Independence Day

In this episode:

The News

• Sony’s official disc announcement: physical production for all new PlayStation games ends January 2028, and the PS3 and Vita stores close region by region starting August 2026
• The full story is in the emergency episode (Episode 3) right next to this one
• Mat Piscatella (Circana) on Nintendo: “Nintendo is going to be Nintendo, for better and/or worse”
• Limited Run Games’ “Forever Physical” statement and the boutique publishers’ response
• Sony’s own 2013 used-game ad, the one where they handed each other a disc, is now a funeral
• The Video Game History Foundation recovered a lost 1990 Indiana Jones demo from one man’s personal archive
• Game Informer’s complete back catalog, every issue since 1991, now free online
• M2’s Goemon collection hides Crisis Force, a 1991 Famicom exclusive getting its first release in 35 years
• The Sega Genesis recompilation project gets its first playable game: Sonic 1
• The 3DO comeback collapsed in about a week
• Jerk Gustafsson (MachineGames co-founder) takes over Arkane Studios; Leonard Bendel resigned
• Quick hits: Oblivion Remastered on Switch 2 with a real cartridge, Ecco the Dolphin remaster reportedly getting a physical edition, Cruis’n Blast delisted, Til Morning’s Light coming back, Epilogue building an N64 cartridge reader, the open-source EZBuff disc resurfacer

This Week in POCG History (1998 and 1999)

• July 4, 1998: posting about VGA drivers for the Diamond Stealth II S220 on Independence Day
• July 7, 1999: EA shipped Skydive!, the nineties “make a game about anything” era
• July 9, 1999: Acclaim reported $80 million in quarterly revenue, five years before the company was gone

The Most American Games Ever Made (Top Loader #02)

• The full ranked top ten is on the site: The Most American Games Ever Made
• Metal Wolf Chaos: you play the President in a mech, FromSoftware made it in Japan, and it took 15 years to reach America
• #1 Bad Dudes, #2 The Oregon Trail, #3 Vice City, #4 Duke Nukem 3D, #5 Contra, #6 Fallout, #7 1943: The Battle of Midway, #8 RoboCop, #9 TMNT, #10 Crazy Taxi
• Seven of the ten were made outside the USA

From the Zip Disks (new series)

• The new series about losing and recovering this website
• The Zip disk labeled “Adam’s stuff” that held 200+ reviews, Sega Post material, and thousands of news articles from the original site
• Parts one and two are live under Editorials

This week’s question:

• What is the most American game in YOUR collection? Not where it was made, the game that makes you feel like a Fourth of July cookout.

Coming up: July is Nintendo month. Next week, the top SNES games that play like summer. Then N64, then Game Boy for its birthday.