• Them’s Fightin’ Herds went through a very tragic downfall. Publisher fired the entire development team at the end of 2023, before the final DLC character was even finished, and then released her in a completely broken state. Much later they would eventually put out a hotfix patch with several pages of nerfs, and this character is still banned competitively. They did promise further fixes, but they promised that a long time ago and it’s been radio silence since. All other promised content updates, including Story Mode, are canceled.
  Despite all that, the community’s still here. I’m about to leave for Combo Breaker 2025 this weekend, where TFH will be one of the brackets I’m entering. Only a side event, bracket’s small, but as long as there are brackets I will show up to them.
• Skullgirls is somehow still here, 13 years after release. It’s had a long history of perpetual development troubles, and yet has always been kicking. Earlier this year it came out that the developers are suing the publisher over $1.2 million they haven’t been paid, so it looks like this actually is the end of development for real now. Fortunately the final patch is in a very good state, they went out on a high note and I’m happy with the finished product.
  But again, the community? Still here. Also at Combo Breaker 2025, as a main stage headliner. Skullgirls will never die.
• Puyo Puyo Champions is the most functional version of the game, in fact it’s the only version on modern platforms that is faithfully accurate to original Tsu rules. Sega let it fall by the wayside in order to sell buggy rehashed crossovers and mobile subscription service exclusives, but PPC is the version you should be playing, don’t buy the shovelware that is skinwalking the IP now. Unfortunately, Sega’s mismanagement has split the playerbase because of all the shovelware they’re pushing, and the west in particular is a hopeless mess because of it. For best results, queue when Japan is awake. But you can still play this version, and you should!

Here’s the actual patch notes from Nintendo instead of this blogspam.

Most of these games were mentioned previously, but now we have actual patch notes.

If you try reading those patch notes they’ll tell you exactly what kinds of modern hardware some of these changes are targeted at:

• Steam Deck optimizations
• Improved controller support
• Default gamma reduced since you’re probably not playing on a CRT anymore, and resolution no longer defaults to 640x480
• Ultrawide FOV support for ultrawide monitors
• Lowest quality settings removed since no one is running hardware that weak anymore
• Software renderer fixed on hardware that doesn’t support 16-bit color

Because they’re professionals in unrelated fields. Understanding AI was never part of their job description, this strange and confusing technology snuck up on everyone and most people don’t really know what’s going on, they were never ready for this.

This is why native support still matters. Anything not supported can pull the rug out from under you at any time.

I’m telling the IRS that RFK said I don’t have to pay taxes anymore.

A game can be fun in spite of balance. MvC2 is a beloved game even with its six character meta. But when there’s room for improvement, and the internet now makes improvement possible, devs should take the opportunity to improve as much as they can.

Also, speaking of Tekken 5 - are you talking about the initial arcade release, the rebalanced console port, the “5.1” arcade rerelease, or Dark Resurrection? Because those totally count as patches.

Normally games shouldn’t allow players on different versions to connect to each other. Version checks may be something devs need to explicitly implement, but surely most games should already have them or else I have questions for the developers.

Also, in the context of fighting games specifically, this is largely a nonissue. Fighting game netcode works by sending button inputs only, and the other client will play back those inputs to independently verify the outcome. There’s very little cheaters can try to do that won’t just result in a desync. To my knowledge there’s only ever been one cheating scandal in the FGC, and the accused turned out to be innocent in the end.

It’s not like I’m saying I hate classic fighters, or that there aren’t any I still enjoy today. I’ve got plenty of hours on FightCade just dicking around in various random kusoge. I’m traveling to Combo Breaker in two weeks, and I signed up for six different brackets, two of which are retro titles (Waku Waku 7 and Twinkle Star Sprites) (you could also count Mystery Bracket, but the point of Mystery is to play trash that doesn’t hold up).

But the games that have stood the test of time are few and far between. They’re the exception, not the rule. If you think your game is too good for patches because it worked for Vampire Savior, you’re a lot more likely to end up like SVC Chaos.

From a developer’s perspective, they have to adapt to a changing market. All your competitors are iterating and improving their games, you need to keep up.

And hell, some of the most popular classics are patches in a sense. People play Super Turbo and Third Strike, but no one’s playing World Warrior or New Generation. At least now players don’t have to buy those kinds of ‘patches’ for full price.

Don’t know about other platforms, but it’s worth noting that Steam already does keep old versions and there’s some command line method that can force download an older depot. Valve could offer UI to officially support this.

Edition Select like in USF4 would be rad. But I think I’d just like to see a universal way for platforms to let you roll back to any version of any game. Wouldn’t even require any extra work on developers’ part, platform holders would just maintain an archive of patches.

I get the nostalgia for simpler times, but fighting games have benefited so much from the fact that they can now be patched and updated over the internet.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 had 56 characters, but ~6 of them were so strong that they rendered the rest of the roster nearly unplayable in comparison. And this is one of the games that was most fondly remembered! For every hit like that there were a dozen more that were so much worse they were quickly abandoned and forgotten.

For all the backlash to season 2, Tekken 8 is arguably still in a better place than the vast majority of pre-online fighting games. People are mad because standards have gotten so much higher, now that games do get patched we expect those patches to be better.

Remember that the far right has been desperately trying to label any LGBTQ-related content as ‘porn’. Educational resources? ‘Porn’. Biographies about gay people? ‘Porn’. Drag queens? ‘Porn’. A book about a boy with two mommies? ‘Porn’. Anything that acknowledges the existence of trans people? ‘Porn’.

The purpose of this bill isn’t to ban porn, it’s to ban ‘porn’. Anything they don’t like will be deemed ‘porn’, and then this gives them the legal justification to ban whatever they want.

People are acting like this is an active threat that they’ll flip a killswitch and remotely brick Switches, but it reads more to me like they want to scare you into not tampering with your console by suggesting that it could break.

I agree, it’s important to preserve things today because it may be too late tomorrow. Some Switch titles have already been delisted, so it’s good that we backed them up early.

But I’m just explaining it from Nintendo’s perspective. If the tools we use to restore Super Mario Bros. 35 can also be used to crack Tears of the Kingdom, they don’t want those tools in our hands.

The more important point though is that it is all cat-and-mouse, and the mouse is winning. We have those tools, and they can’t fully stop it.

Nintendo can’t control anyone else’s hardware, they can’t stop you from doing what you want on a Raspberry Pi. They’re trying to crack down on Switch modding, but even that’s just a cat-and-mouse game.

You will not get in trouble for emulating at home. Emulation itself is legal, it’s only illegal to download games you don’t own. But it’s nearly impossible for anyone to get caught doing that, and very obviously not worth any lawyer’s time to pursue individual end users for pennies in damages. You are safe.

What Nintendo wants to do is attack piracy at the source. They can go after sites that distribute ROMs, but those are like a hydra, kill one and three more take its place. Then there’s the likes of Yuzu and Ryujinx, where Nintendo claims to have found some technicality about these emulators having something they shouldn’t. But the forks are still being distributed, and you the end user will not get in trouble for downloading the fork at home.

Note that for the most part, they’re really only concerned with protecting their current hardware. They’ve never gone after Dolphin, Snes9x, mGBA, etc, because they know those are battles they can’t win. Considering how aggressive Nintendo is on the battles they do fight, it’s clear that anything Nintendo doesn’t go after is something they can’t go after.

That’s plenty for retro emulation, probably even overkill for the systems you can emulate on that RK3326 chip. I’ve been rocking a Miyoo Mini Plus which I picked up for about the same price two years ago, and that has 128MB RAM.

You get what you pay for, these obviously aren’t meant to be high-end cutting-edge devices, but for the price they’re a pretty good deal for all the classics you can play.

This is partly the case for any game that receives significant updates as well. Your disc/cart contains 1.0, but is that the version you will want to play 50 years from now when you can’t download updates anymore?

A return to basics would be so much better than the rushed messes Game Freak puts out today.