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General Arcade & Retro Chat' Special Championship Edition
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Join Date:Posts: 50126
Also another lock down question for you guys:
What's the most disappointing game you ever bought.
For me it was Sparkster on the Megadrive.
Sparkster is far from a bad game. However I loved Rocket Knight Adventures so much. It's pretty much my second favourite megadrive game of all time just behind Gunstar Heroes.
I always loved Konami games ever since playing them in the arcade and was so jealous of the NES and SNES getting great Konami games. I was really excited when Konami started making Megadrive games. Their first few weren't great, mediocre conversions/remixes of SNES games like Hyperstone Heist and Sunset Riders. Rocket Knight was Konami's first original game on the Megadrive and they really went all out. I loved the characters, the between stage vignettes, the charm running through it. And that soundtrack was insanely good, up there with Streets of Rage 1 and 2. There was so much variety. And best of all so many bosses!
So I was so excited when I picked up a magazine and saw a preview of Sparkster. It looked a little off, not as good looking as the original. I put it down to the art style. But how could it be bad? It was Konami and Rocket Knight!
Release Date came along and I couldn't find the game anywhere. Not sure why but it just couldn't be found in Dublin. I eventually found it for a budget price of 30 euros in Game a few months later and used all my pocket money to buy it.
I got it home and was so disappointed. Levels were now sprawling with little of the clever design of the first game. The game controlled differently from Rocket Knight Adventures and felt very different. There were less boss battles and the ones that were in it weren't as well designed as Rocket Knight. And after a cracking opening stage theme the music wasn't as memorable. I played the game multiple times willing myself to love it and while it was a good game, it was far from a top tier platformer.
However.... nothing could prepare me for the ultimate betrayal. I picked up a copy of Gamesmaster a few weeks later and in it was a 2 page spread advertising Konami games on the SNES. Animaniacs, Tiny Toons... WTF is this! Sparkster!
Rocket Knight Adventures was a megadrive exclusive. The SNES had a load of Konami classics, Axelay, Tiny Toons, Castlevania IV, Contra 3. But as a megadrive owner Rocket Knight Adventures was mine, was ours! And Konami had put a Sparkster game on the SNES. Not just that, it looked so much better than the Megadrive Sparkster. The gameplay looked more like the first Rocket Knight game. The bosses looked really impressive and there were loads of them. The SNES got the superior game!
Now it was a while before I played the SNES version of Sparkster on emulation. It was indeed a great game, far better than the Megadrive version and played very like the first game. But it wasn't the classic Rocket Knight was. But I'd never felt such betrayal in my life. Let's just say that Konami are lucky Megadrive Probotector was so much better than Contra 3 otherwise I'd have fire bombed their head offices.
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Retr0gamer wrote: »Any word on the analogue pocket? Really enjoying my gameboy at the moment and would love one with a better screen and support for other systems!
Haven't heard anything of it since the initial hype. Lovely little device, but I must admit their whole "NO EMULATION!" marketing thing is a bit eye roll inducing for me. Are they comparing it against emulators from 1998 or something?
Sure, it's FPGA so it's hardware accurate (for the most part, I recently learned that Snes FPGA cores are still not 100%)...but we're talking about 8bit & 16bit games here....they've been perfected* in emulation for ages now
*perfected in the sense that I'd say anyone that can like-for-like distinguish between modern 8/16bit cycle-accurate emulation and an FPGA 8bit core with their eyes, hands, & ears alone is probably bluffing.
It's great that there's FPGA solutions for these consoles & hardware, both from a preservation and playability point of view...but the whole toffee-nosed view of lowly emulation from these companies is disingenuous as a sales tactic, and somewhat insulting to the amazing work that emulator authors have done for decades now.0 -
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Yeah it's all over the place at the moment.
I've noticed my parcel motel packages taking about a week longer than they should.
Even within Ireland, I've had a few courier deliveries which should really have been next day take over a week.
I guess everyone is sitting at home, bored out of their minds and shopping...I know I am 0 -
Join Date:Posts: 50126
It's very annoying for me. Have a chair getting delivered. Within ireland. Next day delivery. But the website never said it's on back order and waiting ages for it. Really need it as my neck and back are getting crippled from the piece of **** chair that was included with my rented room.
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Weird one, but are any of you lads into VHS collecting at all?
I see there's been a little bit of an upsurge in it, especially been reflected in the price of decent working VCRs.
Was tempted to pick one up and get a few choice titles. I know the quality is crap but I do kind of miss the 'CA-CHUNK!' of putting in a tape and movies being cropped to 4:3
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,198 CMod ✭✭✭✭
Join Date:Posts: 27910
Listen: I grew up with VHS, recall with fondness the anti-piracy warnings, and have some unshakable affection for the VHS aesthetic.
All that said: watching a film in that format these days is an act of absolute madness
The ****test quality possible, crimes against original aspect ratios and the sheer space needed to house the damn things combine to make the format's continued death a cause for celebration!0 -
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johnny_ultimate wrote: »Listen: I grew up with VHS, recall with fondness the anti-piracy warnings, and have some unshakable affection for the VHS aesthetic.
All that said: watching a film in that format these days is an act of absolute madness
The ****test quality possible, crimes against original aspect ratios and the sheer space needed to house the damn things combine to make the format's continued death a cause for celebration!
Still the only way to own a legit copy of Song of the South! 0 -
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Retr0gamer wrote: »Disney lawyer squad is on route.
I genuinely loved that film as a kid! My mam taped it on RTE for me and I'd watch it all the time.0 -
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johnny_ultimate wrote: »Listen: I grew up with VHS, recall with fondness the anti-piracy warnings, and have some unshakable affection for the VHS aesthetic.
All that said: watching a film in that format these days is an act of absolute madness
The ****test quality possible, crimes against original aspect ratios and the sheer space needed to house the damn things combine to make the format's continued death a cause for celebration!
I dunno , if I'm watching a really crappy 70s 80s horror movie , I'll throw on the Vive, start up retro neon arcade or emu vr , and watch it on an 80s tv in an 80s environment with the crappiest vhs effects possible.
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Got a pair of these in the end but they took an age to come from IKEA. Still don't have a proper chair setup though and am working from a couch.
https://www.ikea.com/ie/en/p/vittsjoe-laptop-stand-black-brown-glass-00250249/
BED SIDE TABLES EH?
"Oh dear wife, have our butler bring some fresh produce up from the pantry post haste, my tummy is feeling rather empty!"Weird one, but are any of you lads into VHS collecting at all?
I see there's been a little bit of an upsurge in it, especially been reflected in the price of decent working VCRs.
Was tempted to pick one up and get a few choice titles. I know the quality is crap but I do kind of miss the 'CA-CHUNK!' of putting in a tape and movies being cropped to 4:3
I went mad on it there back in September, the best haul was the entire month python's flying Circus collection, the original format I believe with the class artwork.
That high end Panasonic VCR I bought didn't work on arrival though but the seller was sound enough to give a full refund.
I think it's the mode selection switch but didn't get around to fixing it just yet.0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 50126
johnny_ultimate wrote: »VHS enthusiast: “You might have access to an endless stream of content from cinema history in full HD and presented as the directors intended... but do you have a clam shell copy of Disney’s most racist film? Check. Mate.”
Had some bangin' tunes in fairness.
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Weird one, but are any of you lads into VHS collecting at all?
God no. Unless there's a tangible reason to reignite the buying of old media formats, then it's only a nostalgia trip. Vinyl I get, there's a definite warmth in the sound that is lost on a digital copy....but VHS? It offers nothing imoTom Mann Centuria wrote: »So we strive for a perfect picture, unless we're emulating classic video games, where in that case we spend infinite time fiddling with settings to make them look old and not picture perfect.
The thing is, to make retro games picture perfect...you have to make them look old. Retro games are perfect on an old crt tv screen....they certainly don't look anywhere near as good on a modern display panel, and you can only hope to imitate the look of an old tv.0 -
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