General Retro Discussion

[Dcubed]

20 hours ago, Ike said:

Rumours says it's because of licensing due to Michael Jackson's involvement (maybe). If there is a remake I'm not sure I would want to play it with a different soundtrack.

I keep hearing this, but I don't think it's based on any sort of truth.  SEGA/M2 did re-release Sonic 3 & Knuckles on the Wii VC just fine, with no edits whatsoever (Also had lock-on support for Sonic 2 and Sonic 1 - you could play each game standalone as well!), so I don't think it has any basis in reality.  It was also part of the Sonic Mega Collection on GCN/PS2/Xbox, where it was also un-edited.

 

I reckon the real reason why it hasn't happened on modern platforms is twofold.  Firstly, M2 were focusing on the SEGA 3D Classics range and deemed Sonic 3 & Knuckles to be too difficult to render into 3D (In one of the interviews I recall them mentioning that the game was just too big for them to consider giving it the 3D treatment; Sonic 2 nearly killed them and Sonic 3&K is several times the size of Sonic 2, so that makes sense).

 

Secondly, every other SEGA Mega Drive re-release outside of M2's work has been bargain basement emulation at throwaway prices, handled by development teams that simply didn't care about what they were doing.  Getting the lock-on emulation to work requires a bit of effort and that was too much to ask from these kinds of collections.

 

With SEGA AGES on the Switch though? I'd say that Sonic 3 & Knuckles is just a matter of time  

Edited December 18, 2018 by Dcubed

[Ike]

2 hours ago, Dcubed said:

Getting the lock-on emulation to work requires a bit of effort and that was too much to ask from these kinds of collections.

Unless I'm missing something and it's something emulators handle, you literally combine the 2 ROM files with a cat command. There doesn't seem to be any effort required and I'm sure that what I did with my ROM dumps to put it on a Raspberry Pi.

 

[Dcubed]

5 minutes ago, Ike said:

Unless I'm missing something and it's something emulators handle, you literally combine the 2 ROM files with a cat command. There doesn't seem to be any effort required and I'm sure that what I did with my ROM dumps to put it on a Raspberry Pi.

 

Yeah I know that's how it works but even that is too much effort for these guys.  You need to build in a way to actually load two games together into your game/menu engine, make a separate menu system to select the games you want to add, have separate save slots for each of the different lock-on games etc.

Edited December 18, 2018 by Dcubed

[Ike]

1 minute ago, Dcubed said:

Yeah I know that's how it works but even that is too much effort for these guys.  You need to build in a way to actually load two games together into your game/menu engine, make a separate menu system to select the games you want to add etc.

Ah, that's what you meant. 

I just looked it up and S&K does have some kind of special chip, might just be for the Sonic 2 lock-in though.

[Dcubed]

2 minutes ago, Ike said:

Ah, that's what you meant. 

I just looked it up and S&K does have some kind of special chip, might just be for the Sonic 2 lock-in though.

It is indeed for Sonic 2.  It basically includes a new version of the game's program ROM (with the Knuckles physics and new level layouts and stuff) on a separate EPROM chip on the S&K cart itself, and pulls graphic data from the Sonic 2 cart.  It works in basically the same way as a patch does today.

Edited December 18, 2018 by Dcubed

[S.C.G]

Time for a Nintendo themed video now, just to balance things out a bit.

A really well made video on the 35 Years of NES History museum exhibit which happened in Portland some time in November I think but the video had just been uploaded.

There's an entire complete US NES game collection thanks to John Hancock and a load of interesting Nintendo items from before, during and after the NES era including modern stuff.

Very interesting indeed and a good way of preserving video game history.

[Happenstance]

Well Final Fantasy II just arrived and seems to be in good condition so I'm looking forward to playing that at some point. Just my Final Fantasy III cart left to arrive now.

Next thing I need to do is sort out my HDMI switcher. It's driving me nuts now as when you first turn stuff on it likes to keep switching back and forth between HDMI slots so it becomes a game of pressing select at the right moment to get the one I need.

[Helmsly]

I watched through this video this morning, i figured I'd share it as it voices a lot of the feelings I have on emulation:

 

Edited December 19, 2018 by Helmsly

[Hero-of-Time]

17 hours ago, Helmsly said:

I watched through this video this morning, i figured I'd share it as it voices a lot of the feelings I have on emulation

 

Great video, Helmsly. 

The state of official game preservation is a shambles. None of the companies really care about it other than to tug at customers nostalgia strings and pocket a quick buck. 

The video really highlights how far Nintendo have fallen in terms of their commitment to their back catalogue. The fact that the Switch is nearly 3 years old and all we've got are NES games being drip fed to us again is ridiculous.

Sega is another company that I have issue with. Next to Nintendo they are the ones who have a huge library of games that could be released. Instead all we get is the same old games being ported time and time again. It's why I'm not too fussed about the Sega Ages line. A lot of the games in that line up have been released countless times before. 

Sony's classic console highlighted just how hard it is to get games re-released that have licenses attached to them. A lot of games back in the Mega Drive/SNES days were licensed products and were great. Most of the 16bit Disney stuff will forever be stuck on old hardware.  You can understand why people put emulated games on the NES and SNES mini consoles when Nintendo were powerless to get a lot of the more memorable games on there.

The point he made about offering a service and people will sign up is a valid one. If any of the big companies let me play all of their retro games on their most recent hardware via some sort of subscription then I would certainly sign up. It's exactly the same issue that the music industry faces a while back where piracy was rampant but once subscription based services were introduced people started using those instead.

[Hero-of-Time]

I was reading on Era this week that Sega have now officially been out of the console making business longer than they were in it. As of August next year Microsoft will have been in the console gaming business longer than Sega. It's pretty nuts. 

Also, Sonic Adventure celebrated its 20th anniversary this week. Where the hell has all the time gone?  

[S.C.G]

After watching this video, I kind of want to play Sonic '06 again...

...in a parallel universe perhaps.

[Mandalore]

20th anniversary?! I didn't realise Sonic Adventure came out just a month after Ocarina of Time in Japan. That's crazy.

[S.C.G]

Fantastic video, really enjoyed watching it and a great way to round off Christmas Day.

[S.C.G]

Another older video but a good one, I've watched videos on DKC before but not with this level of presentation.

Also, a really cool interview with Yuzo Koshiro. (he composed the music for Streets of Rage, amongst other things)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSyI-Ds2PqU

YouTube doesn't allow embedding of that particular video though, so you'll actually have to... click the link!

Or... just type in "SEGA Forever meets... Yuzo Koshiro"

[Sméagol]

Should I put this here?

https://gamehistory.org/simcity/

[Goafer]

Whilst being far from the most expensive game on the Saturn, I've now added another game to the Shelf of Valuable Games™. Skies of Arcadia (Gamecube) has been booted off and replaced with:

Skies was mainly on there due to it being a personal favourite of mine. The lineup now stands at: Burning Rangers (Saturn), Panzer Dragoon Saga (Saturn), Saturn Bomberman (Saturn), Shining the Holy Ark (Saturn), MGS: The Twin Snakes (GC, signed by David Hayter) and Phantasy Star 4 (Mega Drive).

CeX were selling it for £50, which is their price for "good" condition. I don't know what their criteria is for mint, but I'd say this is about as close as you can get for "good". The box, manual and disc are pretty much perfect, with only some slight rippling on the box cover. Given that boxed copies (with manual) seem to go on eBay for £85 (with one very optimistic £150), I'm pretty happy overall. Apparently it's a good game too (it's by the same developer as Golden Sun), so I may actually play this one at some point.

The best part is, it was paid for with Christmas money. So extra bonus.

I've also just noticed that it's the first Saturn game I've seen without the black stripe down the left of the cover. I'll have to check my other boxes now.

Edited January 1, 2019 by Goafer

[Dcubed]

New Totaka's Song finding!

 

 

It's Pikmin 2 again! Only this time, instead of it being on the Treasure Collection screen with the confetti, someone found it on the memory card check failure screen!

 

Makes a change from seeing everything about a game spoilt through datamining!  

[S.C.G]

Somewhat timely considering the choices for this months N-E Game Club.

An interesting video on how memory is used in Super Mario Land 2 on the Game Boy.

I really need to find my original cartridge again... I know it's here somewhere.

[S.C.G]

I knew there was a reason I kept this in my PS1 collection.

This year perhaps I'll make an effort to finally play Alundra.

It strikes me as one of those games that you could just re-release today on any format and it would still find its market quite easily.

And it has had a re-release of sorts, you can get it on the PS store for only a few pounds, so it's reasonably accessible, or pick up an original copy for £15 - £25 boxed.

I can't remember when or where I picked up my copy, but I'll try and finally appreciate this gem when I get more back into gaming soon hopefully.

[Goafer]

Finally finished Skies of Arcadia Legends. I finished the DC version when it originally came out and it's always been one of my favourite games. It's amazing how little I remember of the game after Crescent Isle. I used to have a pre-end boss save on the DC and just grind endlessly, occasionally finishing the game, but I couldn't remember a lot of the end boss at all this time round.

It's still holds up  and it's still my favourite old-school JRPG. I think the lower frequency of random battles in Legends definitely helps it. I don't remember the DC version being particularly heavy on them, but the GC version seems a good balance and from what I've read, they lowered the encounter rate quite a bit.

[S.C.G]

An interesting and short video on the Game & Watch.

It had more than a few pieces of information that I didn't know about.

- - - - - - - - - -

I've always found the Nintendo Game & Watch fascinating since a very early age, I got some for cheap years ago and some for not so cheap recently.

The first single screen G&W that I got was Super Mario Bros. which was purchased at a car boot for something silly like 20p in the Nineties.

I was lucky enough that two dual screen G&W units (Donkey Kong and Oil Panic) were for sale in a local charity shop for only a few pounds at around the same time.

Ever since then I've picked up a few of the ones I liked the look of the most such as Zelda and Squish when they weren't too expensive.

If you ever see any these days, they are well worth picking up if they are a good deal because regardless of what they go for, they are just really interesting pieces of hardware.

I'd love to write an article about them one day if this is something which would be of interest to anyone on here.

[S.C.G]

A genuinely amazing video here about Tom duBois who was behind a lot of the iconic boxarts of Konami titles on the NES, SNES and Megadrive in particular.

I've been a fan of his work but I never knew a thing about the man behind the artwork, he's definitely an inspiration and has a really honest outlook on it all.

I can't recommend watching this video enough if you really love the artwork from all of those classic boxarts from back in the day.

The influence this person has had on how we remember a lot of videogames is staggering and of course you can say that for a lot of other illustrators as well...

...but it's just when you watch a video on it all and stop to think about it, I find it gives you a new level of appreciation for the amount of work that went into those boxarts.

[S.C.G]

Another great video from Jeremy Parish on the Virtual Boy game Teleroboxer.

I've only watched a few videos on this channel but they all seem to be well researched and have excellent production values.

Definitely worth checking out.

Edited January 18, 2019 by S.C.G

[S.C.G]

A lot of decent Sega fighting games in this video, I think I'll fire up the Virtua Fighter games and Fighters Megamix when I'm next playing on my Sega Saturn.

[Happenstance]

As I’m planning on reducing my retro collection to just the SNES and Mega Drive to make it much more manageable and focused I’m planning on getting rid of a lot of my other consoles. This is going to include the Panasonic Q. I thought I would check here first in case any of you guys were interested as I’d be happy to do you lot a better deal.