BulkSlash

I can't play NES Gradius 1 now without having the arcade improvement patch installed. It even ups the number of options you can have (I think this is another game nerfed to stymie rentals). So unless they include that, it's not much of an omission.

That said, I do prefer SNES Gradius III to the arcade as it's much easier (and I've patched the ROM to give the best ending on all difficulties 😂).

I'd probably still get the collection just for Salamander 3, although it is a shame they didn't include ReBirth now that it's completely unavailable.

I've seen quite a few retro products trying to bring back beige, but I just don't have any nostalgia for beige, it was horrible then and horrible now! 😅

For a brief moment I thought "Interactive Edition" meant it was going to be an FMV game! 😂

I guess if I was in the market for a desktop clock that also told me the temperature and humidity I’d definitely go for one shaped like a Neo Geo. That said, my smart phone’s weather app tells me the approximate temperature and humidity where I am and it has a clock, so 🤷‍♂️.

@NeonPizza Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll do dozens of colour variants, which they will only sell for a limited time in limited amounts so the lucky few can scalp them on eBay.

They seem to have some sort of FOMO thing going on where some people try to collect all the variants and they make it worse by only making a handful of each variant. Even the awful Limited Run Games at least makes enough for everyone who preorders! 😂

Big "taikan" cabs like this are my favourite sort of arcade experience, you get something you just can't get at home. I love how they've stacked two screens on top of each other too.

Raw Thrill's Cruis 'n' Blast was excellent, so if this plays as well it should be really good!

"That boom was only about two years long. It felt like a long time at the time because I was a kid."

This pretty much sums up that whole '90s era for me. I still discover things like RE2 released the same year as MGS1 when in my memory they feel like they were 2-3 years apart!

My CRT actually does only have one speaker, but I didn't think to change the sound setting to mono when I replayed MGS recently. I probably wouldn't have found this easter egg anyway as I tend to ignore the codec whenever possible.

It's no wonder Sony loved Kojima, his games didn't just sell Playstation consoles, they shamed people into updating their TVs too! 😂

@slider1983 If anything is guaranteed to bring about the AI uprising where Skynet destroys us all is if we force it to play LJN’s NES games.

I love how most of the amplifiers look more like washing machines and how there's no drummer.

Is Crash Bandicoot Brawl a fighting game, a kart game or a platform game? 🙄

😂 Playing as naked Arnie isn't something I ever expected to see! I love that there's a choice on whether to execute Miles Dyson or not, I wonder how that could affect the ending.

Yep, I agree with everyone has said. With something like this the Megadrive is barely more than just a power supply and controller port. There’s a similar thing with Krikkz’s Mega EverDrive which has a port of Doom running on its ARM CPU.

The magic comes from pushing the original hardware to its limits and finding clever ways to do things, not “cheating” with modern hardware. That said, WiFi support for cloud saving or online gaming could be interesting!

I'd be all over one of those if they were this side of the pond. I've got VF2 and DOA which I could put in one of them with a switcher.

I didn't think EA had much to do with the first two Mass Effects? The first was published by Microsoft and ME2 was pretty much done by the time EA took over. It was ME3 with the crow-barred in multiplayer, day one DLC and complete focus on action that felt like it had EA's fingerprints all over it.

Can't wait! I've nearly got 100% in GTA 3 on the DC now and Vice City is my favourite GTA so it will be awesome to have it on the Dreamcast.

I'm still rocking my old Mega Everdrive, I've been loath to replace it as it has save state support and the recent cheaper Everdrives don't and the Pro is quite expensive. That said, I can't use save states on mine without unplugging the 32X! 😂

I've always wondered if an FPGA 32X could be achieved on one of these carts. That would definitely get me to upgrade, especially if it can work on the Nomad without needing mods.

@MARl0 Thanks! I’ll wait to see if it gets patched before taking the plunge, I find the Steam Deck really ideal for VNs

I was planning to get this anyway but I want it even more now! I do think the text size might be an issue though as I'll be playing on Steam Deck.

@dmcc0 It could be a muscle memory thing. I don't have much trouble with Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts these days so oddly it is kind of relaxing to play! 😅

I tend to find playing something new where I've got to work out the controls, where to go, what to do, etc, can be a lot more challenging that just picking up something I'm very familiar with.

It could also be down to the complexity of modern graphics or the "readability" of the environment. The old 2D and 3D stuff was more basic so it was easy to discern what's an enemy, a platform, a power-up, etc. When I tried the RE4 Remake I thought they'd taken destructible barrels out because there were barrels as background details that you couldn't destroy. I think that explains why they had to put yellow paint on the ones you could destroy!

Pringles had a retro repair clinic? That's got to be the randomnest thing I've heard in a while. I know those Pringles tubes can be pretty useful for things but are they good for console repairs too? 😉

Still it's true- once you pop [a game into a retro console] you can't stop.

At this point their reputation is just garbage. I won't be buying anything from LRG anymore and I really hope publishers start to use the other companies that make physical versions of games.

Will LRG's "SuperFX 3" version of Doom be using the wrong voltages? I bet id Software won't be happy if LRG's carts start bricking SNES consoles.

It's amusing that they've managed to engrave an A on the disk casing which is the correct shape to defeat the copy protection.

The "old guard" developers who are used to making console games that they release and forget about have never really managed to adjust to the need for mobile games to be supported long term. So many early iOS games stopped working over time and the big companies like Namco, Sega, 2K, Square, Konami, Capcom, etc are the main culprits.

I think they are still in the mindset of releasing a game and moving onto the next project and don't approach it with the need to ensure things don't break when Apple makes a change to iOS.

I'm still annoyed that 2K lied about fixing Bioshock when it stopped working 6 months after release. And they wonder why people don't want to pay premium prices for mobile games...

I really enjoyed Blood Stone, it wasn't the best Bond game (that's GoldenEye!) but the gunplay was solid and the gameplay loop was mostly fun. It was only really spoilt by very samey enemies, if they could have added more variety and some boss encounters it would have been a solid game.

In fairness I think you could probably make quite an interesting Bond game where all you have are Q's gadgets at hand to evade enemies and traverse obstacle in the level.

That said, it wouldn't be appropriate for a GoldenEye game where you would rightly expect guns to play a prominent part!

I'm not sure what to think of Barbara Broccoli, on the one hand, she's apparently holding up Amazon making more films because they see Bond as just mere content and she disagrees with that. On the other, she hated GoldenEye 64 and greenlit that terrible ending for No Time To Die, so she's a bit hit and miss.

I tried it the other day, it was pretty good once I got used to all the controls. It has quite a lot going on, not only is there shooting into the background but you can deflect enemy projectiles, go into bullet time and sometimes jump into the background)

Graphically it looks really excellent, the pixel art is very well done and all the neon colouring is very Blade Runner-esque.

The only thing I didn't like is the way it grades you after each level. I don't know why but I've always disliked being judged by a game on how I've played when it's my first time playing. It's like being asked to do the final exam after your first lesson. Plus it doesn't tell you what the criteria is until after finishing the level!

That's pretty cool! I'd guess Frogbull overwrote all the textures on the arcade ROM with single colours to simulate the look of flat shaded polys. I doubt you could get that many polygons out of the 32X at that frame rate.

They’ll be announcing a partnership to launch the game on the SuperSega next…

@jamess Thanks, I'll give that a look. Now that you mention it, I can definitely see why it could be difficult, the steering mech in an arcade machine will have gears that will alter the range of values coming from the potentiometer plus the wheel itself usually has stops to limit how much it can turn. I know some have a 170 degree-ish range which would limit the values going to the game.

Interesting they fixed analogue sensitivity inputs for Jet Wave. If they deemed that too sensitive does that mean they find the sensitivity level on other racing games OK?

I find I can't get analogue steering to work satisfactorily on Steam Deck in any game I've tried, no matter how much I turn things down. It's always far too twitchy. Plus it never seems to work properly with the analogue triggers, they usually end up backwards or always accelerating even if I'm not touching them. 😩

I've played a fair chunk of the beta and I can't really see many differences other than the police cars not being green and white, which I think could just be a bug rather than a deliberate change.

Several of the vehicles do seem to have different colour schemes and the Comet looks quite different. The trouble is, I mainly know the PC version and from reading the thread on the GTA Forums it looks like the PC port was actually branched off from an older version of the game than the one on the PS2, so some differences I've spotted are actually just differences between the PS2 and PC port.

Funnily enough YouTube recommended this to me earlier. It's quite fascinating, especially the randomness built into the timing of Donkey Kong throwing barrels. I had no idea he could actually run out of barrels either!

If a human was able to waggle the joystick fast enough to trigger that ladder glitch I reckon it would probably damage the joystick and control panel! 😱

Itagaki's secret masterplan for beating Tekken has been leaked:

1) Jiggle physics.
2) More jiggle physics.

It’s a shame, but they just fell out of relevance. I haven’t been in a Smiths in years. Back in the ‘80s I’d be in there all the time for C64 games and toys, then in the ‘90s for books, videos, music and games mags.

With physical media dying, there’s very little they can actually sell these days.

@Serpenterror Yep, readying myself for yet another disappointing reveal of the same old Megadrive ROMs that Sega seem to think we haven’t all bought multiple times now.

I actually like the chunkiness of the Nomad, I find it more comfortable to hold than the Switch, even though the right side of it is pretty square-shaped!

Unless this new battery pack is wider, it shouldn't interfere with holding the Nomad as the official battery pack doesn't get in the way when I hold it.

It would be cool of Krikkz could do a low-profile Mega Everdrive to fit the Nomad with less catridge sticking out the top.

If the NAND goes bad while it’s in storage and not being written to, I’m not sure how wear level testing would allow Nintendo to pick up on flawed memory modules.

Nintendo should have instead put a Wii U away in their cupboard for 10 years and then sent it back in time so their engineers could see the results!

Teasing something that won’t actually be announced until March? I don’t see the point, I’ll have likely forgotten about this in 5 minutes time. Unless you’re Nintendo, you can’t get away with hyping something with so little detail like this, better to just announcing whatever it is you’re making rather than playing hard to get.

I play both sides of my Time Crisis 2 machine, it's actually hard work and both my arms are dead tired by the end. I can't do it without dying a lot though. 😅

I'm much better at Time Crisis 1 thanks to practicing on the PS1 version so much back in the day.

@Daniel36 It's definitely 1996, it's a weird device that's why it looks like it belongs in 1986. 😂

It has a powerful for-the-time x86 CPU but a really basic GameBoy style green screen. I guess they thought they needed loads of processing power for a machine to play chess type games. In spite of that it still takes ages to choose a move! 😆

It’s been mentioned already but Turtles in Time was the one that immediately came to mind. It has a few graphical cut backs, but the additions make it the superior game.

Radiant Silvergun’s Saturn mode that retains your upgrades is pretty rad too.

@sdelfin Yeah I think the limit in part must be down to the second player. Playing single player with the number of enemies at 4 is OK, but when going to 5 you do get flicker. So a two-player game with 4 enemies would have had flicker too, but by sticking to 3 it would have been OK.

I decided to experiment a bit, I upped the number of sprites to 6 and aside from the occasional brief priority issue (one enemy would be in front of another when he should be behind) it's actually able to run OK with 6 enemies. Pushing it to 7 works too, but there's some slowdown and there must only be enough palettes for 6 characters as the 7th has wrong colours. I'm actually going to leave it on 6 I think, it's unlikely I'll be playing it two-player any time soon.

Thanks @BillyTime for including both the emulator and file offset, even when I've found something using the memory editor, finding it again in the ROM file is often a pain! 😅

@BillyTime Oh wow, thanks! I’ll try patching that tomorrow, I can’t believe it’s that simple. 😂 I wonder why Capcom left it out of the game? Do you think it could be done with Final Fight Guy too?

@KitsuneNight I've been having similar thoughts. Just about every Windows app I've tried running on my Steam Deck runs perfectly, the only exceptions I've come across are Xenia (the Xbox 360 emulator) and Gears of War 1 (the PC port).

Windows is just getting worse and worse, while the desktop mode of Steam OS has really impressed me with how many native apps are available and also with how well it can run Windows apps under Wine.

The only real thing holding me back is the pain of moving everything on my desktop over to Linux.

I'm nearly onto the second island now, despite being 20fps a lot of the time, it's actually really playable. Also, if you have an ODE the sound quality doesn't need to be crunched to fit onto a CD-ROM like the version John Linneman is playing in the video.

If you think the enemies are bad in the SNES version, try playing the arcade bootleg! I think that game has the opposite of this patch applied, where your character does even less damage than usual (and the enemies do 2x the damage!). 😆

It's great this patch works with the JP version of the game as that's the one I had growing up. There's another FF2 romhack that allows 5 enemies on screen at once, I wish that was compatible with the JP release!

I tried this yesterday on the Steam Deck and it’s really good. It plays a lot like Mario 64 (things like long jumps, triple jumps, wall kicks, side flips, etc). There’s lots of secrets hidden about the place and in the best tradition of Mario 64 there’s often ways to “cheat” and reach areas you shouldn’t through clever acrobatics. I’ll definitely be getting it when it launches.

The issue isn't with games like Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time, it's when you try playing something really obscure that hardly anyone plays that you find will find graphical and accuracy issues.

The most obvious timing issue with the Switch N64 emulator is the ending sequences to Ocarina of Time and Mario Kart 64. The ending visuals finish before the music does on both because it doesn't accurately emulate the slowdown in certain parts. In the case of Ocarina of Time it cuts the music off, in Mario Kart, Mario talks over the music.

You'd think Capcom would insist on six face buttons for a system that will run their beat 'em ups.

This is the second time I've had to get my Deck out at work today...

Hopefully the game will run on the Steam Deck when it launches.