General Arcade & Retro Chat' Special Championship Edition

Tom Mann Centuria

For those who like a good read, and are followers of you tuber and former retro gamer journalist Kieren Hawkin (Retrolaird/Laird's Lair) here's a pretty thorough dismantling of his work and how he operates.

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/300891-the-review-of-a-z-of-atari-st-games-volume-3-book-retrolaird-is-trying-to-delete/

Tl;dr he's a troll. And it's amazing how many fights people get in over technology decades old.

Tom Mann Centuria

University Challenge just had a picture round with a pic of breadbin commodore 64. None of them knew what it was. I feel old.


Edit: In other news the first Spectrum Nexts are finally getting delivered, mines the accelerated version so I still have a bit to wait for mine, but it's been 3 years, so a few more weeks won't hurt.

CosmicSmash

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

University Challenge just had a picture round with a pic of breadbin commodore 64. None of them knew what it was. I feel old.

They also thought a NES was a N64, that actually surprised me more.

CiDeRmAn

CosmicSmash wrote: »

They also thought a NES was a N64, that actually surprised me more.

Someone needs a short sharp visit from the slap fairy.

Bet they know the difference between the PS4 and an XB1... philistines...

Retr0gamer

Had a friend that thought the NES was the first ever computer.

It's facepalming stuff but you have to also take into account the fact that for these university kids the PS2 or later was their first console.

CiDeRmAn

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Had a friend that thought the NES was the first ever computer.

It's facepalming stuff but you have to also take into account the fact that for these university kids the PS2 or later was their first console.

sniper_samurai

Seems the Royal Mail game stamps have some easter eggs that are revealed under a black light.

https://twitter.com/bitmap_books/status/1227209303142096897?s=19

CiDeRmAn

Come on now, who saw Oh No! and said it in a Lemmings voice???

It's like a screenshot of the original Worms game and saying "Armageddon!"

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy

Shared from The Galway Gamer if anyone's interested

"Tomorrow at 2pm exclusively on FlirtFM, I'll be chatting with the woman whose voice brought life to Lara Croft; @ BlondShelley. We'll be discussing how she got involved in the creation of Tomb Raider" ...

If you can't catch it at 2pm tomorrow, you'll be able to stream the show on FlirtFM's archive Mixcloud account, and I'll also be uploading it to my new Youtube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeUKEvOpwl9M0ksp85-nhhA

Retr0gamer

So missed a bit of big fan translation news.

Ganbare Goemon 2 and 3 have finally been fully translated.

Unfortunately there's been a bit of a... kerfuffle over the translation of Ganbare Goemon 3. The translator used the word 'Tranny' in the game. People took offence but on the other hand it seems it was probably accurate to the original translation. Still... think there's better words to use. Anyway the only information on it is from the cretins at niche gamer.

Anyway the translator has gotten reams of abuse because of it and has now left the scene.

Kind of a ****ty end to this. DDSTranslations did some incredible work and brought translations of Romancing Saga, and multiple Shin Megami Tensei games. They seemed to be very quick in getting fan translations out.

Also means that their plans to translate more Goemon games, including the fourth and a retranslation of Mystical Ninja, are now cancelled.

o1s1n

Yeah that's a tricky one, I see it was a literal translation that was in the Japanese version.

Later, Katala compares the translation to his seemingly physical copy of the original game, and confirms the original uses the Japanese term “newhalf” (“ニューハーフ”).

According to Wikitionary, the term is slang for a transgender woman. Katala’s tweet seems to concede it was an accurate translation, “but it’s still a ****ty word to translate it as.”

It was an accurate translation, simple as.

Honestly, I see removing that as bad as removing Swastikas from Bionic Commando/Wolfenstein 3D or replacing religious symbols in NES/SNES games.

Some things don't date well unfortunately. It's just a common fact of media. You need to keep that in mind when consuming content that wasn't created in our current climate. We shouldn't be changing things to avoid offense.

Retr0gamer

It's a shame. DDSTranslation did some great work translating some of the most wanted untranslated games. The Goemon games for instance were being worked on and abandoned multiple times by various groups and Aeon Genesis had made very little progress on the Maijin Tensei games for years.

I'd be more inclined to take Kurt's point of view from it. He was talking to Tom previously of XSeed and even he is a bit wary about it's use and if he is wary then probably wasn't the right thing to do considering how anti censorship he is.

Retr0gamer

So I beat D.....

It's a bit of it's time. It's very short and the story is kind of awful but it was enjoyable as a bit of horror shlock.

Retr0gamer

Gunblade rip off coming to Switch:

https://www.gematsu.com/2020/02/on-rails-shooting-game-assault-chainguns-km-coming-to-switch-on-february-20-in-japan

o1s1n

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Gunblade rip off coming to Switch:

https://www.gematsu.com/2020/02/on-rails-shooting-game-assault-chainguns-km-coming-to-switch-on-february-20-in-japan

Nice! I'll definitely be picking that up.

Reminded me of Tokyo Wars for some reason. Now there'd be a great game to port to the Switch - if they could somehow get it going online with multiplayer tank battles I don't think I'd ever play another game again.

Mr.Saturn

o1s1n wrote: »

Nice! I'll definitely be picking that up.

Reminded me of Tokyo Wars for some reason. Now there'd be a great game to port to the Switch - if they could somehow get it going online with multiplayer tank battles I don't think I'd ever play another game again.

Still baffling they dropped the sequel onto the Wii U and decided "nope, not gonna bother sticking in online multiplayer."


Allergic to money so they are.

CiDeRmAn

Focusing on the part of this that's important,
The Google Stadia platform is going to have the remake of Panzer Dragoon!
This will be in addition to the PC and Switch versions.
Hopefully the Panzer Dragoon II remake will also find it's way to the Switch and Stadia as well.

https://community.stadia.com/t5/Stadia-Community-Blog/New-games-coming-to-Stadia/ba-p/15052

Shapey Fiend

With regards that translation I guess you could have *'d the word or something make it more explicit that they aren't the translators words but the original author. I mean FF7 remake is going to keep the whole cross dress plot line I think it's better for them to take another stab at it (in whatever way is tasteful in Japan) rather than pretend it didn't exist. Doubtlessly whatever way a Japanese person tackles the subject it'll grate on western tastes. This stuff is pretty complicated don't think ragemobs are terribly helpful.

DaveyDave

I was thinking of getting a SNES Mini for the living room but they're going for a fair bit. Would have been good for guests but the Mega Drive Mini and PS Classic will have to do.

Seeing a few going for €100ish, you'd get a nice boxed original for a bit more and I'd rather that.

I'm done saving for a mortgage now so I'm itching to make a purchase, just not sure what. SNES, PSP, Vita, GBA SP...

CosmicSmash

DaveyDave wrote: »

I'm done saving for a mortgage now so I'm itching to make a purchase, just not sure what. SNES, PSP, Vita, GBA SP...

A Super Famicom and an Everdrive wouldn't be a bad choice.

Sparks43

CosmicSmash wrote: »

A Super Famicom and an Everdrive wouldn't be a bad choice.

Agreed. Famicoms can be picked up very cheap but be wary of game compatibility with some everdrive carts. I got caught out on one not being able to play Super Mario Kart and lots of other DSP and other co processor games.

Doge

Retr0gamer

I'm actually playing more old games now as I find new games more annoying. Having to deal with slow crappy OS on the new consoles, Long tutorials before you are allowed to play the game, ridiculously long cutscenes and then the games that demand hours of you life to be invested for skinner box rewards.

Plenty of new games and indie games do get the balance right I actually have to put some time aside for any new game as I know I won't be out of the tutorial for more than an hour.

CosmicSmash

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'm actually playing more old games now as I find new games more annoying. Having to deal with slow crappy OS on the new consoles, Long tutorials before you are allowed to play the game, ridiculously long cutscenes and then the games that demand hours of you life to be invested for skinner box rewards.

This is so true, I think that's why so many people keep going back to the older games. They were simpler times, you didn't need lengthy tutorials or over complicated controls. You could play a game for a couple of hours and feel like you were actually progressing. With some modern games it feels like you're only scratching the surface.

rubadub

CosmicSmash wrote: »

They were simpler times, you didn't need lengthy tutorials or over complicated controls.

This is why I play the old arcade games, minimal buttons and often no instructions needed.

I went off games a lot when the PS came out, it was like they felt the need to use every button on the joypad just because they were there.

I would like all games to have arcade modes with dumbed down controls, using 3 buttons max. It would also make 2 player games more accessible, I remember years ago friends having PS and being able to do all these fancy moves in tekken. If there was a 2 button mode I might have stood a chance, and I was not bothered reading up a thick manual and trying to remember all the stuff.

Retr0gamer

I always end up looking at a new game and thinking I only have an hour to play and this game is probably going to just waste an hour of my life and I'd really need 3 or more to invest in it.

So then I play an old game or indie game for a quick go.... and end up spending 3 hours on it

ambro25

DaveyDave wrote: »

(...)

I'm done saving for a mortgage now so I'm itching to make a purchase, just not sure what. SNES, PSP, Vita, GBA SP...

Unless you are a completist, you might wish to not bother with a PSP, and go straight through to a Vita, which emulates PSP to perfection, on a bigger + better screen with more comfortable control (-IMHO of course).

That's all I use these days for 'portable' retro. 'Desktop' retro is courtesy of a PS1 Classic, and 'arcade' retro courtesy of the last cab I kept in our country move (a Lordsvale...one less for the Brits )

Echoing the latest posts, not only do I play retro games more often than the current gen for exactly the reason stated (less complex, more experiential...besides no loading/update-downloading times), I play them on ever less systems as well.

I gave my XB1 to my little one, and the last time I booted the PS4 can't have been any more recent than a few weeks pre-Xmas, either for an Ace Combat 7 VR mission (...for the n-time) or the SWBattlefront Xwing VR mission (...for the n+1-time). Pretty confident I won't be upgrading to xbx / PS5 in years yet.

Retr0gamer

So I played and beat the steam version of Dragon's Lair.

I actually never played this on in the arcade and never remember seeing a cabinet. Was it as big here as it was in the states.

As for the game.... it was a fun half hour but it would have driven me insane in the arcades. Did the arcade even had the prompts to tell you what to press or did you just have to guess or do it from the flashing scenery???

CiDeRmAn

Retr0gamer wrote: »

So I played and beat the steam version of Dragon's Lair.

I actually never played this on in the arcade and never remember seeing a cabinet. Was it as big here as it was in the states.

As for the game.... it was a fun half hour but it would have driven me insane in the arcades. Did the arcade even had the prompts to tell you what to press or did you just have to guess or do it from the flashing scenery???

I couldn't stand it at the time, just a money gobbling exercise.
I did indeed have directional prompts.
I liked the much later cel shaded platformer, I played it on the OG XBox.

rubadub

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I actually never played this on in the arcade and never remember seeing a cabinet.

I definitely saw at least 1 cabinet here in Ireland but can't remember where, possibly dublin city centre as I think I would remember if it was in Bray. Nobody used to play it much, I think they used to charge twice or 3 times the price of normal games.