SUPER NINTENDO RAYMAN PROTOTYPE NOW DUMPED ONLINE

The guy behind the development of the 2017 remake Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap Ocornut has recently dumped and released the Rayman SNES prototype for the public to enjoy. Discovered by the creator Michel Ancel back in October. The ROM can now be accessed by the public. The ROM itself contains one playable level and has no sound due to the game being in development. You can check out the ROM down below by clicking on the link. The ROM should be able to run on an emulator just fine and possible even on USB cartridges. Let's hope we get to see more lost games being leaked online. : )

I've dumped a prototype demo of unreleased Rayman for SNES, here it is! (NB: very early dev build, not a full game) https://t.co/F3XB9XRhTA pic.twitter.com/oLhOdNDyHF

— Omar (@ocornut) July 3, 2017

SONY'S E3 CONFERENCE WAS JUST... MEH (AND A RANT ABOUT PLAYLINK)

First up, a few games that has gotten new gameplay trailers were actually good and so is the pre-show. Before I talk about the negatives let's talk about the negatives. We finally got gameplay trailers of Spider-Man, Days Gone and even the most anticipated God of War as well as two expansions for Horizon Zero Dawn and Uncharted. And not to mention, we are finally getting Undertale on a video game system which is awesome since that game is very popular and well received.

The pre-show is actually good. As for the main games conference itself, it's just in my opinion is just meh, The overall presentation is just too boring even the audience doesn't seem to find it interesting. All it is it just starts out as a live musical performance for one of the expansions followed by a bunch of gameplay trailers of games we have already heard of especially Actvision's Destiny 2 and Call of Duty WWII in which I KNEW it was going to be shown at a damn Sony conference. Is it true Sony is shifting away all the good stuff for pre-shows and PS Experiences now? Back then, Sony's E3 conferences were very interesting to watch. Looking at it now it's just trailers and only one guy which is Shawn Layden himself presenting the conference. No developers, no Sony representatives, no demos, no nothing.

And on top of that and I know it wasn't presented at the conference. They introduced a another gimmick series called PlayLink. All it is you're USING a smart device as the controller and that's it. Also, you have to download the app for the damn thing to play it. In my opinion, I don't think the PlayLink isn't going to be a success. I mean, Sony tried bullshit with the PlayStation Move which they copied from Nintendo and it failed. They tried it again with the Wonderbook and only a mere 4 titles were released for the sodding thing because nobody is interested.

Sony, remember when Microsoft discontinued the Kinect because it's library of shovelware games sucked ass and developers stopped making them due to how sucky the Kinect is and it can even invade people's privacy? To be honest PlayLink is a really dumb idea. You're not even using the DualShock 4 pad anymore. You're basically using a smartphone app on a device to interact with the game. Look Sony, I played quizzes that I can make use my smartphone optionally to interact with the website, I can read questions on the board and then answer them on my phone and it's even free to play. I'd rather play Kahoot! over PlayLink. And what's worse, one of the PlayLink titles called ''It's You'' is going to be one the PlayStation 4 titles for PlayStation Plus and I was really pissed off about this. PlayStation Plus isn't JUST about online only, local multiplayer only and soon to be smartphone only titles. PlayStation Plus is all about fun games, with so many average titles and titles that just basically play the same. It's just starting to get worse and worse and worse. Remember when EA used to support your asses by giving out free games for Plus members? What's happening with that now?

Overall, I don't think Sony didn't do well at all with the Conference. The show was boring and it's just games that were already leaked or I heard of. And thanks for announcing a Plus game that I will certainly can't play due to the fact it needs 2 or more players that has smartphones. smh!

DOES PLAYSTATION PLUS HAS TOO MANY CO-OP/MULTIPLAYER TITLES FOR PLAYSTATION 4?

From what I have heard is that Sony Interactive Entertainment in North America and Europe has been adding quite a few co-op/competitive focused titles recently. Back when the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Vita are still in the spotlight, they had been getting some decent AAA titles such as a slew of EA titles, Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Batman Arkham Asylum, Mortal Kombat 9, Metal Gear Rising, Bioshock 2, Bioshock Infinite, Borderlands 2 and many more.

Unfortunately, the PlayStation 4 doesn't seem to recivive the same treatment as most of the time. PS4 owners just gets budget value games and average games that even requires a constant internet connection to play and what's worse, few games on the Instant Game Collection has no Single Player mode meaning you are forced to find a friend locally in order to play. In this blog entry I will list down the PS4 games as of from December 2015 up until now which is June 2017. However, I will omit PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita titles since they are not focused on the Multiplayer aspect as well as cross-buy titles. I will only include the PlayStation 4 titles so here we go.

JANUARY 2016:

• Hardware Rivals (REQUIRES ONLINE TO PLAY!)
• Grim Fandango Remastered

FEBRUARY 2016:

• Helldivers (And it's a co-op shooter)
• Nom Nom Galaxy

MARCH 2016:

• Broforce (Not a co-op shooter but a broken mess)
• Galak-Z

APRIL 2016:

• Dead Star (REQUIRES ONLINE TO PLAY!)
• Zombi (It's just a generic zombie survival game)

MAY 2016: 

• Tropico 5
• Table Top Racing World Tour

JUNE 2016:

• NBA 2K16 (The only AAA PS4 title to be on Plus)
• Gone Home (You can beat this within minutes)

JULY 2016 (Thankfully, no multiplayer titles this time):

• Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell (Yes! An standalone DLC pack!)
• Furi

AUGUST 2016:

• Rebel Galaxy
• Tricky Towers (A mobile game? Really Sony!)

SEPTEMBER 2016:

• Journey
• Lords of the Fallen

OCTOBER 2016 (the only decent selection for PS4 for a change):

• Resident Evil
• Transformer Devastation

NOVEMBER 2016:

• Everybody's Gone to the Rapture
• The Deadly Tower of Monsters

DECEMBER 2016:

• Invisible Inc.
• Stories: The Path of Destinies

JANUARY 2017:

• Day of the Tentacle Remastered
• This War is Mine

FEBRUARY 2017:

• Not a Hero
• LittleBigPlanet 3

MARCH 2017:

• Tearaway Unfolded
• Disc Jam (REQUIRES ONLINE/FRIEND TO PLAY!)

APRIL 2017:

• Drawn to Death (Alas a another online only game!)
• Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

MAY 2017:

• Abzu (North America Only)
• Alienation (Europe Only) (It plays the same as Dead Nation)
• Tales from the Borderlands

JUNE 2017:

• Life is Strange
• Killing Floor 2

After seeing the archives of Plus titles, it seems that Sony is focusing more on the generic multiplayer aspect than the actual games that were given out. As of right now. PlayStation Network has over thousands of titles of the PS4 and there are much better games that Sony could of gave to PlayStation Plus member instead of giving us half assed games and episodic games. For me they are fine but I'm just not really a fan of Telltale Games since they don't much have any interactivity, you're basically watching a TV show and perform dumb quick time events. Seriously, a game based on a game? 

Sony could of easily given us any of the Shantae games, Shovel Knight, Street Fighter IV, Bastion, Among the Sleep, Megaman Legacy Collection, Shadow of the Beast and hell, even a LEGO game on the PS4 would keep me occupied rather than just shovelware. These these two games are okay in my opinion but Killing Floor 2 sounds like fun, the thing, most of the games that are on the list is the game I already have. Let's hope Sony improves their selection next month.  

  

MANTU THE BALL, NOW REBORN IN 3D

Well it's been a long time seen I have written blogs haven't I? I was going to write about the amazing company known as called Scavenger but this is for a another time. When I was studying at college. I was able to get the hang of it with Autodesk 3DS Max. I wanted to make Mantu because he is easy and very simple to do. And this is the result:

This is the first time that Mantu has ever been created in 3D with the use of 3DS Max. All it take is a simple use of primitive shapes and then put them together to create the perfect Mantu 3D Model. I also designed many screenies with him such as this:


And this:


All created with the use of two tools with photoshop to design the textures for the models. I would love to see Mantu being transfred into Garry's Mod, but that is if anyone is willing too. I mean Mantu in real time 3D. I could dream. 

LET'S TALK ABOUT SONIC XTREME

Now before I talk on what I really wanted to talk about so bad. Apologies if this blog has been really inactive for a while since I was very busy with college and other personal stuff. Now then, does anyone remember this Sonic game called Sonic X-treme?

Well if not, let me tell you. It was going to be first 3D Sonic game that was going to be released for the Sega Saturn and even on the PC. It was also first started as a 3D Sonic game for SEGA's ill-fated 32X addon. In the game, Sonic had to traverse through the 3D levels like in Bug! which used the similar gameplay concept were 2D sprites move within the 3D levels, even though the levels are in 3D, Sonic and the rest were 2D sprites. But however, there were screenshots that Sonic had a 3D model. The game was going to be developed by SEGA's North American studio called SEGA Technical Institute (the same studio behind Sonic Spinball, Comix Zone and The Ooze) and later on by Point of View. SEGA Technical Institute wanted to try a different way with Sonic by using the fish-eye lens view. However, STI was split into two development teams. Chris Senn and Ofer Alon was in charge of the PC port while Robert Morgan and Chris Coffin were in charge with the fixed free-roaming boss engine as well as porting it to the Saturn.

But this is where things start to get really ugly. SEGA of Japan's Hayao Nakayama hated the progress and wanted the team to use the boss engine. Even though Wallis dashed in suggested the team to use the NiGHTS engine which came out like this:

Things got even UGLIER. STI lost 2 weeks of development time and even the NiGHTS engine. One of the Sonic designers Yuki Naka even threatened to leave Sonic Team if the engine is used. And Chris Senn at the time was seriously ill at the time and only had 6 months to live. With both teams struggling. The game was unfortunately cancelled. Leaving SEGA with no true 3D Sonic game for the Saturn. 

To make it up on having a no Sonic game on the SEGA Saturn. SEGA decided to request a British studio Traveller Tales on developing a Saturn port of Sonic 3D: Flickies Island/Blast. But the damage was already done. Crash Bandicoot and Super Mario 64 were already out and they were played beautifully with good graphics and gameplay. Sonic 3D on the other hand was just an isometric view where you run around and help the birds escape rather than play through the stage which to me I find it boring and I don't think Sonic 3D would help SEGA very much due the game already made for the Genesis/Mega Drive a year ago and so would the other two Sonic games. These two Sonic games are Sonic Jam which is just a compilation developed by Sonic Team. And Sonic R which is just a foot racing game also made by Traveller's Tales which was too short and can be beaten within around an hour.

Let's fast forward to the 2010 as we find out that many many gameplay videos of Sonic X-treme were published online (including the 32X build), even from Chris Senn himself. Then few years later. A user goes by the name of jollyroger managed to leak few builds online, including the fish-eye build and the Point of View build in which can be played on a real SEGA Saturn which is shown here:

     
I happen to saw a video from speedylink showing the POV build running on real hardware. The POV build did look complete, Sonic was able to collect rings, destroy enemies and even take damage from them. It even has built in debug mode and you can even rotate the screen with the shoulder buttons. Is it true that Point Of View got their build rejected too? Did they help out STI? There are quite a few interesting videos of the game worth checking out. You can also download those builds at the Sonic Retro page:
http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=34255&st=0
http://forums.sonicretro.org/?showtopic=34038

TASBOT PUSHES THE NES AND SNES TO THE LIMIT WITH INSANE ARBITRARY HACKS

So Games Done Quick has finally done it again. They have raised over $1 Million towards Prevent Cancer Foundation and has been a major success. But however. TASBot has shown yet a another trick that actually vowed everyone. So we had Pong & Snake in Super Mario World at AGDQ 2014, Super Mario Bros. in Super Mario World and Twitch in Pokemon Red at AGDQ 2015 and then we had Super Mario Maker in Super Mario All-Stars. But this year, it went in a whole new direction. Wanna take a guess? It's not a NES game in a SNES game. It's actually FULL STREAMING video on an ACTUAL Super Nintendo hardware which showcased TAS videos of Super Mario 64 and Portal. Not just that, real time Skype video chat was running too. It's crazy to see an actual SNES also running Skype as well.

You know, running real-life videos on Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past really surprised me. Feel free to see the insane tricks below. Let's hope we get to see more Arbitrary tricks later down the road at future GDQ's.

HONEST THOUGHTS ON THE NINTENDO SWITCH

Image Source: (c) Ars Techinica

So Nintendo has finally revealed so much information regarding Nintendo's brand new hybrid game console/handheld system that due to come out 3rd March 2017. And holy crap, there are so many good games coming out for the Nintendo Switch. You got a new Super Mario game that takes place in different worlds rather than the Mushroom Kingdom, a new Splatoon sequel, Mario Kart 8 DX, EA Sports FIFA, new Shin Megami Tensei game from Atlus, new Zenoblade Chornicles sequel from Monolithsoft, a new Fire Emblem Musou Warriors titles possibly from Koei Tecmo, Skyrim from Bethesda and heck even Puyo Puyo Tetris is finally getting localized with many thanks to Deep Sliver. And oh, Sonic Mania is also confirmed it's on getting a Switch port. Overall this is all great news.

The question is, can it sell very well and will it gain more 3rd-party support from other AA developers? The thing is, I really hope so since the Switch looks like an interesting piece of hardware and has many many great games in development. Buuut no Metroid unfortunately.

On the bright side, the Switch is region free and thank god Nintendo actually listened for once. But what I want Nintendo to see is re-consider their copyright restrictions on YouTube and possibly decent games. Just hope Nintendo doesn't slip up and drive away third-parties again like what happened to the Wii U. And what Nintendo also needs to re-consider is their censorship policy. 

However, the £280 launch price seems quite steep for a Nintendo console as there not many games in the launch line-up. And yeah, I know there is going to be shovelware and gimmickly type games at launch. Mostly being Just Dance from Ubisoft (yuck!).

Overall, let's hope the system sells well and gains decent games this time.