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Backbone may be shutting down

C

CrunchinJelly

formerly cjelly
http://ign.com/articles/2012/10/09/death-jr-dev-faces-closure

Backbone Entertainment is making layoffs with talk of a complete shut down, according to two sources at the company.

One of IGN's sources, however, says that a closure isn't yet a forgone conclusion, and that the company will attempt to "keep it going smaller".

Based in Emeryville, California, Backbone Entertainment was established in 2003 but came to prominence in 2005 with the release of Death Jr. on the PSP.

Recently the studio worked on LEGO Rock Band on the Nintendo DS and Marvel Vs Capcom 2 on XBLA.

Backbone was currently working on Midway Arcade Origins, a collection of 30 classic Midway classics including Gaunlet, Joust, and Spy Hunter. We've contacted Warner Bros. to check on the status of this project.

More news on this as we get it.
Click to expand...
Not really surprising, work seems to have dried up for them over the last few years.
 
I

InfiniteNine

Rolling Girl
Sucks for the staff hope they find other jobs, but considering their retro/arcade ports are terrible I'm hopeful for future if companies latch onto someone like M2 for the job.
 
M

meppi

Member
Too bad for the people losing their job.

Not a fan of their work though.
I actively started not buying the things they worked on after getting burned several times by stuff that should have been handled a lot better in this day and age.
 
DR2K

DR2K

Banned
Not a major loss in the gaming world. Sorry, but these guys especially sucked at their job. Good luck to those in their future endeveros.
 
E

Eusis

Member
Tizoc said:
Could someone provide vids just to showcase why their porting jobs weren't very good?
Click to expand...
They always felt off to me. For the most part I don't think most people could point to anything specific wrong (well, I recall weird audio stuttering in MvC2), but just felt inauthentic compared to the likes of Wii's emulation.

Plus their menus look terrible and they always seem to cut off (minor) things in their ports, likely as a result of their crappy new menus most of the time.
 
E

Eusis

Member
Joni said:
He was wrong.


I liked their port jobs.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure that this is the sort of thing you CAN break down objectively. More specifically, is it a faithful, accurate porting job? But that's going to require some rigorous Digital Foundry-esque testing.
 
R

Risette

A Good Citizen
Eusis said:
I'm pretty sure that this is the sort of thing you CAN break down objectively. More specifically, is it a faithful, accurate porting job? But that's going to require some rigorous Digital Foundry-esque testing.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't call it rigorous.

I doubt any Backbone port would pass any sort of basic accuracy test. They're pretty dreadful.
 
K

Korigama

Member
Eusis said:
They always felt off to me. For the most part I don't think most people could point to anything specific wrong (well, I recall weird audio stuttering in MvC2), but just felt inauthentic compared to the likes of Wii's emulation.

Plus their menus look terrible and they always seem to cut off (minor) things in their ports, likely as a result of their crappy new menus most of the time.
Click to expand...
I'm not certain of what could have been their excuse for cutting sound test from the game when they ported Streets of Rage 2 to PSN. All I know is that it was enough reason for me not to bother getting the game back after my PS+ trial expired (I still have the original Genesis versions of the trilogy in working condition anyway).
 
R

Risette

A Good Citizen
Korigama said:
I'm not certain of what could have been their excuse for cutting sound test from the original game when they ported Streets of Rage 2 to PSN. All I know is that it was enough reason for me not to bother getting the game back after my PS+ trial expired (I still have the Genesis versions of the trilogy in working condition anyway).
Click to expand...
Get the excellent M2 Sega Vintage thingy version of the Streets of Rage games.

M2 is the best!
 
R

Risette

A Good Citizen
Tizoc said:
Speaking of which, hope this'll mean the GA and SoR collections on XBL make it to PSN.
Too soon, though?
Click to expand...
They're not on PSN? Weird.

Didn't know that. I never really go to PS3 for ports and stuff unless it's PS3 only like the NeoGeo Station. (also, M2's ports of these games are great too!)
 
H

honorless

We don't have "get out of jail free" cards, but if we did, she'd have one.
Gattsu25 said:
Wikipedia says that they were responsible for Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection which means that they are A Okay in my book.
Click to expand...
My fiancé was pretty hyped for this until he downloaded the demo. Just hearing the awful, awful music emulation in Sonic 1 took it off his "to-buy" list, and he's not the one who's a nerd about port accuracy in this apartment. I don't know how you dealt with it. Was there some kind of patch?

It's too bad that they never got any better, but hopefully their employees can find work. Maybe I should look up this Death Jr. since I have a PSP
 
G

Game Guru

Member
I know people tend to complain about Backbone's emulation, but... what exactly is the alternative for legal emulation outside of the Virtual Console? As someone who has played many of these ports, I've noticed the Digital Eclipse/Backbone Entertainment logo on them enough times that I feel like I have to ask this.
 
R

Risette

A Good Citizen
Game Guru said:
I know people tend to complain about Backbone's emulation, but... what exactly is the alternative for legal emulation outside of the Virtual Console? As someone who has played many of these ports, I've noticed the Digital Eclipse/Backbone Entertainment logo on them enough times that I feel like I have to ask this.
Click to expand...
Dumping your own roms/running them off the cart. http://www.retrode.org/


And buying the good ports from companies like M2.
 
Y

Yagharek

Member
I hated their ports but heard good things about their original games. Shame some studios never really get a chance.
 
S

Sixfortyfive

He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
Tizoc said:
Could someone provide vids just to showcase why their porting jobs weren't very good?
Click to expand...
I don't have any videos, but their emulation accuracy is bad enough to be noticeable. Poor sound quality, glitches, and even notable missing features (no mid-game co-op respawn in Gunstar Heroes, no post-game level select in Sonic 3, no sound test in Streets of Rage). They actually put work into removing shit like that just so they could add that stupid emulator HUD. And one of their Sonic compilations didn't even have S&K lock-on. The mind boggles.

And regardless of what you may think of David Sirlin's ideas of gameplay balance, he reportedly had an awful time convincing them to make respectable netcode for SF2 HD Remix, going so far as to tackle some of the technical side himself because nobody else on the team was interested. He's got a write-up about his experience on the job somewhere out there.

Every product I saw out of that company just struck me as no-budget no-effort slop. The titles involved deserved better.
 
M

michaelius

Banned
Sixfortyfive said:
I don't have any videos, but their emulation accuracy is bad enough to be noticeable. Poor sound quality, glitches, and even notable missing features (no mid-game co-op respawn in Gunstar Heroes, no post-game level select in Sonic 3, no sound test in Streets of Rage). They actually put work into removing shit like that just so they could add that stupid emulator HUD. And one of their Sonic compilations didn't even have S&K lock-on. The mind boggles.

And regardless of what you may think of David Sirlin's ideas of gameplay balance, he reportedly had an awful time convincing them to make respectable netcode for SF2 HD Remix, going so far as to tackle some of the technical side himself because nobody else on the team was interested. He's got a write-up about his experience on the job somewhere out there.

Every product I saw out of that company just struck me as no-budget no-effort slop. The titles involved deserved better.
Click to expand...

I forsee huge carrier for all of them in iOS space.
 
S

Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew

Banned
As much as people hate on them, they are one of the few companies who we should be grateful of for porting such amazing classic titles. In fact, they were the first ones in this generation to do so, if I am not mistaken.

Their ports are very solid, IMO.
 
P

PopcornMegaphone

Banned
jaekwon15 said:
I politely disagree. I enjoyed the game, Especially the Sega Genesis version. And there is no excuse for porting the game with hyper frame rates.
Click to expand...


I remember getting the Genesis version of pit fighter as a gift for Christmas. The damn thing was unplayable. It turned me off from the whole fighting genre.
 
S

Shadow Hog

Member
Tizoc said:
Could someone provide vids just to showcase why their porting jobs weren't very good?
Click to expand...
The audio was generally off. While Spinball's Options screen music was already pretty screechy, the version in Ultimate Genesis Collection is even worse.

Ultimate Genesis Collection did not have Sonic 3 & Knuckles. It had Sonic 3. It had Sonic & Knuckles. You could not combine them and play the complete game. They argued it would take away time from porting games like Zaxxon. This is despite the ROM generated from lock-on literally being a concatenation of two files, something anybody could do in one command on a Unix prompt.

The XBLA port of Sonic & Knuckles finally allowed you to play the games locked-on... but forced you to use THEIR save system instead of the game's. The game's would let you revisit a save you had completed, basically giving you a level select/New Game + for that particular character. Backbone's version did not - once you beat the game, that was it. This makes unlocking the Hyper characters particularly difficult - since it was by-and-large intended for players to unlock them via replaying their saves until they obtained 100% completion, not getting 100% completion in one run.

Just a few examples of their more inept moments.
 
A

arit

Member
Tizoc said:
Could someone provide vids just to showcase why their porting jobs weren't very good?
Click to expand...

- Bizarre save state hackery on the Gunstar Heroes port, which made a difference compared to the MD original, since a player stayed dead and could not reenter the game by stealing hp from the still living player.
- Some base filter which destroyed the glory of pixels, that could not be deactivated.
- Severe input lag on the Capcom Classic Collection 2
- And of course buggy sound emulation

I believe Mortal Kombat II is the only good emulation they did, but that might be because there are no real alternatives and unfamiliarity with the arcade board.

Besides that there was the dark time when Sirlin still worked there...
 
L

lunchwithyuzo

Banned
Shadow Hog said:
The audio was generally off. While Spinball's Options screen music was already pretty screechy, the version in Ultimate Genesis Collection is even worse.

Ultimate Genesis Collection did not have Sonic 3 & Knuckles. It had Sonic 3. It had Sonic & Knuckles. You could not combine them and play the complete game. They argued it would take away time from porting games like Zaxxon. This is despite the ROM generated from lock-on literally being a concatenation of two files, something anybody could do in one command on a Unix prompt.

The XBLA port of Sonic & Knuckles finally allowed you to play the games locked-on... but forced you to use THEIR save system instead of the game's. The game's would let you revisit a save you had completed, basically giving you a level select/New Game + for that particular character. Backbone's version did not - once you beat the game, that was it. This makes unlocking the Hyper characters particularly difficult - since it was by-and-large intended for players to unlock them via replaying their saves until they obtained 100% completion, not getting 100% completion in one run.

Just a few examples of their more inept moments.
Click to expand...
Meanwhile M2 emulated Sonic 3 and S&K flawlessly on Virtual Console, both individually and locked on.
 
T

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
Will Capcom fix Marvel 2 to be arcade perfect since Backbone couldn't?

(hah, who am I kidding)
 
M

Mikor

Member
Don't know much about the outfit, but their XBLA/PSN retro ports were always pretty barebones, and sometimes barely functional. The ones with netplay tacked on were always pretty horrible, too.

Still, shame to see good people out of work - here's to hoping those affected find themselves on their feet soon.
 
R

RobertM

Member
Sucks that people are losing jobs, but the games they released were horse dick. The multiplayer component was always broken, it was unplayable in Gunstar Heroes on PS3 before the patch and the search for partner function never worked properly.
 
S

Sir_Crocodile

Member
Wish more compliations were like sonic jam - if it had had sonic cd on it, there'd be no reason for me ever to play other sonic games.

though I guess that wasn't actually emulation
 
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