What's a "Moral Compass Cricket Thingy"?

[Moonface]

I'm surprised the companies who hold the copyright don't find these things. Like how the fuck has Nintendo not seen this thing?!

[Maniakkid25]

It's like a hydra: cut off one head, two more appear. Usually they're from underserved areas like China, Taiwan, and Russia, and get imported by people wanting to make a quick buck. By the time Nintendo or other companies like it figure out about it, ten more knock-offs have been made and sold to people who don't know better. Sure, they can sue for damages, but the number of suits that would require, its almost better to just let it go under the radar. After all, while they may be ripping off modern console designs, it's not like they're cloning modern day consoles...anymore.

[Moonface]

Would you say those cloned consoles are the worst thing an official company has let another get away with, or is there something worse that you've seen?

[Maniakkid25]

No. Why? Because no one buys these bootleg consoles expecting authenticity. Even the people who get scammed are like "hey, my child loves games, this has hundreds them! They'll love it!" The worst thing an official company can let someone get away with is often done by their own hand by licensing out properties they own. Just ask Nintendo about the Philips deal, or Metroid Other M, or ask Toho how Godzilla '98 worked out. And those aren't even considering the self-inflicted wounds like Devils Third, Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness, Silent Hill HD, and so many, many others! Nah, when a company needs to irreparably damage its brand, the only company that can do it is themselves.

[Moonface]

And those aren't even considering the self-inflicted wounds like Devils Third, Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness, Silent Hill HD, and so many, many others!

I know of the wonderful fun that is AoD, but what was wrong with the other two? Especially for SH HD since that... really doesn't sound like it should be easy to screw up considering it's just going to be a graphical glow up.

[Maniakkid25]

AHAHAHAHAHA! You forget that Konami is Konami, and Konami is the worst! First off, for SH HD, they did not have the license to use the mocap of Silent Hill 2's character, but did anyway, screwing the man out of royalties. They also made sure to try and port the games using incomplete code, ensuring that the developers had to work on FIXING it as well as porting it! I'll put it this way: if your game ends up on an episode of "Wha Happun?", you can be certain that there are shenanigans involved. OH LOOK, HERE'S SILENT HILL HD!

Devil's Third was meant to be the first title of Tomonobu Itagaki, of Team Ninja fame, and his new studio Valhalla. After going through Development Hell with multiple publishers going bankrupt around it, Nintendo published it for the Wii U, and even they tried to bail on the deal before launch because of how bad it was. It had multiplayer servers; those servers were shut down within 16 months! That should tell you how disastrous the reception of it was.

[Moonface]

Funny you mention a video by Matt McMuscles, because I just watched Trihex watching a video by him about Goldeneye and it's the first time I've heard of the channel.

Oh! I remember that game! XD I'm trying to remember if I ever saw it at London Comic Con or not...

[Maniakkid25]

Funny you mention a video by Matt McMuscles, because I just watched Trihex watching a video by him about Goldeneye and it's the first time I've heard of the channel.

Yeah, it's a great investigative show about debacles of all shapes and sizes. I've been watching quite a few of them, and all sorts of reasons why things turned out terribly, but my favorite is Metroid Other M, because everything went RIGHT on that production; it's just the fact that this was a bad idea from start to finish, so that's why the game ended up so maligned.

[ShiraNoMai]

What're your favorite YouTube channels nowadays? I'm intrigued by many of the videos you've posted here lately and wonder if you've got some suggestions/reccs to throw my way

[Maniakkid25]

HOO BOY! To paraphrase Highlander, "Lots of different things."

So, there's critics I've stumbled across, with my personal recommendations being DLJadow and Krimson Rogue (edit: and Rerez). There's educational stuff, largely history. Technology Connections, Knowing Better, and The Chieftain are my picks. I've been entranced by Wha Happun?, watching Doom '93 breakdowns and even a playthrough of a hardcore custom version of Doom called Sunlust, played by Coincident. Adam Neely, David Bennett, and Signal Music Studios have been my sources for Music Theory nonsense of late, Todd in the Shadows and Leonard French have recaptured my attention, I've been getting updates from the World War 2 channel (though I haven't been watching). And to top it all off, I've been watching the amazing s***posts by Pantsahat. And this is just the stuff I can immediately remember or find in my recommends! There's probably others that I just forgot about that make amazing content, or stuff I'm just not watching because I haven't gotten around to it (Contrapoints comes to mind). So yeah, that enough recommendations?

Edit: Oh, speedrunning! Forgot about speedrunning! Summoning Salt, Karl Jobst, and Goose's Gaming Fokelore are where it's at there.

[Moonface]

What's a video or channel you stumbled across unintentionally, i.e. front page YouTube recommendations, that you were actually really happy to find accidentally?

[Maniakkid25]

Ahoy comes to mind, with the Polybius video and then finding his "Iconic Arms" series. I probably found Signal Music Studio and David Bennett on complete accident, as well, which in turn led me to 12Tone. I found out about Karl Jobst through Goose Gaming Fokelore recommending it, and now I watch his more than Goose (they both happen to be speedrunners of the same game, both of them top 10 players in Goldeneye). DLJadow I would have never found if it weren't for my love of James Stephanie Sterling's Digital Homicide Saga. I also have no idea how Decino came on my radar, but maybe from Karl Jobst? My favorite has to be Pantsahat, though, because I never would have found out about him if it weren't for my coworker randomly linking that video and then just binging his entire Hippo Saga.

[Moonface]

Man I forgot about Pantsahat. I started watching their stuff a while ago when you linked to something of theirs and completely forgot to finish it.

What's your least favourite Xbox game you've played?

[Maniakkid25]

Probably FF13, but that's such a low bar that's not really fair to even FF13. So, just talking about the games that I own? God, that list is so long...Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City? That's just what immediately comes to mind, anyway; you ask that like its an easy question lol!

[ShiraNoMai]

Have you ever played Code Veronica?