News Roundup 5/27/22

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

Scott Hayden at Road To VR notes that a VR roguelike called “OUTLIER,” all-caps, has been cancelled, with a reason given that might seem unusual: they overestimated demand. They also say that they underestimated the complexity of the roguelike genre, which I can certainly sympathize with. It’s being remove from the Steam store. People who bought the game on Steam Early Access can either keep it or ask for a refund. I wonder if someday having a notable delisted project in your Steam library might be seen as a mark of status, in some circles?

Over on BoingBoing (they still exist!) there’s a couple of interesting posts. By Popkin, there’s a video from a Nintendo arcade game from 1976 called Sky Hawk, that used 16mm film footage of remote-controlled fighter planes to provide targets for players to hit! It was a shooting-gallery kind of game, where the whole game is hitting targets. Here’s the video on YouTube.

And long-time Boinger David Pescovitz presents a demo for a failed 1982 educational technology program with the name Wired In, that entertaining in its early 80s way. It has clips of Bill Murray providing some entertaining moments, and a tongue-in-cheek PSA from Lily Tomlin about the dangers of Pac-Man addiction.

Steve Hogarly at Rock Paper Shotgun appreciates My Time At Sandrock for PC, a “wild west” town simulation game. Yes, Stardew Valley is mentioned.

At The Chozo Project (which doesn’t seem to be overtly Metroid-themed), Zach Lindermann reviews the Sega Nomad, a portable system that’s capable of playing Genesis games, a mere 25 years after its release.

Claire Jackson over at Kotaku talks about the refreshing repairability of the Steam Deck.

Okay, this one requires a little explanation. There’s a community on the internet. What’s it about? Generally speaking, nearly anything, but this one is devoted to constructing homebrew “cyberdecks,” (Reddit link) self-contained portable computers whose design brings to mind cyberpunk fiction. Liliputing’s Brad Linder presents one that uses for its internals the guts of a Framework modular laptop.

Ryan Dinsdale at IGN reports that Jonathan Jacque-Belletête of Eidos Montréal noted that their studio had for a time been working on Final Fantasy XV, before Square-Enix decided to return the project to its Japanese studios.

Stuart Gipp at NintendoLife presents us with a history of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle video games on Nintendo systems.

And, the website High Five For has a number of lists of 25 games on various system that they consider to still be interesting now, years after their obsolescence: NES – SNES – PS1 – Genesis/Mega Drive – Game Boy Advance – TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine.