I actually really liked Haru, and thought she got some legitimately interesting development, even if it would have worked better in terms of pacing if you didn’t need to cram it all in during the last third of the game or so. Yusuke was godawful, though, and while I could understand where Ryuji was coming from most of…

Thank you. Yusuke is a creep. There’s the whole thing where his introduction involves blackmailing Ann into posing nude, which he is literally never called to task for throughout the rest of the game. And he’s just generally a collosal ass to everyone. Another key moment is when he criticizes Futaba’s appearance…

I think the fundamental difference with your examples is that it is a cop’s job to enforce laws on speeding. It’s a store store security guard is explicitly hired to stop shoplifters. It is not Kaldaien’s job to stop pirates of someone else’s game. I think there a lot of drivers who would react negatively to having…

Personally, the thing I found weird about this initially, and about the most vocal defenders of it in these comments, is that it isn’t the mod maker’s job to enforce someone else’s IP. I don’t condone piracy in the least, and I stress that I’m not really criticizing the idea that Kaldaien is fully justified to do…

They both irritate me, but I think I can tolerate Ryuji more. He’s a jerk, but it feels like most of his assholishness is accidental. I wish he showed a little more willingness to learn from his mistakes, but at least he doesn’t really seem malicious.

I was obsessed with Final Fantasy V, back in the day. I played through a good chunk of it before the RPGe patch was released. I didn’t understand a lick of Japanese, mind you, but I had a text script from the Internet and a table of kana (thank god the menus didn’t use kanji!) and managed to get about halfway through…

This reminds me that I really miss the old school kids’ show intro format where they do their best to squeeze the entire backstory into a minute-long theme. It was pioneered by Sid and Marty Krofft in the 1970s and persevered through at least the late 1990s (seen here with Sonic Underground) before seemingly dying…

Archie Comics put out some amazing licensed comics in the 1990s. I’ve always been partial to their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, which started out as straight-up adaptations of the cartoon before very quickly veering into very outre territory, and winded up in a much, much different place than any other…

Beamdog’s never gotten a license to the Planescape setting, but they’ve gotten Forgotten Realms from Hasbro for the Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale remasters, and even gotten a new expansion and an interquel out of the deal. So it can be done, but it may not be worth the asking price.

Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me that much. I don’t expect it soon, since there would likely need to be a shakeup in Konami’s management first, but given how closely Kojima is associated with MGS, I can easily see Kojima getting licensed to do another game to be published by Konami. I just doubt he’ll ever return as…

It’s not a lie: they’re bringing in less, but they’re spending way, way less. So it’s a net profit. The question is whether or not they can keep this up going forward. They’ve likely already trimmed all of the fat they can realistically trim, and there’s no guaranteed their revenue won’t continue to fall, particularly…

Well, I meant “all bets are off” in the sense of “standard trademark law isn’t necessarily the be-all and end-all,” but you’re right, and I appreciate the clarification.

Assuming it’s anything like trademark law, they’re all but required to do that. But I’m just surprised because of the number of fairly high-profile games of the mid-1990s that seemingly got away with appropriating the symbol. It seems unlikely to me that the Red Cross would have reached out to Nintendo on the matter…

Fair enough. As I said, it could have been a combination of the two. But Earthbound definitely was impacted by Nintendo of America’s content guidelines, and the presence of a cross would have likely violated that rule even if the ICRC hadn’t been in the picture.

I actually really, really like the level design in Mega Man 6. The introduction of a more non-linear approach and multiple exits was a great one that I wish hadn’t been abandoned after one outing. The robot masters weren’t among the most inspired, but they were a considerable improvement over Mega Man 5's altogether…

As great as Mega Man Unlimited is (and it is great, don’t get me wrong), I find its difficulty to be a little too unforgiving for my tastes. Though its been substantially nerfed in more recent versions, Rainbow Man’s stage is still harder than just about any official level, and it flies well past “challenging” en…

Both are superb, but I’ve always found Dive Man’s music to be my favorite regular level track of the franchise.

Mega Man 4's soundtrack is superb, frankly. I know Mega Man 2 gets more love in that department, but I think I have to give a slight edge to this one. It’s definitely an improvement over Mega Man 3 (which had a couple of good songs, but far too many forgettable ones).

Mega Man X is one of the better games of the Mega Man franchise, but I’ve never seen it as the be-all and end-all so many of its supporters make it out to be. The robot master/maverick designs are good, and the idea of changing up certain aspects of the levels based on the order you visit them is a great one (Flame…

Look, Mega Man 4 has some problems in its boss design, certainly. Poor Toad Man clearly only graduated from video game boss academy on a technicality, and its not like Ring Man was the most inspired of concepts. But I won’t accept anyone telling me that a game that featured both Skull Man and Pharoah Man was “less…