog through a run for half an hour to get new conversations. I came to the conclusion that roguelikes probably aren’t for me.
So one comparison they make is “What if Titanic was only available on VHS and you had to go buy it off eBay!” I feel like it’s a very silly way to compare video games and movies. Like what? That’s fine. There are thousands of movies that are only available in their given home release format. Video games are already digitized for the most part but it’s like asking “What if you could only play a really specific pinball machine by buying the pinball machine?”
I’m all for preserving games. As a game developer, that’s my work and I do want it to live on forever. That said it’s insane to expect any developer or publisher to fund a failed game’s port to newer hardware or still sell it for older hardware. It’s simply not worth the hassle. Make it profitable, give grants for selling older titles. If this is something gamehistory.org wants to see, offer the money to make it happen. Otherwise be happy with old formats and ROM dumps.
That’s not how I understood the analogy. What I thought it meant was vhs is an outdated format. Having it only available on home release is fine, but if it was only on VHS, and not say, DVD or Blu-ray, then it is less accessible and not easily obtainable. Titanic has released on DVD and Blu-ray, so you don’t have to scrounge around reselling sites to find an old VHS copy
In release - For the purposes of this study, a game is considered to be “in release” if the game, or a version of the game derived from its original release including emulated, modified, or reimplemented versions of the original game is reasonably, readily, and legally available from the game’s rightsholder, either in physical or digital format, for a currently produced or supported game platform.
They are expecting copyright holders of a game to indefinitely sell the game. It’s not that easy. Something like the 1999 movie Dogma would not qualify as “in release” since you can’t buy it or watch it from the copyright holder. You can however buy a DVD version on amazon from mediamaniasales legally.
Overall, the study is expecting studios to support and release classic games for current or supported game platforms. It’s a lot of work and it’s not reasonable to expect a studio to do. If people want supported classic games then they should create a system that gives money to people trying to do that. We live in a society that requires money and people work to get that money. Expecting people to put in that work for free is pretty silly.
As far as I’m concerned, if game studios simply had ISOs/ROMs of their abandoned games available to download for a nominal fee that would be acceptable. Heck with the advent of browser based emulators Sony, Nintendo and Sega (plus many early PC game rightsholders) could simply sell access to play their back catalog on their website Netflix-style via these web-based emulators, much like how archive.org handles it
Honestly I think the most achievable solution is an abandonware law that basically permits the free redistribution of any software that isn’t available for sale in any standard format for x years. Basically just codify what many companies already practice which is turning a blind eye to abandonware/rom sites distributing the very old games they aren’t selling anymore
Commercial availability specifically. Thanks to archivers and the such, there are usually options to play most things. While I personally don’t care about commercially buying most of these classics, I do find it odd how little ip owners seem to want to make some of these older titles available
There’s such a weird attitude around release of old material. Why can’t Disney+ show the star wars theatrical release? Why won’t Nintendo sell their old titles? The only possible outcome is that people get what they want and give the company cash. It’s bizarre.
Disney, at least back in the VHS, and (probably early) DVD days, would purposefully keep their titles in the “vault” and only release a handful of titles at a time for a limited time window.
What it did was create artificial scarcity, and when they put out an “anniversary edition” of Cinderella or whatever, they cashed in.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Lucas didn’t specify Disney agreeing to not releasing the theatrical cuts as a stipulation of the sale. He’s been trying to bury those since the beginning. Last I heard he claimed they were too damaged to release.
Well most of the comments here don’t have an insight into this. The reason they don’t re-release video games or old movies is because they don’t want you enjoying old things. It’s capitalism, but it’s not arbitrary like the scarcity. Because it’s not just video games, no company wants to re-release anything. Not a tractor, not a movie, not a dishwasher, nothing.
Why? Because then you don’t buy the new thing with higher margins. Then you don’t watch the new movie and they can’t sell the new ads with the new character designs promoting it. Or you don’t get locked in to their new cartridge system. Or subscription plan. Whatever. The song is different, the story is the same, new stuff make line go up faster. With tons of waste involved as well.
The reason they don’t re-release video games or old movies is because they don’t want you enjoying old things.
You’re assuming nefarious intent. I suspect the reality is that it’s not worth the rights holders’ time or money to invest in re-releasing old titles that very few people would buy.
Right, I figure re-releasing a game takes some amount of labor, which means someone needs to make a case for spending time on that instead of whatever the current priorities are.
That makes the efforts of archivists all the more commendable, and it’s all the more frustrating when you see a company dedicating resources to shutting them down.
it’s all the more frustrating when you see a company dedicating resources to shutting them down.
Yes, definitely sucks when they do that. I struggle to understand why unless there’s some legal reason to protect all of your intellectual property instead of just the stuff that’s still making money.
I mean some of them claim that if they don’t do that they’ll lose the copyright, but I looked it up a bit ago and there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that that is the case, so make of that what you will. ~Strawberry
Yeah, im going with this one. Even if it takes a company a total of 5 hours work to wrap an old game in an emulator and release it on steam, it’s not going to be worth it when only 5 people buy it.
I think one of the exceptions to this is music. Of course there’s top 40 and whatnot, but it’s one of the areas where older hits either don’t go away, or get repackaged algorithmically into let’s say “stuff from that decade you like that you’ve never heard before.”
Of course it’s still being selected from a much larger sample. But I think there’s something different about music.
I think music gets treated differently in this way partly because the fidelity 50 years ago was already very acceptable compared to the fidelity of brand new music, meanwhile you compare any other media and there’s significant improvements in the graphical fidelity that even movies from within this century can be poor enough video quality to degrade the experience compared to a new release
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