General Retro Discussion

[Happenstance]

Playing Sonic 2 Christmas morning on a Mega Drive. As it should be every Christmas.

[Happenstance]

Liking the Mega Drive Mini so far but I definitely need to grab myself a wireless pad for it. It's funny how quickly you forget how annoying wires are!

Also, after starting xmas day with Sonic 2, we ended it with Super Mario Bros. Think I might have to turn it into a tradition.

[Ike]

Playing Sonic 2 right now sounds good.

[Ike]

And done. Metropolis still sucks.

 

Bonus trivia: The ending song was given lyrics and turned into a love song:

 

[Happenstance]

Just finished "upgrading" my Mega Drive Mini this morning. Main menu looks a lot more packed now

Gonna order the RetroBit controller in a minute. Already sick of wires lol.

[Ike]

8 hours ago, Happenstance said:

Just finished "upgrading" my Mega Drive Mini this morning. Main menu looks a lot more packed now

Gonna order the RetroBit controller in a minute. Already sick of wires lol.

Post impressions of the controller when you get it, the cable is too short for me. I might just use an USB extension cable. 

Although I was thinking of pulling the ROMs off and using the Mega SG instead.

[Happenstance]

5 minutes ago, Ike said:

Post impressions of the controller when you get it, the cable is too short for me. I might just use an USB extension cable. 

Although I was thinking of pulling the ROMs off and using the Mega SG instead.

Will do

[Happenstance]

The Retrobit wireless pad just arrived. I think just on it's own it's perfectly fine. Works great and feels ok. It's in comparison to the M30 that its let down a bit, feeling a bit cheaper in construction, more plasticky and lighter.

[S.C.G]

Sega Lord X with a video titled PAL Exclusive Sega Saturn Games (Europe)

I'm posting this one because I thought it would be of interest, possibly to @Goafer as I remember you mentioning that you were going after PAL Sega Saturn games.

Which reminds me, I should be getting to my Saturn games soon, so I'll give you a shout and/or make a thread when I have some for trades.

Also, on control pads, I've got the wired version of that Retrobit Sega Mega Drive controller @Happenstance and I've found it to be a pretty good replacement pad.

I got another Sega pad in the post today which I ordered a good while ago, the Brawlergen pad from Retro Fighters.

It's a two in one pad which works for both Mega Drive and Saturn, has all the buttons plus an analogue stick, except it's only eight-way so it's not a true replacement for the 3D pad.

I should get around to checking it out soon, plus some of the other Retro Fighters pads so I'll see about maybe doing a write-up on those at some point.

This year I really want to get back into playing more retro games in addition to clearing a few new ones, we'll see how that goes but I'm hopeful that 2020 will be the year for it.

[Happenstance]

Anyone remember the name of that multi console that was talked about last year? All I remember is that it was supposed to play discs finally. Ki d of tempting for Saturn etc.

Found it, the PolyMega https://www.polymega.com/

Edited January 3, 2020 by Happenstance

[S.C.G]

37 minutes ago, Happenstance said:

Anyone remember the name of that multi console that was talked about last year? All I remember is that it was supposed to play discs finally. Ki d of tempting for Saturn etc.

Found it, the PolyMega https://www.polymega.com/

Remember it?

I backed it!

Though I am hopeful that it is actually coming out and will be at the very least a decent multi-console with high-end emulation utilising physical media.

Many people have called it out, saying that it could be the latest in a long line of Kickstarted consoles which failed to come to market.

I had a good feeling about it though, so I backed it and it is looking like the machine is at least in some form of production now and they are active on Twitter with updates.

If not, and it's all an elaborate hoax (which I don't think it is) then well-played to them I guess, the feeling I get though is that there's a lot of passion behind this project.

Time will tell I suppose, it will surely be a great machine though assuming that producing the units all goes to plan.

[Happenstance]

Oh nice, at least that means we can rely on you for a review (if it comes put!)

[S.C.G]

16 minutes ago, Happenstance said:

Oh nice, at least that means we can rely on you for a review (if it comes out!)

Yep, you can count on it... if the Polymega comes out then I'll be happy to review it.

At this point, I'm cautiously optimistic, I just checked their website again and it looks like you can still pre-order it directly from them at the moment but not for much longer.

I'm guessing that means, they'll be shipping the first batch out to people who pre-ordered it directly from them sometime this year, then it'll be available from other outlets.

Or... they've spent the money on retro games and it's all an elaborate ruse.

I hope not... I'd really like a system which can 'play' all games from the 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit disc-based machines.

[Happenstance]

Yeah that's what has kept me coming back. I probably would use it for the snes or mega drive but being able to play discs would be really helpful.

[S.C.G]

Sega Lord X with a video titled North American Sega Saturn Exclusives

A few interesting titles in there, not as good as the PAL exclusives though.

Speaking of PAL Sega Saturn games, I finally got around to going through those games @Goafer so I'll send you that list shortly.

Its been nice to go through my Saturn games, I still haven't got my Saturn set up mind but I think I will soon so I can play some games and test them properly.

The sad thing about Sega Saturn PAL cases though, or more specifically the first generation ones is the cardboard and plastic design...

I really like it as when you have a nice condition game, they look great on the shelf but when you have ones where the cardboard has come away from the plastic, or the spines have got battered, plus the missing teeth in the disc holder parts (particularly if you have a two-disc case) then they really aren't that brilliant.

I really like the second generation cases though, made completely of plastic, the only thing you usually get wrong with those is again, the missing teeth which hold the games in the case but they seem to be generally of better overall construction.

Edited January 11, 2020 by S.C.G

[Goafer]

2 minutes ago, S.C.G said:

The sad thing about Sega Saturn PAL cases though, or more specifically the first generation ones is the cardboard and plastic design...

I really like it as when you have a nice condition game, they look great on the shelf but when you have ones where the cardboard has come away from the plastic, or the spines have got battered, plus the missing teeth in the disc holder parts (particularly if you have a two-disc case) then they really aren't that brilliant.

I really like the second generation cases though, made completely of plastic, the only thing you usually get wrong with those is again, the missing teeth which hold the games in the case but they seem to be generally of better overall construction.

I bought a brand new, still sealed copy of Defcon 5 in a first generation case. The thing was immaculate. It was weird taking the little sticker off and opening a brand new Saturn game all these years later.

[Hero-of-Time]

 

Sega should remaster the original Skies of Arcadia first and then get to work on the sequel.

Speaking of Dreamcast games...

 

I haven't watched the second part yet but I did enjoy the first. Capcom were absolute beasts when it came to delivering on Dreamcast games. Soooooooo many good fighters were on that system and they put Sega to shame with their pitiful efforts like Virtua Fighter 3TB and the Fighting Vipers sequel. 

[Goafer]

8 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

[Helmsly]

Recently I hacked my snes mini and added a few games to it. I didn't go too crazy, just added the games I owned as a kid. One of which was Jurassic Park for the Snes.

Playing trough this game again after all this time bought back a lot of memories. Its not a great game by any means but its also not terrible, although I might be in the minority with that opinion.

Back when it came out, I was not a huge Jurassic Park fan (I enjoyed the movie but not enough so that I want to buy a game based on it) but the game looked very interesting when I was reading reviews of it in magazines at the time. The main draw to me was the game changed depending on whether you where inside or outside of buildings. Walking around the island, you controlled Alan grant via a top down perspective:

And interior locations switched to a First person perspective, similar to FPS at the time like Doom or Wolfenstein:

This was something very different back then and I don't recall any other super nintendo game doing this.

It seemed like quite an original change from what most licensed video games did at the time, which was that they normally just made a standard action platformer out of movie or tv show it was based off of that was normally average at best. This seemed like the developers were actually trying to make a decent game rather then just use a movie license to make some money off of an average/bad product.

And 12 year old me assumed that because it had both Overhead and FPS sections, this game would be like Link to the Past and Doom combined. I was completely wrong about that (lol), but i still enjoyed playing through it to some degree simply because it was something different.

Most of the gameplay involved you going from one Utility Shed to another, trying to complete an objective of some kind ( such as turn on the power to the park or reboot a computer) but the main thing they did they artificially stretch the game's playtime put, was to lock all the important areas behind doors that you needed ID cards to open.

So for example, the one objective requires you to kill all the dinosaurs on board a ship. The problem is you can't reach the lower decks of that ship without Security Clearance Level 2. The Good news is you can get that at a nearby computer on the very floor you are on, the bad news is you won't be able to get Security Clearance Level 2 without already having Security Clearance 1 which is located at a different computer all the way back at the Visitor Center, half way across the map. And to add to that, you can't access the room the computer is in without having Dr Wu's ID card. Which is somewhere on the ship.

There is a lot of that throughout the game and playing through it was mostly a matter of trial and error, finding where you needed to go to do a thing, based off of very vague hints:

Only to find out you need an ID card to progress once you get there, which could be in any of the six buildings in the park. To add to that, sections of the park have electric gates blocking them off, which you have to open via the computer system. If you unlocked Gate 1, then Gates 2 and 3 where locked off. So it took quite a bit of effort to navigate around the place the first few times I played the game. And on top of that the insides of three of the buildings have exactly the same wall textures, repeated from room to room. And there was no map of any kind in the game.

And aside from all of that, you have to find 18 Raptor Eggs which are hidden around the Park. 17 of them are relatively easy to find from just exploring the island. But there was one egg I just could not find, no matter how hard I looked back in the 90's.

This was infuriating because I had, over time, worked out how to do everything else. I had memorized the locations of all ID cards, remembered what order I can get them in so that I could, for the most part, breeze through the game getting all of the objectives done. But when the game told me to head to the helipad to head home, standing there just made a screen with Jeff Goldblums face pop up to remind me I had one last egg to find. I even drew a map at the time of the island and shading off all the areas I had explored. I never finished the game as a result until over a decade later when I happened to remember I'd never found that egg and looked it up.

It turned out the final egg was in a hidden area near the helipad that you have to walk through some trees (that look identical to all the other trees you can not walk through in the game):

After all of that I finally got to see the ending. And what an ending it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTao08upXok

So, playing through it again this week I seemed to remember where everything was, despite not playing it in well over 15 years and managed to finish it in less then a couple of hours. But looking back, I feel like this game could have been so much better.

The basic concept is fine, but they perhaps should not have replied on ID cards hidden around the map with no clue to their locations so much. A save feature or password system would have been a huge benefit to this game back in the day and the game really could have done with a map, both for the island itself and for the interior sections, either in-game or even as a fold out paper map with the instructions, like Lttp had.

And one last thing, back when I originally played this game I noticed that there were letters of the alphabet laying around on the floor or on buildings. You couldn't pick them up or anything and I genuinely assumed this was bits of code they had just left in the game by mistake:

 

It turns out this was actually part of some competition that was running at the time. All the letters on the map are an anagram to the name of someone. If you deciphered it and sent it in, you won a trip to the Jurassic Park ride that opened a couple of years later at Universal Studios theme park

Edited January 22, 2020 by Helmsly

[Hero-of-Time]

Great write up, @Helmsly.

I also played the game as a youngster. I rented it a couple of times in order in complete it but sadly I was never able to do so. The game was pretty hard and IIRC you couldn't save the game at all, so you had to finish it in one sitting. If you died then it was right back to the start you go. I had a magazine (think it was Gamesmaster) that had a guide for the game in it but even using that my younger self didn't get to see the credits.  

I did finish Jurassic Park on the Mega Drive though but that was a much more straight forward game. Playing as both Alan Grant and a raptor was pretty cool at the time.

I wouldn't mind playing both of these again at some point.

[Helmsly]

5 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Great write up, @Helmsly.

I also played the game as a youngster. I rented it a couple of times in order in complete it but sadly I was never able to do so. The game was pretty hard and IIRC you couldn't save the game at all, so you had to finish it in one sitting. If you died then it was right back to the start you go. I had a magazine (think it was Gamesmaster) that had a guide for the game in it but even using that my younger self didn't get to see the credits.  

I did finish Jurassic Park on the Mega Drive though but that was a much more straight forward game. Playing as both Alan Grant and a raptor was pretty cool at the time.

I wouldn't mind playing both of these again at some point.

That’s correct, there was no save system or even a password system which meant you had to get through the game in one sitting. And because It took a lot of exploring and backtracking the first time you played, just to find out where find ID cards or even the location of the next objective, this would all take hours to do.

So if you had to switch the game off for whatever reason, you would lost all progress and would have to do it all again the next time you played lol

It didn’t restart you when you died though, it just respawned you at the last entrance or check point you activated and if you lost all lives you could continue from the park entrance.

[martinist]

Parodius. Go buy it. SNES Parodius atleast. PS1 Parodius is kinda expensive...

[Hero-of-Time]

Calling @RedShell

https://www.resetera.com/threads/translations-for-goemon-2-3-sequels-to-legend-of-the-mystical-ninja-have-finally-been-released.166598/

[RedShell]

2 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Calling @RedShell

https://www.resetera.com/threads/translations-for-goemon-2-3-sequels-to-legend-of-the-mystical-ninja-have-finally-been-released.166598/

Wow! Thanks for the heads-up.

[Happenstance]

Off to another retro video game market with @Goafer in a couple of weeks. I was thinking about getting maybe one big game like finally picking up Batman & Robin but as I'm currently putting money aside for an iPad Pro I think I'll have to hold off on that idea and maybe just pick up a couple of cheap games instead.