At one point MaxEnt had announced an Avatar fighting game, but then silently canceled it when everything imploded. So this appears to be a revival of that.

Over a month ago we were told that TFH’s IP had been sold to a new owner, and they’d have an announcement within a month. Announcement still hasn’t happened, but the publisher on Steam was silently changed to Gameplay Group International, along with Diesel Legacy’s.

FTL

Don’t forget Splatoon 2.

The only Switch 2 game I even have right now is Deltarune. But I know I’m buying Kirby Air Riders, and I figured it’d be best to make sure I get the console right away in case tariffs fuck anything up by then.

There actually was a new Madou that came out last year. Heard it wasn’t very good though…

TBH, I don’t think the originals hold up very well either…

13 All Clear

I haven’t gotten all the way down to 2 yet, but at the rate I’m going, I could see it. I’ve settled into mostly grinding the same few forever games while the mainstream industry moves further and further away from my tastes.

Yeah, there’s definite value in having these boards to ask questions. It just… needs moderators to be more proactive in dealing with bad actors.

Don’t want to manage your own forum, then disable user posts entirely.

I don’t believe that’s an option. I know one indie dev that actually told me they wished they could just not have a Steam forum because they hate it.

Steam Forums are one of the worst hellholes I’ve seen on the modern internet, and Valve does nothing. Any game that gets declared a target by the post-Gamergate crowd ends up having its board seiged until it’s unusable for any kind of actual discussion.

TIC-80 Is a different fantasy console, not compatible for Pico-8. There are open source Pico-8 emulators though, including a libretro core.

TBH, it’s starting to feel like bringing up Epstein in response to every single headline is itself becoming a distraction.

It’s 少年. How you want to transliterate that into our alphabet is open to interpretation.

That’s an answer for you as a consumer, but the article is from the perspective of the industry. If no one ever bought new games, game development would not be sustainable.

There are three tiers of activity:

• Active enough that I can queue at any time of day and find opponents close to my skill level with good ping
• Active enough that I can queue at peak hours and find opponents
• Need to schedule games via Discord matchmaking

If I really love the game enough, I’ll put up with jumping through hoops to play it, but it does get frustrating when the games I like are a lot more convenient to play than the games I love.

The trailer was made entirely within the game’s very robust level editor. At the end it actually shows the level editor project.

The technical merits were why FF7 was so impactful as a cultural landmark of video game history.

Is Trails a good game? Sure.

Is FF7 the right comparison to invoke? Not even close.

The big thing about FF7 was that it came out during a critical transition period for the industry, and Squaresoft put the highest budget of any video game to date into making sure FF’s jump to 3D graphics was as explosive as possible. The game was heavily marketed on its technical merits, boasting about how everything this game does could only be possible on PS1. It’s full of setpiece moments that are literally just Squaresoft trying to show off their VFX budget (this is why summon cutscenes are so absurdly long). And it blew audiences away because no one had never seen anything like it before. FF7 was a revolution.

Trails certainly has good reason to be beloved by its niche fanbase, but by 2004, it really wasn’t doing anything super unique compared to its contemporaries from the same time period. It’s a polished game, but I can’t describe it as anything more than an evolution.

What part of this is comparable to FF7?

This comparison really feels strained. FF7 was the PS1’s biggest game, and by far. It was a revolution that shook the entire industry.

Trails is a cult classic that’s beloved by a niche fanbase, and I’m happy to see this kind of game get a shot at wider recognition here, but its impact was in no way even remotely comparable to FF7.