BulkSlash

@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.

Even if you aren't intending to make a sequel, surely keeping the brand awareness alive isn't a bad thing? It could even sell a few consoles if people decided they liked the look of the game and wanted to play it. If the game gets popular enough in tournaments it could end up justifying a sequel actually being made!

I bet the reality is there was some nonsense office politics going on.

And 25 years later WB sabotaged another Superman game when they insisted Kill the Justice League be a live service looter shooter. Plus ça change! 😩

They had me at "transforming mech shmup". 😂

This looks awesome, I can't wait to play it.

Cue Sega hardware collectors offering these places silly money for their urinals...

Two things I'll always give Sony credit for with controllers is making handles popular and using the symbols for the face buttons, which mean I could do a QTE on a Sony controller on sheer reflex, but you ask me to do a QTE on a DC/Nintendo or MS controller and I have to stop and think about which way round all the letters are. 💀

Only £90? That's nothing, the DreamPort is £160! 😅

https://www.dreammods.net/dreamport.html

Seriously though, I do need to get a replacement PSU for my DC as the one I've got must be a dodgy knock-off one as my multi-meter shows power still going through the SCART cable even when the console is off.

Whatever happened to that DLC for the Switch port of Cruis'n Blast they were working on? If this is as fun as Cruis'n Blast then it should be worth a play, although I so rarely encounter arcades these days I'll likely never play it without a home release.

I remember putting a pirated version of Tomb Raider for the N-Gage on my 6600, it ran fairly well and was quite impressive for the time, but I never got very far in it. It would probably have played much better with a proper d-pad instead of the little joystick nub that phone had! 😅

Ironically I think that’s probably a better camera angle than the one in Micro Machines. I was replaying MMV3 the other day and the camera picks really unhelpful angles most of the time. There’s the occasional tantalising moment where it’s just right, but sadly it doesn’t happen often enough!

@IntrepidWombat It was a combination of things. Steve Jobs' had a long standing beef with Adobe which lead to him implementing a "no interpreted code" rule for all apps on the App Store, as a way of preventing Flash from being on the iPhone. This unfortunately meant most emulators were blocked as well for quite a long time.

Later on, Apple did relax this rule, but they wouldn't allow apps that could play anything, they wanted each release to be a specific game so they could give it an age rating (I think possibly this was done to stop things like the Xbox streaming app). So things like Sega's individual Megadrive game releases would be allowed, but a general Megadrive emulator was not.

That said, if you had a Mac, you could build emulators for your iPhone and iPad quite easily. MAME4iOS uses the most recent PC version of MAME and there's also Provenence which does NES, SNES, N64, Master System, Megadrive, Saturn, PS1, GameBoy, GameGear and loads of others I've never used! But now that Apple have been forced by the EU to allow side-loading of apps, they've basically given up on any emulator restrictions as they would just drive people to use the alternate app stores coming.

Yeah I never even noticed you couldn't go back in there! Or if I did, it was years ago. A shame it doesn't lead somewhere interesting like an earlier version of the room, but I'm sure all the unused content in the game has long been found by data mining the ROM.

“Professionally pressed disc” I wonder why they needed to mention that! 😂

I don’t know if The Wizard was ever in cinemas in the UK, but I do remember renting it on VHS and enjoying it a lot. I remember wondering why the footage of TMNT was level 1 yet Beau Bridges claimed to be on level 3. While it’s probably a production mistake, he was on the third sewer of level 1, so maybe he thought it was level 3? 😅

Now if we could just get a soundtrack release for the film…

It’s OK, it wasn’t a real arcade machine. 😉

@Lofoten I think technically there are four known variants now. You're right that pictures 1 and 3 are the same prototype (from what we can tell from the picture anyway!)

But the "red switch" prototype now has three known variants (assuming this auction is legit)- there's the one in the picture above with the controller ports on the right and no EXT port; and then there's another version similar to the one being auctioned but with a yellow volume knob, a more bulging eject switch and different mouldings on the controller ports. This tweet has a close-up of the port differences:
https://twitter.com/covell_chris/status/1788019147659727104

@bobby_steurer 🤣 I could definitely see that happening!

@RetroGames Yeah, if I go to a garage sale the best I'm likely to find is a copy of Just Dance for the Wii and the empty box for Hannah Montana on the DS.

Somehow other people go to these things and find one-of-a-kind PlayStations or Saturns or Super Famicom prototypes! 😩

@smoreon Thanks. I’ll perhaps try to track down a copy of that version! It’s been a long time since I played DOA2.

@LowDefAl Blimey, I didn't know if was that convoluted! 😅 So is the DC version better? I'm sure I'd heard the PS2 version looked better, had more features and had 60fps cut scenes compared to 30fps on the DC. I wonder if this adds in everything the PS2 version had? (Incidentally the only version I've ever played is the EU DC release).

@KingMike You could fit a cart by removing the case and just inserting the PCB, of course whether the slot in the console is the same and has the same wiring is another matter! 😅

I’d still be fascinated to see the insides and know how close to final the hardware is.

Wow, I didn’t think any of these still existed. I’d love to have it but I’d bet it’s going to go for millions (assuming Nintendo don’t stop the auction).

I’d be fascinated to know what’s inside and if it can run any commercially released games.

It’s a shame the 64DD didn’t get more of a chance. Having (relatively) large amounts of storage space, decent access speeds compared to CD and most tantalisingly- the ability to write to the disks and persist changes in the game world could have made it quite special.

Perhaps if it had been the N64’s launch format instead of carts things might have gone differently (although even 64MB was paltry compared to the 700MB of CDs). I wonder if the DD’s capacity could have increased over time?

I really don't see the attraction of US/EU protos of games released in Japan first. They're very unlikely to have any major differences compared to the released game in them.

Protos of games still in development could well yield interesting differences, but aside from the odd game like Probotector, they aren't going to massively change the Western release, so why pay so much for a title screen with a different date?

I think anyone selling a proto should be required to dump it and show a binary comparison with the released version so people know how different the version is (the dump doesn't need to be released, it's just to prove if the ROM is worth anything).

It might surprise you when I say I’ve played Bulk Slash a lot, and I’ve never noticed any difference between the MISSes with one exception- the final unlockable MISS, Kina, will recharge the bomb in robot mode and the seeker missiles in flight mode much more quickly. The bombs in particular are the secret to a good high score as you can set off massive combo chains with them.

In terms of endings, if you get a high enough score you’ll get an extra FMV cutscene with the MISS you used after the credits. Also depending on your score you can get a different “wallpaper” of the MISS, with a particularly high score awarding you a picture of them in a bikini. It’s why I avoid playing as Kina as she’s like 5 and they have a bikini picture of her. 😫

This actually sounds like it could have been really good. I especially like the idea of them creating a bunch of fictitious wrestlers with silly names for it. Being able to damage the backgrounds or inflict damage on enemies using the environment is something I've wanted to see in a beat 'em-up for a long time.

@UK_Kev The DC would probably have better textures though as it had double the VRAM of the PS2.

I hope they plan to include the improvements Immorpher has made to Doom 64, including a much better brightness range.

My personal favourite improvement is showing how many secrets/enemies/items are left in a level so I can make sure I get 100% before finishing.

They'll probably have to put weapon selection on the d-pad as there aren't enough face buttons on the DC controller.

That was a great shop. I seem to remember thinking everything was very expensive, I bet if I saw those prices today I'd think everything was an utter bargain compared to today's prices! 😂

I tried this on Friday. The intro text goes on for something like 5 minutes, I assume it's summarising the entire anime up to that point or something! 😂 It probably needs some controls to slow down the scrolling as I couldn't quite keep up with the text towards the end!

In terms of gameplay it's pretty decent, I plan to give it a longer go at some point, but it certainly felt pretty fun to play, it feels a bit like Shinobi when you've run out of throwing knives.

@Sketcz Yeah that’s the method that mixes the tracks up, because it scans the TOC of the first disc and then assumes it’s still that disc loaded after you’ve swapped them.

I got my console modded eventually too, but for quite a while I was whipping the disc out while it was still spinning as if you got the timing right it would load the correct TOC for the disc. Can you believe the CD drive eventually broke in my PS1? 😂

This is quite huge, the Z80 is in so many arcade boards, many used them for sound like Capcom's CPS1 and Konami's TMNT board. Having new Z80s available has meant repairs have been quite easy, but if they start to become scarce that could be a problem.

@Sketcz Slightly funny story, but because I had an import PS1 I had to use the CD swap trick to play Doom on it. This would mess up which music tracks it used, which meant the levels would use the heavy metal tracks that were supposed to play on the map screens between levels and those map screens would get the atmospheric tracks.

I do agree Doom works well with aggressive music and the game playing those wrong tracks actually fit the game really well! I wonder if it's possible to switch the tracks around in this port... 😉

I thought Citra had to be shut down along with Yuzu after their problems with Nintendo? Is there some way they are allowed to carry it on?

It won't run on my old ST as it's an STFM! 😅

It's really cool to see such smooth scaling, especially considering how poor the OutRun port to ST was (I did enjoy playing OutRun back in the day, but I needed to use the STARION cheat to win).

I remember someone was porting Ghouls 'n' Ghosts to the ST a few years back because it used the same 68000 CPU as the CPS1 making moving the code over easier.

@Pillowpants Yeah that DX mod of Metroid II is outstanding, I wouldn't want to go back to the original now! 😅

I’ve been compiling MAME and Provenance to install on my iPhone and iPad for a few years now. It will be nice if this means I can just install them from the App Store directly. MAME is easy enough but Provenance can be a real pain to get it to build.

Some interesting stuff in there. I’ve never owned a NegCon, I’d really like to try one of those one day. I did have the JogCon which was pretty good.

I certainly wouldn’t argue with OoT getting the top spot, it’s still an amazing game to play even today (it’s my joint favourite Zelda alongside ALttP and ALBW).

I have noticed (and I’m not criticising) that RPGs tend to be over represented in topping most online games polls. I’m not sure why, maybe RPG players surf the web more than most gamers? Whatever it is, you can usually expect to see an RPG win even if it actually sold less than other games in the poll.

That’s interesting to hear about Jerry’s involvement with Time Crisis as he’s listed in the special thanks section of the game’s end credits.

The funny thing about Jack’s take on GTAIII is that it’s the player who runs over hookers or shoots a load of civilians, the game doesn’t make you do any of that.

Heck, if you find all the missions so objectionable you don’t have to do any of them, you can just explore the first island in peace. You won’t get very far in the game, but it’s 100% the player’s choice to participate. Plus it’s not like killing innocents isn’t consequence free, the police do come after you.