Farewell, Beam Software

Reports emerging today indicate that Krome Studios (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Game Room) has laid off all its workers and will, for the most part, close this Sunday.

While it’s depressing to hear about any developer shuttering, this closure is especially sad as it includes Krome’s Melbourne branch, previously known as Melbourne House and Beam Software — the longest running development studio in Australia.

Though Beam was apparently responsible for the awful Back to the Future NES games, I’ll remember the studio for its Smash TV ports, Krush Kill ‘n’ Destroy, and the SNES masterpiece I can’t help but bring up whenever an opportunity presents itself (like this one), Shadowrun.

And to quote Oscar-winning hip-hop group Three 6 Mafia, “Fuck what you heard and it just no doubt,” the SNES release of Shadowrun was wayyy more fun than BlueSky’s Genesis game. Keep that thought in your mind as you tip a 40 later tonight in Krome’s honor.

Buy: Shadowrun (SNES)

See also: Reasons To Return To Classic Shadowruns

tags / beam software / krome / melbourne house / australia / shadowrun / data east / ec

NSFW: Super Smash TV x VirtuaGirlHD

Man, I don’t even know. Someone sent this in, and it’s too bizarre not to share: two Japanese dudes playing Super Smash TV (SNES) while running one of those embarrassing “virtual girls dancing/stripping on your desktop” apps.

Two videos after the break:

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tags / super smash tv / snes / beam software / virtuagirlhd / nsfw / ec

Reasons To Return To Classic Shadowruns

Though FASA Interactive and Microsoft’s Shadowrun first-person shooter in 2007 was widely regarded as an awful idea, we still have the cyberpunk series’ previous three games to return to and enjoy.

In fact, the SNES, Genesis, and import Sega CD games (each separate experiences from different developers despite sharing identical titles) have all seen recent developments that might convince you to play them again even if you already ran through them a decade ago.

• The top-down, open world Genesis game has a new conversion mod that revises your starting races, characters, stats, inventories, and more. Programmer Magus77 also made lots of changes to the weapons and text/dialogue, though I haven’t tried it out myself to see if this improves or damages the game. Dragoon Zero’s Races mod is also worth trying, too.
• Someone unearthed a beta ROM of the European SNES game (I typically don’t like to direct link ROMs, but I’m making an exception since this wasn’t intended for retail release), which someone should investigate. There’s a similar beta ROM for the U.S. edition, and that revealed a few “censored” edits:

• As for the Japan-only Sega CD game (intro cinematic embedded above), someone put out a call for technical help to create an English patch several months ago. This isn’t the first time someone’s hinted at an upcoming translation for the text-heavy title, but I’m mentioning it anyway because maybe some kind-hearted ROM hacker will read this post and lend their talents to the project.

If it’s not obvious, I love the Shadowrun series and spend too much time following unofficial projects since the PC game killed any chances of future video games. Also, I wish there was a DS emulator that ran Shadowrun SNES without any issues so I could play this on a portable.

[Via Romhacking]

tags / shadowrun / fasa / snes / genesis / sega cd / blue sky software / beam software / compile / group sne / imports / translation / homebrew / ec