BulkSlash

This is pretty anecdotal but I have messed around hacking the difficulty scaling in SFII on the CPS1 and I’ve noticed both Ryu and E. Honda are often more difficult than the other fighters as if the developers wanted the Japanese characters to be the strongest. Ken noticeably doesn’t exhibit the same behaviour which makes me think it might be deliberate.

@Razieluigi I’m in the same boat, this is the first console generation since I’ve been earning my own money where I’ve not bought at least one system at launch.

I was hoping the Pro would be a bit cheaper, I need to decide if I really want to pay that much. I might wait for some reviews to see how well it performs. I mostly want it for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Stellar Blade. There just aren’t many games this gen that actually excite me. 😢

Now that we’ve had Rent-A-Hero translated, I think this is the last of the DC games that I was really excited to play that never left Japan due to Sega discontinuing the Dreamcast (well, I’m assuming they would have released it in the West).

It's kind of funny how they've ripped most of the 3D models from the PS2 game but then slapped in a bunch of much higher detail palm trees (presumably some off-the-shelf 3D model assets they've bought).

I watched for a few minutes, it managed to get as far as the second corner a couple of times. It seems it's designed to fail and reset as soon as it touches the edges of the road.

I wonder if they could speed things up by disabling the emulator's frame limiter? It seems it will take forever for it to learn and it might just end up learning how to beat one track. Or it might learn that not accelerating at all allows it to avoid the edges of the road forever! 😂

Seems very plausible. House of the Dead 2 in the arcades used an array of infrared emitters around the edge of the screen which the gun could "see" so it would know where it was aiming, which basically is how the Wii pointer works. The fishing rod controller had basic motion control sensors.

I could easily see Sega looking into these technologies, especially when the approach of LCD screens meant alternative methods to the old light guns would be needed.

I’m really looking forward to this one, the expanded moveset like the slide move allows for all sorts of cool actions like kicking an enemy’s projectile back at them.

The funniest thing I saw was a video of Simon beating a boss and pulling off some cool moves to collect the sphere and the game rates you on how cool your finish move is. 😂

@GravyThief @RejectedAng3L Yeah that's it, it's cool from a technical standpoint, but it's not really authentic to the era. Although someone the other day described the MSU1 as being a bit like what we'd have got if the SNES CD-ROM drive had launched! 😂

StarFox, Doom and Stunt Race are the ones I'd most like to see get enhanced frame rates. I'm genuinely curious as to how this FX3 can improve performance. We know you can overclock the SuperFX 1 & 2 which makes the games run faster but until now no-one had cracked getting more frames per second without the game also running too fast.

I kind of hope the new chip isn't doing too much work and is authentic to what would have been possible back in 199X. You can run the full version of Doom on a Megadrive using a Mega Everdrive Pro, but it's basically running the whole game on the cartridge and just using the Megadrive for controller inputs and image output which feels like cheating to me! 😂

@Gs69 Yeah I ordered one of their PS1 memory cards back in May and it still hasn’t shipped, they said it was supposed to ship in June. I’d prefer they sort their back orders before developing yet another product…

@RetroGames I don't know if what I'm referencing is related to the people who were being unpleasant. I remember there was a Mega-Man fan game uploaded which caused concerns about copyright and resulted in the full games section being closed to new submissions.

Someone uploaded one or more patches made by someone else who didn't want them posted on RHDN and there was quite a lot of disagreement over whether they should be kept or taken down. I think there was something to do with a Pokemon patch too. I think the whole moderation process was in upheaval at the time.

In all cases there were people who were adamant that the item in question be kept/deleted, which polarised things quite a bit. Although from the sounds of things there was a whole other thing going on in Discord totally separate from the website, so possibly none of the above is related.

I just saw that earlier, it's a real shame as the site is one of the ones I usually check every day to see what new hacks are out. I noticed something going on last year when there was some sort of controversy over certain hacks submitted to the site, so I suppose this isn't entirely out of the blue. Hopefully romhacks.org will be able to fill the gap they're leaving behind.

I just watched some of that and he's doing all sorts of crazy things. It's amazing how quickly he charges up the power slide too. On Rainbow Road he does some crazy thing with red shells to knock himself off the track and trick the game into thinking he's completed a lap too. 😂

I love Bloodlines (although I do prefer the Japanese name for it!), so seeing this ported to the SNES would be really cool if it gets finished. There's some clever line scrolling use in this game, it would be interesting to see if it can be replicated or if something like Mode 7 gets used instead.

I thought this was going to be about something like the metal parts of the cab not being earthed and someone getting an electric shock! 😅

I love these DX patches. The ones for Mario Land 1 & 2, Metroid II and Tetris: Rosy Retrospection are all basically the definitive versions of those games for me now. If we could just get a better Wario Land and pretty much all my favourites will have had the DX treatment.

@KitsuneNight Yeah the battery life was terrible really. We had rechargeable EverReadys back then, but they took all night to charge and only lasted about 3 hours in the console and you could only charge 4 at a time. So you could play for 3 hours every two days that way! 😆

@KitsuneNight I'm not sure I ever put batteries in my GameGear, I just plugged it into the wall wherever I went! 😅

My preferred SNES controller is the Hori Super Commander, so I don't think those d-pad membranes would fit, but it looks like the button one might and I do need one of those as my Y button is getting a bit iffy in Mario World these days.

@KitsuneNight 😂 I need to try the Dreamcast Metal Slug port, it's supposed to be really good.

Oooh, chance-based in-game purchases you say? I'll go boot up the MVS instead thanks.

I wonder if Sega Rally now renders in colour when using hardware acceleration? Thankfully software rendering works and is full speed, but it would be nice to be able to use the same options for everything.

That MGS1 trailer was amazing. I remember it came on a cover CD with an issue of Edge and I must have watched it a hundred times it was so good. I was even impressed with the toilet because Konami were using so many polygons for it! 😂

@sdelfin I don’t think I’ve had that glitch, but I’ve been caught more than once with a glitch in Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts where taking a shortcut on level 4 doesn’t load the rest of the level. 💀

I think I know the Strider patch you’re taking about, I downloaded it but it was for an older version of the game not supported in MAME anymore. I wonder if it’s possible to port it…

@sdelfin I love a bit of Strider as well, I finally managed to 1cc it a month back! It wouldn’t surprise me if there are glitches, I tend to play the Japanese release and you can occasionally see small garbage pixels at the edge of Hiryuu’s sprite where it overlaps with another sprite in the ROM. Some versions re-use level 1’s music on other stages instead of having their own unique tracks too.

@Sketcz I haven’t uploaded any of them, as I wasn’t sure anyone would want them. In some cases they could probably just be made into Game Genie codes as they don’t change much. The Contra Spirits one is a bit bigger though as I needed to jump to the end of the ROM to add some extra instructions. 😅 Also I tend to mod the Japanese releases as those are the ones I imported back in the day, so I’d need to also do the US ROM before releasing. I probably should do it at some point!

@sdelfin Yeah Super SFII Turbo’s difficulty is broken, it always starts on hardest. For the rest of them, when you set the difficulty dip switches it reads that into another part of the memory when starting a new game and increments it after each fight you win, I find it eventually becomes impossible to win. I think it’s supposed to drop the difficulty when you lose, but I’ve never noticed it get much easier.

Many of the Capcom games from that era increase the difficulty the longer you play for, Strider is one of them. When you see those little robots flying in from the top or bottom of the screen you know the game wants to kill you and make you put more money in! 😂 Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts and Final Fight have it too IIRC.

I’ve done quite a few hacks like these lately, mostly on SNES games to get the full ending on all difficulties. I’ve done Area 88, Contra III, Gradius III, Salamander II (arcade) and Street Fighter II Turbo (I’ve also hacked the arcade ROM to disable the difficulty scaling).

I’ve been working on doing this for F-Zero but I’m trying to get it to show both endings rather only one of the endings but it’s hard to find where it’s branching after the end sequence.

I’ve modded Axelay to offer the hidden final difficulty setting called Monkey on the options screen and finally I’ve also changed ActRaiser to speed up the egg timer. It still needs some work though as it’s not possible to max out your population levels with the monster lairs being destroyed more quickly.

I wonder, if it had been released in a format like the Sonic & Knuckles lock-on cart, would we have got ports of Virtua Fighter and Star Wars Arcade? Would Sega have skipped the 32X if they'd had this as a stop-gap?

Was the two button mode a setting on the STV cart or was it just because some arcade operators put the three button game into a two button cab?

I think the two screenshots are back to front. I don't really know KoF but I was confused why a statue of Guile was controversial when it's right next to Guile himself, then I realised that was from CvS2. 😂

I would love a sequel to Axelay, although after all this time, I don't know if it would have the same impact it had on me the as the original did back in '92. Those rolling planet graphics and the giant lava boss were amazing to me back then.

Would they renew the trademark if they were putting it on NSO for the Switch?

I love this idea of trying to create demand. It reminds me of Theme Park where you could make the chips cheap but really salty to make everyone thirsty and then make the drinks really expensive to turn a huge profit!

I had a lot of fun playing this game with my brother. I can’t remember what levels we used to play, but I think we found certain swear words generated very good levels.

Even the name of the game was fun, as my puerile response to being asked if I wanted to play was to ask if he had worms and that he should get that looked at. 😂

@gojiguy Definitely, one of these in black with RGB out would be perfection.

@-wc- Definitely, controllers are pretty boring these days, there's no wild innovation, just minor tweaks to make them a bit more ergonomic. I do like the idea of the impulse triggers on the PS5 (I've not personally tried them yet) but other than that, we seem to be ossified into a standard now.

Even Nintendo doesn't seem to have an appetite for trying to innovate on the controller front, which is a bit surprising considering they could have released all sorts of whacky controller concepts to slide onto the Switch.

I'm not too surprised by this. I tried GoldenEye with the NSO controller and it just feels all wrong, the analogue stick just doesn't have the sensitivity and accuracy of a real stick. The N64 experience, more than any other console I think, just can't be accurately replicated without an original controller.

That's really impressive, but I'm very curious as to how they'd handle the Mode 7 rooms in that game!

@KitsuneNight Totally, it’s why I’ve never attempted to get very far in it. Plus if you die, you restart the level with nothing but the handgun. 😩 I’d be very happy to try and beat it if there was some way of saving my progress.

I wonder if they could port the Doom 64 levels to the SNES…? 😆

@kjra92 I haven't seen that movie, but I definitely agree someone who knows and loves the franchise is what is needed here. Just swapping in any old random director for hire will likely result in a load of deviations from the source material. Hollywood can't seem to help themselves when it comes to licensing a well known IP and then changing absolutely everything about it except the name. 😩

I'd forgotten they'd reprinted Issue 0 in a later issue of Mean Machines. I remember back then you were considered to be in possession of some sort of precious heirloom having the first issues of certain mags, with Mean Machines Issue 0 being the most desirable of all.

Having a look on eBay, you can get issue 1 for £30, which is a lot for an old games mag, but not quite the nest egg we thought it would be back then. 😂

@Kushan I hadn't considered them just dumping a PS1 ROM onto Steam like that, I hope that's not the case!

I wonder if this time it truly will be the uncensored version? I still love the original version of RE, so I'm definitely getting this if it's a good port.

@mjparker77 I was really impressed with them at the time, actually leaving ruts in the track and having that affect the grip and handling of the cars really felt special. The mud splattering on the cars and being washed off by puddles looked amazing too.

I tried replaying it recently on the Steam Deck and while it still looks and plays well, on a couple of tracks the AI car in first place is basically impossible to catch, which kind of spoils it. 😢 When practicing on single race mode the AI is easy to catch up, so maybe it’s a bug?

This looks pretty cool, it’s a combination of game type and setting I don’t think I’ve seen before.

I notice no Xbox version. Xbox is starting to feel like the Wii U now, I’m seeing more and more games skipping it this gen. Luckily I’ve got the other platforms but it must suck for people with just Xbox.

I haven't played this yet, but I'm hoping it's more like Curse of the Moon and Blaster Master Zero than a full-on MetroidVania. It's not the lack of 8-bit aesthetics that puts me off the MetroidVanias, it's exploring for ages and then dying before finding a save room which annoys me. At least keep the areas I've revealed on the map when I die!

Wandering around for ages not knowing where to go next doesn't help either. I always liked how Metroid Zero Mission handled hinting at where to go, it put a dot in an unexplored area of the map and then it's up to you to find your way to it.

They should release it on Switch with a special trackball joy-con. That would allow it to be controlled properly and finally make good use of the Switch's ability to change controls.

I wonder if it's another one would benefit from JIT support? The last time I tried iNDS a few years back it would run DS games but the performance was always iffy even on an M1 iPad Pro because of the lack of JIT.

I'm not surprised 3DS struggles, even the Steam Deck struggles to keep it full speed all the time.

I’m afraid I don’t remember any of these other than Go! 😅 It was always a good read though, I bought so many GB and GG games back then as they were much cheaper than console games. I do seem to remember that the screenshots for Sonic on the GameGear looked like the SMS version…

My personal forgotten gem from back then is Games X (which has been covered on here). Being a fortnightly magazine meant it often got reviews and news out faster than any of their competitors. I’m pretty sure they were the first to show a picture of the US SNES in the UK.

It's a shame some of the CPS1 library is locked behind licences like Willow and Area 88. They're both a lot of fun and both have RPG-esque progression to level up your plane/character, which is not something you saw very often in the arcades (except on the CPS1! 😅)

@gingerbeardman I would hazard a guess that it would be done roughly the same way, but it's not perfect on the SD2SNES, save states usually mess up the sound because there's no way to read the status of the SPC chip, so they're best used with the game paused (which usually stops the music so the game can restart it when you unpause).

I know Ikari had to use an oscilloscope to read the status lines on the SNES to help work out why certain in-game hooks would break certain games. So I can see why even on an FPGA where there's possibly more control it would be hard to implement.

This is one of those things that perhaps doesn’t get mentioned much amidst all the hype of FPGA systems. One of the reasons I stopped using my SuperNT was the lack of save states support, I didn’t really see the point of using a modern recreation of a system if it doesn’t offer any interesting modern features like being able to turn the console on and off from the controller or suspend the game so I can continue later.

These days I just use a regular Super Famicom and the save states the SD2SNES provides. If I really want to play something away from home, I usually just emulate it on the Steam Deck.