It’s a combination of technical incompatibilities and Sony’s corporate culture. The PS4 uses a proprietary texture and audio format. The texture format used by the other versions of Fallout 4 purportedly works on the PS4, but at a significant performance hit, and the audio won’t work at all. Since Sony’s formats…

It may not improve anyone’s opinion of the game, but the localization of Castlevania 2 is perfectly fine. It wasn’t mistranslated at all. All that talk about looking in to the death star or whatever aren’t mangled clues that made more sense in the original Japanese. They’re direct translations of deliberate red…

While I’d rather see it on the 3DS, I’m tentatively interested so long as Square Enix builds in proper Bluetooth controller support. Their recent games have been improving, but their earlier releases didn’t have it and are nigh unplayable for me.

There’s a bit of a... history between Bethesda and the developers of Skywind (and Morroblivion before it) that may complicate it ever coming to consoles. Also, given the size of the project, it may not even fit within the size restrictions imposed by the consoles (2 GB for XB1, 900 MB for PS4). Honestly, I wouldn’t…

I believe that mod is a simple retexture. At most, it’s a new texture and a new model. The point is, it doesn’t include an actual plugin file. The model and texture format is mostly unchanged for the special edition of the game: it’s only the plugins that need to be modified to work in the new version. Most, if not…

There’s a technical side to it as well. I’m not an expert, but, as I understand it, Sony uses a proprietary format for both textures and audio files that they’re not willing to open up for Bethesda to include with their modding tools for Skyrim. You can use standard formats for textures, at a significant performance…

The game really doesn’t have any reliable way to tell whether or not the mod you’re using is a cheat or just a bug fix, so I understand why Bethesda/Microsoft/Sony would err on the side of keeping their achievement/trophy system “clean,” so to speak. Really, sometimes it’s not even clear to a human observer what the…

There have been a couple of locational damage/dismemberment mods (adding a system similar to the one from the 3D Fallout games) for the old version of the game, but most rely on some very questionable hacks to the game’s scripting system. Even with the script extender (which is not currently, and may not ever be…

You don’t technically need a script extender to overhaul the UI. The most famous UI overhaul for classic Skyrim, SkyUI, requires it, but earlier versions, at least, would run without the script extender with somewhat reduced functionality (no searching, etc.). You’d still get the improved layout, though. I wouldn’t…

All of Love’s work is worth checking out. I’m a particular fan of Digital: A Love Story, one of her older, freeware games. It’s not quite as intellectually or emotionally challenging as her more recent work, but it’s a clever and moving little story told in a genuinely creative way.

SMB3 is better. :-P

I doubt it’s going to have a standard USB power port. Nintendo’s been all about the proprietary adapters for the better part of two decades. I’m just happy that they abandoned the whole proprietary headphone jack after the GBA SP.

They did it with the Game Boy Advance, too. The original was replaced with the SP, which was followed by the Micro.

I doubt it, personally. I think a huge part of the appeal of Minecraft to Microsoft was that it wasn’t already embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem. Having a product that’s played extensively by Apple, Google, etc. consumers seems like it would be a big draw. The only way I can see them benefitting from Microsoft…

I don’t know about Fallout 4 (but I’d be surprised if it’s much different from Skyrim), but the Skyrim Unofficial Patch will not work under these restrictions. Arthmoor, the project manager, has confirmed this. It includes a number of texture, mesh, and script fixes, all of which would be classified as external assets…

Scripts are external assets in Skyrim, at least (haven’t played around with Fallout 4 modding yet). They’re packaged externally from the plugins that appear to be the only files allowed on the PS4.

From “relationship.”

The Mario jump sound effects are the reason I won’t watch a SM64 speed run without muting the audio first.

Basically nothing. They let go all of their internal development studios (including Black Isle, responsible for Fallout) back in the early 2000s with the intention of going exclusively into publishing/licensing to overcome their ongoing financial troubles. That led to the license, and subsequently sale, of the Fallout…

I think the rights to all of the old D&D games was always with the company that owned the license (Wizards of the Coast, these days). I know that Interplay hasn’t had anything to do with any of the recent remakes/remasterings of the old Infinity Engine games (both Baldur’s Gate games and the first Icewind Dale, so…