I wonder if having commercially successful Dreamcast 4 now would kill the legend we fondly remember...actually no, saving Sega from leaving hardware market is the only thing i would do if I could change anything in history.

Can we stop calling the discontinuation of a product or business “death”, please?

I think it changed the landscape of the industry, that’s for sure. Hundreds of long running businesses folded as a result.

The methods and philosophies of those companies were thus removed from the public sphere.

@@iwanttocomplain If you just want to complain, a therapist office is a pretty good place to do it

You can just buy 1 up arcade consoles now or an arcade with 100 games in it. They are a lot better since you don't have to put quarters in them.

@@tonyp9313still not the same and you can make og arcades free to play of course. I get what u mean I definitely want to get one though but walking into a huge room and hearing all those games, picking the right ones to spend your money on then getting smoked by some sweaty player 1v1 lol. Good times.

arcades died in the west but still thrive in japan where they began. what you really hate is the westernization of the video games industry. Most of what people are complaining about in this comment section are symptoms of it.

​​@@Nathan_H1gg3rz've heard that before, but even if arcades are still popular in Japan, the great arcade game developers from the 80s and 90s have either moved on from arcades or don't even exist anymore.

or a proper port of Golden Axe revenge of Death Adder

My sentiments exactly! It used to be rare that a game would be built with overly long cinematic and things of that nature (I’m looking at you Metal Gear 3) but it seemed like it used to be the exception to the rule. Now a days, it’s almost the other way around. I, like many others, don’t have a ton of time to play games, so when I get to I actually like to PLAY games, not watch them ;).

​@@SuperBlessedFamilyMan yeah. I turned Metal Gear Solid 3 off after the 40 minute intro and haven't turned it on since. Yakuza 0 was another one where I gave it like 90 minutes and only had about 3 seconds of actual gameplay.

@@danbauer3669bro what. Go play MGS3 again. Ur fucking up. It's regarded as one of the best games ever made. They can't all be Pac-Man

@@danbauer3669 I had that exact same experience with Yakuza 0! I wanted to check the Yakuza games out and figured chronological order may be good…guess it’s just not for me :P

I rememberback in the day turning off the wifi on my 360 when I launched a game so I didn't have to deal with updates or if I wanted to do glitches. When I heard the bone was always online, I was like "hard pass"

Oh, that's a good pick.

How about just Microsoft entering the arena in general

Same with Blizzard to Activision.

​@@GutsyredcoatHey, the Xbox and Xbox 360 were peak gaming.

You dirty dog...

How do people like bread so much. Empty calories and doesn't even satisfy me. Maybe a nice English muffin with butter on it but I'd much rather have a wrap over a sandwich. I wonder how many sandwiches bird has a month 🤔

The revenge of Timmy

​@@XhalonickHave you tried toast with jelly on it?

@@catsaregovernmentspies yea it's okay but that's like a dessert to me. Idk how people eat stuff like that and pancakes with syrup for breakfast. It's practically candy

You must hate Kojima...

100% agree! This is why I keep going back to 90’s era games too!

Monopoly is the ultimatum of capitalism. You got money people stifling creativity because new ideas are risky and another f---ing Star Wars game is safe.

This comment is regretfully underappreciated

This comment is on every retrobird video. As well as "you're the Mr Roger's of retro gaming" maybe it's my turn to post it next time for 8-15 likes

@@Xhalonick this is the captain obvious in this one particular retro bird video and it's earned him 1 like which is mine that i gave him to disarm his mildly passive aggressive stance on common retro bird comments.

@@raggamuffinmcgee I don't care about likes or your opinion. Just have to point out the same NPC's make the same comments over and over. At what point isn't he underrated? Has tens of thousands of subs, gets thousands of views, and has tons of interactions in the comments. I think he and his efforts have been recognized quite notably by the retro game community. Not like he has 500 subs or something lol

It's rated perfectly in 2023 for being ran by a shlubby cis white male without a goofy accent chosen by an "equality" algorithm set by -communist- community guidelines

Happy to hear it!

Hey Retro Bird!

Sega was run by a bunch of morons who couldn’t get out of their own way. It still is

Sega's demise paved the way for Xbox. Maybe that's not a bad thing

⁠@@simonwong5608sega paved the way for xbox, i see op's point.

Yeah, Sony is no Sega. And MS… well, they made their career making office software.

Sony was determined to enter the video game console industry no matter what. They were even trying to partner up with Sega at one point but Sega realized that they were going to take control of their partnership. I still don't get why Nintendo didn't just end their deal with Sony and not pursue CD technology for now. Did they really think that Philips could make a good console? I guess they were willing to take a chance as long as they didn't have to deal with Sony being in control. Sony wisely used their immense financial resources to put out a developer-friendly console to attract all the best 3rd parties and buy some developers too. Sega's internal struggles really killed its competitive edge during the life of the Saturn. Not that many good games were coming out from them specifically. They didn't release or they put out lackluster games of their IPs like Shinobi, Sonic, Streets of Rage, and their sports titles that put them ahead of Nintendo with the Genesis. By the time Dreamcast came out, the only thing keeping them afloat was some good games from them and they had acquired a decent amount of developers that were putting out great games like Capcom, of course. Dreamcast would have died a lot sooner without Capcom's commitment to it. Most of the games I had for Dreamcast were from them.

the funny part is Sony didn't want the Playstation, they just released it cause Sega Japan was just too obtuse to capitalize on the opportunity to stick it to Nintendo

I agree with the last point but not with 'release different iterations like they did back in the “retro” days'. Hell no. Get that awful idea out of here. One game, one version. If those companies want more money they can do it with collector's editions that just offer physical trinkets and not extra in game content.

its not the abuse of connectivity as much as the westernization of video games as a whole that is the true culprit. Video games thrived as a Japanese phenomenon. American capitalism sucked the life out of it right around the time Xbox came out. Micro-transactions soon followed thanks to bethesda (now owned by microsoft) *the worlds a sadder place without mega man*

@@Nathan_H1gg3rz Mega Man 11 and the Battle Collection sold well in recent years. The report from Capcom's recent shareholders meeting is they're bringing more Mega Man soon, after planning carefully how to best satisfy what seems to be fair-sized demand.

@@sonicmania9993 Mega Man 11 harkened back to a retro style Japanese Megaman and was a clear attempt to salvage the franchise. Their attempts to westernize the franchise have failed and the blue bomber has been discontinued (for now) The creator of mega Man left Capcom about it. It was kind of a big deal in the video games industry, you should look into it. Capcom, like other Japanese companies, almost floundered because of their failed attempts at westernization and being forced to compete with Western development studios. *Article about capcom's westernization:* "We all know and understand that today’s video game market is becoming more and more global. There are still some titles that are exclusive to Japan (Yakuza 3 comes to mind, as does Afrika - until recent announcements) which might seem strange because Japan is losing its prominence as a leader in the market. The UK is now a bigger market (second only to North America) and the industry as a whole has Westernised. I remember a time when if you wanted some of the greatest games you had to import them from the land of the rising sun. Now it seems like they are importing games from western markets and trying to pitch them to a Japanese audience (Grand Theft Auto IV is published and distributed by Capcom in Japan). Even the mighty Hideo Kojima and Konami altered the feel of the Metal Gear Solid series with the fourth instalment so that it could be played by a more wide-ranging, traditionally western audience. They made it play more like an action shooter and less like the tense, stealthy thrillers that the previous MGS games had been. Capcom have publicly stated that they want to move their game design to a more Western standpoint but what do they really mean by that? I recently played Dead Rising on the Xbox 360 and was shocked at how little I could find to enjoy in it. I was encouraged to think about why I didn’t enjoy it (plenty of other people thought it was great) and I found a quote from Capcom’s Head of Research and Development, Keiji Inafune, in which he expressed surprise that the game’s western audience had immediately spotted its Japanese design roots. According to Inafune, they had attempted to design it like a Western game. This is when it all fell into place with me. The reason that I really didn’t like Dead Rising (and for that matter Resident Evil 5) is because it was a Japanese game design with a clichéd and simplified set of Western characters. The menu systems, disjointed save-game points, the over-emotional character interactions and the now-infamous run-shoot mechanics are the primary things that singled out Dead Rising and Resident Evil as Japanese game for me. Back in my PSX and PS2 days I loved Capcom design. I used to be a huge fan of Resident Evil and I still believe that Japanese game design (especially at Capcom and Konami) is the most imaginative but only in small flashes. For the most part the Japanese designers seem to have found a few mechanics that do what they need them to do and they have entrenched those mechanics in a game series."

@@markula_4040 I think you’re missing my point about the different iterations of games. The example that comes to mind would be the different versions of Street Fighter 3. Third Strike is generally the go-to game for tournament fighting, but the earlier versions are preferred by *some* people owing to the differences in fighting style. Rather than just update those versions and erase the play styles of the earlier versions, some people might prefer to access those earlier versions. This is actually not that controversial a proposal, and indeed exists in the digital world. (Just as an example, Street Fighter 5 for PS4 was ruined for me when Capcom did their first big update. I was a Rashid player, and they basically ruined his play style for me. I would much rather play the original SF5 launch version of that character than have to play the ruined one they crammed down my throat.) I hope that provides you with a little more context, but if you still think it’s a bad idea, to each their own.

I was literally just thinking about that. How cool it would be if there was a new console - perhaps by Sega - that deliberately baked in limitations. Maybe something like a 32 or 64 bit console but with more memory, faster processor and more storage. Something to make developers get creative. It would be novel and generate some really interesting games whilst having a kind of retro feel about it

@@notme5744 That's the problem though with technological advancements - once you move forward, there's no going back. And the people interested in going back will always just be in a niche community.

@@bmwolgas I do agree, but people also like novelty and fun games. Nintendo's hardware has been quite far behind everyone else for their past few consoles but people still love it because the games are good, plus the console would be great for indie developers so would get lots of great games. But yeah I expect the crowd that just loves the best graphics and FPS games with online multiplayer, etc., wouldn't be into it, but there are still a lot of us out there that could still make it a viable product even if it won't sell as many as the other consoles, and it would be a lot cheaper to manufacture too. Probably wouldn't happen but it's fun to think about. I like to think about what kind of console I'd create if I had the money, or if I was Sega :D

I'll be glad when the day comes that "how big a game is" no longer carries marketing weight. A game can be big, but I think a lot of games are losing sight of what matters most.

I imagine we're going to feel the same type of way we did seeing Sonic show up on the 'Cube, when we see Crash and Spyro exclusively on Xbox due to Microsoft's greed.

I remember that my cousin hadn't even owned his console for that long when they announced that they were going to discontinue it.

This dude I used to work with had the entire Dreamcast library burned to Memorex CD's that he bought from OfficeMax.

I played the first Prey for the first time a year or so ago and it still blew my mind. The interactivity, the way it uses gravity and portals, it all worked so well together, even today its impressive

@@killingtimeonline Yeah it really is, and the story was pretty good as well. The gore and creatures in that game makes Doom look like a PG-13 game.

I’ve still got a quality CRT on my desk that I exclusively use for retro gaming, but man I will say that using a good upscaler into a modern display is breathtaking in its own right. (I use a RetroTink 5X-Pro.) Some day I’d love to get another large CRT, but personally I am more than happy with the results properly scaled analog video into digital displays provides. It just often requires a bit of know-how and investment to get to those results so most don’t bother.

Yeah that & my friends will give me grief if I don't beat a game on normal settings, beat said retro games in 1 sitting without using guides or save states.

@@tonyp9313 Right, just silly stuff with some of these people. I'm in my 30s and have multiple jobs. I don't have time to grind some of these retro games anymore. I need something easy to pick up and able to save where I left off.

Don’t forget that in the mid-nineties SONY actively discouraged 2D games from being published for the US PlayStation.

Totally. The convenience cannot be understated. It's not all bad. I was just discussing some of the aspects that I think are.

@@RetroBirdGaming Yeah man, love your vids and agree on all points. Just wanted to add that too cause it’s not all bad lol

Thank you!

Rare are still around. They are currently continuing their support of mega-successful Sea of Thieves, and developing new game Everwild (if they can ever stop rebooting it ... that project could be in trouble I fear).

And what an alternate reality that would be!

Love this comment. I think about this all the time.

Thank you!

we did, kids wanted 3d and so did all major publications. 2d had been done to death at that point with side scrollers and Mario clones galore. Saturns lack of good 3d is part of what killed it.

Really glad to hear that the videos have been helping you get to a better place with the hobby. That's actually a huge goal of this channel. Thank you for the kind words :)

Sega the console maker in particular went under due to their obsession with success in Japan. Almost no one talks about this.

Yes, I was going to post something very similar. I would argue that Japanese publishers STILL make 70% of the best games, just as they have ever since Space Invaders. The biggest JP games still get big sales/market share worldwide, and the JRPG and JP-big-action genres have had a renaissance in quality the last 6-8 years, resulting in a lot of popular and well-regarded games. But smaller and quirky Japanese games are kind of a dying breed... and the kind of creativity and risk-taking we saw from Japanese developers from the mid-80s until the early-00s is hard to find today. The worst side of westernization for me though is the moving of Sony's Playstation division to California, resulting in both PS and XB being very western corporations whose main goals are things like user engagement & retention, creative monetization, and market dominance via online service games & subscription services. When companies in Japan were leading the industry, most of those things were important -- but always less important than developers being creative and making a ton of fun videogames for us to enjoy. Both Playstation and Xbox are heading in bad directions, and though their fans may be satisfied for now ... I wonder if they still will be in 10-15 years (with Sony's huge push toward service games for increased profits, and Microsoft's focus on acquisitions and flooding Game Pass with big, kinda popular, kinda mediocre games). The Japanese third-parties and Nintendo are left to hold the fort, with indies filling in some under-represented genres. I miss the old SEGA, and I miss the old Japanese-led Playstation. [[My second-worst thing is the fact that nowadays many games take 5-10 years to develop, because of modern graphical expectations and the complexities of modern programming for 9th gen systems & hi-spec PCs. I wish games were made more simply, with gameplay and fun-factor the primary concerns.]]

I think about this all the time.

@@RetroBirdGaming I figured you would bird, I'm an old gamer like you. Empathize with a lot of what you say in your content. Good stuff man

@@sonicmania9993 My biggest gripe with the westernization of the video games industry runs deep, people don't realize just how committed the Japanese people were to video games. They literally had organized crime (Yakuza) driving them to produce quality material and it shows. There are reports of developers who lived inside of their development studios and spent all of their time working on projects. They would sleep next to their computers (The game Tenchu for PS1 was made this way) It's fascinating and poignant. Men sacrificed their family lives and health to bring us quality entertainment. They treated it with Japanese pride and perfectionism. The debugging alone was superhuman

@@Nathan_H1gg3rz Yeah, I've heard of Japanese dev teams being that committed but that's not a good thing either. I mean to put yourself through that just for a game is kind of ridiculous.

Yeah for physical copies that's terrible. If you buy digital that is the norm. Modern games I'll just beat them once & delete them off my console.

I mean, it makes sense that not everyone would love any given console and you happen to be one of the people who doesn't love the Dreamcast.