BulkSlash

That's cool. I always thought the cartridge port would be the obvious place for an ODE-type device, yet pretty much everything so far hasn't used it! We've got the Fenrir which replaces the CD-ROM drive, the Satiator which works via the Video CD slot and the SDLoader which works through the controller port! 😂

I recently bought the big box version to go with my Japanese copy. Once I've finished Prime Remastered I'll definitely be replaying Super Metroid again. I think it was only a year ago or so that I finally got 100% items, so I like to keep replaying it every so often to make sure I don't forget where everything is! 😅

I think you're being a bit hard on Accelerated 😅, it's true you did need to pay to unlock the rest of the tracks, but Slipstream would make races artificially difficult until you spent real money on an upgrade (I worked out once it would take 24 hours of constant grinding to unlock just one upgrade towards the end of the game)!

Plus, Accelerated's tracks were from Ridge, Revolution, Rage and Type 4, rather than the less iconic tracks of RR6/7 that Slipstream had. That said, I'd rather play either of them over Unbounded. 😆

My personal favourite for gameplay is still the first RR. While Rage and R4 have some stunning tracks, you lose a lot of speed when power sliding, whereas the first one would let you maintain top speed round the whole track.

If only Namco would give us an HD collection...

No, Mario and Ocarina are better, but Prime is still very good.

That’s a great list. I’ve always had a soft spot for Final Fight Guy and Final Fight 2, even though they’re quite flawed.

Ninja Warriors Again on the SNES is superb and just recently I started playing Ghost Chaser Densei, which is a bit easy but a lot of fun. It also has an incredible soundtrack which for some reason includes Rocky’s Eye of the Tiger when fighting the final boss! 😂

@RadioHedgeFund I'd forgotten about that one! I don't know whether to be happy or sad that the big publishers have pretty much given up on releasing their major franchises on phones and ceded the market to endless pay-to-win cartoon puzzle games.

@gingerbeardman Dude, that’s awesome, thanks. 👍

It’s been years since I played Prime 1 on the GC so I was genuinely surprised to learn they’d improved the graphics, I thought this was how the original looked just running at 1080p! 😅

I’ve also forgotten where everything is, so I’m having to rediscover everything all over again!

It's great to see Ninja Gaiden on the list, it's short and some of the bosses have hilariously basic patterns but Ryu is so fun to control and there's some great variety in the levels and power-ups.

I really must give Shinobi II a try, I got really into the first one on the 3DS (sadly I never had it back in the day) so something that refines and improves on it must be good. I need to try Vampire at some point too.

I had no idea about that MegaMan game (or I've forgotten), if it's as hard as the GameBoy MegaMan games I'm probably not going to get very far! 😅

That's interesting, I'd always heard that Sega had basically run out of money rather than the attach rate being too low. I knew the hardware was selling quite well but was dogged with shortages early in its life, which meant they could potentially have sold a lot more consoles if they'd had the stock.

Now that I think about it, if people weren't buying many games then selling the hardware at a loss would have been what bled the company dry. That's probably why a lot of major publishers stayed away too leading to a death spiral of no games and therefore no game sales.

It seems like there wasn't a way for Sega to win. Delaying the DC to make it more powerful and including a DVD drive would have put it in direct competition with the PS2 (and GC and Xbox).

It's a shame, the DC (along with the Super Famicom) is my favourite console ever, so I do wish we'd had a few more years of the incredible games Sega were putting out on it.

That's really impressive, it's like a hybrid of the Megadrive levels and the SMS bonus levels. They've even nicked the level title tiles from the MD version. I'll definitely have to give this a go after work.

Kind of crazy that they released a more powerful console and them hamstrung themselves by only releasing smaller My Card games for the first 8 months, but then Sega were always very good at sabotaging their own hardware launches! 😩

This is excellent news, there are tons of old iOS games that are actually very inventive and worth playing that won't run on modern versions of iOS. If they can make more games compatible I'd definitely enjoy being able to play Crayon Physics, Ridge Racer Accelerated or Minotron again (to name just a few).

I know they’ve lost the source code, but I’d love to have Minotron recreated for consoles and PC. The original only runs on old versions of iOS but it’s so much fun it’s a shame it can’t be easily played any more.

@Damo That's good to know. In fairness even the Steam Deck isn't perfect, things like Heroic Games Launcher are needed to get the old Star Trek games from GOG running.

That's impressive. I really love my Steam Deck but more power is always cool.

Does the Aya Neo have any kind of custom front end for launching games? The Steam Deck's custom interface for launching games is a big plus point, also loads of games have been tuned for the hardware and there are loads of community created settings and control layouts out there.

If the Aya Neo doesn't have that, then there's probably going to be quite a lot of faffing with game settings while with the Steam Deck you can usually just get straight into the game.

I bought a PAL version a few years back in pretty decent condition (the corners of the cardboard slipcase are a bit worn). It's such an awesome game, I love the combat system, the "radar" showing danger areas and the depth in evolving your dragon and picking the correct dragon form for each battle really make it unique.

I honestly don't know if I'd want a remake. It's got such a unique look you'd need people really dedicated to replicating the visual style of the game otherwise it wouldn't feel right. The final area of The Last Guardian reminds me of this game.

I didn't even know there were button codes! I've always unlocked them the hard way by playing the levels. 😂

I never actually use them, I just do it for the extra challenge. 😉

Sega moves in mysterious ways.

Ironically, the US version of Actraiser was easier than the Japanese version, so it’s quite funny to hear the sequel went the other way.

I can sort of understand why they wanted the sim parts removed. Before I actually played Actraiser I thought the sim bits would be boring, then I actually played it and realised they made the game awesome. I can certainly see it putting people off buying the game back in the day.

Wip3out definitely has some of the best box art. The Japanese Saturn version of Wipeout XL is pretty awesome too.

I remember the producer of Wip3out saying they actually took features out of the game in order to make it as minimal as possible. I think it ran in one of the PS1’s high-res modes too as it looked really sharp.

My favourite to play is still probably 2097, I don’t like the XL name, but the NTSC versions are definitely smoother and faster than the PAL release. I’m hoping one day there will be a patch to change the NTSC title screen to display the 2097 logo. 😅

@sdelfin Yeah I absolutely love Ninja Warriors Again, I actually like it more than the recent remake even. I can't put my finger on why, I just like the way it plays more.

I recently played Ghost Chaser Densei as well, and that's a fun little beat 'em up. Prices for that are sky high too! 😩😅

I own most of the games I play on Flashcarts/ODEs. It's mainly the convenience of not having to switch games, being able to play patched versions of games with QoL improvements and in some cases save states for games with no built-in saving facility

I still like to own the original cart/disc if I like the game enough and if I can afford it. Stuff like Vampire Killer and Ninja Warriors Again are getting crazy expensive now sadly. 😢

Great list, Photoboy is a particular favourite of mine, there’s never really been anything else much like it (as far I know). I didn’t realise it was ported to PS1, I’ll have to see if I can track that one down. I do have the PS2 sequel though!

I also really love the PC Engine version of SFII as the AI feels a lot less cheap compared to other versions. Plus it gives you the full ending on all difficulties!

Release it on a JAMMA board! 😅

Fascinating how messing around with an LED/LCD calculator inspired both Mattel and Gunpei Yokoi to make handheld games.

It’s surprising to hear Katz say they didn’t have the hot arcade games. I’d be interested to know what games he was thinking of (maybe Konami’s TMNT game?) because the Mega Drive had great versions of Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts and Strider as well as Sega’s arcade games.

@Zenszulu I think it's the only third party memory card I've used that hasn't trashed my data! 😂 I was quite pleased when I discovered all my data still on it when I plugged it in a few years back.

I once entrusted my Dreamcast saves to an Action Replay memory card (or was it Game Shark around then? I can't remember anymore 😅). Anyway it lost my best Crazy Taxi score of 88K or thereabouts. That took me ages to get too!

This has prompted me to check my old Shock Wave in my N64, which is a combo of 1MB memory and rumble pak.

I just opened it up and it's got a CR2032 soldered in it, so I'm going to order some replacement batteries and holders. I've got two, so I'm going to transfer data to the other one so it doesn't lose anything when the battery is disconnected!

It's either the Dog Bone NES controller, the SNES controller or the N64 controller for me. They're all excellent to use and represent most of the key DNA in all modern controllers. I voted for the N64 expecting it to be the lowest but actually it's doing quite well! 😂

I'd also say the Saturn Analogue pad and the Dreamcast controller are very important for introducing analogue triggers (which so many companies seem to struggle to do well, with Nintendo having just given up on them entirely it seems).

I wonder why that Orange staffer thought the device looked unprofessional? I mean folded up it looks like any other smartphone from that era (unless it was unreasonably chunky because of the folding controls?)

I think what killed it for me was the lack of games outside of the PS1. If it had two proper analogue sticks and supported PSP games too I think they would have been onto more of a winner. Really all Sony needed to do was make the PSP Go a phone and they’d have been done. 😅

@Bunkerneath I often report the obvious Vampire Killer repros on eBay being sold for £300 as loose cartridges. I never hear anything back, maybe TimeExtension could try asking eBay for an official comment as to why they never seem to take action when fakes are being sold as originals? Some bad publicity might make them pay attention.

I seem to remember rumours back in the day of building an SVP chip into a pass-through cart like Sonic & Knuckles with the idea that you’d only need to pay for the expensive chip once and then the games could be cheaper.

I wonder if the 32X killed that idea or if someone got their wires crossed and the 32X was the rumoured “pass-through cartridge”? It’s been so long now I can’t remember where I even heard that rumour (hopefully it wasn’t from someone whose uncle worked at Sega 😅).

As cool as it is to see Starfox on base MD hardware, I’d be really interested to see it running on the SVP and see how it could handle it.

That’s a good list. I never really got into Neo Geo back in the day as I rarely got to visit arcades and the times I did they usually didn’t have any Neo Geo games. That said, I’ve played quite a few now and my favourites are definitely Metal Slug 1, Puzzle Bobble and Neo Turf Masters (“on the green!”).

It still doesn’t feel like a new console launch to me without a Ridge Racer game! I must have blacked out Ridge Racer Draw & Drift. 🤮

The last mobile one I played was Slipstream (it’s still on my iPhone), it could have been fairly decent but was ruined by micro-transactions. It was really blatant about it too, the moment you paid for a single vehicle upgrade the AI cars would go from being impossible to being really easy.

I think the problem is Bamco kept trying to make Ridge Racer like it was Gran Turismo, so they’d spend huge amounts trying to make a AAA game with ever larger career modes, when really RR should be a short arcade experience and a budget price to match. Much like the recent Cruis‘n Blast.

I loved Games-X, they tended to break stories much earlier than the monthly mags (obviously) and I distinctly remember them having the first picture of the US “Super Famicom”. When I saw what they’d done to the design I stopped waiting for the US machine and bought an imported Super Famicom. 😅

I remember the SAPS adverts, I remember everyone said they were rubbish but I always thought they were pretty good! 😅

“we continue to maintain inventory and fulfill new orders”

Sounds to me like they’ve stopped making them and are just running down the mountain of systems they’ve got sat in a warehouse somewhere. Hopefully they don’t end up like all those E.T. cartridges.

Coupled with “We have several hardware and software projects in development, under licensed contracts” I think they plan to just licence out the rights to make Atari mini consoles and let someone else take the financial risk of building hardware.

I can’t get more than a few minutes into level 1. I really do suck at shmups! 😩😅

On the topic of the game having a sense of humour, I assume that’s why the gates at the end of Statue say BJ instead of JB…

I love Dark Forces and its sequel. I’m replaying Jedi Knight at the moment on the Steam Deck, but this will definitely be what I’m playing next!

I love how DOLLS stands for Detachment of Limited Line Service. Reminds me of how the girl co-pilots in Bulk Slash were called MISS which stood for Manageable Intelligent Support System. 😂

I’ve always found Carmack to be a deeply insightful and intelligent guy. I remember years ago reading his change logs on porting Wolfenstein to the iPhone and every decision he made was well considered and made perfect sense. It’s definitely to Meta’s detriment that they’ve lost him.

I didn't know there were devices for this back in the day for consoles, but thinking about all the crazy stuff that came out back then I really shouldn't be surprised! 😅

I've got something like this for JAMMA boards, but I was never able to get it to work properly.

I never saw Robotech but in the UK we had Battle of the Planets, which was similarly heavily re-edited from the original Gatchaman series.

We also had Star Fleet which was a puppet show like Thunderbirds but the puppets looked like anime characters. It was similarly reworked from its original Japanese series X-Bomber.

Both were great and I wouldn’t have got into anime without them. There were a lot of bad dubs in the ‘80s and ‘90s, so I can understand why people tend to hate anything that has been dubbed or localised or altered, but it wasn’t all bad.

I was always on board with the look, at the time I considered it a visual successor to A Link to the Past and what that game would have looked like in 3D.

What I really didn’t like was the lack of dungeons and content in general and the fetch quest at the end to pad the game out disappointed me so much I didn’t even finish it.

Sadly both Mario and Zelda seemed to fall victim on the GC to Nintendo overcompensating for the way games would be delayed until they were perfect on the N64 and they released games before they were ready.

Someone actually voted for LJN! 🤣

I was lucky enough to have a go on a G-Loc 360 at the Trocadero back in the day. I remember they kept a stack of towels next to it so cleaning up accidents was obviously fairly common! 😆

I didn't really play the game, I just put the plane into a spin so I could get the cabinet to spin me round over and over! 😂

It was a truly unique gaming experience and really gave you something you would likely never get at home. Things like this and Ridge Racer Full Scale really were incredible in their day, it's a shame the days of huge statement cabs like that are over as it really was the golden age of arcade games to me.

@sdelfin Thanks, yes it was Console Wars! I’ve got so many books in my Kindle Library that without remembering the name I couldn’t even search for it! 😅

That’s a great point about the Saturn coming with a game and storage vs the PS1 with no game or memory card. I guess it came down to that all important optical price.

Speaking of pack-in games, IIRC Console Wars also recounted how SoJ were adamant that Kalinske shouldn’t pack the brand new Sonic 1 in with the Genesis. Iramajiri eventually relented and it lead to the sale of loads of consoles. I think that was the start of the problems between SoA and SoJ.

I remember reading about this in a book about Sega of America and Kalinske (annoyingly I can’t remember its name 😳).

Apparently when SoA prioritised certain retailers over others for the early Saturn stock they ended up black listed by the retailers who missed out. They refused to even stock the Saturn later on, which certainly wouldn’t have helped.

I’d be interested in hearing the perspective of people at SoJ at the time for fairness, but from everything I’ve read they really made some terrible decisions and sabotaged their own launch just because Kalinske succeeded where they hadn’t.

It's pretty much the only way to do it these days given the complexity of game development. Why re-invent the wheel when someone has already done it and done all the debugging and testing to make sure it works? It means you can focus on making the game and not the engine.