General Arcade & Retro Chat' Special Championship Edition

Retr0gamer

Inviere wrote: »

An hour ago I started Super Mario 64 for the first time

Hold on a minute.... That's Super Mario World 96 exits levels of criminality.

Don't come back and post until you have 120 stars.

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

GameCube Mini or bust tbh.

That perfect little purple cube and those masterpiece controllers are crying out for a lavish, rom-packed replica.

Yes I know it’s probably not feasible or cheap, but I don’t bloody well care :pac:

I'd love a GC mini especially if I can finally get the orange one

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Hold on a minute.... That's Super Mario World 96 exits levels of criminality.

Don't come back and post until you have 120 stars.

Can categorically say fully completing 64 isn't gonna happen, maybe if I'd have played it closer to release...but not now, the controls and camera controls are excruciating

Gradius

Inviere wrote: »

Can categorically say fully completing 64 isn't gonna happen, maybe if I'd have played it closer to release...but not now, the controls and camera controls are excruciating

I remember popping into hmv on grafton Street coming close to the release of the n64, they had a demo unit set up with Mario 64.it was genuinely super impressive, even lots of aul lads and aul ones stopping to watch it

Separate note, I might be sticking a bunch of jamma arcade stuff up for sale later, some repair jobs to keep someone busy during the lockdown!

Retr0gamer

Inviere wrote: »

Can categorically say fully completing 64 isn't gonna happen, maybe if I'd have played it closer to release...but not now, the controls and camera controls are excruciating

Hmm, always love going back to that game and feels it holds up really well. Worth sticking with I think.

briany

o1s1n wrote: »

As Retro mentioned above, unfortunately we're not the target demographic on this one.

Sprite based games are a lot more visually assessible than old 3D games. Even at that, a lot of folks would play the NES mini and think 'god, these look crap' and switch it off. I can't even imagine how many people would probably do that with the n64.

There's also the massive issue with the console that a lot of folks seem to overlook - there aren't actually that many good games for it.

I'd be hard pressed finding 20 games on the system that I'd enjoy playing anyway.

There are lots of good games on the N64. There would have been more, but it was a console hampered by the silly decisions that went into designing it and that hurt it with developers and players alike. In any case, you only need a couple of dozen games (if that) to make a classic mini. The N64 also has a sort of leg up if it were ever to have a classic mini in that a lot of its best stuff was 1st party or Rare developing it, and that would (presumably) mean that it wouldn't be hard stuff to have on the console out of the box.

Retr0gamer

Hypothetical N64 line up?

Likely:

Mario 64
Zelda OoT
Zelda MM
Starfox 64
Mario Kart 64
F-zero X
Kirby 64
Waverace 64
Smash
Yoshi's Story
Paper Mario

What I'd love and strong likelihood of being on it:

Sin and Punishment
Pilotwings
1080
Jet Force Gemini
Bomberman Hero
Ogre Battle
Mischief Makers
Excitebike 64

Would love but not likely:

Space Station Silicon Valley
Body Harvest
Geomon 1 and 2
Glover
Chameleon Twist 1 and 2
Beetle Adventure Racing
San Francisco Rush
Castlevania 1 and 2
Blast Corp
Custom Robo
Hydro Thunder
Hybrid Heaven
Turok 1 and 2

MEH:

DK64
Banjo 1+2
Goldeneye (very unlikely)
Perfect Dark
Diddy Kong Racing

Just no:

Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire

Retr0gamer

The N64 really has a bad line up of worthwhile exclusives. It's almost as bad as the PS4.

Retr0gamer

So what got people into retro games?

Lots of little factors for me. Was over in a friends a lot because he had an amiga and was always in awe at how much ahead of my C64 it was in terms of graphics. Anyway one day he got an issue of Amiga Power and included on the cover disc was Impossible Mission. It was just the C64 converted to the Amiga with no changes. I hadn't heard of the game and asked what it was. He told me it was really good. I asked but why would you want to play an old C64 game on your Amiga and he was like... duh... It's still an amazing game. Kind of my first realisation that old games can still be really good.

Always wanted a Nintendo console. Loved the games on the NES but what I really really wanted was a SNES. Closest I got was the Gameboy. I loved the japanese games on it but didn't have many games for it. Next up was a Megadrive which I got pretty late. I really liked it but it just wasn't the SNES I really crazed.

One of my best friends at the time was really into games but was very poor. I'd let him play my games a lot. One xmas his parents got him a NES. I was a bit snobby in my own head about play an old computer with him until I sat down to play it. I liked Super Mario Bros. Found Simon's Quest intriguing.

I loved the **** out of Megaman 2 though. How it played. How it was designed. And my god the music was so good. Fell in love with the NES and would have liked one myself. My friend found it too hard but I had Megaman 3 on the Gameboy so understood it. And while MM3 was good MM2 just clicked with me. Same friend also made me remember how much I wanted a SNES. His uncle would call over some weekends and leave his snes with him and I'd be over playing UN Squadron and other classic SNES games. He also got a weird VHS magazine covering SNES releases. Whatever time period that VHS was covering was an insane month for amazing snes releases. Probotector 3, Axelay, Super Aleste off the top of my head. We had that VHS worn out and I just so wanted to own a SNES.

Missed out on most of the 32 bit era consoles until I got a PS1 in xmas 1999. Instead my parents got me a PC. A P100. It was pretty low spec when we got it in 1996 (but still cost the guts of a grand) and I had that PC entirely too long. By 1998 there was only a handful of games I could play on it and Half Life was running at about 15 fps in software mode. I felt like I was totally missing out on new games. Also still really really wanted a snes.

Then one day I picked up a copy of PC Zone in 1999 while browsing a magazine stand. Saw an article by Stuart Campbell who I always liked reading, how to play old games on your PC. The article was about emulation. There were pictures of SNES games in it.

So my PC that couldn't barely play new games became an emulation machine. As I couldn't play much of anything else I just immersed myself in all those old games. Most people just wanted a nostalgia trip and to play all the games they did as a youth. I was there to experience all the games I had missed out on not owning a SNES or a NES. Then I went about discovering new games. I was in my element. Even when I got a PS1 in 2000 and then eventually upgraded my PC I was still playing old emulated games.

In fact I probably got worse. The PS1 introduced me to RPGs with Final Fantasy and I discovered my favourite videogame genre. So then I was using emulation to discover older RPGs and then fan translations.

So what's your story... if you have the time

o1s1n

'Retro gaming' officially became a thing for me when I went onto ebay in 2003 after becoming jaded with the PS2 and bought a Snes. Was actually the first thing I ever bought on ebay.

I'd been mad about the latest and greatest since getting a Megadrive back in the early 90s, but something about the PS2 felt so samey after being crazy into PS1 games (I've probably discussed this a million times here already) that I decided to look backwards at what I'd enjoyed in the past.

Luckily I hadn't sold any of my previous consoles, so took my Megadrive and NES out of storage and started playing that again too.

Went on to buy an N64 and eventually collect lots of Nintendo consoles as I'd always been a Sega fan so hadn't played many of their games.

I've also been an absolute bargain whore and a collector my whole life, so the idea of being able to pick up consoles and games for a fraction of what they cost a few years previously (especially while I was a broke student!)completely blew my mind. Was convinced back in those days they'd all become collectors items too..!

I always think it's funny that I bought a Snes as a 'retro' console, 5 years or so after it was discontinued - 17 years ago!

Inviere

Anybody see these yet?

Very interesting for a few reasons. For one, the emulation seems to a very high standard - cycle accurate in the case of Blast Em (John Linneman is an original hardware nut, and any praise from him regarding emulation is high praise), the proprietary carts themselves house the games AND the associated emulators, and curated lists are ALWAYS better than dumping thousands of roms onto a flash device.

I'm not very into handheld gaming, but this is definitely interesting.

Tom Mann Centuria

I'll wait until the Chinese do flashcarts for it that hold ten thousand games. Darn you to heck curated lists, I want obscure games I have no interest in playing to scroll through (and ignore).



Actually it looks like a nice idea and if I were I bit more flushed I'd probably buy one.

Inviere

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

I'll wait until the Chinese do flashcarts for it that hold ten thousand games. Darn you to heck curated lists, I want obscure games I have no interest in playing to scroll through (and ignore).



Actually it looks like a nice idea and if I were I but more flushed I'd probably buy one.

I feel a flash cart for it would still have its uses. There's likely a lot of great games that won't be on it for various reasons.

The Last Bandit

Looks very nice, I'd seen news of it before but dismissed it as another emulation handheld. But these guys have definitely targeted the collectors is us all which is a great idea, I love the idea of the carts and is well priced.
Hopefully they'll be able to release more carts over time although I wouldn't expect to see to many first party games on it, as for flashcarts ya I'm sure this could be modded as well but kinda defeats the purpose of it, I've a drawer full of handhelds that can play emulators.

CiDeRmAn

I got into gaming when it was retro!
Starting with the neighbours Binatone pong clone back in the 70's, and then trying my cousins Coleco back in the very early 80's.
Over the period it was also punctuated with time in the arcades with Donkey Kong, Galaxians, Galaga, Pacman and Battlezone.
By Christmas 1984 I had my first computer, really a platform for games, the ZX Spectrum.
Three years of that, and I was bereft of a games machine, though I still enjoyed the arcades, playing Gravitar, Bubble Bobble and Jackal in the Kevin Street College student coffee shop, until I bought a Gameboy in 1990, when I was a student nurse.
I seemed to buy a C64 around that time as well, and that was still a fun machine to own.
In 1991 In bought a Megadrive, and loved every second of it, the following number of years saw a succession of consoles, each one sold to fund the next, Snes, MD again, 3DO, and then the Playstation at launch, then the N64 at launch and so on.
The actual collecting really was a consequence of not selling anything anymore (I can hear you laughing as I type it).
I had a launch Dreamcast and sold it, but the guy didn't have the money on him, so I got cash and a Sega Saturn instead, then bought a PS2.
And so it rolled on, never really selling on anything, but collecting too all the consoles I had once owned too, and the collection expanded.
Sometimes, when someone might ask about my horde, they wonder how I did it and how much it all cost, I tell them it is more about just having two decades in which to collect, and just accruing things slowly, and even on a tight budget you'd be surprised at what you can amass, what goodies you can find.

TLDR: I never got into retro gaming, it was always just gaming!

Inviere

The Last Bandit wrote: »

I'm sure this could be modded as well but kinda defeats the purpose of it

In a way yes, as the curated nature of the games lists would be lost & you could end up with a device with thousands of roms on it. In another way though, there'd be a lot of amazing games missing from the carts that would be a shame to have to miss out on. I feel with some discipline, it's still possible to stick to curated lists (I do it myself), but also expand upon the included games. There's a bit of variety in the carts too, some carts have a handful of games, where others seem a bit more packed out.

CiDeRmAn

Thousands of roms, like cakes of CD-Rs, are a recipe for playing bugger all.
Better to, as Inviere suggests, keep the lists nice and tidy, with a theme or a period, maybe a developer, and that way you end up with a managable but curated selection of only the good stuff, regardless of the system being emulated, or the flash cart in question.

Inviere

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Thousands of roms, like cakes of CD-Rs, are a recipe for playing bugger all.
Better to, as Inviere suggests, keep the lists nice and tidy, with a theme or a period, maybe a developer, and that way you end up with a managable but curated selection of only the good stuff, regardless of the system being emulated, or the flash cart in question.

Curious, if a physical collection grows large enough, does it still have that same paralyzing effect that thousands of roms do? Curating is porbably the best approach not only when it comes to emulation, but also physically collecting? Granted, a physical collection grows over time, unlike a romset....but given enough time, do they eventually become difficult to navigate & to decide what to play?

Nerdkiller1991

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

I'll wait until the Chinese do flashcarts for it that hold ten thousand games.

I don't think that would be possible, since the carts that contain the games also hold the emulator, so if those flashcarts do want to include an emulator, it'll probably be a lot worse than the ones contained in the official carts.

Inviere

Nerdkiller1991 wrote: »

I don't think that would be possible, since the carts that contain the games also hold the emulator, so if those flashcarts do want to include an emulator, it'll probably be a lot worse than the ones contained in the official carts.

The official carts will undoubtedly be dumped, emulators & roms extracted, & placed on a flashcart bootloader with a gui to pick the game & system.

o1s1n

Inviere wrote: »

Curious, if a physical collection grows large enough, does it still have that same paralyzing effect that thousands of roms do? Curating is porbably the best approach not only when it comes to emulation, but also physically collecting? Granted, a physical collection grows over time, unlike a romset....but given enough time, do they eventually become difficult to navigate & to decide what to play?

A physical collection displayed has a lovely quality to it. When I had all my games out across a few bookcases in my old house and it was almost like going to a video shop in ye olden days and picking a game to rent.

That's how I treated it anyway. Have a bit of a browse, pick something out and then play it for the evening.

I'd say if you got to the point where it was thousands upon thousands of games across huge areas though it would definitely be far too overwhelming.

Inviere

Well, there you have it...a contender for the best of the lot according to John Linneman...

Inviere

o1s1n wrote: »

A physical collection displayed has a lovely quality to it...

No doubt there But when a physical collection grows big enough, does it get hard to actually decide what to play (as in the case of these emulation devices filled to the brim with roms)?

o1s1n

I'd say there's definitely a point where it does get overwhelming alright, although I'd imagine it's when you get a bit away from my levels of collection and more towards that Australian millionaire lad with rooms and rooms of stuff

Retr0gamer

Inviere wrote: »

Curious, if a physical collection grows large enough, does it still have that same paralyzing effect that thousands of roms do?

Yes it does. As well as an insane Steam/Switch library.

megaten

I don't think there's a specific point where I got into retro games but I've almost always been at least 2 years behind the curve when getting new consoles. Most of my early exposure to games was having a lend of a cousins OG gameboy or playing budget PC re-releases so I never got into the habit of buying the latest and greatest. Only exception I think is the switch which I think I bought a year after it came out.

Nerdkiller1991

Inviere wrote: »

Well, there you have it...a contender for the best of the lot according to John Linneman...

He used the incorrect name for the Mega Drive in the video. Why should I trust his opinion on the matter?

briany

When we talk about the history of gaming, I think it can be roughly divided into three eras so far.

Mid 70s to late 80s - Hi Score era. At this time, I think video games were more thought of as amusements to be played in relatively short bursts at a time, and the point of playing them was to have the best score around.

Early 90s to mid 2000s - Get to the end era - This is when games machines became powerful enough to have long games with many different interesting sequences and levels. In this era, the emphasis was on adventure, and the bragging rights mostly came in the form of completing it.

Mid 2000s to the present - Competition & creativity era - As internet access has improved for many people, MMORPGs and competitive shooters have become much more popular, as well as the behemoth that is Minecraft. The point of gaming has shifted again to the thrill of exploitation of game mechanics to shave a second off or snipe a fellow player, as well as exploration, using your imagination to build and create.

Now, I realise there is a huge overlap between my 3 eras. It's really a gradient shift and all of these types of games exist in the current day and throughout the years, but I'm just thinking more of what is prominent. And also I'm thinking of whether there is a generation gap between gamers where one can't understand why the other enjoys a certain game, and maybe this being down to the fundamental objective of the game being different.

Retr0gamer

So some absolute maniacs are releasing Hoshi wo Miru Hito on the switch..... Worldwide

Not familiar with that name?

Well here is an explanation.

In Japan there is a term, kusoge, reserved for **** games. It literally translates to **** game.

Hoshi wo Miru Hito has its own term coined for it.

The legendary kusoge.

I watched a speed run at this years agdq and it really is that bad

Atavan-Halen

I think I first got into retro games around 2008/2009. Had always loved video games and got a PS1 off Santa when I was 5 so that would have been around 97. A few years later a game boy colour and Pokémon blue which came with me everywhere. Then for Christmas 2002 it was the PS2 and a game boy advance I think the year after. I always had the current gen console for the time and spent most evenings playing games. Never got into PC gaming because we never had a PC with internet access. I played a bit of the original sims on it for a year or two but that was it.

When I was in secondary school one of my friends was also into gaming. He was big into RPGs and introduced me to a lot of great series over the years. One day we were out in town and in game on Dawson street. They were getting rid of or phasing out all their GameCube stuff and selling the consoles off for €20. He convinced me to pick one up along with Metroid prime and I loved it. I started looking into more titles on the GameCube and added those to my collection.

That Christmas I managed to get my first job as a Christmas temp in game and I loved it. It was only for a few months but it was a lot of fun to check out all the older titles they had hidden in the back and I was interested in them

Then I realized that there’s a lot of fun games on older systems that I’d like to play and retro stuff was relatively cheap at that time so started going on eBay, car boot sales and picking stuff up. It just grew from there. Looking up info about retro games and stores online and I found this forum. Started posting and it’s been a wealth of info and craic over the years.

I really miss those days of when I first started getting interested about retro games. Consoles and games were a lot more accessible and cheap. My favourite memories are from a chain of stores in the UK called gamestation. My dad lives in the UK so I’d go over to visit him and I’d come back with suitcases full. They always stocked retro for a good price and had a little bit of everything. Picked up a Saturn there for £9, mint in box grape N64 for £17, GBA SP’s for £5. It was great.

I feel like now it’s maybe not as accessible as it once was. Prices have gone way up and it’s quite a lucrative market. There’s not a great selection of physical stores anymore to just go in and browse and pick up a game you want to try out.