Martin_H

Blimey that's running slooooooooow.

@DestructoDisk You make a good point. It's what I would call a value-added "curated experience".

They do pop up from time to time. Most recently with the Atari 50 and Jeff Minter collections, but also earlier examples like the Sega Mega Drive Collection and the Taito Legends outings.

I remember going through my "Cave Shooter" phase on the 360, even to the extent of importing some titles from Play Asia. Even back then Cave knew they had to cram in extra features to make it appeal to a broader audience than just the very few hardcore enthusiasts.

I had a lot of fun with those, although I never really "got" bullet hell, what with it's esoteric scoring, multiplier and bonus mechanics. And having to focus on the 2 pixel square that was your hitbox, meaning you missed much of the screen-filling excitement.

Cave lost a lot of good-will from me over the Android releases of DoDonPachi and EspGaluda 2 fiasco. Years after the iPhone releases we finally got them for Android... which had been farmed off to some other company. Instead of downloading the games directly from the Play store as you might expect, you actually paid to buy a downloader. This was never advertised on the store pages. Within a few years the downloader stopped working (although you could still buy it on the Play store!), then some time after that the downloader vanished.

@Bot_Bot_69 Captain passive aggressive runs away again! If you're up at 3am arguing on the internet, try getting a life.

@Bot_Bot_69

Now address the points I made... if you can.

@Bot_Bot_69 Funny, that. You never seem to be up for a conversation or a debate.

So here you go: Sorrell made his deal with the devil back in the 90s. He chose to accept money over his rights to the James Pond property, if he had any claim to it to begin with. To come back 30 years later and complain about his lack of involvement and the "soulless" activities of business people:

1) Didn't stop him from selling out in the first place.
2) Having sold out gives him no right to complain about the activities of those he sold out to.

You'll notice he doesn't actually criticise AI - calls it "complicated" - so that's not his issue.

Hence: sour grapes. Sorrell is regretting the choices he made in the 90s, thinking he'd be inline for a lot more money now.

@Bot_Bot_69 I see. How may I help direct you?

@Bot_Bot_69 I bet he didn't complain at whatever remuneration he received at the time.

Sounds like a case of sour grapes to me. We all have regrets in life, but those were the choices we made at the time.

@JackGYarwood wins this one!

I'm hoping for some Atari 50 DLC too, however.

There's a certain incongruity between having a bespoke, custom, handbuilt arcade stick and using AI to promote it. Surely it would be easier just to build the thing and take some photos of it?

Not forgetting Toonstruck!

You'll be missed, Tim. But your legacy will live on!

@slider1983 I never really got on with Zool, but if we were all the same it would make for a boring world. But we all have a story about why certain games mean so much to us, so I'm intrigued: what do you love about Zool and the series?

Even without these blasted cataracts, I don't think I could cope with a screen that small. Maybe under a microscope. But that would put a dent in the portability!

My go to portable these days is the Trim UI Smart Pro S. It's just about the right size, plays what I want it to play, and was cheap enough that I don't worry too much about it getting lost, stolen, or damaged. Honourable mentions go to my 3DS XL, Vita and RG Cube XX.

You can never have enough Alien Breed. I've never played the 3D games, but the first three are stone cold classics. I even liked the 2010 reboot trilogy, which I thought was awesome although "reviewers" at the time weren't so keen.

I also recommend Shadowgrounds and Shadowgrounds: Survivor. Both great games, heavily inspired by Alien Breed.

Which reminds me: if you have any friends who like these sorts of games and are actually capable of acting like a team, the UT: 2004 mod Alien Swarm and the later Steam game Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop are both great.

If you know of any other games like this, let me know!

I'll stick this on the Christmas wish list.

Looks like a good range of representative games from each decade. I take it a requirement for inclusion was having a developer story and none could be sourced for games like Ridge Racer and Sega's Virtua games?

Doesn't really matter, though. A book like this is never going to encompass every arcade game ever released, and there looks to be plenty of games included that I know nothing about in terms of development or ever having played.

I've been playing the Mega Drive version for most of the day... I've deleted the rom from my computer.

I can't have this game dictating the next 6 months of my life! I wish I'd known about it back then, when I had a lot more time on my hands.

It looks very impressive for the price... heck, it just looks impressive full stop. I'd love to try that 1080p 120Hz mode.

If I had the space to use more original hardware and a better monitor, I'd probably get one of these. As it is, I'll probably stick with the GBS-C. It's definitely on the list of things if I win the lottery, though.

@-wc- I've also upgraded my evaluation of how many Evercade games natively support the resolution of the Nexus: 2 - thanks to the Banjo twin pack! 😄

@A_WINNER_IS_Mii Oh, I'm not talking corporate controlled digital. That isn't preservation at all.

This will go down like a lead balloon, but I'll say it anyway: the future of preservation is digital.

I like having physical things. I like paper books, vinyl albums, films on VHS and DVD, and games on discs and cartridges and floppy disks and on tapes. That isn't preservation. It's me owning stuff.

Preservation is making sure we all have access to all this stuff, forever. That can only be done digitally. Digital gives us infinite replication at near zero cost.

I remember buying Second Samurai for the Mega Drive. It was one of those games that just seemed to appear briefly in the shops with no fanfare and no reviews I ever saw and then vanished. Since it was going pretty cheap, I slapped down some filthy lucre and took it home.

What a cool game! One minute you're fighting cavemen and riding dinosaurs, the next you've got a jetpack and shooting down spaceships.

I'll have to give it a replay at some point.

Well I wasn't expecting the comedy capers of Ax Battler and friends to emerge from this.

I don't think this is going to have particularly long legs. Once all of the in-jokes have been exhausted (which will probably take all of five minutes), I don't know where else they can take it. Oh well, we'll see.

What would be cool is a proper Conan animated series based on Robert E. Howard's stories.

Never heard the death row theory before. Sounds like an April 1st story that got out of hand!

I'm not totally convinced that the team at Sega went round renting as many VHS tapes as possible in the hopes of ripping off some sound effects. It could be true, but I think it more likely they had access to the same sound effect libraries used by the movie studios.

I'm excited to visit one of these, having never managed to get to a Cex in the good old days. However... isn't most of what they will sell be behind lock and key given how pricey a lot of it is? Was it like that back in the day?

@Lanmanna Ah, but this isn't the original.

My question: why would you want to play this over the HD remake from a few years back?

@-wc- I reckon cost was a major part of the decision.

Mind you, I do wonder if Evercade are gaining new customers these days or are mostly trying to up-sell the existing customer base.

@KingMike I think you may be confusing the more square ratios like 10:9 and 6:5 used on those older handhelds with 16:10, which is a widescreen format.

I'd probably put the number of Evercade games that support 16:10 natively at zero. That said, having a nice big widescreen display will happily display those 4:3 and square aspect ratios nicely, as long as the user doesn't mind some black bars either side.

I think the lesson here is not to fall for the FOMO pre-order nonsense. It's usually a good bet to wait 2-3 weeks after release for any problems with the device to surface before you buy. Plus you avoid this sort of thing.

This goes for most of the other Chinese retro handheld makers, too. They've all done things like this, or worse, from dangerous batteries, changes from the advertised specifications, to faulty by design products that cannot be firmware fixed.

That $5-20 coupon pre-order discount is never worth it, in my opinion.

I'm sure this will gain a cult following... but it looks, well, miserable. Like Tolkien's elves (Monkey Ball) vs his orks (this).

@slider1983 maybe if they put in SNES Doom, 32x Doom, Playstation Doom, and N64 Doom. A Doom on console history, as it were. That would be worth it.

But plain old Doom with no mods, I have a hard time with.

For me the big pull of Doom these days are all the custom mods and maps the community has built. Without at least some access to that, like Bethesda/Nightdive did with the enhanced version of Doom/Doom II, this package has limited appeal.

@Bot_Bot_69 We didn't have WASD and mouse back then, but Doom definitely had mouse support baked in. I remember reading somewhere John Romero saying it was the preferred way to play the game.

You can please all of the people some of the time. And you can please some of the people all of the time. But you can't please all of the people all of the time.

Revenge of Shinobi is such a classic I think trying to do anything with it is going to be a tricky task. Even Shinobi III, which in its own right is a classic, doesn't really fill Revenge's boots in my opinion.

Still, time and tastes change. I think those of us who remember the heyday of the arcades, eagerly poring over magazine articles, waiting months for games to release, and doing endless paper rounds to afford a single game have a different perspective on games and game design and sometimes what we're really defending are cherished memories

I think the poet W. B. Yeats put it best:

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

@Gs69 Some Samsung TVs and monitors let you set the input mode of the HDMI port which can resolve some issues. I had a TV/Monitor combo that absolutely refused to display my PC correctly - off colours, huge borders around the image. My fix was to "name" the HDMI input to "PC" in the TVs menu. You might also be able to change the HDMI version. If it defaults to HDMI 2 you might be able to change it to 1.4.

If none of that works, I thoroughly recommend the McBazel GBS-C scaler. It's cheap and effective!

@Gs69 What TV are you using?

@PKDuckman I'd have thought LucasArts would be more likely to make a complaint in the US than Europe, if they were going for a copyright thing. It wouldn't make much sense - for them - to do it in Europe.

The story I've heard for both Star Fox and Star Fox 64 is due to a German company called StarVox.

edit
And it was our very own @damo who revealed the Star Fox/Star Vox mystery! https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/09/want_to_know_the_real_reason_star_fox_was_renamed_in_europe

What I miss about physical isn't so much the software medium - be that cassette, floppy disk, cartridge, or optical disc - but the supporting material like manuals, boxes, maps, posters, badges, stickers, tea towels and all the rest of it.

Rebel Assault is one of those games where I fell for the negative reviews and subsequently didn't try it until many years later. It's a much better game than those reviews had led me to believe. Had I played either the DOS or Mega-CD version back in the day, I'd have been blown away.

Great interview - loved the bit about Nintendo's testing requirements!

@RupeeClock In the emulator settings (and I presume the shader) there are options to dial in the grid, ghosting, rot, rot type, dimming, dead lines, and temperature. That should be enough to simulate a GB screen of any age, from brand new to barely functional.

I had actually forgotten a lot of the characteristics of the DMG screen. I think a lot of those memories have been forced out by the Game Boy Pocket's much improved screen.

I remember the film being a big hit and that Bryan Adams song being in the charts for an eternity, but I honestly can't remember any toys, games, or other merchandising from the time. I don't even recognise that Mean Machines cover and I was a monthly reader.

Mind you, I've never really been plugged into the current culture. I got my roof retiled last year and the roofers had their radio tuned to BBC Radio 1. I've never heard such gormless inanity in all my life! And if that's what passes for music these days, we're all doomed. I'm just glad I don't pay for it, having not owned a TV in well over 20 years.

I'll give this a go on my Mister PI over the weekend. I might get a bit more use out of it.

No automap in this day and age? That's a bold move.

I used to love making my own maps back in the day. I even had a special agreement with my maths teacher that I could have as many square paper workbooks as I wanted (within reason) as long as I kept getting A's in class work. In retrospect I should have commercialised those books - I didn't just map, I basically created entire guides to the game.

If you ever find a big box PC rpg at, say, the car boot and it includes an A5 orange maths workbook, it'll be one of mine. Treasure it!

Good news everybody!

Thimbleweed Park was a decent point n click, and it completely nailed the Twin Peaks/Coen brothers aesthetic. If I had any complaints they would be:

None of the characters were particularly likeable.
Some of the puzzles were a little bit too old school.
Overall the game wasn't as memorable as some of the giants of the genre.

I'm looking forwards to see what they can do with a second installment.

Setting aside one's views on AI for the moment, going from nothing to a fully functional port in just seven days is... extraordinary.

@Thad Nah. People who want accuracy buy real hardware, possibly mod it for convenience, and prefer CRTs even over high-end scalers.

@Scollurio @1040STF I highly recommend getting the ES-DE emulation frontend for Android. It's not free, but fairly cheap at £4.50.