Does anyone remember a game on the Megadrive called Megalomania?
I used to love it until I hated it!
I had a hankering for a game of it so tried emulating it. Apart from not being able to emulate it 100% on Ubuntu, the game is still good. For those that know it, I haven't played enough of it yet to get annoyed by the repetitive dialogue. I'm still getting the retro buzz from it and currently considering changing my incoming text ringtone to "You've advanced a tech level" or maybe "You're running out of elements", but I don't want to torture myself!
My source was a Stephanie Sterling deep dive into the last game which I found interesting. It does seem to be a wrestling roleplay type game rather than something you'd consider competitive
From my time in the fandom, I've literally never heard/seen/encountered anyone talking about the actual game-feel/flow and most of the praise goes towards the customization options that let you CPU vs CPU Kenta Kobashi vs Marko Stunt in a Landmine Deathmatch.
I think the issue with most sports games is that they've all become associated with one developer or brand that they are never going to change.
Konami tried their best with pro Evo but couldn't keep up with EAs popularity. 2K managed to wrestle the NBA game away from EA but their much better American football series was killed off by madden. Wrestling no longer has WcW games to compete. So you have a monopoly one these sports and the holders just could not be bothered to put much effort into making them good experiences (except 2K who seem to still care about making a fun basketball game that gets sabotaged by studio exec demands).
I've heard the reason rasslin fans love fire pro is not that it's a great fighting game but that it emulates the flow of a rasslin fight better than anything else, with the ebbs and flow of a fighters dominating and miraculous comebacks . They don't really play it to win.
I think a lot of early PCs and graphics cards weren't running it at a much higher frame rate at the time!
Wrestling games have fallen off a cliff in the last few generations as you stick on a modern one and it just leans so hard into the sim end of thing you'd think it was a legit sport, and that's me as a lifelong, avowed 'rasslin fan. Hell, a lot of the criticism aimed at AEW: Fight Forever was that it was a throwback to older wrestling games with a focus on gameplay rather than say properly emulating 2006 Chris Jericho's shoe size or having a customize your contract negotiation mode.
Mind you, these are the same people that would tell you Fire Pro is a great series, so I'm more to blame for even getting involved in the first place.
I think some sports game just lend themselves better to being fun sports games. Ice Hockey being one that had always been a huge amount of fun. Madden was great as well but they kind of FIFA'ed that up and ruined it. Basketball also tends to be one that works very well. The 2K NBA games play brilliantly despite 2K doing their outright best to ruin that series with monetisation.
I think that works across the board with most game genres too. The more lifelike you try to make a game, the less fun it becomes. Generally I find the genres which try to be most lifelike are the sports ones and I've a feeling that's why I've always found them boring.
Saying that, then you have things like Neo Cup 98 which is an absolute blast.
I find the more abstract and removed football games are from the actual sport the more fun it is. It's why sensible soccer and the old ISS Deluxe games are so much fun even for non gamers and why FIFA does everything in its power to be absolutely everything someone into videogames doesn't want with naff controls and rng bullshit.
Nintendo Pocket Football Club on the 3DS does the impossible in making football management and actually watching a game somewhat compelling. It has to be up there with Inazuma Eleven in making something as tedious as soccer feel fun and exciting.
I have yet to try the final stage, didn't want the game to end so I put it down for a bit!
Decided to try out the Tomb Raider 32X demo. Spent a while looking for it, could only find the 32X version patch which was a 552Kb download. No game to be found.
Or was there...
Thought I'd chance throwing what I thought was the patch it on an SD card and booting up the Megadrive/32X and Lara Croft appeared on my screen.
What absolute witchcraft! How did they fit all of that into barely over half a Mb?
About 12-15fps (I think I saw 17fps at one point) but seriously still playable, looked like I was witnessing a miracle.
After seeing what has been done with Doom Resurrection on the 32X I'd say this is going to get far more playable.
The final, final stage on Mario Wonder is trumping all retro for me. Holy crap it's tough!
3-5 are the good ones with 5 the best. Megaman 2 is a bit of a stinker
I picked up the Rockman GB titles, have yet to play them, might give them a blast
Enjoy, it's really good. Just don't be afraid to use a walkthrough if you get stuck. Both games are faithful to the original, obnoxious puzzles and all.
...did not realise there was a remake on PSP... installing to the psp as we speak... physical copy looks spicy price-wise.
Ys book 1 and 2 are great but the PC/PSP remake is the definitive way. Ys is a little archaic and I'd recommend the remake ys the oath in felghana which might be the best action rpg ever made. Ys 4 Ive heard is great.
As for SMT the SNES version is the one to play there.
The xak games are meant to be good and have fan translations. I'm not sure if they are cd or hu card.
I quite liked Ys Book 1 and 2 (I didn't try 3 and 4 which are also on it - not sure if there are translation patches yet) and since I am partial to the odd shooter : Gate of Thunder, Cotton, Darius, Lords of Thunder, R-Type, Raiden, Zero Wing and a few others.
Original Splatterhouse is on it too it that's your type of thing.
One that I was surprised / delighted to find a console version of was LucasArts Loom, which I played once almost to completion on a 286 pc with a black and white screen in the mid nineties. There's also a pretty decent version of the original prince of Persia, a couple of wonderboy games etc..
Original Shin Megami Tensei is on there too. And a surprisingly good version of Snatcher too if you can locate a translation for it.
And that's before you get to the weird stuff.
Nice console. Enjoying my one. Considering getting the Analogue Duo.. if only I could get it to output on a CRT I would already have one.
Nexzr all day.
I forgot about saphire as well. That's probably the pinnacle of PC engine CD shooters.
There's also versions of exile and exile 2 that remove the working designs changes and makes them playable again.
It's mostly shooters. I hear kaze Kiri is good. Ys 4 had a fan translation and worth checking out. It's the best of the ys4 games (the SNES had a ys 4 game but it's a totally different game from the PC engine one) it's non canonical but also way better than the SNES game, which got remade as the much better ys: celceta.
Loads of shooters. Air Zonk. The best versions of lords of thunder and gate of thunder. Spriggan. Gradius 2. Star parodied.
Tengai makyou also finally got a fan translation.
Heard good things about last alert.
Any other PCE CD standout stuff worth noting? The only game I really know from the system is Rondo of Blood, otherwise I'm going in fairly blind. My Turbo Everdrive Pro should be here in the next day or two so cant wait to have a flick through the library and see what's on there.
Finished up Megaman V on the Gameboy. Great game but I regret starting it before I found out about the colourised GBC rom Hack which makes some of the more samey early levels look way better and more distinct.
Back to the 3DS and finishing those Guild games off. I started and finished Liberation Maiden last night. Fun little project with a unique control scheme. It's only about an hour long but good fun for that hour. Feels like a vertical slice pitch for a bigger project but that's kind of what the guild games were about.
Started Starship Damrey but early days for that.
I've played the first part of the translated PC98 version, it's pretty great. Great atmosphere, great artwork, great music....must get back to it. Hopefully part 2 gets the translation treatment
I heard it's pretty good for a VN with great art. What I can definitely vouch for is the soundtrack which is peak 90s videogame synth. Well the PC 98 version (which I think has a translated version available). I imagine PC engine soundtrack is weaker.
Browsing ROMs on the Steam Deck at work last night, I was intrigued by the box art of this. Dead of the Brain 1 & 2, a PC Engine CD game that has been recently translated to English.
Visual novel/point and click stuff isn't my cup of tea but apparently this is gorey so it had my interest. It's very slow moving so I'll need to figure out some sort of turbo move on the emulator!
Just to be pedantic, they made king's knight for msx and NES.
Yes, they hadn't made one before, they never made one again, yet they made such an impressive game.
I mean, it is easily up there with RType Delta, if not better.
