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Armored Core VI is a certified banger and the tutorial is probably needed even for old fans as it sounds like it's going to challenging in the controls department alone.

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while a sci-fi Soulslike would be nine kinds of fun

I mean, there is The Surge if you want a sci-fi/technology-focused Soulslike...

Anyway, Armored Core VI really does look cool & appropriately AC, which is great. It's nice to see that FromSoft is being allowed to essentially just make what they want to make with this game, and hopefully it pays off well enough to encourage FromSoft to eventually return to some of its other long-abandoned franchises, like Echo Night or Tenchu (yes, both had spiritual successors by FromSoft in recent years, but I mean ACTUAL new games for them).

The Stadia tanked so badly that it, leaving Microsoft as the only people doing cloud gaming, killed a $59 billion deal. Everyone think about that for a second.

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RPG Maker Unite's finally through its developmental woes! It was released as of the 27th of this month. Amateur game devs, jump in!

Oof. You wrote this part of the column at the beginning of the week, didn't you? RM Unite's listing on the Unity Asset Store broke when they attempted to go live, somehow, and consequently the final release is now in limbo pending some kind of ambiguous backend fix.

https://twitter.com/RPGMakerUnite/status/1651882770522836994

Naturally, people have all sorts of uninformed hot-takes and conspiracy theories. I don't work for Unity or GGG, but I do work in software, and sometimes the problem really is just as boring as it sounds (and boring does not necessarily mean "easy to fix"). All we can really be sure of is that the curse is still very much alive and well, but hopefully not for too much longer.

Beatdigga wrote:

The Stadia tanked so badly that it, leaving Microsoft as the only people doing cloud gaming, killed a $59 billion deal. Everyone think about that for a second.

Jason Schreier put it best:

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Food for thought... the UK says it is blocking the Microsoft-Activision deal because of Microsoft's advantages in cloud gaming, which are stronger because Google Stadia failed... in other words, the deal is now in jeopardy because of Phil Harrison

Now that's HILARIOUS. In a week where seemingly everything happened at once, this is still taking the cake. Union buster Lulu Cheng Meservey giving hollow threats (https://twitter.com/lulumeservey/status/1651181116164919297), Brad Smith going on a weepy tantrum (https://twitter.com/BBCBusiness/status/1651496929023467521), and Bobby Kotick crying conspiracy, claiming the CMA and FTC are colluding (https://twitter.com/DeekeTweak/status/1651672507550773248). This reaction alone should be enough to throw out the merger. Oh, you don't get to engage in monopolization? Boohoo, every last one of you. Fixing ActiBlizz's toxic workplace shouldn't require being bought out by MS and MS has enough studios already, they just need to manage them better instead of using pay to win. With the CMA's appeal history not being in MS' favor, the deal is all but dead. And thank god for that.

As for happier things, Armored Core looks like a return to some high-octane mecha action we've been missing for too long. Daemon X Machina held the line, so good to see the genre is coming back. All we need now is for Square-Enix to put out the rest of the Front Mission series (GIVE US FRONT MISSION 5 ALREADY!)

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This is particularly heartening news. Mega Man Battle Network was the black sheep of the franchise when it debuted in the U.S. in the early '00s. The games moved from the traditional Mega Man formula of side-scrollers to more of an RPG format during the time when people really started hating hard on Japanese games. Plus, people really loved ragging on Mega Man having "too many sequels" in those days. Oh, and it was painfully "anime."

Meanwhile it was always a huge success in Japan spawning multiple spin offs and anime series spanning hundreds of episodes. Maybe it came out in the US at the wrong time during the xenophobic anti-anime era but Battle Network doing well is not surprising. I suppose people are more receptive to it nowadays with anime losing most of its stigma. It's always been my favorite Rock Man iteration.

wolf10 wrote:

Quote:

RPG Maker Unite's finally through its developmental woes! It was released as of the 27th of this month. Amateur game devs, jump in!

Oof. You wrote this part of the column at the beginning of the week, didn't you? RM Unite's listing on the Unity Asset Store broke when they attempted to go live, somehow, and consequently the final release is now in limbo pending some kind of ambiguous backend fix.

https://twitter.com/RPGMakerUnite/status/1651882770522836994

Naturally, people have all sorts of uninformed hot-takes and conspiracy theories. I don't work for Unity or GGG, but I do work in software, and sometimes the problem really is just as boring as it sounds (and boring does not necessarily mean "easy to fix"). All we can really be sure of is that the curse is still very much alive and well, but hopefully not for too much longer.

Thanks for the heads-up, we've made sure to correct the relevant story! Man, poor RPG Maker Unite. That game is practically cursed...

Zoltan Kakler wrote:

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This is particularly heartening news. Mega Man Battle Network was the black sheep of the franchise when it debuted in the U.S. in the early '00s. The games moved from the traditional Mega Man formula of side-scrollers to more of an RPG format during the time when people really started hating hard on Japanese games. Plus, people really loved ragging on Mega Man having "too many sequels" in those days. Oh, and it was painfully "anime."

Meanwhile it was always a huge success in Japan spawning multiple spin offs and anime series spanning hundreds of episodes. Maybe it came out in the US at the wrong time during the xenophobic anti-anime era but Battle Network doing well is not surprising. I suppose people are more receptive to it nowadays with anime losing most of its stigma. It's always been my favorite Rock Man iteration.

I don't think that was the particularly anti-anime or anti-RPG era (that sounds more like the late 00's, especially for the latter), but I do know there were fans who recognized it was aimed at kids while not using the same characters they knew, and didn't like that.

I feel like this collection had a lot of things going in its favor:

1) Marketed really well, probably better than any of the previous collections or even 11.
2) That marketing made it clear how much effort was being put into this collection.
3) Only previous re-release was the inferior Wii U Virtual Console versions no one remembers.
4) The new features make the collection superior to buying the originals in many ways.
5) Timing (nostalgia sweet spot of about 20 years later)
6) The previous collections generally have a good reputation (i.e. little reason to wait and see if they messed it up)

Kicksville wrote:

3) Only previous re-release was the inferior Wii U Virtual Console versions no one remembers.

The Wii U version is not really inferior, it has all the content of the original games minus multiplayer, it more like a different build of the same game. Since the battle network games have content that would be locked in the Wii U becasue they would require multiplayer battles or trading, they added those into the Wii U version from the get go(the Super Mario Advance 4 game did something like this as well including the e-reader content in the Wii U version), this make the Wii U version a good speedrun version, its now lost to history with the eshop closed.

Those are fair points, but being incapable of multiplayer battle or trading makes it an inferior version in my eyes.

Zoltan Kakler wrote:

Meanwhile it was always a huge success in Japan spawning multiple spin offs and anime series spanning hundreds of episodes. Maybe it came out in the US at the wrong time during the xenophobic anti-anime era but Battle Network doing well is not surprising. I suppose people are more receptive to it nowadays with anime losing most of its stigma. It's always been my favorite Rock Man iteration.

There was never really a strong stigma towards anime in the U.S. as evidenced by the popularity of DragonBall Z, Gundam Wing, Pokémon and some other stuff and while I don’t know how popular the original GBA Battle Network games were for their time the fact that Capcom released all but 4 of the total 12 games here seems to suggest they were enough of a success for the time.

BadNewsBlues wrote:

Zoltan Kakler wrote:

Meanwhile it was always a huge success in Japan spawning multiple spin offs and anime series spanning hundreds of episodes. Maybe it came out in the US at the wrong time during the xenophobic anti-anime era but Battle Network doing well is not surprising. I suppose people are more receptive to it nowadays with anime losing most of its stigma. It's always been my favorite Rock Man iteration.

There was never really a strong stigma towards anime in the U.S. as evidenced by the popularity of DragonBall Z, Gundam Wing, Pokémon and some other stuff

Yeah... no. That's ahistorical as heck. Yes, these shows and games made bank in their time and developed thriving communities. The 90s and early-00s (and even mid-00s) were still pretty lousy with anti-anime sentiment. It was all "big eyes, small mouths, screaming your attack name" stuff to people, and being an "anime fan" marked you as one of those kinds of nerds. There were plenty of wild, expansive screeds about how manga were so "different" from American comics. The whole thing was shunted into its own ghetto. There's a reason Miyazaki is the only anime director most other people in "nerd" fandoms can name.

Mega Man was always a Japanese franchise, but fans in America could pretend it wasn't because so much of it was changed in localizations (and boxart changes). The Battle Network series was the first to really lean into its own unique aesthetic (and had a tie-in show that was an anime), there was definitely a ton of "Mega Man is now ripping off of Pokémon" sentiment back in the early 00s when Battle Network came out.

FinalVentCard wrote:

Yeah... no. That's ahistorical as heck. Yes, these shows and games made bank in their time and developed thriving communities. The 90s and early-00s (and even mid-00s) were still pretty lousy with anti-anime sentiment. It was all "big eyes, small mouths, screaming your attack name" stuff to people, and being an "anime fan" marked you as one of those kinds of nerds. There were plenty of wild, expansive screeds about how manga were so "different" from American comics. The whole thing was shunted into its own ghetto. There's a reason Miyazaki is the only anime director most other people in "nerd" fandoms can name.

Mega Man was always a Japanese franchise, but fans in America could pretend it wasn't because so much of it was changed in localizations (and boxart changes). The Battle Network series was the first to really lean into its own unique aesthetic (and had a tie-in show that was an anime), there was definitely a ton of "Mega Man is now ripping off of Pokémon" sentiment back in the early 00s when Battle Network came out.

We also got a reminder two months ago that the West is still, in fact, very Japanophobic. And that the only reason a lot of them aren't more open about their contempt for anime is because they can't afford to alienate their base anymore. They can't even admit their screwups, let alone apologize for them

ACVI looks like a lot more of a sequel to 4 and 4A than to V or VD, which is absolutely fine in my book. Don't know when I'll have the hardware to run it well, though (I'm skeptical of how the last-gen versions will perform, although I'd be happy to be proven wrong).

I mostly missed out on Battle Network by virtue of never owning a GBA. The one game I did have as a kid (and played to death) was the Gamecube sidescroller spinoff, Network Transmission, which is also the only one missing from the new collections. I always liked the designs for the robots/programs/whatever-they-were-called, so I might check those out if I ever work through enough of my backlog.

AQuin1904 wrote:

I mostly missed out on Battle Network by virtue of never owning a GBA. The one game I did have as a kid (and played to death) was the Gamecube sidescroller spinoff, Network Transmission, which is also the only one missing from the new collections. I always liked the designs for the robots/programs/whatever-they-were-called, so I might check those out if I ever work through enough of my backlog.

I bemoan that a lot of the collections don't have any of the spin-offs like the Gameboy Mega Man titles or Battle & Chase or The Power Battles, but Network Transmission's absence (while tragic) is at least justified--apparently, that game has been locked up in complicated rights issues for years. But not including Battle Chip Challenge is still disappointing. Crying or Very sad

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This Week in Games - "Hand It Over, That Thing, Your Armored Core"