General Arcade and Retro Chat - Insert Coin -

Bracken3000 · 17-01-2017 09:47PM

Inviere wrote:

Fantastic place in its day, huge gaming selection.

Yeh, it was the first place I remember going as a kid to buy games. Got The Last Ninja 2 for C64 which came in a excellent and ridiculously big box for one tape cassette.

Andrew76 · 17-01-2017 10:04PM

Inviere wrote: »

Fantastic place in its day, huge gaming selection.

A trip to town always had to include a visit to arcades and the Virgin Megastore, up the escalators and over to the gaming section. Try not to stare too long at the condom stand less the embarrassment kicks in. :pac:

Downstairs was mostly music iirc. Bought a few Guns N' Roses albums in there too. Appetite for Destruction on tape, Use Your Illusion 1&2 on LP.

Bracken3000 · 17-01-2017 11:05PM

Andrew76 wrote:

A trip to town always had to include a visit to arcades and the Virgin Megastore, up the escalators and over to the gaming section. Try not to stare too long at the condom stand less the embarrassment kicks in.

Kinda remember Clearys having a computer section, not as good as Virgin but still worth a look. I remember seeing Rise of the Robots on display there!

CiDeRmAn · 18-01-2017 01:15AM

Bracken3000 wrote: »

Kinda remember Clearys having a computer section, not as good as Virgin but still worth a look. I remember seeing Rise of the Robots on display there!

I recall seeing the Commodore CDTV there, being blown away by what turned out to be a prerender streaming from a CD.

Jerichoholic · 18-01-2017 08:54AM

The Megastore was heaven on earth for me, didn't get to Dublin much back then, but it had everything I could possibly want.

The Last Bandit · 18-01-2017 09:25AM

Bracken3000 wrote: »

Kinda remember Clearys having a computer section, not as good as Virgin but still worth a look. I remember seeing Rise of the Robots on display there!

Remember spending a fortune in there on a new sound card once, actually has a good enough selection of stuff.
Think I picked up a pair of shoes as well before heading home

Megastore was great for the old big box PC games, had heaps of them but sadly all got chucked out during a house move some years ago

Bracken3000 · 18-01-2017 09:42AM

The Last Bandit wrote:

Megastore was great for the old big box PC games, had heaps of them but sadly all got chucked out during a house move some years ago

I think the last boxed game I bought in the Megastore was Mortal Kombat for the Amiga, it was terrible.

DinoRex · 18-01-2017 11:22AM

Was the place upstairs in Clearys called Beyond 2000? They were originally downstairs in Easons if I recall correctly.

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy wrote: »

I've never actually played Ape Escape, is it worth trying now? They played the 2ND one at GDQ but didn't watch it.

The first one might be a bit rough to play now, it's about as PS1 as you can get. The second one still looks great though.

18-01-2017 12:50PM

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Remember spending a fortune in there on a new sound card once,:(

sound blaster 1.0 ?:P:P

The Last Bandit · 18-01-2017 01:06PM

BrownFinger wrote: »

sound blaster 1.0 ?:P:P

Think so

Massive Creative Labs yokes complete with IRQ hell to setup !!

Retr0gamer · 18-01-2017 02:00PM

I only realise now how god awful the SoundBlaster was until recently. The Gravis and Roland cards sounded so much better... although the Rolands would set you back the price of a new house at the time.

WeleaseWoderick · 18-01-2017 02:57PM

Was a frequent visitor to Virgin Megastore back in the 90's. My first memory of it was browsing the Amstrad games and wanting Bart vs the Space Mutants.

The shop used to have one of the best poster selections in Dublin too.

I also found this video of the opening day http://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/1201/835827-virgin-megastore-opens-in-dublin/

DinoRex · 18-01-2017 03:19PM

They had a great board game section as well. I even mentioned it in an interview with the Sunday Business Post a few weeks back.

DinoRex · 18-01-2017 05:15PM

Pretty neat looking C64 RPG game currently finishing up on Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stirringdragongames/unknown-realm-an-8bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64?ref=hero_thanks

Star Lord · 18-01-2017 10:24PM

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I only realise now how god awful the SoundBlaster was until recently. The Gravis and Roland cards sounded so much better... although the Rolands would set you back the price of a new house at the time.

When you are coming from pc speaker, the soundblaster was like a chorus of angels singing just for you... And sometimes just sounding wrong because it was so different to the pc speaker tune you were used to for that game!

CiDeRmAn · 19-01-2017 12:17AM

Remember that configuration screen, pressing the right number for your audio card before you got to the game.
You'd get to it after selecting the video mode, EGA/CGA/VGA/SVGA...
Good times!

Retr0gamer · 19-01-2017 12:22AM

I remember before the god like DOS/4GW.

Some games just wouldn't have the memory for sounds randomly.
Why?
Who knows it was completely random if they had the memory or not. You'd have to reset the PC 3 or 4 times to get sound in Wolf 3D.

And now we live in an age where consoles are getting more complex than a PC

CiDeRmAn · 19-01-2017 12:38AM

Optimized for Win95!

was in it's nards!

Direct X Sir?
Update Sir?

Noooo!!!!
Just install ffs!

Retr0gamer · 19-01-2017 01:03AM

Ah the horrors of the original directX.

'Hi I'm directX and I'll make games run faster on windows95. While I'm installing why don't I uninstall your graphics card drivers and myself in their place. It will only take 5 hours and a call to gateway support to get rid of me!'

Bracken3000 · 19-01-2017 05:15AM

Retr0gamer wrote:

'Hi I'm directX and I'll make games run faster on windows95. While I'm installing why don't I uninstall your graphics card drivers and myself in their place. It will only take 5 hours and a call to gateway support to get rid of me!'

Worked in Gateway when I finished school. I doubt you got much support, they were a useless bunch of monkeys that ran the place.

DinoRex · 19-01-2017 11:43AM

I applied for a job there and didn't get it. So they had some standards.

Bracken3000 · 19-01-2017 01:18PM

Gremlinertia wrote:

Have you asked your gp for a referral to a local mental health services?.

DinoRex wrote:

I applied for a job there and didn't get it. So they had some standards.

Maybe you were over qualified! :-) The place must be closed a good few years now.

YourSuperior · 19-01-2017 08:46PM

Back around 2001-02 I got the Rainbow Six Collector's Edition at Virgin Megastore. It had the orginal game, Rogue Spear + all the mission packs and Covert Ops. It included a mouse pad and a poster! Plus a CD detailing the history of terrorism, the psychology of terrorists along with counter-terrorism tactics. It was all very new to me; that type of thing. I was glued to the PC for months. One of the best computer game purchases I ever made.

Retr0gamer · 19-01-2017 11:19PM

YourSuperior wrote: »

Back around 2001-02 I got the Rainbow Six Collector's Edition at Virgin Megastore. It had the orginal game, Rogue Spear + all the mission packs and Covert Ops. It included a mouse pad and a poster! Plus a CD detailing the history of terrorism, the psychology of terrorists along with counter-terrorism tactics. It was all very new to me; that type of thing. I was glued to the PC for months. One of the best computer game purchases I ever made.

It would all be a pdf from the publishers site now and a 30 minute tutorial telling you how to move forward.

I really ****ing hate handholdy tutorials. I blame Halo for this. It's opening level is the perfect tutorial and publishers took that and decided to copy it except do it for babies.

Tom Mann Centuria · 19-01-2017 11:29PM

I've just spent 20 quid on Spectrum compilations that aren't very good. Just bought them because I had them originally when I first got my Spectrum. Most of the games weren't worth playing back then either.

*sigh* A fool and his money......

Star Lord · 20-01-2017 01:06AM

Those original Rainbow Six games were superb.

o1s1n · 20-01-2017 12:48PM

Any of you guys heading to Carpenter Brut in the Voodoo Lounge tomorrow week? Should be a good one, tickets are only 20 quid!

YourSuperior · 20-01-2017 03:07PM

@RetrOgamer. For some reason, the quotes are not showing up on my screen. Anyway, yes it's tedious. It all boils down to indifferent, clueless parents buying their ten year olds GTA, COD etc., and publishers eager to make more sales. The industry regulators need to stop it. Pull it out of the game design all together.

@Star Lord. They were ahead of their time. I read the original novel many years later. The games were way more fun though.

Star Lord · 20-01-2017 05:24PM

Read the novel back in 1999, when I was sitting in the Mater hospital for 3.5 weeks. Helped pass a couple of days...

I did enjoy it though!
Had played the N64 version of the game already at that stage, so it was interesting enough! Played the PC version of it and Rogue Spear later, which were even better. We had a great time playing the N64 version in co-op mode though.

CosmicSmash · 20-01-2017 09:06PM

I was down in CEX today, absolutely nothing of interest in terms of quality retro. Everything seems overpriced, anything cheap is either shovelware, missing manuals or a combination of the two.

General Arcade and Retro Chat - Insert Coin -

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