Nipah

Avenging Spirits. When I was younger, a friend and I loaned each other a bunch of our games. Sadly, he ended up moving away before we managed to swap back, and he got the better end of the deal when it came to the games. However, I did get left with a copy of Avenging Spirits… the game is a bit strange but its very fun and the sprite work is just adorable.

The game has you playing as a spirit who can possess enemies. You start off with a few you can possess, and then you gain more choices as you progress. Or so I believe… I wasn’t all that good at the game back in the day, so I don’t remember getting too far in it.

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I tried AntennaPod because folks on lemmy/kbin/beehaw/wherever have been recommended it, but it was being a bit weird with the only ‘podcast’ I listen to: Critical Role campaigns.

With Google Podcasts, they’d load in with a “Welcome to the Critical Role podcast” intro by one of the players, then go into the fanfare and then into the game. With AntennaPod, it would load (from the same subscription) with at least one ad right off the bat for some reason. I tried it a few times (granted, with just one episode (campaign 1, session 115)) and even uninstalled and reinstalled, and still had ad(s) at the front… I didn’t bother to scrub through to see if it had more ads in the middle bits, because one ad was too many, ya know?

I then tried out Pocket Casts (another recommendation) and the podcast behaves exactly like the Google Podcasts one does… no ads.

Not sure why, but that is how it worked when I tried it at least so other folks may run into a similar situation based on the podcast(s) in question.

There are third party memory card solutions out there… essentially they hijack the cart slot and allow you to stick in a standard micro SD card to use as storage.

I have two of the standard PSV memory cards (I think a 4gb one that came with my Assassin’s Creed bundle, and another 32gb one that I spent like $100 on when the finally dropped the prices into a realm that was at least within viewing distance of sanity), but being able to stick in a cheap-o micro SD card and have ALL the games I purchased (and some extras…) is pretty great.

And because I feel like I’m legally obligated to say this as a Vita owner, hacking the thing was the best decision I made outside of buying the handheld in the first place, when it comes to the PSV. It’s way easier now than when I initially wanted to try (and was too scared to do so when the handheld was still being supported), and as long as you follow up-to-date instructions you should be golden.

The main problem is that its not enough to be competitive with Steam at this point… you need to put out something so good that it give people enough of a reason to leave the comfort of Steam… you need Steam and then another layer of goodness on top of Steam.

This is the same issue that a lot of MMOs had when trying to become a WoW killer. You not only needed to have pretty much everything Blizzard put into the game, but more on top because otherwise why would anyone bother to leave the comforts of Azeroth to play something that is maybe marginally better, or a possibly worse experience?

Microtransactions are ‘small’ purchases made in a game (or via some kind of store that allows you to buy stuff to be used inside of a game).

DLC is any additional downloadable content that is not included with the game (so something like a day 1 patch wouldn’t be considered DLC, I’d say).

All microtransations are DLC, but not all DLC are microtransactions, generally (before someone comes along with some kind of physical microtransaction or something I guess)

I personally just view microtransations as anything that isn’t ‘playable content’. So buying a mount from an in-game store would be a microtransaction, while buying an expansion wouldn’t be. Map packs kind of blur the line in this instance, because one could argue that they’re essentially ‘world cosmetics’, but its a hard and fast rule and not something I’d try to enforce as a law, ya know?

I see this take a lot, and while I don’t disagree… I think it downplays the number of people who DO make ‘sensible’ purchases in a lot of these games.

I personally don’t bother with in-game purchases (I also rarely buy DLC… but I also sub to FFXIV regularly, and have all the content for Destiny 2, so sometimes I can be got) for cosmetics or especially boosts. I’d rather earn the items in game, or a step down, earn in-game currency to purchase those items instead because I’m, at the end of the day, paying for a game to play it and while I want to look good in game while doing so, I’m not gonna drop $15 on digital t-shirts.

But there are plenty of people who don’t mind tossing down $60 additionally a year into a game like Destiny 2 for sparkly new transmog outfits from the Eververse store, and they’ll see it as any sort of reason to do so (‘because I have the money’, ‘because I want to support the developer’, ‘because I have to collect everything’, ‘because because because’), and we can’t just pretend like its a handful of dudes dropping thousands of dollars while everyone else nobly boycotts the practice.

The big problem is that a company will look at something like World of Warcraft/Destiny at the height of their popularity and think “We want that!”

Then they’ll put out a (we’re being optimistic here) serviceable, good game with a respectable amount of content… but it won’t be able to hold a candle to something that: already has that much content + more AND players who are already ‘stuck’ with the game (sunk cost, friends/family/community, etc).

So you put out a game, get a brief spurt of attention from people who are a bit bored of the same ol’ same ol’, but then once they breakneck through all the content you have in less than a month they turn around and head back to their comfort food game and never look back. Congratulations, you can now put out a master class on how to waste millions of dollars.

In order to make a game as a service now you need either an extremely good hook, or you need to not only be comparable to an existing game but also EXCEED what that game offers and continue to provide content at a staggering speed until you’ve coerced people to have invested enough in the game to then be their comfort food/sunk cost game of choice.

Let’s see what I can come up with (and see if I can remember the names correctly!):

• NES: Back in the day, it was probably River City Ransom. Growing up, it was a game my brother and I loved to play… but no one ever knew what we were talking about at the time. Now the Kunio games are a bit more known, and with River City Girls 1/2 they’re getting attention, which is great.
• Gameboy: Avenging Spirits. When I was younger, a friend and I loaned each other a bunch of our games. Sadly, he ended up moving away before we managed to swap back, and he got the better end of the deal when it came to the games. However, I did get left with a copy of Avenging Spirits… the game is a bit strange but its very fun and the sprite work is just adorable.
• SNES: Dragon View. It has great sprite work and a very (at the time) cool looking 3D overworld you can stumble around in… Solid gameplay and some RPG elements make it a nice little gem of a game.
• GBA: River City Ransom EX. Same deal as the NES version. I worked at Toys R Us around this time, and I think I’m the only person who purchased this game from the store…
• PS1: Brave Fencer Musashi. Someone else already mentioned Einhander, so I’ll go with my other go-to PS1 gem from Squaresoft.
• Saturn: Guardian Heroes. While I bought the console for X-men vs Street Fighter, I go it with a handful of games on the cheap at EB Games: Magic Knight Rayearth, some crappy 2D Dragon Ball Z game, X-men vs Street Fighter (and a 4in1 cart of course!) and Guardian Heroes. Its such a well made beat-em-up that really doesn’t get a lot of love because most folks never played any Saturn games.
• PS2: Way of the Samurai. Maybe not super unknown, but definitely a niche game back when it released in the US I think.
• Dreamcast: Cannon Spike. I bought my DC for Capcom games (and SoulCalibur), and this is one of the many gems on that console that never really pops up in discussions. I bought it on the sole merit that Charlie/Nash was in it, but it was wacky and engaging enough to warrant a place in my heart.
• XB360: Tenchu Z. I loved Tenchu back on the PS1/PS2, but this was probably the one that most folks didn’t touch… it was a bit weird but a friend and I played the hell out of it on many a weekend back in the day.

Any other console I either didn’t own (Genesis, Gamegear, PS3, etc) or just couldn’t think of anything that really stood out as a hidden gem (PSP, PSV) or are more current and also don’t really have anything that ranks (PS4, PS5).