M2 Toaplan collection

[XtraSmiley]

And that's why nobody should ever buy digital games anywhere except GOG.

If you purchased it you can still download it. Also, I've never really understood this thought process. If I buy a CD/DVD/Cart and in 20 years it stops working or I lose it, I'm in the exact same boat. If you buy a digital game, ANY platform, download it to your system to play with and in 10, 20, or whenever, the digital market for that system closes, you STILL have the game. If you lose your system or it breaks, yeah, it's gone, but that's no different than if you lose the CD/DVD/Cart or it breaks.

Digital is the same as physical, you're just storing it somewhere else. The benefit is that while the marketplace is open, you store it in the "cloud" for free. The negative is that you can't lend, trade, or sell it easily (with most digital markets).

As for the "delisted" Cave games, guess what, when the license expired, you can't buy them physical anymore either. Same outcome.

This "physical forever" mentality is not really well thought out, IMO.

[MJR]

And that's why nobody should ever buy digital games anywhere except GOG.

If you purchased it you can still download it. Also, I've never really understood this thought process. If I buy a CD/DVD/Cart and in 20 years it stops working or I lose it, I'm in the exact same boat. If you buy a digital game, ANY platform, download it to your system to play with and in 10, 20, or whenever, the digital market for that system closes, you STILL have the game. If you lose your system or it breaks, yeah, it's gone, but that's no different than if you lose the CD/DVD/Cart or it breaks.

Digital is the same as physical, you're just storing it somewhere else. The benefit is that while the marketplace is open, you store it in the "cloud" for free. The negative is that you can't lend, trade, or sell it easily (with most digital markets).

As for the "delisted" Cave games, guess what, when the license expired, you can't buy them physical anymore either. Same outcome.

This "physical forever" mentality is not really well thought out, IMO.

Digital is not the same as physical, at all. I do get digital copies when physical is not available; but physical is always the first option when possible.

For movies, physical offers better bitrate and no compression. 4K blurays offer better picture than anything on streaming. You also get more control to which version of movie you get.

For music, cd’s are definitely better and my favourite music I listen on vinyl which I prefer. Vinyl has better sound quality and most importantly, mastering that does not suffer from audio range compression. Also you get to choose which version of your favourite album to track down for best mastering and authoring. When on Spotify you wont even know.

For games, well on old arcade games nothing beats original hardware on CRT. I dont need to explain why, everyone here knows.

But there is also more than that. When you got practically unlimited amount of content, which is all just files on cloud, it all becomes meaningless, its just some abstract content to consume. Tracking down and getting the best possible physical copy of your favourite album/film/game is a whole different experience, and more meaningful as well.

As I said, I do buy lot of digital stuff because buying everything on physical is not an option, and sometimes you just want to try out if you like something. But if someone is not able to discern the differences - even on their most favourite games/movies/music, well, then I am so sorry.

[davyK]

The digital v physical argument when it comes to film is particularly strong. Films can be amended or censored to reflect contemporary sensibilities. I'd rather have a copy of a film that's important to me so I can watch when I like without worrying about buffering or if it has been tampered with.

That's not the case with games and what's with talking about games being 20 years old and not working? I have 2600 cartridges from the late 70s that still work. I have Saturn and PS1 games that still work. I have CDs from the 90s.

Digital is convenient but it's ultimately a compromise - there isn't anything else I can think of that's positive about it. I will and do buy digital but reserve physical for my favourites if at all possible.

Digital remains extremely important for archiving purposes of course.

[AGermanArtist]

Xbox 360/PS3 was the first console gen I bought anything digitially for. I still have them and every digital purchase I made is still available for download. Even the Japanese account I have on PS3.
I have not been given a reason to suspect foul play like half these Youtubers screech about. I would much rather see a Steam-like library system going fwd, so I don't need to keep consoles and that's up to console manufacturers to ensure that happens.
When I collected I had to rent property with an extra room just to store my stuff, now I don't. My place was starting to look like a junk store, the only thing it missed was some cum smelling guy rattling on about Pokemon to randoms. Looking back on it, I don't even know why I bothered. Every now and again I'd pull something off a shelf and quickly put it back, and that's pretty much the extent of it. I don't have a media unit in my living room anymore, I love it. I don't even have to get up and change disks. Video gaming is peak right now - no wires and no disks and remasters of old games with QoL improvements and small form factor PCs you can hook up to your TV capable of running the best emulation from SSDs and even cheap phones are capable of running Dreamcast, Gamecube, PS1/2 games perfectly - brilliant.
And on top of all that cloud storage negates the need for constantly having to back up data.
I don't buy movies, I still torrent. I buy music (mostly Bandcamp) and stick that on my Google drive with everything else. I have mounted Samsung tablets in the living room and the bathroom with bluetooth speakers and digital turntables with bluetooth speakers in my music room. I love how things are now. It's fucking great. Tomorrow's World happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0fp8FJE0Q0

My only issue with all digital everything is the fact there is no printing, no media, no distribution and no retail and yet none of these savings has been passed onto the consumer.

[Sengoku Strider]

The thing with digital purchases is that you end up deleting them to make space for other games, especially if you DL anything AAA at any point. I've definitely lost digital games to storefront issues.

GunDeadLigne was delisted on PS3 back in the day, and there was no option to redownload it. Nintendo have been terrible about digital games, nothing pre-Switch is available anymore and wasn't linked to any account beyond the hardware. And of course there are situations like P.T. on PS4, where the publisher decides you can't have something anymore for no market or player-based reason, just internal drama. If a cart breaks I can potentially repair it, or buy another one. If my Wii U is as dead in the water as it currently seems, I've lost that whole library and can't ever get it back.

And unless you're someone blessed with unlimited disposable income, a major issue is the financial one. You don't own a digital game, it's just a license you're essentially long-term renting. You have no avenue to recoup a single cent. I can resell a physical game because I own it, and because I like niche genres and read enough online impressions to know what's decent, luckily some of my games have ended up being worth hundreds of dollars. Given how much they've historically appreciated, anybody buying shmups is likely throwing money down a well if they're going digital when given another choice.

I'll still buy digital if it's really cheap or there's no other option, but for all those reasons I'm clinging to physical for as long as they'll let me. Digital is fundamentally just corporate exploitation that took root because 99% of people didn't know what they were actually agreeing to when they clicked the button mislabelled "Buy." They very easily could sell it to you, but they very deliberately don't.

[pablumatic]

Western physical release of the two new collections goes on sale June 10th from Limited Run Games.

https://limitedrungames.com/collections ... switch-ps5
https://limitedrungames.com/collections ... switch-ps5

[Creamy Goodness]

I think I will go with the Japanese version. Got no desire to deal with LRG.

[Ms. Tea]

Looks like it's being published by Clear River and just distributed by Limited Run; I'd expect to see it pop up in other stores eventually.

[Sumez]

Yeah, no reason to import these, stores will probably have them a lot cheaper

[TransatlanticFoe]

Clear River Games are giving this a standard retail release in Europe

[Creamy Goodness]

From the little chatter I have seen for this it looks like Japan and Europe are getting retail releases. Not seeing much said about the US.