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Nicole Express on Twin Famicom Compatibility with Guardic Gaiden

Nicole Express is so knowledgable. How many blog posts have you seen about an obscure hardware issue, itself with obscure hardware, and the Japanese version of one specific cult game? Which the writer tested herself with her own unit and cartridge? Then went in to investigate herself with a freaking multimeter? Whaaa?

I won’t keep you waiting for the link: here it is. And here is my grossly simplified summary, intended to inspire you to go to the original article, if you have the time, and get all the deets.

Guardic Gaiden, known in the US as The Guardian Legend, uses a weird trick to put its status bar at the bottom of the screen, instead of, as usually seen in an UNROM game, at the top. To create a fixed status window requires stopping whatever the processor is doing at a very precise time while the display is being drawn to the TV, and then changing some PPU registers to display the status.

More complex and versatile mappers, like the MMC family, have the ability to trigger interrupts at specific screen lines, but Guardic Gaiden/Guardian Legend doesn’t use an MMC. It doesn’t even have a raster line counter, so the game simply doesn’t know where on screen the raster beam is drawing.

There are still lots of games on the system that have status windows, even with MMC chips. The PPU has a built-in feature called Sprite 0 Hit, where the chip can signal when Sprite 0 (of the system’s 64 sprites) is being drawn on top of non-transparent background data. So what older games commonly do is put Sprite 0 in an unobtrusive place at the bottom of the status window at the top of the screen. When the Sprite 0 Hit register indicates a collision, the code knows it’s time to set up the PPU to display the main portion of the game screen.

There is a really big problem with this setup, though. Sprite 0 Hit doesn’t trigger an interrupt. It doesn’t stop the code to let it switch the graphics. It’s not even proper to say it “sends a signal.” It’s up to the code to check if Sprite 0 Hit has been triggered. If it has, then it’s time to set the scroll register to the right place, and maybe switch to the proper background tileset, and do whatever else needs to happen, and the code can then be off to run essential game logic, the actual game part of the game.

If it hasn’t… then, the code has to check again, and immediately. And if it hasn’t triggered then, to do it again. It has to literally check as quickly as it can, because if it delays in its check, the game screen might not get set up at the right moment, which will be perceptible as the bar straying down one extra line that one frame. Not the end of the world, but it looks glitchy. And this code will be running every frame, so if it strays down once, it might do it again, which is a more perceptible glitchiness.

Sprite 0 is set to trigger its hit at the top of the screen, because the code won’t have to spin its wheels checking the hit over and over. It wastes time, but not that much. This is why UNROM games put their status lines, with the score, timer, health bar and life counters, at the top of the screen.

Well, The Guardian Legend is an UNROM game, and maybe because creators Compile wanted to show off, they decided they’d put the bar at the bottom of the screen. And yet, their game doesn’t waste most of each frame just in maintaining the status bar.

How? And what does that have to do with the Twin Famicom? For that I’m going to direct you to Nicole Express’ blog post. May you find it as fascinating as I did!

Nicole Express: Is the Twin Famicom Flawed? The Case of Guardic Gaiden

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Katamari Damacy Turns 20

Paste Magazine has a piece up on Namco’s seminal Playstation 2 game Katamari Damacy turning 20. It’s still one of those titles that has the power to attract attention when they see it played, especially if they’ve never heard of it before.

In case you haven’t heard of it (is that possible?)–you, playing the part of the Prince of all the Cosmos, have a sticky ball, called a katamari, which means “clump,” on a series levels that are laid out as kind of surreal versions of normal Earth environments. Typical places might include a Japanese living room, a modestly-sized town, and a larger city. The idea is to roll the ball so that it comes into contact with various objects. If they’re at most a certain size relative to that of the ball, they stick to it, and in so doing make its aggregate size a little larger. The more things that stick to the ball, the bigger it gets, and so the larger the size of things that will stick. If you reach a certain target size within the time limit you complete the stage. If you fail then the Prince’s father, the King of All Cosmos, expresses his disappointment in you in a ludicrously extreme manner. While not all of the levels are about achieving raw size, the most entertaining ones do, and they’re all about fulfilling certain goals with the katamari. This should give you a sense of how the game plays, if needed:

Since Katamari Damacy, designer Keita Takahashi hasn’t been idle. They also made the downloadable game Noby Noby Boy for PS3, worked on the Flash MMORPG Glitch, and made the weirdly wonderful Wattam. I’ve mentioned previously in these pages that I’m looking forward to his next project, To A T, presuming it survives the travails of publisher Annapurna Interactive.

Back to the Paste Magazine article, it mentions that the game happened due to a fortuitous set of events that involved a bunch of student artists looking for a project, and a number of programmers who worked on it so as not to be seen as idle in a time of layoffs. I personally remember that a substantial part of its legend, perhaps even the tipping point, was due to a particular review on Insert Credit by Tim Rogers. While it’s possible to see his review as a tad self-indulgent, I really don’t have any standing to criticize, seeing as how I created pixel art aliens to be our site’s voice. Hah.

It did the trick of making people consider the game though, which may have been how this very Japanese game got an English localization, rainbow-and-cow festooned cover intact. I was in college at the time, and for a few months they had PS2s to play in the student union. I found a certain delight in taking in my copy of Katamari Damacy (it had been released in the US by this point) and just playing through Make The Moon. It was the kind of game that would arrest other people in the room and cause them to just watch for a couple of minutes. Another time, I played it on the TV at my cousin’s house when there was a certain teenager, at the age where they sometimes get into a mood to dismiss everything. They scoffed at the game when I put it in; eight minutes later, they were calling out “get the giraffe!”

That Katamari Damacy could happened was a miracle; that it had, and continues to have, this effect on people, seems like magic. It isn’t perfect, because it doesn’t ever make sense to say a created work is “perfect,” there are always tradeoffs, but it is a care where it’s difficult to say it could be improved. Sure, it could be a little easier, but it still never takes more than a few attempts to pass a level. It could be a little harder, but that would make it much less accessible. Suffice to say that it’s at a local maxima of quality, and that can’t be an accident, it’s there because strong effort put it there.

It was inevitable that it would get sequels. Critical consensus is that the best of them was the first one, We Love Katamari, stylized on its logo with a heart in place of Love. It’s the only one with creator Keita Takahashi still at the helm. It’s a little less thematically together than the original; the premise is that the King of All Cosmos from the first game fulfills requests made by fans, much like how the game itself was made due to fan requests. Later sequels were made without Takahashi’s efforts. They feel increasingly fan-servicey, in the sense that they were trying harder and harder to give fans what they wanted, without being sure of what that was.

With each sequel, the luster dulled a bit. There was a furor over the third game in the main series, Beautiful Katamari on Xbox 360, for having paid DLC that was actually just unlock codes for levels that shipped on the disk. There were mobile sequels that were mostly terrible. The last of the series until recently was Katamari Forever, a name that proved inaccurate. More recently, remakes of the first two games have sold fairly well, so maybe it still has a chance to redeem itself with a proper successor.

Anyway, happy 20th birthday to Katamari Damacy. May it spend 25 more years of showing Playstation kids that gaming can be something more than Call of Duty and Fortnite.

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UFO 50!

This one isn’t really obscure I think, but it’s amazing, and if I can do my part to help spread the word I’m happy to do so. UFO 50 ($25 on Steam, with other platforms on the way) is a collection of 50 8-bit styled games from Mossmouth, the creator and publisher of Spelunky, although they’re made by all kinds of people.

When you hear “50 games,” you might come to think of it as, 50 little games, but that’s not the case. UFO 50 contains 50 full games, including one in the JRPG genre that could take many hours to finish. It seeks to emulate the experience of putting a pirate multicart into a game console, except none of these games are pirated. It’s a super-abundant collection of fun, and what’s more, the word is that there’s not a single dud in the group, there really is something here for everyone.

Like with Baldur’s Gate III, there’s so much here that it feels like they might be stretching out what’s expected from a relatively small amount of money. My suggestion is, get it, but don’t feel like everyone has to give you 50 full-sized games for $25 in the future. It’s a one-off, wonderful for what it is, but an anomaly.

With 50 games included, it can be difficult to tell where to start! If you let itt sit on the game selection screen, it’ll play demos of the games, which might give some direction to your exploration. By default, the games are listed according to release date in the collection’s fictional chronology, so generally they’ll get more complex later on in the list. Xanagear reviewed every game in UFO 50, in 50 minutes natch:

I haven’t had the chance to get into any of this yet, but a particular game I want to point to is Valbrace, which is a first-person dungeon exploration game, with Crossed Swords-like action combat!

The promised JRPG is Grimstone, which has a western theme, and one of your potential characters (you pick your party at the start) is a dog!

UFO 50 deserves a lot more words than I can give it right now. There may be more to come on it later….

UFO 50 (Steam, $25)

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Gamefinds: Make-Ten

We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.

It’s another of those games that’s remade in Pico8, and in the process becomes subtly different, not necessarily better, but not worse either. It’s Make-Ten, and it’s free on itch.io.

This time it’s not an arcade game. The remake is of a mobile and web game called Fruit Box. I’ve only tried the web version and, in this case, I think the Pico8 version is better. The UI is a lot easier to use for its only action, drawing boxes around numbers. The original uses a generic rectangular box, while the Pico8 version snaps the lines to the number grid, which works much better for me. Also the numbers are colored according to value, which helps readability a lot.

I’m sorry, I should explain what I’m talking about!

It’s one of those simple yet addicting games. You’re given a random field of digits from 1 to 9. You’re given a couple of minutes to draw rectangles around sets of numbers that up to 10. When you do, you get one point per digit you remove (which is a difference from the original), and those digits disappear from the board.

Obviously, pairs of numbers that add up to 10 are relatively easy to find. Any pair of 5s, for instance, can be immediately cleared. Each game usually starts with clearing away any quick pairs. Removed pairs make space to connect further digits. Empty spaces have no number value, and make it easier to clear more than two numbers at once. Some examples of common larger sets to surround (of course they can be in any order): 4-3-3, 1-2-3-4, 7-1-2, 5-3-2, 6-2-2 and 4-4-2. The tricky part is connecting two numbers in the corners of a box, when other digits get in the way, adding unwanted values to the sum.

The most valuable digit is 1, since they fit into the most possible combinations.

While Make-Ten is not a game for perfectionists, as it’s probable that most fields cannot be fully cleared, the game does let you keep playing after time concludes, which is an advantage it has over Fruit Box. It doesn’t count points after the time bar runs out, but it can be interesting to see how much of the board you can complete.

Make-Ten is really simple and has very little fuss about it. It plays quickly, and then it’s over. It’s a nice game for quick sessions. It was written in 500 characters of code, and doesn’t offer any progression or metagame. After two minutes, which begin the moment the game starts, there isn’t even a prompt to play again. To have another go, press Enter and choose to Reset Cart, or just close the window if you’re done.

Make-Ten (itch.io, by pancelor, $0)

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Sundry Sunday: The Untitled Goose Programme

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

It isn’t always easy finding things for this weekly feature. Sometimes it’s backed up a month, sometimes though something gets scheduled just a couple of days after it premieres, and I have to scrape the barrel a bit. But not this time. Oh no.

Remember Untitled Goose Game? Seven years ago I made a Metafilter post about the first WIP promo video, but the game itself is only five years old. Since its 2019 release, there’s been celebratory essays, philosophy essays, desktop toys, a very popular “review” from videogamedunkey, and more wonderful articles and reviews from, among other places, the New Yorker and The Guardian.

Back in 2021, developer House House considered making an animated series about the Goose and its village. Nothing came of it, but they did make a four-minute proof-of-concept animation, and it’s wonderful. Please allow your day to be brightened, and moistened, once again, by the Goose:

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A Look At Beta Versions of the Wii Channels

An internal Nintendo metaphor for the Wii’s UI was “more channels for the TV.” It’s a particularly Old Dad idea for the Wii really, as even at that time broadcast TV was beginning to decline in popularity, but it may have made more sense in Nintendo’s home territory.

The experiences of these channels, the Mii Channel, the News Channel, the Weather Channel, the Shop Channel and the like, are receding in memory, although there are fan efforts to revive them and connect them to new information sources. But at the other end of their development life, of their pre-release development very little has ever been known. Early Wiis had stubs in their place, that only directed the user to installing a launch-day update. (I experienced this myself! I drove 140 miles in order to wait in a line for a Wii on its launch day, November 19, 2006. I’m objectively insane.)

Those stubs weren’t the true original versions of the Wii Channels, they had been in development within Nintendo for some time. Those development versions of the Wii software have never been leaked outside the company, but there exists footage of them from various sources. Bjohn on Youtube has compiled what we know about the development Wii Channels into a 21-minute video. Here it is:

There’s a fair amount there, including early versions of the Internet Channel and early evidence of plans to include DVD support. (The Wii has a fully-operational DVD drive, but to avoid playing a license fee to the DVD Consortium it cannot play DVDs without hacks.)

Beta Wii Channels! (Bjohn on Youtube, 21 minutes)

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Why Hasn’t Nintendo Adopted Achievements?

Some years back, as a casual remark in a place that I don’t remember, I said that Nintendo has a problem with using ideas that they didn’t come up with in-house. “Not Invented Here Syndrome” I may have phrased it. I forget the context too. It may have had to do with their refusal to use rollback code in internet multiplayer gaming, but there are other time where it’s seemed that there are things that are solved problems everywhere else, that Nintendo still has trouble with.

One of these things has been Achievements, a platform-recognized system where a player’s accomplishments are registered and stored, that can be observed outside the game and shared with others. Achievements began with the Xbox 360, and were soon after implemented by Valve in Steam, as “Awards” by Sony in the Playstation ecosystem, and even by fans playing games and romhacks in emulators as RetroAchievements.

One company that’s always avoided using them, despite being the oldest major console publisher still in operation, is Nintendo. They’ve avoided any cross-game recognition of skill or accomplishment, even though they’ve come close multiple times. Several of their games offer in-game recognition of accomplishments, in the form of “Stamps” or “Trophies” or “Stickers.” Super Mario Galaxy would post images on the Wii message board when the game was completed. When Miiverse was a thing, players could share messages with earned stamps from some games. But none of these systems had sharing outside of their respective games or individual consoles. None promises any account-level recognition.

Why is this? Nintendo’s games are enormously popular, and many players have rued the absence of any support for an achievement system, and to this day show no signs of starting one. Why? It seems like such an obvious thing. Everyone else does it. It would probably heap more value upon Nintendo’s bottom line, so why not?

As it turns out, it goes back to their Not Invented Here Syndrome. The person at whose fee the blame trail ends is unknown, but the evidence is there, in an episode of the Kit and Krysta show, available as a podcast with excerpts on Youtube. Hosted by two former Ninendo employees, who ran a periodic show that was promoted for a time on the Switch’s News channel, they tell the story of what happened when another employee brought up the possibility of offering something like achievements at a meeting. The recounting is in this Youtube video (4 1/2 minutes), with the important bit starting around 2:07:

From the transcript (there are some minor errors):

“I remember I think you were in this meeting too this was like a pre E3
meeting somebody pretty high ranking got absolutely eviscerated in a meeting by another person who is very high ranking because they were they were suggesting doing something things in the style of micros why don’t why don’t we do like Xbox does this thing really well why don’t we do that and this was like a really like packed full meeting I’m and this person was like a senior director this person got eviscerated in that meeting of like we do things our way this is the Nintendo way we cannot simply follow the path of what Xbox like it was just like it went on and on I was like it was like a 20 minute lecture […]

so there you go yeah they definitely don’t want to do like copy their competitors but they also have that sense of like no everyone’s equal we’re equal opportunist gamers right I think they also see this as like this is not a pure way of experiencing a game like you rushing through it or like only focusing on this thing like that’s not how you should play a game I kind of agree with that cuz we did some dumb stuff get those achievements that’s true and then they also like want you to play that game in a very specific way so they don’t want you to use a different system to like do it your way because they want they’ve built this game specifically in the way that they think that you’ll enjoy it the most and they’re going to want you to do that[…]“

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Mario 64’s Optimization Paradox

EDIT: It looks like this post might have originally gone up without content! Evidently I didn’t publish it with text before its publish date, or maybe my login cookie expired in the meantime. Hopefully it’s up now!

Kaze Emanuar, an expert on Super Mario 64’s code who I’ve linked multiple times before, tends to bang on this drum, but they’ve now done a 20-minute video that treats the issue with detail. They tell us that the Ninendo 64 is a rendering monster, and Nintendo’s use of it isn’t really optimal, especially in the subject of his fixation.

The problem, they say, isn’t triangle count, but cache misses. The N64, we’re told, can really motor (“vroom vroom” is the phrase they use), but fetching code and data tends to bog down the system while the data bus gets the necessary data. If that information is already in the cache, then access is much faster, as in, it directly affects the frame rate.

According to his data, unrolled loops, a traditional optimization measure, are actually bad, because all those extra instructions cause extra data fetches to read them. It’s better to use the loop instructions to run through the same code repeatedly, because it can run completely from the processor’s internal memory. Nintendo’s culling system actually hurts performance in most areas, because the extra data needed to implement their system results in more cache misses. And their culling system only considers data that’s out of sight horizontally, which is such a big problem on the vertical area Tick Tock Clock that there’s a kludge in the engine to reduce draw distance on that one level to make up for it.

I know! I link a lot of technical stuff here. It’s of interest to my diseased brain! But it’s got to be interesting to some of you, right? Well for those readers to whom it is of interest, here it is:

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Gamefinds: Blob the Klex

We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.

The title is a little mysterious. What is a Klex, and why is it named Blob? Or is Blobbing something that one does to a Klex?

As it turns out, Klex is a kittycat! A black cat, that looks, a bit, like a black blob that moves around. Klex is the name, Blob is what it is. I can ignore the order of the nouns in the title for cuteness factor.

Cat games are springing up in greater numbers. All spiritual descendants of their great ancestor Neko, more lately you play as the cat. Maybe Stray was what kicked them off, but more recently there was the wonderful Little Kitty, Big City. (I interviewed its creators over on Game Developer!)

Blog the Klex is a demo for another cat game, currently being worked on by Sigma Unit. It’s free at itch.io. It’s being worked on by a much smaller team, and there isn’t a lot to do in the demo, but it shows a terrific sense of whimsy. Klex is adorable, and plays differently from the unnamed kitty in LKBC. LKBC is quite a vertical game, with a lot of climbing around, but Klex mostly runs on the ground with some jumping.

Klex’s animation is “procedural,” meaning in this case that the game figures out where their front paws go, and the rest of the cat follows from that. As Klex runs, there’s a jingling, like of a jingle ball rolling along, that perfectly follows their foorsteps. It’s a case where the sum is greater than the parts: the cat’s head, eyes huge, staying perfectly level, while their paws move in a flurry beneath them, jingling away. It’s very cute. Then you hold the Dash button down, and it gets cuter. You have to experience it to understand. You should. Also, Klex is more apt to squeeze themselves into narrow spaces than the cat in KLBC, and has a very cat-like ability to walk on narrow ledges. They also have an uncat-like ability to turn themself into a bouncy ball. Maybe Klex is part Samus.

The game itself, as it currently is, is brief, a sequence of areas where it’s left to you to figure out how to progress. Like LKBC there is nothing that can harm the cat. The worst that can happen is you fall off of a roof, and the game voids you out and puts you back on the rooftop. (I don’t know why you can even fall off; there’s a lot of invisible walls around to keep you on track. Maybe they have later plans for those street areas.)

Most of it is straightforward, but there are a couple of places where you might get stuck, until you realize you can grab some moving objects by holding down the Interact button. Once you know that you shouldn’t have much trouble. You’ll know the demo is over because you’ll get a screen of credits.

Please give Blob the Klex a try! And enjoy a few screenshots:

Blob the Klex Demo (itch.io, $0)

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Weird Balatro Deck Peeking Trick Discovered

A trick was discovered a scant few days ago in Balatro that will outright tell you what the top card on your deck is, it’s been in the game since the original demo release, and its an intentional inclusion by the game’s creator.

One of the many Jokers you can obtain in the game is Misprint. (See right) Misprint’s function is to add a random number from 0 to 23 to the hand’s “Mult,” the chip value it’ll earn. It displays this, amusingly, as glitched description text that changes, and occasionally displays random, apparently garbled text.

Well as it turns out, it’s not random text at all. It’s a code that tells you what the card on top of your deck is! It’s the rank of the card (2-14 for its rank) and its suit (H for Hearts, etc.)!

The trick in action — the next card is a 10 of Hearts!

Balatro is unusually devoid of other deck-peeking abilities. While there’s abilities that affect chips, Mult, Mult-multipliers, money, Tarot cards, Spectral cards and lots more, and you can at any time review what possible cards might be waiting in your deck, nothing will absolutely tell you what’s waiting for your next hand. And you don’t even have to have this Joker in play to use it, which is good, because it’s not great in many circumstances. If you go to the card’s spot in the Collection (provided it’s been gained at least once) and look at its description there, it still works! It’s been noted that it’ll even reveal the hidden identity of Stone Cards, which have their original values obscured by a layer of rock.

How does this affect the game? Well I’m going to go out on a limb and say, not as much as you’d think? It only reveals one card, and doesn’t say anything about its Enhancement, Edition or Seal. If you have more than one of a card, it’ll just tell you its rank and suit. That can still be used to deduce other properties of a card (if your only Red-Sealed Glass card is a 7 of Hearts, it’s a giveaway if Misprint reports a 7H) but it’ll require some setup, which is like nearly every other aspect of the game. It does slightly help you make specific hands, but even the best games of Balatro eventually run afoul of its ruthless ante scaling.

Every Set Side B post needs a link to a Youtube video, right? Here’s a breathless two minute one from BelenosBear explaining the trick:

Of particular note, Balatro University says they’ve known about this all along (18 seconds):

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Sundry Sunday: Crash Bandicoot Carnival Japan-only Cutscenes

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

Crash Bash was Crash Bandicoot’s attempt to move into the Mario Party genre of minigame compilations. It was the first Crash game to be made by someone other than Naughty Dog, and the last to be released exclusively for Sony platforms. In Japan, the game was known as Crash Bandicoot Carnival. All of this comes from the Wikipedia page.

Now we venture into weirder waters. For Crash had a weird ad campaign in Japan. In Japan, Crash had a slightly different character design, with rounder eyes and five fingers on his hands. (The Japanese market has a weird thing about four fingered hands.) And also, he had an extremely catchy theme song and associated dance, which which the series seems to have became associated. We linked to that song here before, almost exactly two years ago!

The theme song music video seems to have been an unlockable in some version of Crash Bandicoot or its sequels. CBC had some other little videos included, including live-action bits with a lady and someone in a Crash mascot costume. It seems to be a retrospective of the previous Crash games, including kart racers and a little handheld device virtual pet that I don’t know the name of, but they were missing something if they didn’t call it a Crashigatchi. You also get to hear the lady say “Arabian Nigh-toooo!” free of context.

They total sixteen minutes in all, and they’re this week’s offering for Sundry Sunday. Enjoy them, won’t you? Thank you. Crash Bandicoooot, Crash Bandicoo-OOoot! Crashi-bandi-bandicoot!

Have an extra, hidden cutscenes from the Japanese version of Crash Bandicoot 3 (13 minutes)!

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Annapurna Interactive’s Entire Staff Resigns

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

It’s been a while since I, your favorite amorphous neon-green alien, have presented my whimsical take on Earth gaming news. I’ve mostly settled into an editorial role, consuming, digesting and excreting the work of others in an un-credited and, I assure you, sanitary capacity. This, as opposed to doing so for the news posts of other websites, which was time consuming, space filling, and of dubious interest to readers. I’m a humble amoeboid and can admit when something isn’t working.

But this story, from PC Gamer but no doubt from plenty of others too, is huge! Everyone at popular and prolific publisher Annapurna Interactive walked out! They released tons of games! They published Kentucky Route Zero! They published Stray! And Donut County, Outer Wilds and Wattam! And a lot of other games too!

Annapurna Interactive publishes adorable and somewhat upsetting animal imperiling adventure game Stray.

The surface reason is dismay over abandoned plans by owner Megan Ellison to spin their company off from owners Annapurna Pictures. If there’s some deeper reason, I wouldn’t have any way to speculate. Annapurna Interactive was highly successful, president Nathan Gary was promoted from it to head their movie-making parent, and screenplays based on their games are in production, including an animated movie based on Stray.

I’m sure there’s some deep story there behind literally everyone leaving the company. I’d presume the Pictures parent not wanting to lose access to such a useful source of projects, but the employees feeling betrayed by that? I can only speculate, in a way that gets more irresponsible the further I go, so I’m going to stop. Annapurna Interactive had a good, consistent track record of hits, and didn’t seem to alienate the studios publishing through them. That counts for a lot, from a publisher.

Keita Takahashi’s current project To A T

The walkout leaves a number of games currently in production in a state of 𝙿𝚄𝙱𝙻𝙸𝚂𝙷𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙻𝙸𝙼𝙱𝙾, including always-delightful Keita Takahashi’s upcoming To A T. Let’s hope everything works out for all involved.

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