GravyThief

Great read. I knew a lot of the early part thanks to having recently read the book ‘Dice Men’ from Ian Livingstone. Which is a great book. But then much of the latter part was entirely new for me and very interesting. Thanks!

I’d love for Time Extension to do an article covering the early Fighting Fantasy and Games Workshop videogames. There must be some good stories there? HeroQuest, Soace Hulk, Space Crusade, the first two Warhammer games on PC and PS1.

That was an excellent read, thank you.

I’ll take a look at this. I’m already due to receive Jonathan Green’s FF 40th Anniversary book from his most recent Kickstarter, but I wasn’t aware of this.

The artwork is an iconic part of FF books, and that list of names at the end of the article define Fantasy art for me.

I’ll have to check this out.

Never heard of this before, and mention of Fighting Fantasy and Warhammer Quest 1995 has piqued my interest. I’ll check it out.

As long as CoLD SToRAGE did the soundtrack. Not interested in any music from ‘real’ artists. Tim Wright’s music is the only true Wipeout music.

Does anybody know why the PAL version of this game has the thickest, most horrendous borders ever seen in a PAL SNES game?

PAL SNES games in general are bad enough, with thick borders and skewed aspect ratios (much worse than PAL Mega Drive games), but this game takes the biscuit.

It’s strange, because the NTSC version doesn’t have any borders at all. I thought it might be like Street Fighter II on the SNES where even the NTSC version has borders, so the PAL version has even thicker borders because of it. But nope, the NTSC version is fine. It even has thicker borders than the PAL versions of the Street Fighter II games.

Anyway, I think I’ve used up my allowance of the word ‘borders’ in a single comment, so I’ll stop!

I was pretty underwhelmed with PIKO’s 4O Winks’ release. I remember playing the prototype rom on my Everdrive and thinking the sound was off (too quiet I think?). I assumed it would be fixed with PIKO’s release but it wasn’t, it sounded just the same as the prototype.

@-wc- thanks, I have that game so I’ll be sure to play that one if/when I come to play a PS2 GT game

Boo for not including the original. Still my favourite. All games after that just have too many cars for my liking.

I wonder which games company E.T. will destroy next?!

I really do like these articles on Time Extension from Jack and John. All the time and effort you put in to investigating, researching, interviewing etc really pays off.

From the article: Atari filed a lawsuit against Sega for infringement of one of its patents, taken out in 1984, which covered "horizontal scrolling on a video display."

Doesn’t that cover like a billion videogames? Atari could have been rich!

Wata ridiculous price for a magazine

That Lego is from my era. I had those 3 sets as a child. I used to love it! I’ll always remember Rampart on the SNES for being a game that was always in the ‘crate’ at an electronics store (maybe Dixons, can’t quite remember). My brother and I would always rush to it to look through the games, and got fed up of always seeing Rampart!

I’ve never come across this story before. It was really interesting, thanks!

I remember really enjoying Mario’s Time Machine back in the day as a kid. I think I also played this one, and enjoyed it too. They both kind of merge together in my memory

I do specifically remember Mario’s Time Machine highlighting to me that America used to be a British colony. It’s not something I remember being taught at school, probably because it was just one of hundreds colonies Britain had and lost over the centuries. But it stuck with me as an example of a videogame teaching me something, and I’m sure I used it numerous times as ammunition against people who thought videogames were a waste of time! 🤣

I should give this a try at some point. Thankfully I have an Everdrive, so I don’t have to worry how much the original cartridge costs. Even the Mega Drive mini 2 is stupidly expense now.

Soldering in new save batteries in each of these will be fun

That’s nuts. They probably wanted to squirrel them away in the hope their value would increase even more.

I’m glad hardware like this, and the Evercade, seem to be doing well. Hopefully we get more hardware in the future from similar ‘niche’ projects.

Speaking of the Evercade, that business model is how I wish Sega and Nintendo would have approached their Classic Mini consoles. They could still be selling mini cartridges that contain multiple games from different publishers (including themselves), and be making money from it. If Evercade can do it, then they definitely could.

I don’t recall anything about this game at the time. But having played, and thoroughly enjoyed, Alien Isolation, I can’t say I missed out.

This was a fascinating read, thank you. I’d never heard of this before, but it helps explain the jump in quality (from a technical standpoint at least) of the later PS1 games.

I always like it when complex and technical subject matter can be distilled into something a layman can understand.

I’ve been wanting to hack one of my 3DSes for a while. Not to download games for free, but to be able to play genuine US exclusive copies of 3DS games on my UK console. I cannot believe they region locked the 3DS, and this idiotic move of theirs has directly resulted in me wanting to hack their console. I was hoping they would release a software update to make it region free, but alas that doesn’t seem to be happening.

@RetroGames I was… joking.

Want to watch this, but won’t be subscribing to Apple TV+ for it. Hopefully it becomes available elsewhere at some point.

These games were trash as SlowROM. I never bothered with them as they were just so unplayable. I’m glad they’re now FastROM so I can finally enjoy them. Only took 30+ years.

@Krisi I got the Konami GB Collection Vol 3 last year and was pleasantly surprised to find that the Goemon game wasn’t just a colourised version of the GB Goemon game, but a different game entirely.

Does that Goemon game exist elsewhere, or is it unique to that cartridge? Because I struggled to find much info on it.

I’ll be checking mine tomorrow. I put it into the attic a few years ago as I got a PS4, although it got loads of use before that. I transferred my Wii over to it as well and have loads of eShop and VC games on a separate hard drive for it.

I’ve been charging up the game pad every 6 months to help keep the battery life as optimum as possible, but never thought I needed to fire up the console. I’ll probably start doing that when I do the battery admin, not that I understand what NAND is or why turning on the console stops it from causing issues. Hopefully this is something that can be fixed with a software update? For consoles that haven’t been bricked yet that is.

Wasn’t the original Polymega hardware just software emulation anyway, with the processing power inside the hardware rather than being on a PC? I know it allowed you to plug in your original carts/CDs, but that’s just cosmetics. At the end of the day, it was slick software emulation, wasn’t it?

So what they’re doing here is loving that software emulation to the app, which can then get its processing power from whatever device the app runs on?

When comparing it to the original piece of hardware it makes sense. Although I never thought the original hardware made sense anyway. As it’s not FPGA, I didn’t see the point in getting specific hardware for what is basically software emulation in the first place.

@HalBailman the point I was making was that it should be Wonder Boy and Metroid combined, not Metroid and Castlevania. Because Wonder Boy III did Metroidvania nearly a decade before Symphony of the Night did.

Also just to add about the Japanese version. The ROM inside the cartridge of the Japanese and American versions are exactly the same, so if you just want to play the game in English, you can do so with the Super Famicom version. And the box art is better too!

In my opinion the genre really should be called Wonderoid. Or Metroboy. Maybe not as internet catchy, but I’ve no idea why a game from 1997 gets all the credit. Wonder Boy III did it a decade earlier.

A great read, thank you

If you have a job and children, I can assure anyone from personal experience that you will not spend too much time playing videogames, because you won’t have any time to play videogames

A great read, thank you!

I mostly read Nintendo Life and Push Square for retro content, so Time Extension is ideal for me. I now read this site more than the other two, so I hope it goes from strength to strength next year. Good luck and Merry Christmas!

Great read, thank you!

I’d just got a Wii U for Xmas that year, and was thoroughly enjoying Zombi U! Can’t believe that was 10 years ago, I should probably give it another playthrough.

I find it interesting how the file extensions you see on ROMs for certain consoles are from the device that extracted the ROMs back in the day: .smd = Super Magic Drive, .smc = Super MagiCom, .v64 is from the Doctor v64 device. There are probably others.

I’m currently going in the opposite direction, selling off a lot of my collection. One day I looked at all the plastic tubs of games in my loft and it dawned on me: when did I become a hoarder? I went from only buying the games I had fond memories of growing up, to Carmageddon 64. Plus I don’t want my parting gift to my children to be ‘here, you have to deal with all this tat after I’m gone’.

Also, now is a good time to sell. I mean, I got £650 for two N64 games I never owned or played as a child!

I hear people talk about numbered generations all the time, but I never which is which and what consoles they include. I either have to look it up or I just switch off.

But I do group consoles together myself, although I think about them more in terms of power and the main competition of each one. So like 8bit, 16bit, then 32/64bit, then who knows what after that!

I never knew this existed, never saw one in the wild back in the day unfortunately. Would love to have a go on one though, shame I never will.

At first I thought this was the arcade machine from the Terminator 2 film. Then I saw the embedded video and realised it most definitely isn’t! 🤣

Off tangent I know, but every time I see Riverhillsoft mentioned, I just think of their opening jingle on their masterpiece Overblood for the PS1.

As Raz Karcy (the star of Overblood) would say: AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

I’ve not seen this box art until now and my goodness, it’s horrific. Who is that guy, and what’s going on with his face and hair?

This is how I think Nintendo and Sega should have done their classic mini consoles - with the ability to buy and play cartridges like the Evercade. Publishers could have released their own compilation cartridges to play on the systems.

Although I don’t have one (yet), I’m really glad Evercade are finding success with this system and business model, and I hope it continues.

I must say I find it perplexing when a British website says ‘UK Flea Market’ in one of its headlines!

I don’t know what he looks like now, but in my head he still sports a superb Mullet.

And an additional note. People talk about the SCART plug like it’s RGB. It isn’t. A SCART plug can carry composite, S-Video and RGB video signals. It all depends how its wired and what signal the console is sending across it. You can also get RGB via component cables, it isn’t exclusive to SCART.

I hate the SCART connector. It’s fiddly, has to be plugged in the right way round and is just annoying. Especially when trying to plug/unplug it at the back of a CRT that needs pulling out to do so.

However, pretty much all of my retro gaming is done using this god awful connector as RGB via a CRT is, in my opinion, the best way to play pre-HDMI games. No messing about with settings on things like the OSSC or RetroTINKs, no worrying about input lag or rubbish colours on LCD TVs, just simple plug and play with an awesome picture.

S-Video is good too, not quite as good as RGB but much better than composite.

I also don’t mind composite on a CRT when it looks good. The NTSC NES/Famicom has an atrocious composite signal, but the Master System has a decent one, for example.

My first Metroid game, and to me the best 2D Metroid game. I like the UK box art, but that Japanese box art is even better!