Summer Gaming Memories

Every December, there's a lot of discussion about which games best capture the spirit of the holiday season. Usually, it's something like Christmas NiGHTS or similar titles. But what about the game that's perfect to play when the weather is nice?

For me, the first title that comes to mind is Super Mario Sunshine. Even though it's often considered the worst 3D Mario game, I still have fond memories of playing it because it reminds me of summer holidays. I was surprised to find out that it was released in the summer in Japan and the US but didn't make it to Europe until October!

I think I played it around the time it came out, and the bright, sunny environment with its beaches and water pistol backpack made it feel like a summer game. It's kind of neat how it's associated with those warm, carefree days.

Dark Tidings and Star Wars Day

Happy Star Wars Day, everyone (assuming this gets shown on Monday). I'm hoping we might get a tease of Star Wars Jedi 3 today, as there's no Star Wars Celebration until next year now. I'm not sure how likely that is, but it feels like a long time since the last one, even if they were set back by the director leaving.

I've really enjoyed the last two games, even if I don't really like the grey Jedi theme going on with Cal. The movies made it clear that "once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny," so the idea of switching it on when you get to a hard part seems wrong to me.

But I guess that's the problem with Star Wars nowadays—everyone has their own view of it, and there's no way everything, or maybe even anything, is going to match up with that.

Bored of the Rings

I don't know how I feel about Warhorse possibly working on a new Lord of the Rings game. Although I would like to see a big budget role-playing game, I don't think Warhorse are quite big enough to do it the way I imagine. The scale would have to be a lot bigger than Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and that's going to cost so much that I'm not sure it's feasible for anyone.

I'd rather see them make something new. Whether it's a new historical setting or something completely different, I'm not bothered. But Kingdom Come was great at ignoring what other companies were doing and going with what the developers were passionate about. As much as I love Lord of the Rings, that's what we need more of—not more licensed games.

Aging Gracelessly

I really like the look of those Commodore 64 and Spectrum portables, but I feel like we're dancing around the problem at the moment. It's all very easy to recreate the hardware—you could just run it as an emulator on any PC or phone—but the games themselves are in need of a major update.

I know remasters of such old, UK-centric games are unlikely, but as good as The Great Escape and Head Over Heels seemed to anyone at the time, I just don't think they can entertain anyone new nowadays. I've tried with my kids, and it's not the same.

You could say the same for NES games, but of course, they get constant remasters and remakes to keep them playable. Maybe there's something that can be done as a fan project or a Kickstarter, but I think the more likely option is that these games will just fade from memory and never be played again, at least within the next decade or so.

Sunny with a Chance of Snowdrift

In terms of the debate over the new Resident Evil movie trailer, I'm happy for it to ignore the characters and even monsters to a degree, as what works in a game doesn't necessarily work in a movie, as we've seen multiple times with Resident Evil itself.

What I don't get, though, is why is it snowing in the film? This is set in Raccoon City, before it gets nuked, and not once has it ever been portrayed as snowing during that time. I don't think it was ever implied to be winter, and I seem to remember everyone having light clothing. Heck, Jill was wearing a boob tube in Resident Evil 3!

Some details like that do annoy me for some reason, as it doesn't seem to add anything and yet it makes it clear that they don't care about directly contradicting the games.

Exclusive U-Turn

I think it's obvious that Microsoft's campaign against exclusives wasn't coming from an honest place. On one hand, it was coming from Satya Nadella, who doesn't understand games and doesn't like the concept of exclusives. But most of it was coming from Xbox in general realizing they didn't have any exclusives anyone cared about, so the obvious thing to do was try and pretend exclusives were anti-consumer and shame Sony for having them.

The weird thing is it kind of worked. I don't know that any normal person really believed it, but all of a sudden Sony were releasing games on PC and Switch, despite the obvious dangers of undermining the PlayStation and the fact that they weren't very good ports and were making Sony look bad.

This isn't the first time they've done this, though. I've never understood why they gave in and allowed console cross-play. I don't really play multiplayer, so I don't care either way, but why treat Xbox as an equal when before they were forcing people to make a choice.

I'm more than prepared to accept I'm wrong for some kind of business reason, but here we are, and they're reversing the exclusive policy, or at least that's what all the rumors say.

It seems to have taken them a very long time to realize what everyone else knew before they even started, wasting who knows how much time and money in the meantime. Seems about typical for this generation.

The Kids Are Alright

I am actually very surprised that Roblox fans have turned against the new AI graphics mode. It's probably only a vocal minority, but well done to those kids.

It's not quite NFT levels, but there does seem to be a turn against AI in games, which pleases me greatly. Just like NFTs, we can make a stand and stop companies from using it, if we just close our wallets to them. This is going to be a tougher fight, but I feel we can still win it.

Join the Queue

Nice to see a call for a new Maximo from Terry Gold this weekend, there are dozens of us!

I first played Ghosts To Glory digitally on PlayStation 3, which nowadays is only a slightly less archaic means than plugging in a PlayStation 2, and it quickly became one of my favourites alongside Contra: Shattered Soldier (I like hard games).

As Terry pointed out, there was a sequel, the Army Of Zin, which sadly toned down the intricate level design and difficulty to focus more on combat.

There was also plans for a third game, footage of which you can see here, but sadly it was cancelled due to poor sales of Army Of Zin and poor everything from Capcom Studio 8’s next and final game, Final Fight Streetwise.

After all these years, I'm quietly optimistic we could get a new Maximo, considering Capcom’s can't miss, fan-pleasing form of late. Although they haven't made any new Dino Crisis and that seems like a no-brainer.

Inbox Also-Rans

At this point, I'd settle for a low budget XCOM 3, but I don't think it's going to happen. I hate to say it, but I think 2K has bigger fish to fry.

The Small Print

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