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I understand it’s not just impacting US developers, as the price of these development kits is also going up across Europe and elsewhere. That’s likely because those “macroeconomic” conditions extend beyond just US tariffs, with currency fluctuations, production costs, and other elements impacting pricing.
I’m thinking they don’t sell that many dev kits so maybe the price is going up for Europe also simply because all of the kits ship from China to Redmond and get distributed to the rest of the world from there. Like, I kind of doubt they even build and sell enough in a year to fill a single shipping container.
My experience was only playing at friends’ houses who had Play Stations, but I never felt like one was better than the other. I appreciated the mechanic of upgrading items helped to give a different element to the game instead of it being the same thing Nintendo was doing but with different characters. What we really played a lot with friends, though, was Battle Mode on Mario Kart. I don’t think CTR had that, or else no one thought it was as good. It really hasn’t been as good in Mario Kart either since the Wii version I’d say.
There’s a part of me that would be tempted to buy a Nintendo 64 if I ever found one, just for the authentic experience with Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye, and a few others.
The classic tracks usually vary some in newer versions of Mario Kart. Typically I’d say it doesn’t make a difference, mostly cosmetic, but sometimes it’s significant. SNES Rainbow Road is one I’d say is dramatically easier in the remakes, and I’ve seen comparisons showing wholesale changes on others to the extent they’re hardly even the same track. It mostly seems to impact the SNES and GBA tracks, though. Not as many real differences in tracks that were already 3D models.
I remember the rough start they had, but major kudos to them for sticking it out and turning it into a fantastic game, and even more kudos for all the content they’ve continued to release over the years expanding the game with none of it as additional purchases/DLC. I’ve bought the game once on Xbox One when it was on sale because that was the only system I had that could run it, but I suspect I’ll buy it again for PC when I have a system that can run it because it supports PCVR and I feel like this would be a fantastic game for that.
This whole saga has been fascinating in that it has revealed an entire side of gaming I really didn’t know existed. I’m not looking very deeply into it, but just seeing how much exists and how many categories and classifications go into it is surprising, although I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised given how long I’ve been online.
Going through the lists everyone has posted I realized I’m surprised I haven’t seen anything from the Medal of Honor franchise posted. I only ever played Medal of Honor: Frontline because a roommate had it, but it was scored by Michael Giacchino, who also composed the scores for the original Medal of Honor, Medal of Honor: Underground, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and Medal of Honor: Airborne. Giacchino won awards for the first four soundtracks in the series and it was his video game work that caught J. J. Abrams’s attention and led to him scoring Alias and Lost, starting his TV and movie career.
Also, if you enjoy soundtracks, you might like StreamingSoundtracks.com. It’s been around since 2001 and features soundtracks from movies, tv shows, and video games. It’s a free streaming radio service with the playlist queued by listeners along with limits on how frequently any track can be played, so you won’t hear repeats very often. A manager at a past job played it most days. One year someone took advantage of the “No repeats” rules and played all the horror tracks throughout October so that on Halloween there were basically no horror tracks available, angering many when they realized what had happened. I found it one of the more impressively planned and executed pranks I’ve personally witnessed.
I really like SimCity 3000’s jazz soundtrack. That was the first time I remember playing a game where the soundtrack was released separately.
Honorable mention goes to DX-Ball 2, which introduced me to a lot of electronic music and the concept of module/tracker music. The game by default came with just 4 .mod songs but on the website you could download additional files from the same creator, or add other .mod files from other sources to a folder and they’d appear in the game. First shareware game I ever bought, and paid by sending a money order through the mail because I was too young to have a credit card.
Looks like PC Gamer is going to be mining this for multiple articles; there’s another one talking about how he got started at Microsoft because he was yelled at by Steve Balmer for distracting his brother, who was working there writing a C compiler at the time. I think I’ll just watch the video, it’s about a half-hour.
Demo available for Mac and Windows on Steam, trailer shows planned Linux support. I’m going to have to check that out later, it looks chill.
I forgot about using those scripts. I’ll have to put Grease Monkey on my newer computer. I added an extension a couple months ago to stop websites from preventing me from pasting into text fields, but I’d guess using a script would be a more efficient way to deal with it than adding an extension for every annoyance!
“We will store backup copies of our code in a secure repository in Switzerland, and we will provide our European partners with the legal rights needed to access and use this code if needed for this purpose.”
If Microsoft is going to actually risk giving access to their source code then they’re really scared!
I was just looking and realized there were some old racing games I used to love, so I filtered to that category and found they have the Moto Racer Collection, including 1, 2, and 3 for $1.59. I think we had Moto Racer 2 and I remember playing that a lot, so I’ll be picking those up.
I’m going to need to look into finding the old Need For Speed, Midtown Madness, and Motocross Madness games from, like, 25 years ago. I might still have some of those discs somewhere, actually.
This sounds like too many games are being made. I suppose a lot of these are hobby/passion projects or learning exercises people have made, but that has to be more games than there is any viable market for.