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So, is Afterburner Climax lost forever?

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PC version is missing graphical effects like bloom and stuff. looks oddly like a mobile game.

The missing graphical effects are too bad, but it still looks pretty swanky in 4K. I imagine you could probably simulate some of the missing effects with SweetFX and other injectors.

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Hmm, you're right actually... I just feel that it's a way more widespread problem with gaming than movies. I think in general the movie industry has more "respect" for its history than gaming (at least right now; I know it hasn't always been the case). But yeah, I definitely remember having to track down out-of-distribution movies through various means on more than one occasion.

It sometimes comes from the other direction... that is, Sega may have been perfectly willing to negotiate some sort of 'forever license' to use whatever jet was at issue, but Boeing may have not wanted to play ball and agreed to only X years in case better opportunities came up later.
 
the game is so good

I own it on my ps3 but I wish it had come out on steam

I'm still really pissed I missed outrun 2006 on steam

fucking sega
 
You never see that with movies anymore, at least not as widespread... Can you imagine the blu-ray relase of Fight Club having some random public domain song during the last scene because they wouldn't have the rights to the Pixies song anymore?

This has happened to movies a lot, but you really want to see that nonsense, look at TV shows. You want WKRP on DVD? You have a choice between having a bunch of music edited out, or bootlegs someone taped off TV and transferred to DVD-R.

It's not just physical releases that get molestered that way either. There are shows on Netflix with problems like this too. Season 1 of Supernatural for instance. It's particularly weird watching the finale with the music all changed, then starting the first episode of season 2 where they have the music intact over the exact same scene being recapped.

It's annoying as fuck, and completely anti-consumer, but that's what you get in a world with insane copyright laws.
 
Physical copies of Outrun 2 and Coast 2 Coast may exist, but in my opinion Outrun Online Arcade is still a huge loss. Thankfully I did buy it on the 360 and it will forever reside on my hard drive. While I enjoyed Outrun 2 (don't think I ever played C2C) Online Arcade was pretty different. I mean, they're both very similar because they're both Outrun, but they're by no means the same games. But Afterburner took me completely by surprise. I never got around to buying that. Though I did pull the demo, that's small consolation.
 
I think this who licensing stuff with Sega games has gotten beyond a fucking joke at this point. They really need to start working out some contingency plans to keep the games around. There's no good reason why game with so little non-original content are being pulled. You wanna release After Burner Climax on console? Cool, do it without the licensed jets, and then make those free DLC for those that buy it early... At least then it's just the DLC planes that disappear instead of the whole goddamn game... it's such a simple thing to avoid, that I get angry every time I think about it. Same with Outrun.

Shit, if Daytona USA's going down too, then swap out a couple of assets and put up Sega Racing Classic in its place, playable against people with Daytona USA. No excuse.

Unrelated, I wonder if licensing is why we never got a home port of Scud Race?

I kinda doubt it, considering this would be during the sort of time window where Sega were happily paying KFC, Swatch and the like to fucking advertise for them in their games, lol.

Plus, there's no port of Daytona USA 2, yet there was a Daytona USA 2001... so it'd seem the licensing wasn't the only thing leading to strange choices.

SonyToo!™;172799138 said:
I have AbC but I missed Outrun plus Sega Rally 3 XBLA/PSN which was delisted a year later for unknown reasons (says wikipedia)

Get Outrun 2 or Coast2Coast for Xbox, and get Sega Rally Revo for 360 or PS3. In both cases the XBLA/PSN version aren't the best versions of the game anyway.

Physical copies of Outrun 2 and Coast 2 Coast may exist, but in my opinion Outrun Online Arcade is still a huge loss. Thankfully I did buy it on the 360 and it will forever reside on my hard drive. While I enjoyed Outrun 2 (don't think I ever played C2C) Online Arcade was pretty different. I mean, they're both very similar because they're both Outrun, but they're by no means the same games. But Afterburner took me completely by surprise. I never got around to buying that. Though I did pull the demo, that's small consolation.

Outrun Online Arcade is basically a subset of Coast2Coast. If C2C were a 360/PS3 game, it would render Online Arcade immediately obsolete.
 
I bought Double Dragon on 360 years ago and tried to download it again the other week. I can't as it says the game is no longer available. They should give me my money back if they are taking the game back. Not my fault my other 360 broke.
 
Outrun Online Arcade is basically a subset of Coast2Coast. If C2C were a 360/PS3 game, it would render Online Arcade immediately obsolete.
Can't speak for Coast 2 Coast but visually Online Arcade destroys Outrun 2. And from footage I've seen of C2C, that as well. I agree with you about Sega rally Revo, however. I prefer that over the online version, though I'm glad I own that as well.
 
Incidentallly, if making purely fictional jets wasn't an option, there could have been another way to replace the licensed content.

replace everything with russian jets.

No, really. Look at the credits for all 2000s-onward flight sims and arcade flight games. Russian planes are NEVER licensed.
 
Can't speak for Coast 2 Coast but visually Online Arcade destroys Outrun 2. And from footage I've seen of C2C, that as well. I agree with you about Sega rally Revo, however. I prefer that over the online version, though I'm glad I own that as well.

Yea, I'm saying if C2C were a 360/PS3 game... in which case it would look the same as Online Arcade. Content-wise Online Arcade is just a stripped down version of it. I don't think the visuals make it a huge loss, more the platforms it was on.

Online Arcade also looks better than vanilla Outrun 2, but that's pretty much limited to resolution. C2C actually looks slightly inferior, likely a result of it being multiplatform unlike the original (PS2 version).
 
No one talks about the PSP port of Sega Rally Revo, but that was delisted as well. And it was a decent port. At least physical versions of that exist.
 
I bought Double Dragon on 360 years ago and tried to download it again the other week. I can't as it says the game is no longer available. They should give me my money back if they are taking the game back. Not my fault my other 360 broke.

This is why I'm not looking forward to digital only future.

Scott Pilgrim got taken off last year.

Luckily Gaf was quick to tell me how to get it before it was taken off the store
 
No one talks about the PSP port of Sega Rally Revo, but that was delisted as well. And it was a decent port. At least physical versions of that exist.

Yea, that was pretty good also. Felt very different from the console versions. As if the console version were to Sega Rally 2, as the PSP version was to Sega Rally 1.
 
No one talks about the PSP port of Sega Rally Revo, but that was delisted as well. And it was a decent port. At least physical versions of that exist.

Made by Bugbear Entertainment funnily enough. I never played it but I heard it was a brilliant version of the game.
 
Sometimes, the replacement of licensed materials can make a game feel odd, as with Crazy Taxi. But honestly I can understand some of the licensing, it can help cover the cost of development OR a developer wants it for other reasons (like setting the mood/environment or scene they want to convey)...though conversely this can lead to games being removed digitally once the deal expires, which sucks and makes me wonder if this will to Yakuza 4 and 5 on PSN as well (see as they have product placement/licensing deals).

Yes, I dunno why. I asked him on Twitter once but he just told me that he friggin hated it.
Atleast he didn't told me me to ask my mom...

It is, he just strongly took issue with the button layout for some reason.

Which is again odd, seeing I don't recall having that much issue with the controls after maybe changing something in the options and getting used to it.

Maybe he wanted a flight stick.

This has happened to movies a lot, but you really want to see that nonsense, look at TV shows. You want WKRP on DVD? You have a choice between having a bunch of music edited out, or bootlegs someone taped off TV and transferred to DVD-R.

It's not just physical releases that get molestered that way either. There are shows on Netflix with problems like this too. Season 1 of Supernatural for instance. It's particularly weird watching the finale with the music all changed, then starting the first episode of season 2 where they have the music intact over the exact same scene being recapped.

It's annoying as fuck, and completely anti-consumer, but that's what you get in a world with insane copyright laws.

If I recall House has it's opening replaced during the syndicated airings, not sure about Netflix...though I know the Saban produced Ninja Turtles Next Mutation had ALL of it's music replaced, not only on Netflix, but DVD as well (sure not really a good series, but just using it as an example, and I kind of liked the original theme song).
 
So glad I've got After Burner Climax on my PS3 HDD. People better grab Daytona USA because one day, that'll be gone from PSN / XBLA too.

It's simply a flawless port of the arcade in HD. They didn't mess with the controls, and I don't even have a racing wheel. Plays flawlessly on Dual Shock 3..
 
But honestly I can understand some of the licensing, it can help cover the cost of development

Wouldn't this typically be the opposite case though? In general a licensed game is paying for the license. It would be cheaper to make the same game without it.

Either way, I still think that when dealing with ports such as these, the licensed material should be offered separately so the loss of it doesn't take the entire game with it.

Crazy Taxi is a slightly unique case, because the licensed music is a large part of what made the game. It's not too dissimilar to when Wipeout games would get ported to Saturn and have to replace all the licensed tracks with new CoLD SToRAGE tracks. In Crazy Taxi's case however, they could simply have offered the original soundtrack as DLC (they obtained the licenses again in time for the iOS port), or added an custom soundtrack option, so we could slot the old music back in ourselves. These aren't really difficult problems to overcome as long as you're not thinking ridiculously short term when you make the game.
 
Why do military planes have to have a fucking license anyway ?

F-14D Super Tomcat - So currently that would be Northrop-Grumman.

Edit: It's just a bunch of polygons and textures. WTF.
 
Really? Why's that? And are you talking about Outrun 2 or Outrun Coast2Coast (which is an expanded release if I'm not mistaken)? Guess I should track that down.

the thing is that outrun 2 was a chihiro arcade machine which was, more or less, just an xbox. the original port was basically 100% identical to the arcade in terms of textures, geometry, lighting, attract mode, etc with a few unnoticeable alterations to make up for the lack of memory. coast 2 coast was the port of outrun 2sp, and was heavily downgraded on ALL platforms, including the xbox! so essentially, the xbox vanilla OR2 looks noticeably better than every version of c2c due to platform parity. the pc port has the resolution advantage but you're just getting a clearer picture of an uglier game (with missing bloom lighting that every other version had for some reason).

while vanilla OR2 does miss out on the SP courses, you get a better and way more interesting mission mode, plus the bonus scud race and daytona 2 courses. the japanese version actually had additional tweaks by am2 to make the bonus courses more accurate to the originals among a few other things. that version can be hard to find though and cost me a good chunk of change, but the NA version is pretty cheap.
 
You're not really missing much... although you seem to have become a hardcore AB fan. This game just wasn't my cup of tea, for some reason.

PC version is missing graphical effects like bloom and stuff. looks oddly like a mobile game.

It's missing bloom, I think that's it. It does look a bit dull, but it still looks solid and plays just as well. Has a lot more content than the PS360 games, which is what matters.
 
I regret not getting into Steam/PC gaming sooner...I would have like have Out run on my PC.

Wouldn't this typically be the opposite case though? In general a licensed game is paying for the license. It would be cheaper to make the same game without it.

Either way, I still think that when dealing with ports such as these, the licensed material should be offered separately so the loss of it doesn't take the entire game with it.

Crazy Taxi is a slightly unique case, because the licensed music is a large part of what made the game. It's not too dissimilar to when Wipeout games would get ported to Saturn and have to replace all the licensed tracks with new CoLD SToRAGE tracks. In Crazy Taxi's case however, they could simply have offered the original soundtrack as DLC (they obtained the licenses again in time for the iOS port), or added an custom soundtrack option, so we could slot the old music back in ourselves. These aren't really difficult problems to overcome as long as you're not thinking ridiculously short term when you make the game.

it might not be case of covering cost, it may be just something the developer wanted, designing convenience, or to bring in familiar elements to interested players (or you know, ad space).

They probably weren't thinking about a possible home console port when developing the game, so when they did decide to port it they just thought it was cheaper/easier to get the license (maybe a short term one because I think Japanese companies don't really think about long term sales) rather than rework it.
 
Sega is insane. That's all there is to it. I know a guy who is currently trying to buy an Xbox 360 just because it has this game installed on it. It's madness.

I was looking some games randomly up today, I had no idea that Sonic Riders, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg and Crazy Taxi 3 all had PC ports that were exclusively put out in Europe and then never rereleased again! Hell, you can buy Billy Hatcher from Amazon's digital store, but not Steam. It's madness.

Why you wouldn't want to have as many of your games out there on digital store shelves is beyond me. There has to be some intern somewhere at SEGA HQ that can be given the task of erasing a few logos and then putting out the game again.
 
it might not be case of covering cost, it may be just something the developer wanted, designing convenience, or to bring in familiar elements to interested players (or you know, ad space).

They probably weren't thinking about a possible home console port when developing the game, so when they did decide to port it they just thought it was cheaper/easier to get the license (maybe a short term one because I think Japanese companies don't really think about long term sales) rather than rework it.

Yea, that's entirely understandable in many cases (especially with something like F355 Challenge). It even makes perfect for the industry in the past, with arcades and physical copies that would have only been distributed for a limited time... but today, where you have the opportunity for prolonged sales, it's time to start thinking about creating the games in such a fashion where it's not made completely unavailable in the future. Most of Sega's offering shouldn't be disappearing. They're not reliant enough on the licensing to justify it. Stuff like F355 Challenge, TMNT '89, The Simpsons Arcade, Marvel vs Capcom? Sure, those make sense... without the license there's basically no game to be had.

This isn't the case with something like Outrun, which Sega has demonstrated in the past by releasing versions of the game that aren't dependent on the license.
 
I'm still upset I never downloaded GTI Club+: Rally CĂ´te d'Azur for PS3 before it was delisted.

I LOVED THE ARCADE *version, and somehow never knew it got a DLC release remake. Sucks.

Frank Cifaldi, save us all.

(there was a cheat code to race as a dog in the arcade, wonder if this version had it)
 
For those asking, if you bought a game and it got delisted on XBL, you can redownload it forever, so no worries, you still got Afterburner Climax.

I got that baby on day one, since I was waiting on it ever since that E3 montage clip of games SEGA made in like 2004-2005 with that, Chromehounds, the Sonic game, etc. Afterburner really wowed me in that video.

And thanks for the link to vote to make it BC on XB1, I just voted as well too.

https://xbox.uservoice.com/forums/2...05-after-burner-climax-backward-compatibility
 
Breaks my heart.
Luckily I've double dipped on both PS3 and 360 (same with Outrun) but man what a bummer. I wish it came out in a period when SEGA bothered to release PC ports of their stuff, but it was a bit too early to market for that to happen back then...

I love playing it with my flightstick on PS3! It's a masterpiece but people didn't buy the game.
Most gamers have such a shit taste, no wonder we get less and less awesome arcade games (farewell Cave).

For those asking, if you bought a game and it got delisted on XBL, you can redownload it forever, so no worries, you still got Afterburner Climax.

I got that baby on day one, since I was waiting on it ever since that E3 montage clip of games SEGA made in like 2004-2005 with that, Chromehounds, the Sonic game, etc. Afterburner really wowed me in that video.

And thanks for the link to vote to make it BC on XB1, I just voted as well too.

https://xbox.uservoice.com/forums/2...05-after-burner-climax-backward-compatibility

22 votes. lol
It'd never happen anyway because it got pulled with licensing issues (fuck real planes, this is why I don't want this stuff and am mostly content with "repro"/bootlegs/inspired by) but fuckin' bottom of the barrel shovelware have triple those votes, never fail to disappoint me fellow gamers
 
Can't speak for Coast 2 Coast but visually Online Arcade destroys Outrun 2. And from footage I've seen of C2C, that as well. I agree with you about Sega rally Revo, however. I prefer that over the online version, though I'm glad I own that as well.
I picked up Revo on the cheap for 360, great game. This was after I learned SR Arcade was yanked.

By coincidence, I just picked up OutRun C2C on eBay for PS2. Is it considered a good alternative to OR Online? I'm already going in, just curious about comparison.

Even more coincidental and back on subject, I learned of Climax's yanking while researching C2C. Bad news.
 
I picked up Revo on the cheap for 360, great game. This was after I learned SR Arcade was yanked.

By coincidence, I just picked up OutRun C2C on eBay for PS2. Is it considered a good alternative to OR Online? I'm already going in, just curious about comparison.

Even more coincidental and back on subject, I learned of Climax's yanking while researching C2C. Bad news.

Actually if you have a 360 then both OR2 and OR2C2C are backwards compatible with the Xbox releases.
I actually love 'em both, pretty different games (of course it's just minutiae for the non aficionados)
 
Are there any other games with the same "rinse repeat + unlock" system in place? It got fun with every replay and unlock.

The only other game I can remember that worked just as addictive and fun was Sega's other game Ghost Squad on Wii.
 
Actually if you have a 360 then both OR2 and OR2C2C are backwards compatible with the Xbox releases.
I actually love 'em both, pretty different games (of course it's just minutiae for the non aficionados)
Oh wow, thanks for heads up. They both play well on 360? I don't think I have ever dabbled in the 360's BC capabilities.
 
Are there any other games with the same "rinse repeat + unlock" system in place? It got fun with every replay and unlock.

The only other game I can remember that worked just as addictive and fun was Sega's other game Ghost Squad on Wii.
Just got Ghost Squad! Incredible game, so cheap these days on eBay and at GameStop. Big time bargain.
 
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