Pac-Man World Re-Pac - Updated Credits

A few months after the game's release, Bandai Namco and Now Production had made a patch that improved many aspects of the game such as credits, soundtrack and other stuffs that were changed. The credits part is the most important part of the update with the original team who made the game credited with True Accurate Information. Under the Sounds and Music part, it is Todd Dennis and Joey Kuras who worked on the music and sound part for the original version of the game under Tallarico Studios at the time. With this updated credit list, it can be proven that Tommy wasn't the one who composed the music for the game at all. Also, it is the first step in undoing the damage Tommy had caused in the past. The other games Tallarico Studios was involved in still have inaccurate credit information for the composer as if many websites still state that Tommy is the only composer due to him passing off others' compositions as his.

Besides the patch, there are two DLCs for the game and the Jukebox feature allows you to listen to the high quality versions of the songs in the Sound Test. The soundtrack in Re-Pac is said to be updated with high quality and uncompressed versions for free but the Jukebox remains a paid DLC.

Indeed, compliment is what I have for Bandai Namco and Now Production for a truly accurate credit information for the original team under Special Thanks category. However, this update should come with a new responsibility to keep those credits for the original team accurate and protected. The sites that wrongly claimed that Tommy Tallarico was the composer for this game should have corrected the credits in the game page once the update was out. I don't know for sure if there's some jerk-face out there who tries to make a malicious request to those sites to revert said changes or not but I think that the Special Thanks portion of the updated credits list should remain in the accurate form.

Aside from the Intellivision Amico controversies, there were other backlashes Tommy had done in the past such as giving Super Smash Bros games a low score in the most ignorant and offensive ways, and passing off other stuffs like sound effects he didn't make as his creations for instance but you can look up those stories yourself as they're beyond the scope of this blog article. His actions were not cool back then and the on-going controversies surrounding the Amico had already tarnished the Intellivision brand and his reputation further.

COD MW2 Phone Number Requirement Controversy (A controversy borrowed from Overwatch 2?)

If the phone number requirement for Overwatch 2 wasn't controversial enough and is a feature that won't go away for new players of the Overwatch series, even the upcoming COD MW2 will borrow that feature. That's Activision Blizzard for you which can mean game franchises coming from both sides. The problems Activision Blizzard mentioned like bots, cheaters and other types of gaming misbehaviors still exist to this day but to make use of phone number to tackle such problems isn't going to help a lot in my opinion as there are concerns of the solution's downside like someone using someone else's phone number to do such malicious activities for instance. So, if you see someone doing such malicious stuffs in the game online, you should report that person. Of course, it's not an easy feat from that point on as once that person's account is terminated for their disruptive behavior, they can come up with another account to circumvent the account termination and continue such nefarious acts using it.

It's like Activision Blizzard downplayed the backlash Overwatch 2 caused and they're trying to extend it further with other games like COD MW2. You may wonder if they're out of their minds enough to cause another gaming controversy in a row or something after a series of controversies surrounding Diablo Immortal occurred. It's worse than we thought but again, people were right to be disgruntled and vocal over such controversies like this. And to anyone claiming that people were "entitled" for feeling displeased, disgusted or whatever over the Diablo Immortal gaming controversies, it'll be best to reflect on this mistake.

Overwatch 2 Phone Number Requirement Controversy

What kind of greed would come up with an unusual requirement for playing a game like Overwatch 2? Indeed, there have been cases of bots, cheaters and toxic behaviors plaguing whatever popular game out there but to make people enter their phone number as part of logging in to the game in the guise of tackling those problems is already STEP BACKWARDS. How can THAT be a solution to said problems, anyway? It's like an email address isn't enough to mainly represent your gaming account that the phone number is somewhat the main thing or a required portion of the account information.

It's stupid that Activision Blizzard had the audacity to mandate something like linking/attaching a phone number to the gaming account to play. Sure, if anyone is caught using bots, cheats or even impersonating someone as part of a disruptive and immature behavior for instance, that account of theirs will be banned. Granted, that person may end up making a new account to continue such acts as a way to circumvent the account termination. As long as that person's malicious behavior continues to persist, it's going to be a long fight against it. So, what can Activision Blizzard do to the phone number belonging to the account that is reported?

A bigger problem is that not all players were able to play Overwatch 2 as they happened to use prepaid plans but the lucky thing was that not all prepaid plans were affected and even then, is there an acceptable reason on why the account used to play Overwatch 2 and other games must have the phone number attached? What about the authentication app? Many tech companies have one and it's said to be more convenient for account security.

I don't know for sure if handling over your mobile phone number by attaching it to your battle.net account as required for playing Overwatch 2 is considered a privacy violation or not. Even if it is, the mandation of phone number for playing Overwatch 2 is a NEW LEVEL OF GREED I've ever seen in gaming. How much worse the reputation can be for Activision Blizzard after endless amounts of controversy surrounding Diablo Immortal? There's already a well-known case of some streamer spending huge amounts of money on the microtransaction feature in Diablo Immortal and his acts were financially selfish. You could have spent that same amount of money for a house or something instead.

Yesterday, Activision Blizzard dropped the controversial requirement for Overwatch 2 for anyone who's played the original Overwatch. So, I do have a feeling that the requirement is still there for those new to the series or something.

Currently, the game is in early access and was recently released a few days ago as a free-to-play game on PC, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Playstation 4 and Playstation 5.

Pac-Man World Re-Pac Credits Controversy?

The Rangok Skies controversy was a real definition of controversy over stolen assets that the credits list remains questionable to this day because of the stolen sound effects. That is something the developers have no intention to do something about despite having made some improvements and other changes prior to the game's release. At least, Mojang put in the a fully detailed credits list for sound effects taken from freesound.org that are used for Minecraft and that's appreciated.

In the case of Pac-Man World Re-Pac's credits list, the original developers of the original Pac-Man World aren't credited in the remake and that's a shame and disappointment. I don't know if this qualifies as a gaming controversy or not as there's a chance the developers of the remake will be requested to fix the credits list, just like how the developers of the 8th-gen console ports of S**** Colors added the credits related to Godot game engine in a patch. Believe it or not, for every game made with Godot game engine, the game engine has to be credited no matter what despite it being a free and open-source game engine. At times, there are games that show the Made With Unity logo upon starting up. This lets people know that that game is made with Unity game engine.

Some interesting story prior to the remake's release included the fact that Tommy already sold the rights of the soundtrack to Bandai Namco and the composer is actually Todd Dennis, not Tommy himself. The credits information for the composer circulated on the net has been mostly incorrect and to find a correct one is a challenge to this day.

There are multiple reasons why people were interested in taking a look at Pac-Man World Re-Pac:

1. It's a remake of the original that came out on Playstation 1 in the late 90s.
   
2. Tommy and others under Tallarico Studios were involved in the sound and music department for the game.

The controversies surrounding the Tommy and Intellivision Amico were severe enough that the Amico console will never see a release because of his poor leadership and disrespectful attitude but the latest concern regarding the fact that the original developers of Pac-Man World aren't credited in the remake has attracted the attention of the content creators, fans of the franchise and some original developers. I don't know for sure if even Tommy would be disappointed for this but if it looks like he doesn't care for this controversy-to-be because the remake was released recently on Switch, Sony and Microsoft consoles, maybe his disrespectful attitude is still intact even if the Amico console was pretty much dead at this point that even a family would buy a Switch and play together or something.

S**** Origins compilation controversy

Hate to blog anything related to that franchise I'm no longer a fan of but it seems that many journalists and content creators brought up AAA GAMES while the topic is about S***c Origins, the upcoming compilation game from Sega that will come up in two months or so. The reason has something to do with Sega emulating what other companies like Rockstar and Square Enix did to the original versions of the old games in favor of the remastered ones. Suffice to say, GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition is a disaster when it came out that Rockstar would eventually come up with a plan to reinstate the original versions of the old games on Rockstar Store which is still an incomplete amend they had made. Square Enix had pretty much done the same for some classic Final Fantasy games on mobile and PC in favor of the Pixel Remaster versions and the Pixel Remaster versions of the classic Final Fantasy games are said to be quite good.

So, what is Sega planning for this compilation this time? Well, they're planning to remove the original versions of the classic S***c games from Steam, PS3, Xbox 360 and even Playstation Now service in favor of the enhanced compilation version done by Christian Whitehead and Headcannon, who were behind the enhanced ports of some classics previously released on mobile with S**** CD enhanced version released on mobile, PC and consoles. The recent actions from Sega attracted the attention of some content creators who make news videos on big games like those AAA games for instance.

The gaming news that had both the upcoming S***c Origins and whatever AAA games mentioned was the reason I wrote this blog article in the first place. Even the content creators who make gaming news videos, ranted about this S***c Origins controversy in a professional way like proper adults.

Thieves pretended to be particular YouTubers and gangs broke into a truck over Playstation 5

Man, the scalping saga is likely to continue on and it sort of does according to the more recent videos about product scalping cases from ReviewtechUSA. It's one scummy business practice that still needs to be dealt with and taken for a crime. And about the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles that cost more than their own original and genuine prices on online stores, it may seem that the scalpers had already earned like a huge amount of money from such scamming actions of theirs. It's basically like a scam and the you may end up getting something else than whatever you've wanted so you need to be careful about buying online as a customer. Who knows what the said scammers are going to do with that amount of money they've got from those illegal online sales?

And to involve YouTubers by impersonation for this same scummy practice is going to make them look bad once they and their viewers find out about it. In fact, it's not even just YouTubers any scalper can pretend to be when it comes to selling products like the Playstation 5, Xbox Series X and even the recent NVIDIA graphics cards for Windows computers. Such products I just mentioned are really expensive but the hardcore-level NVIDIA graphics cards are serious show off of technical power. Such pretense from the scalper can draw negative attention and especially when they pretend to be whatever celebrity or superstar for the same nefarious purposes.

8-Bit Eric and viewers were more or less pissed when it happened but should piss you off more is that the scalpers removed and re-created their accounts to continue the same shady practice. Another problem is that the impersonation account of a YouTuber may have more or less momentum like the number of subscribers than the genuine one but the email account is something the companies may need to carefully determine to see if that email account truly belongs to that YouTuber or not.

From 8-Bit Eric's channel, there's a video of him telling you that he's not selling anything online and warns you that if there's an account that uses his name, a photo of him or both on those online store sites like Offerup, Craigslist, you name it. This kind of trolling as done by the scammer that was caught by 8-Bit Eric isn't anything funny. It didn't seem like an easy challenge for 8-Bit Eric as if the scammer/scalper could try to make misclaims that the genuine person that was 8-Bit Eric was impersonating the scalper when IT WAS ACTUALLY THE OPPOSITE which meant the scammer impersonating 8-Bit Eric, not the other way around. At the end of the video, 8-Bit Eric issued the viewers the stern warning against those scalpers who try to set him up as a scammer. Legal actions against scalpers won't be an easy feat for him as I guess a lawsuit from him against them may be quite costly.

Another different case involved some gangs breaking into a fast-moving truck to steal the Playstation 5 consoles out of it via a stunt. It's like something you'll see in an action movie like Fast and Furious series. I don't know if that kind of movie may cause bad influence or not but such stunts like that because of high demand are total criminal acts. There are various mature AAA games that offer multiple choices in which you can choose to do good things in those games as one of the choices and that is what you should go for. When you do good things in those games, the player character you're playing as eventually gets trusted like the reputation is currently in a good state. But to emulate a character doing a bunch of bad things like some kid driving away his parent's car without a license could cause a news like that to exist permanently.

Patience is a great key when it comes to buying a product online and what those gangs did to get the Playstation 5 console from inside the truck was a desperate act. Sure, a modern electronic device can be considered locked that there's no way to use it should it get stolen or something but that won't stop scalpers from doing such scummy practice as a bricked or stolen console can be a bigger advantage for them. Those who drive the fast-moving trucks should be aware of such acts and there should be some protection feature for the doors at the back of those trucks.

PS5 Scalping Group snatches opportunity to order 1000 Xbox Series X but orders are cancelled due to "technical error"

Well, we're back at this scummy saga again with the part two involving the same group who got 3500 PS5 units. This Time, they tried to order 1000 Xbox Series X using the bots involved but their orders were cancelled due to "technical error". The same error affected the REAL customers who wanted to buy the next-gen consoles online. It left them disappointed but at the same time, they should be surprised about the fact that something like 1000 orders of Xbox Series X units backfired on the scalping group. It sort of angered the scalping group or something but the chaos like this regarding the next-gen console launch is still on-going and we don't know when will this scummy business stop.

About the part when the same scalping group said that they had "no regrets", as they claimed, they would continue to do such scummy things like ordering 1000 Xbox Series X units online. It's kind of like how "unusual activities" at the Golden Village cinemas are still allowed there in which anyone can book there just to do something else instead of watching movies with "no regrets". It's sickening that one of the idiot-bookers/Idiots-On-Facebook, got only positive reactions, articles and compliments like two weeks ago and that's that. Will those idiot-bookers do the same shit again in the future with "no regrets"? That is something I don't know. I also don't know if anyone else will be stupid enough to do the same thing as those idiot-bookers did or not.

If that's not scummy enough, the online stores have the units of Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles having an extremely high price with some Playstation 5 units costing a million bucks. This kind of action should be a crime to us! Another scummy problem is that the customers got something else instead of whatever next-gen console they ordered. Perhaps, some scalping group must have tempered with the customers' orders or something. What if the customers got a non-working console or even a console in a damaged state?

Then, there's another scummy practice someone had done according to one of ReviewtechUSA's videos regarding the on-going chaotic scalping saga for Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X, and that is to impersonate a professional YouTuber and doing what that YouTuber didn't do, selling next-gen consoles through impersonation. It's not just a YouTuber any scalper can impersonate like a scammer that they are. It can be any other professional occupation. However, that case is a different story of another time as it involved some individual scalper, not that same scalping group.

The Road to Playstation 5 Live Stream

Boy, when I saw this live stream, it looked like some kind of school lecture with the presentation shown on the screen as if the live stream took place in the Lecture Theater room in whatever tertiary school like polytechnic, university, you name it. The details about the Playstation 5 from the presentation were too technical but I was still able to understand stuffs like the PCIe, SSDs, RDNR2, AMD Zen 2 CPU, 3D audio, etc. Some parts of the system specs are a bit lower in value when compared to the hardware specs of Xbox Series X so it looks like the Xbox Series X is more powerful than the Playstation 5. Before the hardware specs reveal began, the presenter eventually talked about how Sony had three principles when it comes to Playstation 4 and Playstation 5. Remember, the whole presentation was suited for developers although it was originally planned to be a GDC presentation. Speaking of GDC, large events were already cancelled and game and tech companies were already planning for online alternatives due to the on-going virus outbreak. Even worse is that there may or may not be product delays because of that. Not to mention that most of the public places were already closed in the western regions. However, there's still hope when it comes to obtaining new games like digital-copies for instance.
Why would they organize the live stream that was suited for developers in the first place? Well, it cannot be helped that the GDC was cancelled and most of the professional game developers are already working from home although not all countries are in Lock-Down mode as we speak and new cases are coming in daily. For gamers, the presentation might seem boring to them that they would wind up falling asleep or some sort and they expected the actual hardware and gameplay reveal instead of all the technical stuffs.
Like Xbox Series X, Playstation 5 will have the optical-disc drive for physical copies of games with the SSDs to have lesser load times and things should look instantaneous. Games that are not AAA-level will be too obvious that they load quite quickly but for patches, it's said to be something like incremental patching or something thanks to SSDs like there's no seeking whatsoever. Unfortunately, the selected Playstation 4 games will be backwards compatible with Playstation 5 and it may disappoint those who expected full backwards compatibility when compared to what Xbox Series X has.
Even with 850GB/1TB of SSD, certain AAA-games are going to take a WHOLE LOT of GBs like around tens to even hundreds of GBs so it looks like you can fit a few AAA-games on that storage. Also, we still have yet to see what the actual hardware of Playstation 5 is like as well as the gameplay of PS5 games in action via a trailer or some sort in the future.