General Retro Discussion

[Helmsly]

There is a recently translated interview with Shigeru Miyamoto from 1999 about Ocarina of Time, that has some funny and interesting stuff in it: https://shmuplations.com/ocarinaoftime/

 

Quote

—While Ocarina of Time features familiar characters like the Tektites and Armos Knights, there are also some notable absences. The Mario series regular Chain Chomp, for instance, who appeared in ALttP, didn't make the cut.

Miyamoto: Actually, Chain Chomp was in there up to the very end, but in the final revisions we removed him. Do you know where he was going to appear?

—Was it the desert area?

Miyamoto: It was Gerudo's Fortress. If the Chain Chomp grabbed Link, he'd be bound by chains, and could only escape by using the hammer to break the chainlinks.

 

Edited January 26, 2022 by Helmsly

[Julius]

New footage of Star Wars 1313 has surfaced:

Quote

To celebrate the Vault Project's 6th anniversary we present this unseen footage from Star Wars: 1313 showing Boba Fett in action. Very interesting to see considering the famous E3 demo showed off a version of the game prior to the character switch.

Nailed the look early on in development at least, because that's a Star Wars-looking Star Wars game. Not sure it needed to be a Boba Fett game, though -- I know it was reported previously that George Lucas was the one to push for Boba to be the main character, but from the limited things we know about the game, I feel like it could have just as well been anyone else or an entirely new character. 

[darksnowman]

On 26/01/2022 at 11:26 PM, Helmsly said:

There is a recently translated interview with Shigeru Miyamoto from 1999 about Ocarina of Time, that has some funny and interesting stuff in it: https://shmuplations.com/ocarinaoftime/

So many cool tidbits in this.  A really nice find. 

[Dcubed]

Yeah, that's a great interview.  Really interesting to see how Miyamoto wasn't really satisfied with the difficulty and tutorial design; you can really see how this is something that he has wrestled with for a very long time.  It wasn't something that he really managed to solve until 2009's NSMB Wii and the Super Guide system, but it's fascinating to see how this was something he was trying to solve for over a decade before finding a true solution!

[Dcubed]

Insane stuff! This mod just keeps going from strength to strength!

Really is a must-play if you have the means!

[Glen-i]

Smash Remix is easily the best Smash mod there is. My only criticism is that Dark Samus feels out of place because that character didn't exist in the N64 era (You could argue the same for Lucas, but I like to pretend it's an alternate universe Smash where the N64 version of Mother 3 actually happened).

[S.C.G]

52 minutes ago, BowserBasher said:

I'm so glad I have kept all my old games from the SNES era up to present day. My N64 collection could be worth a few thousand as they are all pretty much in their boxes still.

(Quoting in General Retro Discussion as I didn't want to derail the Kirby thread)

Your N64 collection could well be worth that. If you're curious about its value, you might want to check as you may be surprised at what some of the games are worth.

Of course, if you're attached to the original boxes, manuals, carts etc, then its worth is irrelevant, as they will be worth more to you in your collection.

- - - - -

I used to have quite a few N64 games, but I decided to reduce the collection by about half, just keeping the main games I grew up with, or which have either memories attached to them, or save files which I want to keep, but even then, I'm considering keeping even less.

One case in point, is the original Super Smash Bros. as I don't have as much attachment to it, but then again... I may just keep it, just to highlight the difference between the base game, and Smash Remix which I'm definitely considering checking out, as I do like seeing what can be done with enhanced versions of original N64 games.

I really like the GameCube as well, but there are titles on that machine which I know that I'll realistically never play again, so I have started parting with some of the games already, particularly ones which come with large peripherals, because as cool as they are, it really is just the novelty value.

While the Switch isn't retro, I paired down the amount of physical games I had ages ago, and I'm still looking at a shelf of sixty games, which seems like far too many... and I must have had twice or three times that amount a couple of years ago...

The SNES collection is quite concise, though that has been reduced because I didn't really want to keep the rare/obscure/import titles, because I just don't play them these days, and if I did, there are other official options available now, including VC (downloaded before the eShop cut off date) on the Wii etc... plus the Wii in itself is another console which I'll likely only be playing titles which support the GameCube contoller, as I really don't like going back to the Wii-mote, just as I don't tend to play games with the Joy-Con on the Switch.

There are plenty of great games on the portable Nintendo consoles as well, though I think I'll be looking at those more critically soon. I can see a fair few GameBoy games being kept, but when it comes to DS and 3DS, of course there are some great games on the system, but there are probably only a certain amount that I still want to play or would replay.

I'd definitely say, it's worth keeping any game you have, if you really think that you're going to play it, or if you're attached to it in any way. But for those games which you know that you'll probably never play again, it could be worth considering selling, especially if you either need to get a bit of money back from your collection, or if you need the space.

- - - - -

How do you view your Retro Videogame Collection now, compared to when you first started collecting?

Is it still worth it? Have you found any bargains or gotten a lot of value out of certain games? Are there certain games which you keep coming back to?

I think it's worth putting as much into it, as you get out of it.

I've obtained value from replaying titles such as PSO, thanks to recently obtaining an ASCII Keyboard controller for the GameCube.

Aside from that, it's either the classic games or fan-made variations/restorations which still interest me, mostly due to the passion and creativity behind them.

 

I don't always post about retro games, but when I do, it's about N-E thing but playing them. (aside from PSO and a handful of titles)

[Dcubed]

My focus recently has been about trying to make my retro collection as accessible as possible and the process of playing them as friction-free as possible.  I attribute this primarily to the loss of Virtual Console on Switch and my general dissatisfaction with NSO as a Virtual Console service replacement; though I have been impressed with the N64 service as-of late at least (it does provide a notably better experience than playing on the original hardware; or even the Wii/Wii U VC services as bugs are getting fixed).

So I've found myself filling out the remaining holes in my various console collections and focused on upgrading my old hardware with things like Everdrives, ODEs, HDMI ports, wireless controller adapters etc to improve the experience of playing on old hardware.  I've actually been playing a LOT of Dreamcast games over the past few weeks, since I just got my hands on a heavily modded Dreamcast with a GDEMU and a HDMI port

While I have been buying up the original discs for some of the Dreamcast games I still didn't have (like Outtrigger and Seaman), playing them off of the GDEMU is just so much more convenient.  It makes the experience much more enjoyable when you're not having to fumble with tons of wires/display adapters and old discs etc.  Plus it also gives you access to cool homebrew projects (like Smash Remix) and cool prototypes and stuff too!

I've never seen myself as a "collector", I don't collect games that I do not intend to play.  I buy games in order to play them.  I might not get round to playing them right away, but I will only buy games that I actually want to play; and I do go back and play my old games fairly regularily.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Dcubed

[BowserBasher]

17 hours ago, S.C.G said:

Your N64 collection could well be worth that. If you're curious about its value, you might want to check as you may be surprised at what some of the games are worth.

Of course, if you're attached to the original boxes, manuals, carts etc, then its worth is irrelevant, as they will be worth more to you in your collection.

I know a few games that would fetch a lot in the state they are in. My Conkers Bad Fur Day is near perfect condition, goldenEye similar, then there's Beetle Adventure Racing which was mentioned that made me think of this. I'd probably find some in there I completely forgot about too. 

I've never kept them in the hopes to sell and make money. they are my childhood and many N64 games where the first that I actually were able to buy myself as it was when I started working and making money. If one day I'm in desperate shape then I may have to think of it, but for now they are staying with me.

It's the same way that I have all my old Nintendo consoles still. NES, SNES, N64 (plus the Pikachu version), GC, Wii and Wii U. All with original boxes. A VB, GB, GBA, GBC, think I still have the GBA SP, the foldable one, and numerous DS models.

[Dcubed]

I’ve still got all my original boxes from GBA onwards.  Sadly I wasn’t smart enough to keep any of my N64, GB/C or SNES stuff because I was a dumb kid

Sometimes I like to look back at the old manuals & boxes for a little nostalgia rush

[Sméagol]

I've got every single one of them, but a lot of the older ones don't look great.

The worst one is Super Mario Bros 2, the game that came with my NES. There was a cashback action where you get 7.50 guilders (roughly 3 euros) back if you sent in the barcode. Copying didn't occur to me so I fysically cut it out from the box. 

I was am such a dumbass. 

Edited February 12, 2022 by Sméagol

[Dcubed]

 

Really nice video interview with Chihiro Fujioka, the director of Super Mario RPG, Tomato Adventure and Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga about his life, his history within the industry and his love for Taiko drums.

Very fun, well worth a watch

[Dcubed]

 

This is a massive four hour long interview with various heads of Popcap; they go over Popcap's history and their experiences as the company grew, changed, got bought out by EA and died.  It's actually about 7-8 months old now, but I only just discovered it just now and just devoured the whole thing!

I do recommend a listen in the background, as it's a really great and candid account from all involved, but I understand that it's a big ask for most people.  So here's a quick summary of some of the most salient points brought up...

Quote

Popcap started off as a porn-game studio called Sexy Action Cool; they were originally going to release an 18+ rated strip-poker game, but ultimately decided that they didn't have the heart to make smut games; so ended up changing their focus, changed the name to Popcap (after lots of potential candidates came up) and changed tack to target the casual gaming sector with quality titles.

Bejewelled was a hobby project by one of their programmers (a former games journalist turned game programmer/designer); fatefully delivered one day on a floppy disk with a hastily scribbled name (Diamond Mine).  It was mostly complete and was an instant smash hit that set the company up for life basically overnight.

Bejewelled's success was so huge that it gave the company carte blanche to spend the next 5 or so years just messing around with various prototypes based on whatever they wanted, without having to worry about releasing anything to stay solvent.

Zuma was indeed an unashamed ripoff of Mitchell Corp's Puzzloop; the staff there all believed that Mitchell was no-longer in business and could not sue them for stealing their game design... they were very wrong lol!

Peggle spent about 2 years in development, starting out as a traditional pachinko game before eventually finding its footing once they prototyped having a single ball being launched instead of multiple, and when they started introducing moving and rotating objects.  It was so successful that Valve ended up phoning them up, asking them for guidance on how to beat a particular stage; after their designers had stopped work on Half-Life 2's DLC from getting addicted to Peggle.  This is what lead to Peggle Extreme and Peggle's inclusion within The Orange Box.

Plants Vs Zombies spent 3 years in development and started out as a futuristic strategy game, before eventually turning into a tower defence game.  It was originally due to be titled "Lawn of the Dead", and they contacted George Romero's estate to ask for permission to use the name... They never responded; so they stuck with the temporary title of "Plants Vs Zombies".  Some years after PvZ launched, George Romero's estate actually contacted Popcap to ask to do an official collaboration with PvZ and the Dawn of the Dead movie franchise... Popcap refused out of protest over the way that Romero's estate ghosted and offended them the first time around!

Popcap eventually grew to have hundreds of staff members.  They would have small (20-person roughly) teams work on original games for PC, while the hundreds of other people were all dedicated to the various ports to other platforms (ALL of their ports were done in-house! Which is crazy!)

Microsoft tried to buy Popcap back in 2003-2004.  The deal fell through however after internal staff shuffling happened within Microsoft and a "Closer" was assigned by MS to finish off the deal with Popcap; they changed the offer and Popcap noped out.

There are over a dozen cancelled games, where they discuss some of them within the interview; one of which was a Puzzle & Dragons style game that was killed by EA right when P&D hit its peak within China.  Another one was called Yeti Train which involved guarding a train from would-be bandits with Cabal-style mouse controls.  Another one was a puzzle RPG of sorts, heavily inspired by Puzzle Quest... eventually the idea was resurrected in a different form as "Final Fantasy Bejewelled", which was eventually released as Gyromancer; though S-E mostly developed that game by themselves without Popcap's involvement after Popcap gave them an early prototype and S-E buggered off.

Popcap had an internal communication and build data repository system called Burrito... It ended up getting shut down after it developed a huge repository of porn and highly mysogynistic content; and after a key female member of staff threatened to leave in response.  The interviewees believe that all of Popcap's unreleased prototypes were deleted forever when Burrito got nuked.

During the development of PvZ 2, a huge chunk of the Popcap staff quit the company in protest after the management forced them to make the game into a F2P mobile game.  The decision to go F2P was made before Popcap was acquired by EA; as the company was gearing up towards either being acquired or going public with an IPO (the former, of course, ended up happening).

Zynga made an attempt to buy Popcap before EA did, but the staff rejected Zynga in protest of the low quality and scummy nature of their F2P games and company operations.

Apparantly Popcap were acquired with a series of milestone requirements in places that needed to be met if Popcap's staff were to receive the full payout... So the deal was for EA to leave Popcap to their own devices... but in exchange, Popcap HAD to achieve a certain amount of revenue within a certain time-limit... so Popcap went down the F2P route in order to meet these requirements of their own accord; which caused the big PvZ 2 exodus.  Eventually, EA took over the marketing/publishing side after around 2 years or so; as they centralised them within the EA fold.  Popcap's development culture soon after just ended up collapsing under the pressure and became "toxic".  And the focus changed from making fun games to making as much money as possible.

Interestingly, apparantly EA actually brought in more women and helped stamp out some of that mysogynistic culture to Popcap.

The idea for PvZ Garden Warfare actually came from American McGee! Whose studio had crafted a 3rd person shooter prototype that Popcap then took on-board and built from there.

After the release of PvZ Garden Warfare, basically everyone from the "Old Popcap" had left the company; leaving "New Popcap" as basically a shell of what it used to be.

Popcap has now downsized and the interviewees believe that Glu Mobile (Who EA acquired not long ago) will basically be taking over from Popcap going forward.  EA have zero interest in any of Popcap's franchises outside of PvZ and have no intention of bringing any of them back supposedly.

EVERYONE who was interviewed complained that none of Popcap's games have been re-released on Switch and called EA "insane" for not porting Popcap's classic titles over to Switch.

A few of the people in that interview said that they would like to start up a new company that makes games with no microtransactions involved.  They all agree that MTX & F2P was what "killed" Popcap.

They're all proud of their time at the company and said that Popcap was once a great place to be; but they know nothing about the company it is now or what's going on with them.

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by Dcubed

[martinist]

I have a bid on a Gamecube with a Gameboy Player for £55. Probably going to be outbid. I've been looking for a decently priced Gameboy Player for so long >_>

[S.C.G]

Just now, martinist said:

I have a bid on a Gamecube with a Gameboy Player for £55. Probably going to be outbid. I've been looking for a decently priced Gameboy Player for so long >_>

For a Nintendo GameCube, GBA Player (with disc?) and all the leads, that would be a bargain.

Just checking what they have sold for recently, it would still be a good deal at £150, as the player plus the disc have gone for that.

See how it plays out anyway, if you're going to be placing last minute bids on it nearer the time, anything up to just over £100 would probably fall into the decent price range.

It's all relative, as for the amount of use you can get out of a GBA Player, it's definitely worth it I'd say, but only you know how much would be a good price, for you.

I found the original receipt for my GBA player the other day, I believe it was £44.99 from Dixons.

Also, as an aside, if you end up going down the route of using the Game Boy Interface instead of the GBA Player software, it should give a really good picture, but the games look great using either piece of software, plus the GBA Player disc has some interesting borders to try out.

GBA games look great on the big screen.

[Dcubed]

26 minutes ago, martinist said:

I have a bid on a Gamecube with a Gameboy Player for £55. Probably going to be outbid. I've been looking for a decently priced Gameboy Player for so long >_>

Check that comes with the actual start-up disc.  The Gameboy Player hardware is common as muck, but it's the start-up discs that are actually rare now (How the hell did so many people lose them!?).  Also worth keeping in mind that Gameboy Player hardware is region free; but the start-up discs are not!

It's just like with Wavebirds.  The actual controllers aren't that rare or expensive, but for whatever reason, people just seemed to love losing the wireless receivers that came with them!

Edited February 18, 2022 by Dcubed

[martinist]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304361234407?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1431.l2649

 

Heres the ebay listing. It shows the PAL boot disk in the tray with the DVD box in another. There is also an RGB to HDMI converter and a GBA link cable. I only ever really had one game, Harves Moon, that used the GBA connectivity but I needed Friends of Mineral Town and couldn't use it anyway. I might try it out now that i have the cable

[S.C.G]

11 minutes ago, martinist said:

Heres the ebay listing. It shows the PAL boot disk in the tray with the DVD box in another. There is also an RGB to HDMI converter and a GBA link cable.

It's a nice bundle. Good that the disc is included, it all looks like everything is in used but generally good condition.

The composite to HDMI converter is a nice extra, those can be a bit hit or miss, but generally, it will improve the video quality of a composite cable via upscaling.

GBA link cable is always useful, especially as you can then opt to use your GBA as a controller.

[Glen-i]

2 hours ago, Dcubed said:

It's just like with Wavebirds.  The actual controllers aren't that rare or expensive, but for whatever reason, people just seemed to love losing the wireless receivers that came with them!

How the hell do you lose them!? How hard is it to keep the receiver plugged into the console!?

It really should be the other way around.

[Dcubed]

10 hours ago, martinist said:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304361234407?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1431.l2649

 

Heres the ebay listing. It shows the PAL boot disk in the tray with the DVD box in another. There is also an RGB to HDMI converter and a GBA link cable. I only ever really had one game, Harves Moon, that used the GBA connectivity but I needed Friends of Mineral Town and couldn't use it anyway. I might try it out now that i have the cable

Looks solid, and it's even a DOL-001 that comes with the Digital AV port, so you could get a GC-HDMI adapter for it if you wanted to.

Nice.

[martinist]

Already have a black Gamecube with the Digital AV so this will make two if i end up winning this which i doubt. Never really dabbled in HDMI outputs for old consoles. The videos i've seen online all require alot of soldering which I'm not very confident in doing.

[Dcubed]

5 minutes ago, martinist said:

Already have a black Gamecube with the Digital AV so this will make two if i end up winning this which i doubt. Never really dabbled in HDMI outputs for old consoles. The videos i've seen online all require alot of soldering which I'm not very confident in doing.

No soldering required.  The GC-HD and the Carby are literally plug n’ play devices.  You plug it into the Digital out port, plug in your HDMI cable and away you go! It even transmits digital audio without needing a separate cable!  They’re not analog to digital converters, they pull a true digital video signal out of the Cube; all made possible thanks to that Digital-out port!

And yes, they do enable true 480p output if your game supports it (No PAL games do unfortunately unless you use Homebrew to force it; otherwise only NTSC games support 480p).

Both me and @Glen-i have one each.  They’re awesome!

Edited February 19, 2022 by Dcubed

[martinist]

Well, I knew i wouldn''t get it. I'm not paying more than £100

I could probably find the player itself and the disk for a little less than that anyway.

[Dcubed]

29 minutes ago, martinist said:

Well, I knew i wouldn''t get it. I'm not paying more than £100

I could probably find the player itself and the disk for a little less than that anyway.

Why not make the bid and then sell the additional Gamecube if you win? (Unless you really want a second Cube).

Would be a good way to get the GB Player + Disc for well below market value if you offset the cost by selling the Cube!

[martinist]

2 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Why not make the bid and then sell the additional Gamecube if you win? (Unless you really want a second Cube).

Would be a good way to get the GB Player + Disc for well below market value if you offset the cost by selling the Cube!

 

Not worth it at that price. Atleast not for me.