Guess Who Owns SNK
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/12/22 at 12:24 AM CT
There has been a lot of buying and selling and merging of videogame studios as of late, what with both Microsoft and Sony spending Billions (with a “B”) of dollars on studios and publishers, Square-Enix dumping its under-performing Western division, and – as always – the Chinese Communist Party extending its reach and influence through Tencent. Just when we thought Chinese meddling or Woke idiocy in North America were the worst influences on gaming we had to worry about, a once-big(ish)-name in Japanese game development has been bought out by an unexpected benefactor.
SNK, known for its stable of Golden Age fighting games and overpriced also-ran consoles in the NeoGeo line, has always been a publicly-traded corporation. As such, after struggling to penetrate the home videogaming market, the collapse of arcades worldwide saw SNK fall on hard times, leading to a buyout by Playmore to form SNK-Playmore. This hyphenated version of the company continued to flail away at the …
Review Round-Up: Spring 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/04/22 at 07:53 PM CT
Welcome back to another installment of the MeltedJoystick Review Round-Up. Here’s what our staff has reviewed since last time:
Nelson’s Reviews:
I had a pretty good gaming quarter, which looks magnificent compared to my last quarter. Chris and I finished the second ‘Boot Hill’ game, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I got to dig into another high-quality Ubisoft Sandbox, which is THE definitive “Break of the Weapons” killer. We also started a new Live Service to replace “Destiny 2” (for some of us, at least), which turned out to be an interesting and engrossing time-sink, if not particularly cooperative. I managed to squeeze in an Epic Store freebie at the last minute (and found out why it was a freebie in the process). And I adopted a new dog.
“Boot Hill Bounties” – 4/5
“Immortals: Fenyx Rising” – 4.5/5“
“Warframe” – 3.5/5
“Cris Tales” – 3/5
Chris’ Reviews:
THE Disgruntled Dwarf appears to have given-up on his dreams of becoming a …
Backlog: The Embiggening – June, 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/29/22 at 04:28 PM CT
June is nearly upon us, once again. And with the coming of the Summer season, we must all prepare ourselves mentally for the withering despair of the annual Summer Games Drought, in which the corporate troglodytes of the Games Industry refuse to release very many games during the three months of the year when the biggest proportion of the videogaming audience has significantly decreased amounts of responsibility and obligations and overwhelming amounts of free time – you know, school kids, and, increasingly, their Gen-X and Millennial teachers, who grew up with the NES. Well, it looks like this year, the Drought hasn’t arrived, just yet. There are gobs and gobs of ‘new’ releases coming in June, and it’s up to me to tell you, dear readers, which ones are worth getting out of bed for.
Not much shovelware is coming in June, which is good news. We’ve got all three major categories represented, though. In the category of “Licensed Swill,” we’ve got “MX vs. ATV …
Holy Crap! There’s a New DragonLance Novel Coming in August, 2022!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/21/22 at 09:19 PM CT
The DragonLance High Fantasy campaign setting created by TSR in 1984 is near and dear to the hearts of most of us here on the MeltedJoystick Crew. While we were only 5 years old when the series launched, we all went through a school curriculum that promoted reading through unguided courses called “Reading Workshop,” in which students, from roughly 5th Grade through 8th Grade, were expected to choose their own books to read, and about which to write weekly short-form book reports in the form of letters to classmates and/or the teacher.
I found Reading Workshop to be a painful experience, initially. In spite of being a voracious reader of Little Golden Books – which I read aloud to my cat, Nommy Jr. – to the point of getting waaaay too much free Pizza Hut from the “Book It!” program, once it came time to transition from super-short children’s books to young-adult novels, I couldn’t find anything that could hold my interest for 100+ pages. In 5th Grade, I recall …
Woke Corporatism: Activision Introduces “Diversity Space Tool” Ahead of Microsoft Acquisition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/15/22 at 04:27 PM CT
Remember when we could all hate on corporate Big Business for being greedy, unethical, and in-bed with the Far Right conservatives of the Republican Party – who, naturally, offered the corporations fat tax breaks through the magic of Trickle-Down Reaganomics? Well, ever since that Orange Clown bulldozed his way through American public discourse, corporations have been trying to distance themselves from the Right Wing as much as possible. They, of course, do this primarily by embracing – or making the appearance of embracing – the lunatic fringe of the other side’s politics. For years now, we’ve seen ‘Woke Capitalism’ pushing for diversity, casting the overwhelming majority of advertisements with non-European, non-male, non-hetero characters, and voicing support for Left Wing social movements, even as the corporations themselves don’t actually change their behavior in any way, and continue to suck as much profit out of the economy as possible.
This kind of nonsense …
Square-Enix Dumps Its Half-Dead Western Division
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/08/22 at 02:30 PM CT
We at MeltedJoystick have never truly understood what Square-Enix was thinking back in 2009 when it bought the dying carcasses of Eidos and Crystal Dynamics – the Interplay-era Western developers responsible for Leaden Age PC games the likes of ‘Tomb Raider,’ ‘Deus Ex,’ and ‘Thief’ – and grafted those studios and development philosophies onto a Japanese megacorporation that built its entire reputation on a foundation of 16-and-32-bit console RPGs.
Obviously Square-Enix has finally come around to our side of the argument, and doesn’t know why they did that either, because news broke this week that they are now selling-off Eidos and Crystal Dynamics (along with their homebrewed Western-style developer, Square-Enix Montreal) to Embracer Group, a Scandinavian holding company that used to go by the more-familiar name of THQ Nordic. Even more shocking, in this era of Sony and Microsoft spending BILLIONS of dollars to buy studios and IP, Square-Enix only asked Embracer …
Backlog: The Embiggening – May, 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/01/22 at 02:49 PM CT
April showers are supposed to bring May flowers, but with the drought affecting so much of the U.S., that’s kind of tough. Actually, as May rolls in, it’s finally starting to feel like it was supposed to in April, leading me to believe that, with climate change, we’re seeing the seasons shifting away from what’s traditionally been expected… Just like the Games Industry, which, thanks to the cataclysmic changes wrought during the 7th Generation, has changed from a monthly cycle of new releases to a predictable cycle of re-releases and ports. How big a proportion of this month’s release schedule with be consumed by the old instead of the new? Read on!
We’ve got an eclectic mix of shovelware coming in May. Of course, there’s licensed swill based on non-game IP: “My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure,” based on an IP that primarily appeals to middle-aged male Furries (dubbed “Bronies”), and “Evil Dead: The Game,” based on a hoary old horror movie …
Paradox Interactive Models Positive Behavior Regarding Fangames
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/24/22 at 04:43 PM CT
Fangames have been around since the adolescence of the Internet, circulating within the same gaming communities that tended to pass-around ROM-hacks that spice-up (or ruin) old favorites and Fanslations of unlocalized gems (or turds) out of Japan. Unsurprisngly, most fangames are based on Nintendo IP, thanks to that company’s presence at the very heart of gaming culture in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Also unsurprisingly, Nintendo being the litigious and authoritarian business that they are, loves to bludgeon the communities of their most adoring fans with lawsuits and copyright takedowns at every opportunity – especially when a fangame is involved that manages to deliver a better, truer experience than Nintendo’s own studios.
Nintendo, however, isn’t alone in owning IP that receives fangame support… they’re just alone in their knee-jerk, draconian reaction to such heart-felt out-pourings of adulation. Indeed, this week, Paradox Interactive, a B-tier Eurojank publisher that …
Why <i>Can’t</i> Official Emulation Compete? Copyright, of Course!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/17/22 at 03:47 PM CT
Last week I raked Nintendo (and to a lesser extent Sony) over the coals with the help of a YouTuber. But we never really got to the root of “why” corporations like Nintendo and Sony – who have been so foundational to the history of videogaming on the whole – refuse to engage with Games Preservation, backward compatibility, and official emulation support in any meaningful way.
Even as I slap Nintendo across the face with one hand, I have to wipe away their tears with the other, since they actually have done quite a bit for backwards compatibility compared to other Big Gaming industrial players: They made the Game Boy Advance compatible with original/color Game Boy cartridges, and further put in the extra effort in creating the DS with an entirely different cartridge slot at the bottom so it could continue that legacy of backwards compatibility. They’re also the company that created both the Super Game Boy cartridge shim for the SNES AND the Game Boy Player expansion slot …
Nintendo Proves that Official Emulation Just Can’t (Won’t) Compete
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/10/22 at 03:31 PM CT
Last year, at about this time, the big gaming bugaboo was the fact that Sony was planning to shut-down access to their digital PlayStation Store for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation Portable. This news, combined with the fact that an known bug in Sony’s firmware could invalidated digital purchases until the user reconnected their device to the PlayStation Store, saw a massive grassroots backlash which effectively “forced” (insofar as regular persons can force Corporate Persons to do anything) Sony to keep 2/3 of their slated-for-closure stores up and running, AND to patch the ownership issue.
Well, this year, Nintendo decided to do almost the exact same thing! While Wii and DSi owners haven’t been able to make purchases from those consoles’ digital stores in quite some time, recently, the stores were unceremoniously shut-down with no notice. Well, technically, there was some notice: Specifically, a Nintendo announcement that the WiiU and 3DS eShops …
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