This Week’s Topics:
- Rundown Preamble Ramble: Don’t Pay Your Taxes; Buy A Gun!
- The Natalie.TF Giveaway Went Incredibly Well (And I Suffered For My Success)
- Reject Remakes, Embrace Recompilations (Sonic Unleashed Recompilation Released, And It’s Dope!)
- Suikoden is BACK! (…As a Mobile Live Service!)
- Acclaim is BACK! (Because It’s A Name Millennials Recognize)
- Rockstar Buys Video Games Deluxe (The Developer Who Tried to Save the GTA Trilogy)
- Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 + 4 Announced (Developed By… Not Vicarious Visions!)
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Don’t Pay Your Taxes; Buy A Gun!
DISCLAIMER: NATALIE NEUMANN IS A TAX PROFESSIONAL, BUT THIS SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN AS TAX ADVICE. IF YOU WISH TO GET HER PROFESSIONAL OPINION, CONTACT HER DIRECTLY AND INFORM HER OF YOUR SPECIFIC TAX SITUATION.
That sure is a title, so let me elaborate. America is going through some rough shit at this moment, and I’ll spare you the demoralizing recap. It is also March, meaning it is a month away from the tax deadline, which raises a major question for Americans with sane politics. Do you want your tax dollars to go to fund an overtly fascist regime? Now, the gut answer may be ‘I don’t have any choice in the matter, I gotta pay my bills.’ Which is mostly true. You are supposed to pay your bills, and to do so is to follow the rules of society. However, we are currently living in an America where rules are increasingly irrelevant. Where the highest leaders in this country are foregoing due process in favor of moving fast, breaking things, and ignoring what the courts have to say. All while leaving hundreds of thousands of people with no food, medical care, or means of communication.
America is becoming an overtly terrible country, and I am none too happy about anything that has happened in the past month and a half. Which makes my job as a professional United States tax accountant for companies and individuals rather tricky. From my obviously biased perspective, people should still file their taxes for their Federal and state returns, assuming they live in a state with income tax, but filing one’s taxes is a separate act from paying them. Often they are interlinked— IRS electronic withdrawals have been a thing for a long while— but you can file your taxes without paying them, and this is an approach that I have seen several people take. Particularly those with a libertarian, i.e., anti-democracy, mentality or who were making more than the penalty and interest rate.
That being said, it is never a good idea to avoid filing, as the non-filing penalties can be absolutely brutal. Like, 25% of your total liability brutal. Nobody wants that, and the IRS already has most of your information anyway, so may as well file. Besides, you probably need that information to file your state tax return. And depending on how much you like your state, you might want to fund them. I know I like Illinois, and I am happy to pay whatever I owe them on my taxes. And while their taxes are high, I’d feel the same way if I lived in California or New York. But places like Iowa, where they revoked civil rights for trans people? Yeah, I dunno about wanting to support that one, chief.
Oh, but if you have a liability, that means that the IRS can go after you, right? Well, yes and no. IRS has been understaffed for decades, and now they are severely understaffed, which will leave them barely able to fulfill their established duties or answer the phones. This will also affect their ability to seize financial assets from non-payers, place a lien on their property, or launch audits against other people. Now, there is always a chance that IRS will go after you. But based on everything the current administration is planning… they hate income tax as much as they hate transgender Black women, but they also know that IRS is where America gets most of its money. They will likely never get rid of the IRS, though they may push for an anemic and barely enforced tax system. Well, unless they try to have AI do the job of IRS agents. Because I’m sure it will be a breeze for Elon’s coalition of groomed children to break apart these ancient systems and perform audits via sophisticated chatbots.
The point I am fumbling to is that IRS is going to be less powerful and capable than it previously was, and they already were pretty weak after Trump’s first term. Hence why I am emphasizing that people can choose not to pay their taxes and face, theoretically mild consequences. But if you have one of those increasingly rare and coveted W-2 jobs and are getting a refund back, then file and get your damn money back, ASAP. Hell, you might want to even lower your withholdings just to keep Musk’s hands out of your pockets. You’ll wind up with a penalty, but what are they gonna do if you don’t pay it? Unless you owe over $10,000, they likely won’t do anything.
Cool, so what should you do with your money then? Well, you could give it to any number of charitable organizations who are aiming to fight the fascist regime as they seek to abolish civil rights. Or, if you are doubtful of the actions that courts can take in this world where power and money usurp any and all laws, then you can give to an aid group. Maybe just a local food bank, homeless shelter, charitable organization, that LGBT organization in your community, that sort of thing. Or, as a one time purchase, you could be proactive and… buy a gun.
Buying a gun is a totally normal and routine thing for an American citizen to do, and something the Republican party has advocated for decades upon decades. Just buy a gun, keep it in your home, and wait. Wait and see if you have a good opportunity to use it. You might not. And you might want to make sure you have a way to store it in a jacket or backpack just in case you need to take it outside your home. Though, be sure to consult your state laws regarding carrying a firearm, just so you know your rights.
You are also not supposed to bring a gun with you on a bus heading out of state, but are they gonna check your bags? Probably not. And if you have a car, well, then you can drive anywhere across the country. Are you allowed to bring your gun with you in your car into any state, or city? I don’t know! There are a lot of laws in this country. But the great thing about laws is that you can just choose to not respect them. It’s like a sign, or a barrier, or a locked door. You can just choose to disobey them. Sure, you will have to face consequences for breaking rules, but maybe it’s worth it. Rich people break all the rules and look at them! They’re now running the wealthiest country on earth and writing the laws they choose to practice!
Also, if you need help with your taxes, maybe you have a 1099-NEC and cannot use the free file service that Unelected Apartheid-Supporting South African Billionaire Elon Musk wishes to destroy, then I’ll help you out for cheap. In fact, you can hit me up at my brand new email address, natalie at natalie.tf! Yes, that is right! I have a brand new email address that I am going to use going forward. Alternative, you can just hit me up on Discord— I’m in the big TSF game servers— and we can chat about your situation.
Akumako: “Why not just give them your business email?”
Silence, voice in my head who is totally real— but not real— and an obvious sign that I should be trusted due to my questionable mental health and by extension sanity!
Akumako: “Natalie’s boss doesn’t know this place is real.”
I’M NOT REAL! Natalie Neumann is a fictional character! And so are you!
Akumako: “Also, you do realize that even basic handguns cost, like, $500, right?”
…Wait, what? I thought they started at $200!
Akumako: “Nope! You should’ve gone to Shore Galleries and checked for yourself!”
I’m not gonna bring a gun on the CTA or stick it in my coat. The gun’s for staying in my bathroom until I’m activated.
Akumako: “…What does that mean, Natalie? What the fuck does that mean?“
It means it’s time to end this segment!
Akumako: “Oh, you cowardly little bi—”
The Natalie.TF Giveaway Went Incredibly Well
(And I Suffered For My Success)
This past week, I held a giveaway on Natalie.TF, distributing nearly 600 Steam keys to anybody who left a comment requesting keys. I did this because I have growing doubts about Humble Bundle honoring their keys as time goes on, and after accumulating so many darn keys over the past decade, I wanted to share them with the world. I expected to get a few comments, maybe like 20 in total, but in the end I heard from over 130 different people, and successfully distributed all of my Steam keys. (Though, I did distribute some stragglers via Steam Gifts.) Overall… it was way more work than I expected. Most giveaways have structures and ways to automate things, but there was zero automation involved here. Every key I extracted manually. Every email I composed by copying and pasting text, and every confirmation comment was something I did with my own hands.
It ate into most of my Sunday, forced me to rapidly adjust to my new email account, and kept me busy throughout the first half of the week. I had to go through the backlog of comments twice a day to prevent things from overloading. All while I was working stupid hours at my job, and dealing with tech hardware issues involving a PC fan dying and making an awful noise. Along with setting up my NAS (NASalie), which is encountering some network bottleneck, but I don’t know what! It probably took me over eight hours to log who was getting what keys, compose the emails, and leave a reply, but in the end… I only regret the way I did this, and I’m glad that I did this in general. Because what I was ultimately doing was giving people games that they could play and, ideally, bring them joy and happiness in a world where that is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. I know I cannot verify who these people were. Some were readers, others were new faces who likely just came for the keys, and I’m sure a few were just trying to flip the keys for a few bucks at a shady website. But even in that scenario, that’s still helping somebody.
However, I really need to stop throwing myself into impromptu projects like this, as my time is finite, and it is getting increasingly harder to find the time to do things I love. Which is just the worst thing for my mental health at the moment.
Anyways, time for the news… where I mostly wound up talking about re-whatevers across every section. This wasn’t even planned, the news just kind of did that this week.
Akumako: “Yo! Nat! I finally get back into your old IndieGala account and found over 60 keys! You up for a bonus round giveaway?”
…Nah, I’m just gonna list ’em on Steam Gifts.
Akumako: “Oh, you cowardly little bi—”
Reject Remakes, Embrace Recompilations
(Sonic Unleashed Recompilation Released, And It’s Dope!)
Video game remakes run the gamut in so many ways that I am inclined to just say to hell with the whole bloody thing. There are no good standards, no firm definitions that the community or game companies are willing to stick with, and there is something… contentious about them. So many re-whatevers are made without the original dev team, do not see them return, and are put into the hands of whoever was available. Sometimes they are labors of love, sometimes they are a fucking disgrace, worse than the original in every way, and it’s genuinely difficult to gauge them all because there is no standard. I would genuinely LOVE for there to be a video game re-release database breaking down the qualities of every re-whatever of major game, what was added, what was changed, what was lost, and assign a rating of the game as a re-whatever. But alas, such a thing does not exist.
Akumako: “Why don’t you stop bitching and start doing, making your own database of—”
Shut the hell up, you little demonic transdimensional incest goblin! I’m already barely doing maintenance on this site after Ocean WP bonked up all of my business with an update last year!
Akumako: “But—”
Do I gotta go to Shores Galore and actually buy a gun? Or will you be quiet and let me get on with the topic?
Akumako: “Fiiiiine.”
I used to love re-whatevers as a way to make older games better, fresh, and keep them relevant. But this inconsistency has left me far too jaded for comfort. I want old games to be re-released, I want them to be better than they were before, and I want them to be rendered future-proof with a PC-based release that can be communally supported for decades to come. But companies seem to have such immense issues doing that. It really makes me look at the world of unofficial preservation projects as the best option. And the good news is that there have been massive strides made in this field.
Decompilations rose dramatically in feasibility and popularity over the years, ushering in a grand new era for mods and ports of older games. Most famously the stellar things that people have done with Super Mario 64 (1996). However, what really fascinates me is this new trend to recompilations, something I had not heard of until The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (2000) was recompiled with a PC port in May 2024, and since then, there has been some very promising progress made. I thought that just getting 90s games come back like this was great, and was psyched to start seeing oodles of PS2 games get this treatment in the coming years. …But then these deranged dastards went and did a recompilation of Sonic Unleashed (2008) for Xbox 360! …WHAT?
Holy crap! This game is nearly 10 gigabytes big, and the idea that it can be recompiled and ported over to PC and other hardware is just bonkers to me! And the weirdest thing is that the first game is bloody Sonic Unleashed of all titles. A game that fans have wanted to come to PC for 15 years, and one that I have such weird feelings about.
I was a Sonic kid who was weened on Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (2002) as my childhood 3D platformer of choice, and I remained a Sonic fan for years to come. The sort who eagerly bought up Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) at launch, thinking it was the coolest thing ever because I was literally 10. I endured Sonic Riders (2006) despite being notoriously bad at racing games. I was in denial about Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) as being that bad, because it looked so cool in its pre-release trailers. Hell, I even got halfway through Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood before stopping because I couldn’t do the rhythm mini-games. Also, that game was as balanced as a clown car falling out of an airplane. And as a Nintendork who thought Sonic and the Secret Rings (2007) looked ‘too slow’, I was putting a lot of stake in Sonic Unleashed (2008) as being the game that Made Sonic Great Again.
Based on the initial trailers, I thought it looked incredible, that it was one of the prettiest games yet, and I was even into Ristar beat ’em up werewolf sections, because I was literally 13. So I just had to play it, got it as my 14th birthday present, and… I didn’t like it that much. Partially because it was the Wii version, which is widely seen as inferior, having fewer and generally worse levels. Partially due to the growing Sonic Sux mentality that I was becoming more aware of— thanks in no small part to my former friend Matt. (I have not talked to that man in 11 years and should probably fix that.) Partially because I was just growing into my edgy teenage phase, and wanted to expand my options. And partially because I got to Eggman Land, struggled to get past the first stage without burning through my lives, and immediately got sick of this game’s bullcrap. So I sold the game a week later and used that money to buy Fable 2 (2008) with my Xbox 360. (God, Fable 2 was so good. Also, the reward for beating the game was the ability to become trans, and that was dope as hell!)
After this, I never got the 360 version of Sonic Unleashed, but I did play through the daytime stages of the Xbox 360 version as part of the Project Unleashed mod for Sonic Generation on PC. They were mostly great, but there were also some less great stages there. It was nice to finally get some closure on that, but I have not been able to reconcile if I think Sonic Unleashed is a good game or not. I played the Wii version again seven years ago, and thought it was an “often frustrating yet occasionally enjoyable title.” Still, I completely understand what people see in the Xbox 360 version, as if you were, like, eight when you played this game, it would be some of the most provocative and imaginative shit you’d ever seen in your life. Hell, some stages and settings hold up so well that I think they could pass as a modern game, despite being 16 years old. …Damn. Sonic Unleashed will be legal-2-fuck in 2026!
Okay, okay, so… what does this mean for the future? Well, every great game that was stuck on Xbox 360 is now fair game, as Unleashed Recompiled brought with it a deluge of tools and tech that other technological wizards can use to fashion their own recompilations. Now, what games would I love to see? Well, I just mentioned Fable 2, but I’d also love to see Asura’s Wrath, Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom, Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, the original Lollipop Chainsaw, Raskulls. The updated version of Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, and Perfect Dark. Magna Carta II, [eM] -eNCHANT arM-, Eternal Sonata, and some other 6.5/10 bangers that are actually 8.5/10 in my heart of hearts. (Also, Too Human would just be funny.)
Truly, this will be a magnificent way to bring back games forgotten to time, this time running at better resolutions and frame rates than ever before. Which is really what I want from the vast majority of re-whatevers hitting the scene.
…I would cap things off there, but this news hit my feed just a few days before Nintendo decided to be ‘a wet bag of fucker’ and continue their adamant fight against piracy. They recently won a lawsuit against the French cloud storage site 1fichier, and the results are pretty damning. All French and European file sharing sites must remove or block ‘illegal content’ upon request. If they fail to do so, then they will need to offer compensation to the rights holders.
Okay, so this is a bit squiggly. On one hand, the legal system of the world is designed around companies respecting laws and not hosting illegal files and removing them when requested. That is kind of the way that digital files need to work, as otherwise people will just pursue unauthorized copies instead of the kind that generate money for the legal owners. Because acquiring unauthorized copies is easy as hell so long as you know where to look. On the other hand, this is a futile measure, as unauthorized distribution of files and software will never stop, and I view the prevention of it to be just annoying. And on the third hand that all human beings have, this will move will ruin and render many hosting sites for old games, albums, shows, and other pieces of media, unable to move their repository, and potentially result in lost media. Thus making it harder to find media that companies are not interested in selling or distributing in a desired format. (I don’t want to think about how many things were lost when Zippyshare died.)
…But no matter which hand I settle on at this particular moment, it’s gonna turn into a fist aimed right at Nina Tendo for screwin’ with the harmony! The video game industry is dragging its dick through the dirt with the pitiful attempts of preservation being made, while regular-ass flesh and blood humans are doing the Christ’s work by taking old games and making them better than ever. Dedicated enthusiasts do what a $100 billion industry doesn’t!
Akumako: “Are you going to address the ‘but aren’t you endorsing piracy’ criticism?”
…Bae, the Xbox 360 marketplace has been shut down for months, and while you can buy some of its games… nearly all of them are ten to twenty years old, and companies, by in large, do not notice nor care when a decade-old product generates a few sales. Sonic Unleashed is backwards compatible and available on modern Xbox hardware, but at most, it generates a few thousand dollars a year for Sega, a billion-dollar company. Do you know how little that actually is? $10,000 is 0.001% of $1,000,000,000. Even the most psychotically persnickety prick on the planet does not care about a thousandth of a percent. That is beyond a rounding error. And you know what somebody who plays Sonic Unleashed on PC is likely to do? Buy Sonic X Shadow Generations (2024) on ValveNet’s SteamiPowder Videogame Distributor Service. There is absolutely no harm being done here, and if Sega really wanted that money, they should have done a good Sonic Unleashed port/remaster onto PC and modern systems.
You could make argument after argument about the immorality of playing games through unauthorized means, but at this point, my stance is pretty rigid. I. Do. Not. Care. If a company is failing to make a product that people want available for sale, at a reasonable price, then it is their own damn fault that people choose the path of piracy. Piracy is a service problem, and if you offer shitty service, then the free market will drive people to say fuck the market and download an unauthorized copy. Don’t play capitalism if you don’t like the rules, bitch!
Suikoden is BACK!
(…As a Mobile Live Service!)
Suikoden is one of those RPG series that I have largely written off as being dead forever. Right up there with Grandia, Breath of Fire, Wild Arms, and so forth. It had its time, it was good, and the best you’re going to get are a few remasters that… may or may not be worse than a recompilation with a few good mods. The essence that made these series what they are— the developers— are no longer working with the IP, may have left the industry, or may have just died off. Sometimes they come back with a spiritual successor 15+ years later, sometimes they don’t, and that’s okay.
I guess what I’m saying, more broadly, is that I want older games to be available, accessible, and be made better than ever through the power of modern technology, hacking, and decades of hindsight. And while a revival can be appreciated, it is also not always necessary, so long as a similar niche is being fulfilled. With there being so many games flooding the market, all bases should be covered, but the economics around games is so bad that developers cannot get funding to always make a true successor, and need to pair it with a money-making structure. Which is code for turn it into a damn live service. Also known as one of the worst structures for a game, as it replaces careful design with bloat, pairs the act of play and progress with real-money gambling, and forces the player into parasocial relationships with a fucking app.
I don’t hate live services, I loved Dragalia Lost too much. But seeing that game thrive and perish really showed me the ins and outs of the genre, the cold feeling of loss that comes with EOS, and the fiercely anti-preservation nature of these games. I actually love their ability to tell long-running stories that respond to player feedback, and their ability to become utterly stacked with story and gameplay content over time. You could not make a single-player offline game with the depth, length, and breadth of content as a Dragalia or Genshin Impact or Honkerz mit Star Rail. Because the dev cycle would be nearly a decade long. Yet the fact that they consume the lives of other people, restrict them from playing other games, it just irks me deeply. Gaming is too vast to just invest in one title. It’d be like only watching one show, one movie series, the music of one artist, or only the writings of one author.
Akumako: “Oi! Bitch! Focus!”
Right, right, so… After spending several years mulling around with their game division, and right before releasing Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars, Konami announced the first new Suikoden game since 2012, Suikoden: Star Leap. And it actually looks excellent! It’s taking clear cues from the original PS2 entries of the series with its general sprite designs, but adopting a retro-HD 3D world and dousing it in modern game engine VFX. It looks a lot like a Square Enix HD-2D title, but just different enough. …Though, a more apt comparison may be the Suikoden spiritual successor, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. A title that was announced via Kickstarter in 2020. Which happened suspiciously around the time Konami started to realize that this discarded IP may be worth something and greenlight a quite good looking remaster. I’m not sure if it is actually goo though. It’ll probably be a while before a quality breakdown is composed.
Now, I am on my gacha is bad civilization hate train right now, but if this were just a regular-ass real video game, I would have nothing but good things to say about it per this debut trailer. I think the environments and sprite work both look excellent, doing a lot to make characters expressive, emotive, and paint the world with flashy yet appropriate looking effects. The world looks vibrant and expansive. The interjection of voice acting does a lot to breathe life into these scenes. And while only gameplay snippets were shown, it looks nice and flashy. …Actually, it does have that damn depth of field problem, because people forget that games are not film and film is not real life, so I guess I was wrong. There is one bad thing I can say about it. Though, it’s a common bad decision across projects like this.
Okay, the game looks good, but who is making it? Well, definitely not Konami, despite having said they wanted to get into mobile games nearly a decade ago. Instead, it is a Japanese mobile game developed named Mythril. They previously worked on Pokémon Café Remix (2020), a game that makes me pine for the era of Pokémon Trozei! (2005), which was legit a dope puzzle game!
Akumako: “♫~Four in a row and you’re good to go~♫“
Romancing SaGa Re;Universe (2018), a hyper niche RPG that was only really popular in Japan, and whose global version shut down on December 1, 2024. Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator (2023), a live service that barely lasted over a year and is getting shut down in… three weeks! And SaGa Emerald Beyond (2024), a weird game for freak weirdos, meaning it’s probably an unsung GOTY 2024 contender.
I’m sure the people working at this company want to make this game as good as possible, but… whenever I see a game like this, my biggest hope is that it gets shut down and repurposed as a console or paid experience.
But wait, there’s more! They are also doing an anime based on Suikoden II (1998), which is often said to be the best in the series. And it’s being done by Konami’s in-house animation studio who… wait, when did Konami start expanding like this? Whatever. Point is, Konami is dead set on bringing the series back… which is actually a pretty weird pull. Konami has IPs, but Suikoden was never a big seller. Hell, I don’t think any game ever broke a million units. So… why bring it back like this? Because they felt they needed a fantasy RPG life service propped up by legacy characters and a familiar name? …Eh, maybe. But by that logic, they could have just done a Tengai Makyo live service, and I’d just think that’s funny. What, didn’t expect me to reference that? Guess again, honey!
Acclaim is BACK!
(Because It’s A Name Millennials Recognize)
The way that notorious slimeboy Tommy Tallarico took the Intellivision name and forever sullied it with his bad idea for a console has left me suspicious of any supposed company revivals without any of the original leads. Companies thrive, die, and the circle of life goes on. There is no need to bring one back unless the original creators are involved, or if somebody wants to buy their way into legitimacy by pretending to be someone else. And if one is going to go that route, they could at least pick a name with some renown behind it.
Acclaim Entertainment, Inc. was a C-grade American video game publisher who encapsulated the remedial end of the North America video game industry of the 1990s. They started by shoveling out a deluge of licensed games under their LJN label, a brand notorious for its association with bad to mediocre titles. They had a strong relationship with Midway, who was focusing on delivering arcade hits like Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam, which Acclaim published on consoles and made boatloads of cash, at least through the mid 1990s. They were one of the most prominent supporters of the N64, publishing the Turok series, the bad N64 wrestling games, and a bunch of B-grade sports games. However, as time went on, they started lacking in terms of big successes to call their own, publishing a pretty random selection of games. I’m talking about the Bust-A-Move series, the triple platinum Hood Classic™ No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! (1998), Headhunter (2002), the first two Burnout games, BMX XXX (2002), and the edgy platformer Vexx (2003).
They were not a bad company, but they just could not compete with Activision, EA, or even THQ, and went bankrupt in 2004 after major titles, like Turok: Evolution (2002) had poor sales and their operations grew too expansive. Their assets were distributed, and their name must have gotten lost in the process, allowing somebody named Alex Josef to pick it up from the dump and say he now owns Acclaim. When, no, he owns the name Acclaim, as all the developers are gone and most of the IPs are in a dozen-hundred different hands these days.
Okay, so who is this Alex Josef guy? Well, he is the CEO of an indie game publisher by the name of Graffiti Games, who has released titles like Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (2021). Which you shouldn’t do. Avoid higher tax liabilities, don’t evade them! He has been in this industry as an executive for quite a while, and this just appears to be another way for him to create a new company. Because some guys are just really into making new companies. Whatever the reason though, I am inclined to say this is a good thing, as the games industry needs people willing to fund projects and keep game developers employed. I still wish that this was just a new company, but in this world dominated by brands, just having a familiar name can net more than a few sales and/or eyes.
…Also, whenever I see the Acclaim logo, I think the name should be Akklaim. ‘Cos those ain’t C’s, those are funky-funky K’s!
Rockstar Buys Video Games Deluxe
(The Developer Who Tried to Save the GTA Trilogy)
God DAMN am I glad that the original culturally relevant GTA games had decent PC ports circa the early 2000s and have had robust mod support over the years. Because what Rockstar did to them with their “Definitive Edition” remaster just makes me want to fly a car into the mansions of their executives. Specifically, a car full of petroleum, so the fires are that much more destructive. I never played any of the PS2 GTA trilogy, but damn do I respect them for what they did to help gaming around the world. They were bold new ideas that really showed off how the power of the PS2 could be used to create reactive and multi-faceted experiences that mesh seemingly disparate mechanics together. They were major cultural touchstones of the era, even if that was often marred in controversy from wannabe fascists who did not like the idea of the proletariat being able to enact fantasy violence. And they were gateway experiences for a lot of people to get into gaming. Unlike GTA V, whose online components are designed to make people stuck there and not branch out into new horizons.
However, Rockstar wanted to bring back this trilogy to fill in a gap in their release lineup— it was the pandemic, gaming was booming, and Take Two wanted some kwik kash. So they enlisted a developer by the name of Grove Street Games. Take Two did not give them the time or money needed to give GTA III, Vice City, or San Andreas the facelift these games so rightfully deserved, and Grove Street could not just port these games into HD. Instead, they had to rebuild the games from the old iOS and Android versions from a decade back, which were not great versions, get them to work on a bunch of systems, and give them a visual touch-up to hide the fact that everybody had butt-faces. The end result was a fucking disgrace of a remaster, filled with bad AI ‘upgrades’ to existing assets, and things that were just flat out wrong. It was everything a remaster should not be, and with its release, Rockstar delisted the original games from sale.
Despite this, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition was a massive success, selling over 10 million units in its first year. That just pissed me off, but what pissed me off even more was how little support the game received following its release. However, Rockstar eventually put a different studio, Video Games Deluxe, to work on fixing this title and… a serious effort was made. Lighting was improved in various areas, capturing the look of the original game far better. Missing visual details and effects were added back in. And plenty of obvious mistakes were fixed It took three fucking years for them to do this, but they did get around to them. Now, does that make the Definitive Edition a good remaster? I’m still going to say absolutely no. Because the correct way to remaster this game would be to start from scratch, go back to the original source code— or decompile the PS2 version— and rebuild the game with a careful hand from there.
However, Video Games Deluxe at least did a good enough job to impress Rockstar games enough, and after letting them into their secret abode, they have been awarded by… being bought and rebranded as Rockstar Australia. Fair enough, I suppose, VGD was just a bunch of former Team Bondi folks, who were basically Rockstar’s abused cousin during the development of L.A. Noire (2011). The Australian games industry is in a pretty bad place, and has been for about a decade when a bunch of studios closed down shop. And this does offer the developers some prestige. They can print out Rockstar business cards and say they were part of Rockstar, and everybody knows Rockstar!
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 + 4 Announced
(Developed By… Not Vicarious Visions!)
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 (2020) was a fantastic return of a series that was so egregiously cast aside by Activision’s insatiable lust for money at the cost of all else. And for as much as I love banging on the drum of emulation and recompilation and decompilation, sometimes you just need to remake something to make it sing like a turtledove/shutterbug. The original games are still great, but their low draw distances, wobbliness, and baked-in lighting were not necessarily artistic choices as much as they were all the original developers could do.
The remake was a success, hit all major platforms, and Vicarious Visions established themselves as a group that super understands how to remake old games. They actually wanted to move right on to remaking the third and fourth entries, completing the original and most widely regarded, run of the series. However, Activision had already decided that this studio would be morphed into an appendage of the Blizzard homunculus and tasked them with working on Diablo games. Particularly the excellent Diablo II: Resurrected (2021) and the overly calculated experience that was Diablo IV (2023). Now Vicarious Visions is Blizzard Albany and the hope of another Tony Hawk comeback was fading rapidly. …Until Microsoft opted to announce Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 + 4 after a few teasers.
Now, my first question upon heading about this game was ‘who’s developing it?’ And the answer is Iron Galaxy, a developer who has had a rather storied history over the past few years, filled with highs and lows. They did a lot of support and port work in their early years before becoming Capcom’s go-to retro fighting game port studio, responsible for Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online Edition (2011) and Darkstalkers Resurrection (2013). They developed the initially abysmal PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight (2015), though I’m inclined to put the blame on Warner Bros because… they’re terrible at everything else. And Iron Galaxy also became the developer of Double Helix’s K-III-er Instinct (2013) after the original devs were bought by Amazon. Which was kind of their goal, as the studio was founded by fighting game fans and made the cult classic Divekick (2012).
In recent years, the studio has been a favored PC and Switch port studio, working on the Switch versions of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011), Diablo III (2012), Overwatch (2016-2022). and Apex Legends (2019). While developing the PC ports for Spyro Reignited Trilogy (2018), Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection (2021), and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2. Oh, and they also did a good chunk of the work on Metroid Prime Remastered (2023), as if they needed more to add to their resume. But their biggest and most important release in recent memory is easily Rumbleverse (2022), an ill-fated live service wrestling multiplayer game that was shut down six months after launch, as it did not meet publisher Epic Games’ expectations.
This was not good for Iron Galaxy, and almost certainly put its owners in a tough spot. I have to imagine that what happened next went something like this: After working on the Tony Hawk 1+2 PC port, which took three bloody years to come out, Iron Galaxy, who was now familiar with the engine and tools used in the game, offered to capitalize on the title’s success by developing a sequel. Microsoft/Activision, wanting to get some good graces in, and already paying for the Tony Hawk™ license, decided that it would be worth it. This led the game to become a priority for Iron Galaxy, but as development on it wrapped and things continued to look dire across the games industry, the studio laid off 66 people, calling it a last resort. And I’m inclined to believe them, as nobody is funding games at the moment.
Based on their track record, particularly their Killer Instinct work, and the debut trailer for this game, I think Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 + 4 is in good hands, and will hopefully do well enough to keep the series going, either with a brand new title, or possibly a remake of Tony Hawk’s Underground 1 + 2. Except I seriously doubt that, as those games had cutscenes, a story mode, and adapting that to a new engine, along with updating the technical doodads to PS5 fidelity standards, would be an ordeal. Hell, they are even removing what little bits of story content that was originally in Pro Skater 4, because it is just less to handle and keeps the game’s budget svelte. Weirdly, I think the most plausible way this could continue is with a new Pro Skater game, but who knows if Microsoft will view that as something worth funding. There is a limit to nostalgia, and while Skate Culture has been beaten down by the American Police State, there are things you could do with a modern skate game.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 + 4 will be released for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Switch, and PC on July 11, 2025.
Progress Report 2025-03-09
The overarching theme of this Rundown has been the trend of re-whatevers, and I am always met with a deluge of conflicting viewpoints when the subject comes up. On one hand, preservation is important and old games should be made accessible going forward, à la movies, music, books, etc. On the other hand, games are software that should be improved and be made better over time via the continued development of computer hardware and development of gaming standards. Things like pausing cutscenes, subtitles, quality of life features, accessibility, are all great ways to keep games feeling fresh and rarely do they clash with the essence of a game. However, some games also develop a level of less endearing jank over time, and do not hold up as standards shift over time, so a remaster can do much to improve them.
A full remake, that creates the game beat-for-beat or simply applies a new coat of paint to an existing game, can be a great way to attract new people and help them better appreciate an older work, while being an artistic extension in its own right. (Though, we really should have normalized the ability to toggle between the old look and new look.) While a transformative remake that is effectively a new game capturing the same beats and iconography of the original is… a new game that captures the same beats and iconography of the original. It’s just a new game and should be treated like that, even if it is called a “Remake.” God, The Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) just came into the soup of discourse on this one.
I am of the mindset that gaming could effectively wrap up, stop, and become strictly an indie thing and the medium would be all the better for it. That there are more games than anyone could ever hope to play. That games, generally, were better when they were being sold strictly as bespoke products you bought in a store for the experience. And that the rise in online gaming, while revolutionary for many multiplayer-geared genres and the spread of information, has resulted in a deluge of abusive monetization practices and blasé design meant to endear engagement via routine and frustration.
But despite my ever radicalizing ideologies, I am ultimately a fan of good games that are good at being good games, and don’t have major technical, artistic, or preservation problems. Which sounds simple, but it never is. If given the choice between a remake that does not honor the original or no remake, I would rather have no remake. Just wait for someone to recompile it or load it up onto an emulator. And if you can’t run the game because you don’t have the hardware… get on that. You don’t need a 5090 to play N64 or Saturn games. You could probably just get a $600 Mac Mini and be good-2-go for the next five-plus years.
2025-03-02: After months of delays, I finally built my damn server, running OpenMediaVault and a CM3588 Plus. …Except I could not figure out how to get the mini fan to work. Oh well. I am using a big heatsink and heatsinks on both of the 4 TB NVMe drives that I’m mirroring. Have I loaded files onto it though? No, no I have not. And the reason why is pretty simple. Despite all the work I had to do, following this incredibly helpful guide, it turns out that my data transfer speed is kind of anemic. It caps at around 55 MB per second, when it should be capable of 2.5 gigabit per second, or a theoretical max of 312.5 GB per second. Except my PC was only built for gigabit, and my router/modem/server is only gigabit. This should not be a problem, as gigabit is still pretty good IMO, but then I should get about twice what I was seeing. The speed itself is also inconsistent, so I think the problem might be with my decade-plus old cables. I don’t like buying things willy-nilly, but this seems like a cable issue. Also, the giveaway was stupidly successful, and kept me busy for hours writing emails, using StartMail for the first time, and just distributing things to people.
2025-03-03: Another 12 hour work day, because crypto is complicated and my boss is a scatterbrain who likes have me jump between six clients in a day. Then I did more giveaway stuff before deciding to get some Rundown work done while my hair’s all wet from my night shower! Wrote like 900 words for the Sonic Unleashed bit.
2025-03-04: Wrote 3,000 words today and wound up making this a 10.5 hour day due to some night work. Fucking stayed up until 3:30 in the morning, doing work.
2025-03-05: Wrote 800 word Tony Hawk bit. Made some header images.
2025-03-06: Did nothing today, as I was busy with work for over 12 hours and had to fix a fan in my PC, which involves dealing with the frustrating way my ZOTAC pre-built PC was designed. DO NOT USE ZIP TIES IN A PC. It just makes it a pain in the ass to move cables around. Also, those fan hub things should not have sticky stuff at the end, as that sticky stuff melts when in a hot environment, like inside a computer.
2025-03-07: After so many long days in this 50 hour work week, I needed to rest and decompress for a night, so I did that, sucking more PokeRogue crack from my pipe and then working in a spreadsheet for some fun autistic nonsense. But I did write 600 words for TSF Showcase 2025-03. Over a bloody week since I last touched it.
2025-03-08: Locked in like them Zoomies wanton do and worked on TSF Showcase 2025-03 a bunch. This one is gonna be 15k words, for some reason, and I wrote over 6,200 words despite fucking around with my dumb spreadsheets some more.