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«If we’re going to make a change that sweeping, the original needs to be there as well»
The world of physical media in brick-and-mortar stores has dwindled in recent years due to the proliferation of digital storefronts readily and conveniently available on modern platforms. While some would never think to pay the same (or more) on a digital game versus one they can hold with their hands, plenty of folk are just fine with buying a game and installing it on their SD card without having to leave the house.
However, the success of boutique labels and companies like Limited Run Games has proven that tangible video games still have a place in the world, especially since a digital game store like the Wii Shop Channel, or more recently the 3DS and Wii U eShops, can be closed forever — in turn making digitally exclusive games inaccessible.
Limited Run Games in particular has been an incredible boon in the industry, making physical versions of previously digital-only titles like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World The Game, The Mummy Demastered and plenty more available to the enthusiast masses. Sure, these physical editions will often cost you more than they do digitally on the eShop, and they’re only available for purchase for a certain amount of time, but they are helping guarantee that these games won’t be entirely lost in the digital sands of time.
Making a limited edition print of a video game is only half the battle, however. Once a game sells out, there’s no way to control demand with supply and the price of a game on the secondhand market may well rise. We see this all the time when a well-regarded sequel comes out and fans want to go back and play the original, or when a game doesn’t sell well and is produced in low quantities. Take EarthBound on SNES, Chibi-Robo on GameCube or even Attack on Titan 2 on Switch — all of these games took some time to gain popularity and now are essentially inaccessible for most in their original forms. Every retro game player or collector has at least one title on their list they wish they could buy, but can’t justify an entire paycheck to acquire it.
Limited Run is trying to do something about this. Shantae on the Game Boy Color is not only one of the best titles on the handheld, it also released during a time where the Game Boy Advance was already on the market. Much like in 2017, when people started forgetting to feed their 3DS and spent their free time with the Switch instead, Shantae released to critical praise but commercial indifference. This unfortunate timing made the game a highly-sought treasure that you’d be lucky to play in its original form. But then, in 2020, Limited Run Games announced not only a digital re-release of the game on Switch eShop, but also a physical re-release on an authentic Game Boy Color cartridge.
This port and re-release was thanks in part to Limited Run’s new development tool, the Carbon Engine. A Swiss army knife of sorts, it allows LRG to take games from the classic era and port them efficiently and authentically to every modern platform and, in turn, also offers the chance to bring back games in their original format. More recently, Limited Run used the Carbon Engine to bring over the previously Japan-only exclusive Super Famicom game Shin Nekketsu Koha: Kunio-tachi no Banka, to the West for the first time, re-branded as River City Girls Zero.
Given the frequency with which LRG releases physical games and the desire for them, the impact this effort could have on the retro game community is huge. We recently sat down with LRG co-founder & CEO Josh Fairhurst, marketing director Alena Alambeigi, and game developers Dimitris Giannakis and Joe Modzeleski to dig deeper into the process and find out where they hope to take the Carbon Engine.
Nintendo Life: The Carbon Engine is basically a development tool that you’ve created that works with emulators to make classic games playable on modern hardware. But what truly makes this truly easier for developers to work with and what makes it different from other methods that are currently being utilized?
Joe Modzeleski: The way we approached developing our toolset was a very frontloaded way. We did a lot of the development and the R&D in advance. What we try to provide for people that have legacy content and don’t really know what to do with it or how to bring it to modern customers is to offer them an all encompassing tool that supports every modern platform. Our Carbon Engine has a variety of emulators it supports and it’s one central tool base that we work out of that we’re super familiar with since we’re using and expanding it all the time. It’s a situation where partners don’t have to come in and invest a lot of money or resources, we just need software.
Josh Fairhurst: I don’t want to simplify it this much, but, we’re building a tool that’s basically plug and play for retro re-releases. Every game is going to have things we need to adjust the emulation for, but then once we make those adjustments, every other game that uses that emulation going forward can also be that much better. It’s a continuous thing that the tool will keep getting stronger, more powerful with each release.
Joe: You’ll find weird quirks too, like the first game we really focused on, Shantae, worked great, almost perfect! Then you start messing with some other games and find weird edge cases, weird CPU instructions that aren’t commonly used and we fix it!
Dimitris Giannakis: When we talk about a retro throwback game sometimes there’s a stigma about “well that game can never come back because there’s no source code, assets were lost or there’s some piece that doesn’t exist anymore” so it’s difficult to bring back. With Carbon we’ve tried to simplify that as much as we can to really say, “Look, we can get this game up and running.” Ultimately we can kind of break those barriers to bring any game we choose to.
Josh: We’ll develop classic titles for free for our partners and we’ll work with the Video Game History Foundation to dig up original art assets that we can restore for our releases. VGHF actually acquired all of GamePro magazine’s QuarkXPress files, which is how they use to edit the magazine and for our Doom 64 release they were able to pull art directly out of an old issue for us to use. Another thing we’ll do is if there’s a licensed game out there to bring back, we’ll actually invest the time and resources to reach out to the license holder for that property to figure out how to get their approval to do it. That process is incredibly time consuming, no one wants to chase around all of these Hollywood people around to figure out how to do this. Something that stuck with me during a GDC talk a few years ago was when Frank Cifaldi said you’ll never see a re-release of Home Improvement on the SNES, and I just want to prove him wrong now! We would do the work to go to Disney and they would say “Oh no, you’ve gotta go talk to Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Tim Allen and all of these other people to get their okay.” but we’ll do it!
There are a lot of people out there that will compare and swear by a game’s original version as the only way to play thanks to the fact a re-release may see a change to music, framerate, in game art, dialogue or even something as simple as a font. Are you keeping this in mind and trying to future proof these releases so players won’t have to feel like they’re making a sacrifice to play these games?
Joe: The average person will look at these releases and they won’t notice a difference. However, there’s always going to be a difference as emulation isn’t perfect, it can’t be. There’s a range of what “good enough” is, and there’s “good enough” that I don’t think is truly “good enough” and there’s “good enough” that I can settle for that’s basically 99% almost perfect.
Dimitris: We want to be very careful we don’t mess too much with the original source material of the game. We want it to be the same game, other than removing any licensing information that we potentially need to, we want to offer that same experience! So when you play Shantae on your Switch and then you play the Limited Run cartridge on your Game Boy it should feel and look the same.
Josh: If a game has a feature that is core to that game, we want to make sure that feature is represented. With Shantae, we made sure we had the Game Boy Advance enhancements that were there in both the physical and digital versions. If you look at the 3DS eShop release of Shantae, it’s missing those GBA features since it’s running through a Game Boy Color emulator. So the different color palette is not there, the extra transformation is not there, you’re losing out on a core piece of the experience. We don’t sacrifice those pieces and it’s all about accuracy for us.
Joe: The way we worked within River City Girls Zero. You want save states in an emulator but the average person doesn’t know what that is. So we presented the whole UI in a way that reads to the player as these are just your save files. The way you load into them through the game and the way you save them, all of it’s presented in a way that’s very modern despite the fact the game doesn’t save that way. We’re careful with how we mask things to make it feel modern, but the game is exactly the same.
Josh: One of the big things with River City Girl Zero that I actually really like is that WayForward, Joe and Dimitris pushed really hard is that we had a part that was authentic to the original game. We wanted to make sure we had a version of the game that was very River City Girls, that had the flavor and style of that but we also wanted to give people the option to play it as if it was the Kunio-kun game. So we had one localizer work on it but they localized it in two different ways. One way as a Kunio-kun game, unrelated to the River City Girls brand and then we had it as a River City Girls game. In each version there are little differences that don’t really impact much but they give fans of Kunio-kun a way to play it without having to go “Oh they shoehorned it into River City Girls.” If we’re going to make a change that sweeping, the original needs to be there as well.
If we want to re-release Rap Quest with Vanilla Ice, the game that never came out!
Joe: Say we want to do that!
Josh: Say we want to do that and Vanilla Ice is like “Nahh, you can’t have Ice Ice Baby” so then we’ll license Under Pressure from David Bowie and then change it slightly and we’re good!
Joe: Another thing I wanted to mention is not necessarily preservation but accessibility. There are all sorts of different barriers to something like that, but the absolute casual consumer needs to have a game available on the eShop or PlayStation Network. So you can have a game like, for example, Mother 3, with a fan translation on your PC but that doesn’t mean it’s truly 100% accessible to everyone because there’s always that barrier. One of the things that I think is really important with the philosophy of Carbon is that we’re hitting them at the lowest common denominator of accessibility. We want to take the back catalog of our partners and make it accessible to everyone who wants to play it.
River City Girls Zero and Shantae both received physical versions alongside digital releases, but will you always release your Carbon Engine games physically?
Josh: Anytime we do a Carbon release we’ll follow it up with a physical version. We feel a physical version ensures it stays around, especially if we’re going out to get licensed titles back. Licensed games are five times more likely to get delisted from online shops before anything else. Like Stranger Things 3, the minute that got announced we knew we had to talk to those developers to find out how to make that thing physical. And look, I don’t want to say that a Limited Run physical copy with X amount of copies is accessible, but it is more accessible then the game being completely delisted from the eShop. Physical copies are important for that in terms of just making sure these games are accessible in some way after the term of that licensing agreement is over.
That’s another thing about Carbon that I really like is if you look at the movie industry the barriers of studios getting their content to people are so low since they just send the video files to Netflix, and then boom, it’s out! While Carbon won’t lower the hurdle as much as a streaming service would for video, we could theoretically help a publisher get hundreds of titles from their back catalog back on the modern platforms.
Alena Alambeigi: There’s a lot of times where the hype for a game is higher now than when it first came out. For instance with Shantae on Game Boy, Josh told me we sold more copies of the Game Boy Version that we printed than when they originally put it out.
On your website you cover the fact that part of the goal of the Carbon Engine is to bring back potentially hard to find games that are expensive on the second hand market. Shantae was an excellent starting point. How often can we expect to see Carbon Engine releases and do you have more publishers you’re talking with to plan the future?
Josh: We have a lot of Carbon stuff in the works.
Dimitris: We have three Carbon projects we’re working actively on right now and there’s more in the pipeline.
Josh: There’s about seven projects that we’re about to sign in the next week that people are going to get extremely excited about!
Do you feel any of this work is taking away from some of your other projects or are there two separate teams working on things?
Dimitris: It feels like it compliments the business in a new way and having that development arm of the company adds value to the overall brand. I was telling Josh the other day that when River City Girls Zero came out that someone tweeted that they didn’t realize Limited Run makes games. There’s a lot of public perception out there that they feel Limited Run doesn’t make their own games, but slowly as we make more of these Carbon Releases they’ll definitely know who we are and what we’re about.
Josh: These publishers and developers are very forward focused and just don’t always have the time. We’re just stepping in saying they just have to give us permission and we’ll do it for you. Submission, ratings, and it’s great! It doesn’t detract from our core business because Joe, Dimitris and Kevin are all sort of off doing their own things with Carbon. It’s very complimentary and helps grow our business in a way that makes sense!
Sometimes you’ll hear a story that a developer or publisher used an emulator or software they didn’t have permission to use. What sort of hurdles and steps are you taking to not fall into those same problems.
Dimitris: There’s two ways we’ve kind of approached that. First is, for Shantae on Game Boy Color, we built our own engine in house. So there was no need to go out and find a license for an existing emulator. But for other emulators that we run in the engine like SNES for example, we’ve actively licensed emulators. We’ve been very mindful and careful about when we get licenses for these emulators and that we’re very respectful to the original author and that they’re fully onboard with what we’re trying to do.
Josh: It’s very important because we’ve seen the response the community will have if a hardware manufacturer or somebody just takes something open source and doesn’t let the people that made it know. That’s how you lose your credibility in that sphere.
Dimitris: We love this stuff! I’m personally a retro gamer and everyone else here is as well. If we’re going to bring something back we’re gonna make sure it’s ten out of ten quality and no less.
Now before we run off, where does the infamously expensive and rare Nintendo game, Little Samson, rank on your list of games to bring back?
Josh: It’s super high on games I want to do but no one knows where the rights are. We reached out to Taito and they said “They might be with the owner.” So we found the owner (who was really hard to find) and he said “I don’t know who has the rights.” So now we’re basically at a dead end. Who has the rights to Little Samson? No idea.
That’s one of the things that’s really hard about this is that you basically need someone who is a forensic detective to track down where the rights to these things are. You have companies like, I think it was Culture Brain that were allegedly fronts for criminal organisations. Where did the rights go for games like Ninja Kid? Are those games ever going to get re-released?
The biggest thanks to Josh, Alena, Dimitris and Joe for taking the time to share their passion for all things retro with us.
Be sure to let us know a classic game you’d love to see them bring back to the life!
About Zion Grassl
When Zion isn’t making videos for our YouTube channel, you’re likely to find him out playing shows with his band Constance, or out and about hunting down the latest gaming deals. He swears the sealed Labo Kits sitting in his closet are going to be worth “big bucks” someday…
Comments (95)
With the chance of my comment being deleted.
LRG is a scam FOMO company that betrayed their original costumers from their original psvita days. From stuff like removing their “preservation” and “forever physical” slogans and removing all traces of those slogans because they “never” had them to shipping the DOOM collection with the original patch thay has the always online DRM despite the update removing the DRM being launched before the physical got announced to having shiren the wanderer on pc be a code in the box because it undersold at pre orders and they never announced the change from a DRM free disc to a code. And many many other things.
EDIT: have been wanting to say this for a few LRG articles now but this seemed like the perfect one to share my grievances.
Terrible company. They try to look angelic, but under the hood they have so many shady practices. It’s a shame most media sites want to turn the other cheek and be mates with them, that’s why I’m thankful for SwitchWatch who call them out when they need to be. I wish there were more out there. Happy to hear suggestions.
I am their customer for since Bloodstained Curse of the Moon!
The only problem I have is the cost of shipping but I live in the EU and I have to deal with that!
As much frustration I have over LRG’s practices, it is great to see that there’s a team focused on bringing old and obscure games like River City Girls Zero to new audiences.
Huge relief to see other people share their valid complaints about this company and their practices in the comments section.
On the one hand, I don’t like their limited run business model, it just feels like it needlessly inflates the price of physical media. A game like River City Girls is so good it should just be getting a standard wide physical release.
On the other hand they’re bringing back great games, that aren’t accessible anymore. Which if you ask me is more than a fair trade.
If anyone’s reading this from limited run, I would love a Super Dodgeball (neogeo version) release. It’s impossible to buy, and it’s great fun. That and someonebring back Powerstone.
I like LRG. They offer a product that I love. Physical versions of often obscure or beloved games. They are expensive (more so on the after market) and they take FOREVER to ship, but their stuff is premium, always works great and is super high quality. I’ll keep buying from them selectively when they offer games or franchises I care about. I’m waiting on the deluxe Castlevania Anniversary collection to ship. Wish I had ordered the Monkey Island collection.
It’s a shame they don’t respect their customers – it takes them months to actually ship anything out, and the cost of shipping on top of the inflated cost of the games themselves is just plain disgusting. Unless it’s something I desperately want physically and there is no other option, I won’t be giving them my business again.
@xiao7 Shady practices like what?
This was a great company, emphasis on the was, now its just pure garbage, the shipping times, lack of customer service, mistakes in shipping things and the latest doom collection issue asking customers to send back cartridges so they can remedy the situation THEY created with Bethesda.. International shipping is not cheap.
@xiao7 @darkswabber I too own a LOT of LRG releases/versions – must be close to 100. They’ve changed so much and got greedy. Lost sight of what they claimed to be and had so many bad experiences with them I’ve given up. They think they are gaming rockstars and act like it. Do what they want and have terrible customer service. In my eyes a release from them is as good as no release at all. Wouldn’t touch anything from them these days.
I wish places like Nintendo life didn’t fawn all over them but I’m guessing some nice collectors editions grease the old palms.
The comments sections always prove what actual customers think of them.
@Grail_Quest the special editions are not super high quality. It’s cheap tat. They get by because most people “keep them sealed” those that open them though find cheap and nasty bit and bobs that are not of the quality you’d expect.
I am a fan of LRG and their goal to bring physical games to those that would be forever digital and possibly unplayable if exclusive to one console. That being said……the part of “accessibility” goes out the window when those same games are produced in a much more limited number than typical retail and themselves become hard to find and super expensive, just like their original counterparts!
I’m somewhere in between the haters and lovers of LRG. I’m glad they give some classic games a chance for a modern physical release, like Shantae and Shantae Risky’s Revenge. But I felt burned when I bought Streets of Rage 4 from them and then a better physical version with the DLC came out and was available at stores like Best Buy.
@darkswabber without making it a too long story.
I was one of the first customers there as a Vita fan myself, and they are absolutely not the same company anymore.
To keep it short, no respect for the customer, milking them out and having dollar bills in their eyes a littlebit too much are the main issues with them nowdays.
And they (especially one of the co-founders) can claim what they want, but it’s all lies and no matter what they say, LRG as of now is only in name only, the original LRG is long dead.
I went too long with them, my last order being in 2021 (recently got that) and I sworn to myself to avoid them after that.
And we can all start about others doing same and also lying, but the difference is that most other companies dont claim to be better, they just ignore you telling the truth.
LRG as of now would go as far as removing your comment and going against it with their “story” just to make you look bad to the public… such a shame because they were great in the past.
@Ade117 Agreed with you. I think what they should have done, like they do for Best Buy releases, is provide a warning they’re not the only ones with the exclusive physical license (so they can’t claim to be limited).
limited run games tend to cost more than eShop downloads so I’m never going to get one.
It’s just emulation. Silly buzz words.
so in short, people don’t like LRG because they can’t afford the games and are too impatient to wait for them to be shipped.
All jokes aside, they make great editions of games that might otherwise not get a physical release.
My only complaint is sometimes they release a title that goes on to get a full release at retail anyway.
@Moistnado it makes sense though why. It costs money to produce it in a physical fashion.
I absolutely love Limited Run. If it weren’t for them there are simply a lot of games I would never play. I don’t believe in paying such high prices for digital rentals. It’s funny how people thought digital distribution would make all games cheaper. It enabled the distribution of indie and A-level games, which is glorious. But in the established space all it did was make physical games more expensive LOL
@piecez which title did they release that got a full retail one? I can only think of Huntdown but there was a reason it was only a Collector’s Edition.
@Magrane streets of rage 4, Star Wars x 4 on switch…. I think there have been others….
@Magrane perhaps it costs limited run a lot, because these are limited runs. I’m not paying for that though, its not worth the money.
Funny they should give Home Improvement as an example, and needing to talk to Disney.
Wouldn’t they have to talk to someone previously involved with the dissolved company Absolute Entertainment, which apparently was the publishing arm of Imagineering (how David Crane had fallen from 2600 star to the definitive American shovelware contract developer in the early ’90s, but that’s a different point).
The point is his company was reportedly sunk by Goofy.
Someone screwed up and ordered WAY too many copies of his game on the Sega Genesis, and it bankrupted the company.
@piecez I can assure you I can afford their releases and their over priced postage but just because you can afford it doesn’t mean the cost is justified from their end. It’s very easy to always blame consumers and not the business. Some of us are a bit savvy and expect more.
Anyone who pays the hyper inflated prices from Limited Run over digital is an absolute mug. Most people who buy from them simply do so to extort people on eBay. Anyone who thinks they are buying physical as an investment is kidding themselves. I also hate how even though they are an established company they still won’t invest any of their own money, always relying on customers to stump up cash up front, absolutely no risk on their behalf. Awful company with beyond dreadful customer service.
@HamatoYoshi I find your comment extremely disrespectful. I’m a mug because I want a physical game collection? I get it – I’m paying over the digital version. Do you not think I know that?
But to tell me what I do with MY money? Not cool.
I’ve never had any issues with LRG. I guess I could understand how some people dislike how they operate, but in general I think they are doing some cool stuff.
I’ve always buy sporadically and purely based on the feeling of "oooh, it’d be nice to have a physical copy of that" (and also willing to wait the long production time) when it hits me.
I am a bit of a collector or I wouldn’t be bothering obviously, but I don’t consider them investments. Nor am I interested in their absurd large collector’s editions. I buy to play.
@piecez You can have all the money in the world, for that matter, and you’ll still find reason to complain if you don’t understand how a specialty market works. Perhaps if they were just a "bit savvy" in this regard…
The only gripe I have with LRG is the amount of time it takes them to produce and ship their goods.
I ordered a copy of Meat Boy Forever at the start of July 2021 and it’s only just being shipped. That means they’re able to hold on to customers money and invest it for the best part of a year and earn returns on that money – we all know they can get the product out the door, there is no justifying how long their production/shipping process is.
On a separate note – anyone know when their Contra Anniversary Collection is meant to go up for order? It was announced in June last year, with no sign of it since then…
The star wars games got full retail releases afterwards. And there was one game that LRG got exclusive rights to the english language version too – to stop imports (e.g. from Play-Asia). Their products are cool sometimes but they are happy to con people.
I am still trying to get the Shantae Pirate game. The $300-$500 eBay price tag scares me.
I’m very much pro – LRG and think they’re doing an excellent job of game preservation. Long may they continue.
I seem to be in the minority here but i’ve only ever had fantastic customer service from them. When my delivery went missing, they resent it without fuss (x2 games, even after selling out) with free delivery. I was shocked how little hassle that was.
The shipping price is expensive if buying individual items (tracked delivery from the US to Europe is never exactly going to be cheap)… so buy more copies and resell.
If the price is too high in general then wait for a sale and buy digital but dont lambast a company whose business model is up front from the beginning. "Limited Run" may be unintentially inflating the cost of physical, but they’re also proving the chance to buy it in the first place.
Regardless, nice article. Keep up the good work NL.
@K1LLEGAL That one game was the first Valis collection. It definitely was not cool to gain exclusive rights for a translation.
And I think it’s Strictly Limited that pulled the same shenanigans with Cotton Reboot.
@Andyv01 You’re not in a minority. It’s a rule of thumb that the upset customers are the ones who are more vocal than the ones who are pleased. Not that the angry ones don’t have points to make, but most people who are happy with LRG aren’t as likely to a post about liking them as the people who don’t.
I order from LRG every month. Sure, they can be annoying, but I’d still rather have the game on cart than not have it. I only buy digital at deep price cuts so I can leave my limited releases sealed. At that, I am all about supporting LRG. If it weren’t for LRG and all the other limited edition publishers, we wouldn’t have these carts at all.
@PoliticallyIncorrect Silly question, but why buy a game digitally and then keep a sealed copy of the same game?
Don’t mean to bash, but I’ve never understood the whole ‘I’m going to buy something and then leave it sealed’. To me, it’s akin to buying an empty box, as ultimately the end goal is the same..
I’ve spent more than enough money on these guys – their shipping has gotten worse to the point that some of my stuff had damage on arrival (not to the point of me sending it back since I open my stuff anyway and have no intention of reselling) and the fact that they had to fix two of my orders due to not sending everything. Not to mention they take forever and a day to send everything to you. I’m at least glad my last two items (the Doom Classic Collection and a Rottytops plush) came in just fine.
@AndyC_MK111 Because sealed games are worth a lot more than loose or CIB games. Most of those digital copies were bought long before a physical was even announced, and I like playing games when they come out as well like everyone else.. I don’t mind double dipping on a game that I love. I love supporting indie companies, and quite frankly, I can afford to do so. I have at least 500 digital games.I am 52yo now. When I die in like, let’s say 20 years or so, my son can sell them and probably make bank.
I did get that special bundle of Shantae from them a while ago. Even got a vinyl record soundtrack with it, too!
I’ll never forget when I ordered it. Literally a few minutes after I placed the order, my phone rang. It was my credit union, which at the time was the servicer for the credit card that I used to place the order, warning me about potential fraudulent activity on my account. I told them the purchase was legit, and the order went through.
Then I forgot all about it; until a couple years later, I get an email from the delivery service (UPS, if memory serves me correctly) that my order had been shipped. I ultimately got my package. I chalked up the delay to COVID, which screwed up the entire global supply chain.
Much in the same way, the same thing happened when I bought the True Form Midna (Definitive Edition) statue from First4Figures: bought the statue, got a call from my credit union, confirmed the legitimacy of the order, then forgot all about it until a couple years later, I get an email from out of the blue (this time, from FedEx) saying my order was on it’s way.
@farrgazer thanks I couldn’t remember the title. Bad practice!
@darkswabber : The classic DOOM cartridges were completely up to date at the time of shipping (and when they were in my hands). Unfortunately, Bethesda have since patched them over the last month or two (and I have no idea why as they haven’t added any new features), negating the storage space saved by owning the physical edition.
The Bethesda sign-in never went away; it merely isn’t as intrusive anymore, and there is no requirement to connect online in order to play the games, which is a Bethesda problem, not an LRG one. LRG often delays their releases to ensure the latest version is on the cartridge (and why Celeste took so long to finally ship), but if publishers issue patches/DLC after the fact, that’s only their incompetence/contempt at play (which is an increasingly common occurrence, sadly).
DOOM 3 and 64 remain up-to-date on cartridge though.
@stuntz0rZ : Same here. The only one missing from my collection, and I’m reluctant to open the others.
I suspect that future consoles will be graced with a complete collection that will render the Switch releases obsolete, but I’m still cautious.
The Scott Pilgrim point is so weird because there’s no chance it would have not gotten a physical release. There was just more money in doing it through limited run
The common complaints about shipping times blow my mind. Things got worse for LRG in that regard the same time they did for everybody else. They get various parts of their final products in shipments from different countries (all Switch carts made in Japan, most packaging and included items elsewhere). Anybody going in expecting shipping as fast as it used to be is insane.
I have also never had a problem with their customer service. They’re always quick to respond and helpful in my experience. Regarding Doom…suffice to say regardless of LRG’s spotty online reputation, I still trust them more than freaking BETHESDA. Why people discount the possibility this is all THEIR fault is entirely beyond me.
@HamatoYoshi I happen to own sealed copies of both Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda among many others. Bought them day 1. Would you mind explaining how they are worth so much, yet according to you, people that buy them as an investment are kidding themselves?
P.S. I bought doubles as an investment. Funny how that works, eh?
I would’ve really liked if capcom had included the original resident evil 2 & 3 with the remakes like how when you complete the medieval remake you unlock the original
It’s cool they were doing physical editions when digital only was the big direction, and that is important. But, calling themselves Limited Run is annoying. Nintendo’s tactic is to insinuate they sell premium products worth a premium price forever, but they don’t call themselves Premium Expensive Games. The fear of missing out is a massive motivator in separating people from their money, as is the opportunity to resell premium versions which I suspect is a good chunk of LRG sales now. They’ve done some good but we should never pretend they aren’t a business exploiting a particular market for profits.
Revive Little Samson and all indiscretions are forgiven.
@Moistnado no. The reason is because they have to pay, just like any publisher who creates physical games, for the cartridge distribution as well as the art, paper and plastic cases. If it’s not your tea of a mark up, maybe you should only stick to digital. It’s not just LRG.
But the funny part is that even digital games when first released are “conveniently” and “coincidentally” released at the same price as a physical one. Go figure.
It looks like we even have to thank them for existing. Geez.
I had Shantae for GBC. Kept the box in great shape, only played it two or three times, and then sold it on eBay for roughly what I spent on it ($30). Nobody cared about the game back then except Craig Harris at IGN. Same story with Metal Gear Solid for GBC, although I did beat it before selling it. I wish I had kept them both.
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Celeste and Golf Story are my only games from LRG. The wait times for both were extreme, and seeing the games show up at Best Buy later felt like a kick in the teeth. I don’t order anything from them these days.
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Reading this feels like this is a native advertising article. Makes me wonder if they did get paid to write this.
Reads like a press release from LRG’s marketing department rather than an interview.
sell whatever physical games you have now. the next generation is not going to want them.
In it mostly for reprints of rare cartridge-based titles. Still waiting for the Ninja Five-O rumor to become a reality.
They sound like maybe they’re actually a force for good, but it sure feels like my copy of KOTOR is in a galaxy far, far away.
Also, it seems a missed opportunity not to have named their engine Oxygen, since it seems to connect with everything.
I really like physically collecting Switch games, so in that sense I do end up with a lot of LRG releases.
I do feel they have a lot of legitimate problems. And many of the problems come off worse because I just don’t like their vibe. I know that’s a pretty vague criticism, maybe even bordering on unfair. That said even in this interview I feel it. When a brand starts mattering more than the product I tune out. That’s what it feels like has been increasingly happening. People just buy the LRG stuff because…it’s LRG. Does the game matter anymore? If Poop Simulator came on a cartridge would you buy the Collector’s Edition that came with a commemorative poop coin? At least to keep it sealed on the shelf. Their game pages don’t sell me on the games they sell, even.
I feel the passion from places like Super Rare and Fangamer. Neither is without problems, but…for example I read Super Rare’s e-mails they send about the games they release. I feel like they legitimately want to sell me the GAME, not just a box with a brand on it. And that makes all the difference in the world to my perception.
A few years ago, I really liked LRG. And I was willing to wait a year for Celeste to get the DLC on game card.
But nowadays you have to order the games, before they are out digitally, before they have been reviews by magazines like NL. And when they are delivered months later, they already had a 50% discount in the eShop.
Also, a lot of indie games, which probably would have been released by 505 games, Merge etc in the stores worldwide, are now only available time limited in the US.
LRG was one of my reasons to go all digital. Now I buy more games for less money and feel more relaxed about it.
@Owozifa I wouldn’t buy a game I wouldn’t play. Games like Pokemon, Barbie, Yoshi games, Kirby, etc. aren’t really my cup of tea. I prefer shooters, challenging RPG’s, metroidvanias, souls-likes, platformers that are challenging, rogue-likes, and arcade style games. If I were to try something new I would buy it digital first, and on sale at that. When I was a kid, almost every game was challenging.
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LRG seems to really rile people up! I’ve ordered maybe a dozen Switch games from them, and other than the looong wait for delivery, I’ve no cause for complaint.
I prefer to buy games physically for my collection – not as an investment, but just because I enjoy getting something tangible that I can share. And LRG release or not, you have a limited window during which you can shop for these physical games. Scarcity is nothing new, and their open preorder system seems fair to me, as long as you don’t miss it! I’m just glad they are publishing titles which otherwise may never get a physical printing.
I dearly wish LRG could work with Midway’s rights holders, or Hamster and their Arcade Archives, or how about Capcom? It’s tragic that Ghouls and Ghosts Resurrected is digital-only, and their arcade collections on cart would be insta-buy for me!
Limited Run doesn’t «respect» anything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS3ja5JnkAQ
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@Magrane heaven forbid, they need to spend money on something to make it worth selling. What’s new? They also need to charge a competitive price. Truth is that bits of paper and plastic, and a bit of data on a chip are quite cheap to manufacture and the price of games is heavily inflated anyway, to generate a false value proposition. You are defending LRG so hard on this site, I get the feeling you work for them.
By the way, to you guys who are complaining that it takes several months to get a LRG game copy. Well that is because they only put their order in when pre-orders are done. So of course it is going to take awhile to get shipped to you because of wait times.
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I just wish some publishers explained us why they refer to them to… publish? Calling that a "shady" practice is still an euphemism.
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@PoliticallyIncorrect @HamatoYoshi can we keep the immature trash talking to LRG and not a 40 comment back-and-forth here
@QueenAdrian Wow, that’s a pretty in depth video. Doesn’t do Wayforward any favours either. I’ve bought 2 games from Limited Run in the past and luckily haven’t had problems, but I’ve heard too many horror stories about them that I’ll probably not take that chance again.
@darkswabber I love that there’s just so much salt surrounding the company. Commenting is ok, but just not buying from them is better.
Wait, Culture Brain was a front for organized crime? Holy crap!
Creating an artificial rarity for certain videogames from the get-go.
yea, what a "great" idea in times of scalpers, scammers and co.
Only have heard bad things about them. Then again I’m one who is perfectly fine with digital content because PLAYING the actual game is what matters, not some plastic with a piece of colorful paper in it that you may look at for longer than 5 seconds once every few years.
@Moistnado No, I’m just a major fan. If you look at my first post I did list one of that company’s negative qualities. There are other companies who are better at shipping.
Judging from your posts, you’re not a fan of none of the physical game companies out there. They are all pricing their games at around the same amount, so yes it’s a competitive price. You will never see anywhere a new physical copy sold for the price of the digital version unless its Nintendo. They are not competing against their digital versions of their games for pete’s sake…..?
These companies are aimed at more retro gamers or collectors, not anyone who gamed starting only in the digital store age.
Not a fan of the company/their business model, to put it very mildly, especially being from Europe (price & availability)
A lot of the published titles deserve a “unlimited run”, being “forever physical”, like many other games handled by other third-party publishers. Artificial scarcity is an absolutely bad idea when it comes to classic games, and yet here we are.
Thank goodness for others, like THQ Nordic (Star Wars)…
Producing artificial scarcity is hardly the ideal method of preserving the legacy and accessibility of classic games? It’s ironic this article uses Shantae as an example when by the time Switch collectors were even aware that they could own the entire Shantae series on Switch, the third game, Pirate’s Curse which released years earlier by LRG was already fetching $200 on the secondhand market making most collector’s dream of a "full physical Shantae collection" just a pipe dream.
It wouldn’t be much of a problem but LRG by nature of their business model will never do a second batch reprint of their games, and often have exclusivity within select regions meaning that the only way to acquire these games physically in the future is through second-hand means, and with only a small handful of exceptions, the majority of these titles prices have inflated due to their scarcity, with many resellers specifically buying them to take advantage of this scarcity.
@Gwynbleidd Yeah, I find it absolutely ridiculous to see games by the likes of Ubisoft and Konami published by a publisher like that.
I assume it makes more money but it’s still very shady (similar to when they got the rights to the only English speaking physical of No more heroes)
I’ve only bought one game (a collector’s edition) from them, took months to arrive and when it did they delivered it to the wrong address. Not surprised so see all the criticism.
While I can’t really argue with the fact they bring out games physically that otherwise wouldn’t get a physical release, it’s all irrelevant. Due to their time limited or quantity limited releases, you just end up with overpriced copies for sale on the second hand market.
And I don’t order their games from them at the time of release because I’m in the UK. The games just aren’t worth the price when you factor in postage and possible import duty. It would be nice if they could open a distribution centre here in the UK and/or Europe.
Thankfully, for retro releases, I’ll always have the option of playing on original hardware via Everdrives or copied discs.
I will stick with digital and normal retail. I just want to play games. I don’t care about some overpriced sealed collection just to say I own it or so I can squeeze every last dime I can out of someone later. The second hand market is over inflated as it limits the ability to just play games.
@QueenAdrian watched some of this and while some points are decent, others are an extreme stretch made to sound convincing by being placed next to said decent points and delivered by a guy with a catchy inflammatory speaking style. Would just ask people to question (for themselves, I am not going to put in the energy to break down this video in a comments section) each point on its own merits and whether there’s an actual problem or the YouTuber is spinning it to make it sound nefarious. A sure fire sign: when he whips up hypotheticals as an example and then runs with those hypotheticals as if they’re fact.
The worst part of this company is that after several years in business and obviously many millions in tbe bank, they act like they are still a fledging outfit and expect customers to wait up to a year until the product is shipped to them. Awful service.
Unforgivable.
I’ve bought about 7 games from then and currently waiting for Quake and Dusk to arrive. Love this company. Looking forward to a pre-order announcement for Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties.
@Owozifa You raise a good point about "brand." I didn’t really have any other thought about LRG other than just being another publisher who does random games, and occasionally promotes something that tickles my fancy…but River City Zero definitely made me go "wha…seriously?"
https://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/120524/large.jpg
What the heck is this?? It’s one thing to sneak in a publisher or developer logo into an in-game billboard or ad, but to have the logo as a permanent border? Granted, you can change it, but this definitely feels like flaunting.
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