So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition

Cant beat the double barrel blast of the Spaz 12 in Half Life. An absolute joy in multiplayer when you nail someone with it. Still one of the best feeling shotguns in a game to this day.

Been playing a lot of Blazing Chrome the last few nights. It really is a fantastic game. Such a good Contra Hard Corps homage it should nearly be a considered a sequel.

Gameplay aside, the way the bosses are put together are so faithful to how bosses look in Hard Corps it's actually quite something.

Would be amazing to see some kind of Megadrive port.

You picked the perfect time to play through it, have you seen the Half Life 2 Update that's been released for free on Steam for HL2's 20th anniversary?

Just installing it now myself. Think I might play through Black Mesa first actually!

Edit - really weird, I definitely played through Black Mesa before but it wasn't in my Steam Library. Do I remember correctly in that one of the first iterations of it didn't actually have the full game? I can remember playing through the first section but definitely not as far as anything Xen.

Either way, it's under a fiver at the moment so no better time to nab a copy.

Started watching the documentary the other day, I've never played any Half Life games despite picking them up cheap for the Steam Deck last year. Must get stuck into them!

Got stuck into Turok 2 last night.

I actually bought the cartridge in a lot of N64 games in Cash Converters on Thomas Street back when I was a broke college student, 20 years ago. I'm sure at the time I didn't think I'd wait till I was 40 till I got to playing it, but here we are!

Assumed it was going to be a load of absolute jank - I was wrong. Very wrong. Okay I was right, but also wrong.

It's certainly jank compared to all of the 60fps smooth FPS games that came after it.

But!

With the RAM expansion in, high res mode enabled and my N64 spittin' out RGB it looks absolutely fantastic for it's time. Particularly the enemies, they're super detailed and the animations when you shoot them are excellent. I could imagine have been blown away if I'd played this back in the day.

I spent about an hour playing it last night which is fairly rare for me when it comes to N64 games. Really had a lot of fun doing so too. Was interesting getting used to non twin stick controls again. You can see how it's almost there with the buttons on the right being used for movement/strafing.

Think I'll try to stick it out for another bit. I've read the levels are a bit over engineered. Certainly feels more like exploring a massive open plan area like OOT rather than the traditional levels in the first game.

Opposing Force finished. Very nice little expansion, hasn't quite got the polish and shine of the main game, but it's fun nonetheless. It feels essentially like an official mod, which I suppose, is exactly what it is. The final boss isn't much of a challenge though, same pattern, infinite health regen available too, but regardless, tis done.

Onto Blue Shift next…

A question for those of ye using Retrox on an Android phone. I've asked the developer and to his credit, he doesn't know a fix either and the best suggestion to date has been to revoke permissions and then reinstate. That didn't work.

Neither has uninstall & reinstall oor going thru permissions 1 x 1.

I'm running on HyperOS 1.0.12.0 and when I launch Retrox, I get the mode select screen, select phone then select my Google account as signed in account and then Retrox throws up the below error.

My Google fu hasn't found any examples of this related to Retrox specifically so I'm a bit lost. Anyone any ideas?

It worked prior to switching from MIUI to HyperOS. I've given that permission in part of my own effort at troubleshooting but no joy. Some of the Xiaomi permission settings are also somehow hidden in the privacy dashboard, a proper pain in the arse.

Thanks for the great info, it's really appreciated. I'll pull a logcat from the error over the weekend for the developer and if you don't mind running an eye over it? I'll post it here too to at least get an opinion as to whether it's my end or the app?

I don't really play many games anymore but Grand Theft Auto - Vice City Stories caught my imagination over the December break and I'm nearly finished it. It's the overlooked game in the series and it's quite difficult esp compared to the walk through that was GTA V. Reminded me of the £3 Moving Shadow CD (ROM) 99.1 which was released in 2000. MSX FM from GTA3 is the source of that mad drum & bass.

I still buy second hand records from the now defunct Moving Shadow. Going to move on to Liberty City Stories after I'm done.

GBA Advance Wars (again!)...so simple to pick up and play and works great on the Samsung Flip

Brings back memories of the first time i played on the original yonks ago and was addicted then