Just a low down, dirty rotten shame.

[Despatche]

i think it could have been done in the late '90s and early '00s, if on a smaller scale.

Maybe not new but hasn't been around for ever. There are tons of translations of the web of developers that have been around since the 90s, and even working for large-ish dev houses (Sega, Data East, Taito) was apparently a delight.

i dunno, i've heard terrible things about sega and data east, though that might have been specific years instead of any period.

[JBC]

You're gonna assume wrong, chill out.

oh no, i don't think you know this series very well. it is not an achievement to beat the first difficulty of these games in under 7 hours, especially when its being done by what may as well be "professionals" of these games. that tends to apply to clones, too.

I didn't say that it was, but the subject made the news this morning like all of the other examples of foreboding video game headlines I jotted down in the same sentence. Context. Even had I, it'd still be arrogant and moronic of you to presume to know what games someone you've never met from the internet has played. Logic.

[Mischief Maker]

The first part [Witcher 1] was Gothic lite (worse combat system and exploration) with tits and lots of boring fetch quests, is the second any better?

Witcher 2 plays nothing like its predecessor. It shares the plot and characters, but not much else. The combat is action-game quality, the graphics are gorgeous, the voice actors bring their A game, the morally ambiguous plot is interesting, there are fewer quests of higher quality, just a great overall game that was obviously made by people with a genuine enthusiasm, as opposed to Dragon Age 2 which was written by a dreary fanfiction author who openly states that she hates videogames.

[GaijinPunch]

i dunno, i've heard terrible things about sega and data east, though that might have been specific years instead of any period.

Dig something up. Plenty of people from the Golden Era of gaming stated that at Sega at least (if not plenty of others) the developers were left to their own devices to come up with something. The management didn't fuck up the creative process. I've only read a few articles with Data East programmers, but they were all very positive. Read the latest interview posted in Shmups Chat which says nothing but good stuff about Toaplan -- the CEO didn't even hang out in the same office as the devs. Mind you, this is all in a country that is known for brutalizing employees with ridiculous hours and monotonous bullshit, in a time less liberal than now.

I understand that games are big business now though, so I don't really blame the companies. The user base is too large for the medium as a whole to remain creative. There will always be creative nieches on the software side, but the downside is that there will be more shit to wade through, and the delivery system for the product is shit.

[Despatche]

good, now i don't have to bother with you, you don't even deserve a response, useless punk

Dig something up. Plenty of people from the Golden Era of gaming stated that at Sega at least (if not plenty of others) the developers were left to their own devices to come up with something. The management didn't fuck up the creative process. I've only read a few articles with Data East programmers, but they were all very positive. Read the latest interview posted in Shmups Chat which says nothing but good stuff about Toaplan -- the CEO didn't even hang out in the same office as the devs. Mind you, this is all in a country that is known for brutalizing employees with ridiculous hours and monotonous bullshit, in a time less liberal than now.

i'm probably wrong, but i could have sworn i've read interviews on sega in the later genesis days being a bit of a mess. then there's sonic cd, which i hope i don't need to explain.

now toaplan i can understand, though certain games bug me. do you know of any interviews with a lot about... daisenpuu, vimana, dogyuun, i don't know. kinda wish uemura or yuge or whoever would just talk about each game. what i really want to see is some commentary on all that bizarre output by taito in the '80s, and maybe a real source for hot-b's involvement in chuuka taisen and insector x (i was told this was supposed to be a secret).

i mean the internet makes it somewhat easy to see how people and companies liked x game at the time of release but all these arcade games? impossible. all you get are old magazines and twin galaxies going on about how awesome this or that pac-man clone is.

[louisg]

RIP: Gaming as a hobby.

I think it'll be around. There are enough people out there that care about games. Downloadables could actually turn out to be one of the better things to happen-- OK, so I'll miss having it on my shelf. And I hate the DRM and general lack of guarantees that a game will remain playable. The upside is that there's a lot less overhead.

I wonder what peoples' reactions were when Nintendo broke out and it had a lockout chip plus licensing scheme. Granted, there were fewer serious gamers then. But, *that* was pretty bad news because it meant your game design had to pass through a central, corporate authority, before it could be released. We're so used to it now, which is kind of sad. I'm going to be insanely optimistic here and argue that the changes we're seeing now are less harmful than that.

[GaijinPunch]

i mean the internet makes it somewhat easy to see how people and companies liked x game at the time of release but all these arcade games? impossible. all you get are old magazines and twin galaxies going on about how awesome this or that pac-man clone is.

Well, most of what I"ve translated is from print. Here's a few.

Deco's Golden Age
Toaplan Forever
Kouichi Yotsui Discography (This guy comes off a bit bitter, but after a follow up interview, I don't quite think so).
The Man Who Made Guwange & ESPRade

The interviews in Continue are very informative. Some better than others:
Vol 3: The Man Who Made Treasure
Vol 11: The Man Who Made Makaimura
Vol. 12: Yu Suzuki Interview

The short interviews in Sega Arcade History are full of awesome as well.

Some come right out and say it, others are more subtle. One thing you will rarely if ever hear about that age is anything close to the bullshit coming out of companies these days.

But, *that* was pretty bad news because it meant your game design had to pass through a central, corporate authority, before it could be released.

People probably thought of all the turds on the 2600 and quickly forgot about the downside.