RadioHedgeFund

@Tasuki Not so. I only mentioned software, not physical items.

The reason emulation is so popular is because many of those physical retro releases have either degraded or are so overly priced most people cannot get their hands on them. A memory card full of downloads is no substitute for having a physical item on your shelf but it does enable those of us without thousands of pounds in spare cash to actually experience these games.

I fully support retro stores and indeed do try to buy as many titles as I can from them to keep them open.

I still have a track I made using MTV 2 on the PS2 sat in my iTunes library! I still listen to it from time to time and am surprised at how not rubbish it sounds.

Music 2000 had a facility to swap the disc for a music CD to sample from before putting the game back in. This frequently crashed the console but it was an incredible idea.

@Tasuki I disagree. For one thing a person might be too young to have even been able to buy games for an older console. Nobody under 30 had a chance to buy any new Super Nintendo titles at the time.

Secondly software piracy is only theft if the thing you are stealing is losing somebody money. Would I grab a Switch emulator and download titles to avoid paying for them? Nope. Never. Do I regularly play Gamecube titles on my Android phone? Absolutely. Would I pay for them if Nintendo sold them on that platform? Yes.

Mr arguments exactly. It’s not piracy if the original creators are not losing out on any money. If Nintendo released some sort of premium version of Dolphin that required a sub or just worked as a storefront I’d give them a lot of money. As it stands I can’t.

I would argue if there is no legitimate way to reimburse the original creators then it’s not piracy because nobody has lost any money (well, maybe scalpers on eBay)

We need some fundamental changes to software copyright laws that grant consumers rights to use software as they like as and when it becomes delisted.

I disagree about the ‘fresh’ part. I’ll take an Okami or Vanquish any day of the week over another crime simulator or military FPS from the same era.

Based on software alone I would have to say the Switch but it is let down by having the shoddiest controllers ever designed for any console. I still can't figure out why Nintendo have never redesigned them to correct their flaws like they did with every other portable console.

My inner gamer says the GameCube. It had an incredible software library and great hardware. The controller is probably the most comfortable ever devised.

However I think it has to be the Wii. The focus might have changed a bit in the middle of its life but this was a console that had no less than 2 great Zelda, Metroid and Mario titles for it as well as late releases like Last Story and Xenoblade.

The controller was ingenious and I had a lot of fun post-Uni having friends around for 4-player games. The VC was 2nd to none for its retro catalog.

Whenever I play WipEout it always reminds me of a bar in town that when the PSP launched was the only place around that had WiFi. I’d sit in there and grab a beer or 2 and download the DLC packs whilst i waited. How quaint it seems now everywhere has it!

@riceNpea Bar the odd exception (Diablo and Witcher mostly) I find most western RPGs to be highly derivative whereas JRPGs have more imagination.

@Smokeys36shop Between attacks in Secret of Mana you have to wait for your 3-second timer to count back up before you can attack at full power.

You have full manoeuvrability control during this time but the gauge is in effect the ATB bar or the GCD from FFXIV.

Secret of Mana is in fact turn based but lacks the menu battle system found in other games and is closer to XIV or Xenoblade.

Secret of Mana is actually a stealth turn-based title where you have full control whilst you wait for the ATB gauge to refill. You can mash attacks but they do very little damage whilst you wait for the 100% to rack back up.

This was incredibly ahead of its time even in the face of Chrono Trigger. Its ‘cool-down’ between attacks is a direct influence on the system used in Final Fantasy XIV.

The original HORI controller had a secret weapon: it made REmake playable! The tiny d-pad on the original controller was just too small for tank controls and an analog stick confusing to use as such (because the character didn’t move in relation to the stick position)

The HORI pad made it an absolute breeze to play and was wonderful with the Gameboy Player.

RRT4 had a lot of cars to unlock (including some great Namco throwbacks) but it got pretty repetitive.

I would put the PSP original up there if only for the awesome menu music.

Neither. Both Ocarina and Prime, whilst being stone cold classics are their predecessors with an extra axis to navigate; they don’t do much to reinvent themselves.

Step forward Legacy of Kain. Blood Omen is a combat focused 2D RPG with few puzzles set in a Warhammer-lite world.

Soul Reaver is a gothic Zelda for sure but the streaming technology used to mask the loading means the whole game has an open world from one end to the other. The plane-shifting mechanics for puzzle solving are ingenious and the world build around them actually quite original.

There was 'Devil May Cry 4 Refrain for iOS from 6-7 years ago that was pretty good.

It depends on the title but on the most part yes. Tetris is the video game equivalent of Chess and infinitely replayable. Link’s Awakening is probably the most technically accomplished Zelda they’ll ever made.

But are you really going to play Metroid 2, Game n Watch or Gargoyle’s Quest more than once out of curiosity?

Well kept secret: The Master System is a better console than the NES.

@Bunkerneath @GeneJacket

For me it was a pile of bewildering design choices (and a bug that deleted my save 4 times)

It might just me me but the only WipEout game I can play with analog controls is the N64 version. The rest have to be played with the tap-tap adjustments only a d-pad can bring. The pressure-sensitive analog d-pad on the DS2 was a nightmare for Fusion so it got turned off straight away.

Then we have upgradeable ships: Everyone starts with low shield. The AI can use all the weapons to make the game seem more realistic. The weapons unlock as you gradually play the game.

On their own these are not bad design choices but the first weapon you unlock is the Quake. This means every 3rd weapon being fired at you is unavoidable. Couple this with the low shield stats and you're looking at repeated deaths.

Thus the only way to make Fusion playable is to turn off the analog controls and weapons altogether, at which point you may as well load up F-Zero GX.

This is why I love Pure so much. After the debacle of Fusion they made a portable Wip3out with incredible graphics and a massive screen. I brought a PSP just to play it and had no regrets.

Here’s hoping Omega gets a PSVR2 port because it’s incredible on the PS4 in VR. Heck, they could make a new one an exclusive and people would sink good money to play it.

As for Wip3out: easily my favourite in the series. I loved the pared back graphics that extended to the plain grey, ultra minimalist aesthetic for the front end. It was proper high-concept DR.

Whilst I was sad to see Tim Wright go the Sasha-composed OST was just perfect and kick started an obsession with Progressive Trance.

The tracks were the best in the series. The corkscrew of Mega Mall, the huge jumps of P-Mar project and the tight 90 degree jumps of Manor Top are all up there.

And it was the first PS1 game I remember having zero pop up.

It’s such a shame WipEout Fusion was such a pile of garbage.

Copyright law has been broken by software. It is no longer possible for example to give a company like Nintendo any money for GBA titles so using ROMs isn’t stealing because nobody is losing any money.

The law needs to reflect the rapid pace of software and abandoned hardware.

Were there a way to buy these games to give money right back to the original developers rather than some scalping collector or retro store with inflated prices I’d pay for them.

I thought the Xbox 360 controller was near perfect ar the time. You could easily nudge the bumpers with the inside of your finger whilst resting on the triggers without needing to support the controller beforehand. The little quarter lights letting you know which player you were was an inspired design choice. Plus it used AA batteries which is still a useful backup.

@Poodlestargenerica I have played and enjoyed every Zelda title; I just enjoyed those more.

I am curious as to what you think of Crusader of Centy though. I thought it had a highly original story (seeing things from the monsters POV), that the animal system allowed for some creative puzzles and solutions and that the 16-bit graphics were wonderful.

Its not that LttP or Link's Awakening are not brilliant games; I just find the dungeons on LttP to be a bit samey.

I’d love to see an article on where they went afterwards.

I would hold up genre examples of Okami, Story of Thor, Soleil, Soul Reaver and Alundra as being a lot better than their obvious influence.

Forza Horizon. Still the best in the series and probably the greatest car racing title ever made.

A handheld needs JRPGs. We need a square soft cart.

For me the seal would be Breath of Fire. You can’t have a handheld without a decent JRPG to play in between the arcade titles and the Evercade has precious little. Having one built in is a godsend.

I know it’s primarily for 16-bit and older titles but it’s a shame Sony haven’t released Alundra on it.

Vice. It’s is easily my favourite. The high point being flying over the city in the helicopter dropping flyers for your porn studio during a sunset, the humour that runs through this game is brilliant.

After this I felt the series started to take itself too seriously. Just as Ubisoft will forever be trying to capture lightning in a bottle again by making a protagonist as good as Ezio Auditore, Rockstar will never again make a main character as likeable as Tommy Vercetti as played by the late, great Ray Liotta.

The soundtrack was the icing on the cake.

I’ll still never forget Official PlayStation Magazine giving GTA3 a 7/10 though 😂

I was never sold on the idea that they developed the Animus as a narrative framing device.

A game set in the crusades where, from the outside at least it looks like you are playing as a Muslim who goes around killing Christians, however historically accurate was always going to be a very tough sell in post 9/11 America, the biggest market at that point.

The animus framing device allowed them to tell the player they weren’t playing as a Muslim, but the descendent of a white American man. Altair doesn’t even get his own voice actor until the PSP spinoff, being voiced by Nolan North as Desmond throughout.

It’s a shame they did this because since then they’ve made some brave narrative decisions, for example basing Liberation, the platform exclusive for a handheld aimed at blokes in their 30’s (at the time) on an African/French character of colour and telling a story about slavery was incredibly forward thinking.

Personally I’d love it Ubisoft remade the first title and corrected a few of these errors by making the meta narrative more like the one in Liberation (ie non existent) and then gave Altaïr his own voice. Add in the modern gameplay elements and more mission types and you have a winner.

I have fond memories of playing Heroquest with my son…. Last week!

I found a boxed copy of the game which was only missing a couple of models in a charity shop for £5 about 5 years ago!!

I started playing it with my youngest in lockdown and every few weeks we do an adventure from the quest book. I purchased the GW fellowship of the ring models from my local war games store to use as the heroes and regularly expand the adventures for my son to add in logic puzzles and roleplay story elements and he loves it!

Lets be honest: Nintendo are never going to make a new F-Zero game.

@NEStalgia

1. I would still argue that SEGA gave Nintendo a good run for their money in the 16-bit era. There is more parity between the top Mega Drive games and the top SNES games than retro enthusiasts would have you believe. I would posit that some of SEGA's 'clones' beat Nintendo at their own game: Sonic 3 & Knuckles is the greatest 2D platforming game of that era and Crusader of Centy/Beyond Oasis are both better games than Link to the Past. That is of course a subjective statement but I will die on the hill defending the Master System as a much better console than the NES.

2. We could perhaps argue that the F2P Android market is in fact the 'mobile' market whilst the premium and Arcade titles on iOS does in fact make its premium gaming experience closer to that of a traditional console than that of a phone.

@link3710 it’s not that gaming on Android is bad. 90% of the titles are the same. It’s just Android seems to have far more F2P titles than iOS which has more premium titles due bigger profit margins and a large lack of piracy. As someone who has flitted between both for the last 14 years I can tell you iOS has a better selection of premium titles.

Again though Android has a lot going for it too.It’s just many gamers will look at the Play Store on their phone compared to the Eshop or PSN and ask ‘what?’

@link3710

1. Buy an iPhone. I have nothing against Android. It does have a native GamePass streaming app and emulators galore but the game parity between iOS and Android is something else.

2. Read www.toucharcade.com It’s a great place for reviews and news on mobile gaming.

@Spiders Phantasy Star Online was a great game though.

@Yosher Maybe you need to accept that the mobile market is a legitimate part of the games industry. Not every game out there is some IAP-ridden gatcha money grab. Heck, the iOS port of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is the best one out there.

I regularly play the likes of Geometry Wars, Horizon Chase, Part-Time UFO, Alto’s <Thing>, Stardew Valley, Wayward Souls etc on my phone. These are all great titles!

That Pokémon MMO we keep dreaming Nintendo will make? They already did it on mobile and the game world is a 1:1 recreation of the real world. Instead of nameless NPC’s it features real people which you can talk to about your shared passion. It’s a good way to make friends!

It was November 2002 and I was deep in my first year at Uni. I left my PS2 at home and took my GameCube with me because it was a lot easier to transport on the train!

I'm not a big lover of Mario games and Eternal Darkness was decent enough but I wanted an adventure game to get my teeth into. Metroid Prime wasn't out until March and Wind Waker in May.

Thus, I purchased Starfox Adventures and loved every minute of it. Its not the greatest game ever but the dungeon variety kept me occupied enough until Christmas. And oh, was it a looker. Starfox Adventures had graphics that were head and shoulders above the PS2 at the time, with fur effects that rivalled Pixar movies. Badmouth the gameplay all you like but SA was a technical masterpiece of the fledgling GameCube.

I’d love to suggest a DC Mini but I think a Master System mini has more potential. It has a suite of good Sonic games, top RPGs like Phantasy Star and Golvellius, Alex Kidd in Miracle/Shinobi World and, hopefully Operation Wolf.

Perhaps then history will give it the reputation it deserves. I’ve since been back and played on the NES titles I missed out on as a Sega kid and I’ve got to tell you the Master System was overall a much better console.

£60 with 10 games seems pretty reasonable to me, but it needs a collection with a solid RPG to back up all those quick-play arcade games.

Its a shame that SEGA fell apart so easily. Having SEGA Europe do their own thing back in the early 1990's seemed like a good idea because the idea of global branding didn't really exist; people just watched TV and read the newspaper (or teletext!) and the window to the world was very controlled.

Despite this Nintendo kept its image the same in every market and has continued to do so, even in the face of the sigh 'dark mature' days of the PS2/Xbox.

SEGA on the other hand had 2 separate teams working on the potential Saturn and didn't really know what to do with the Mega CD or the 32X. Each region was independent and in the face of Sony this proved their downfall.

I would keep a few core items for posterity, to share with your future kids.

I stopped hoarding games years ago but my one regret is selling my Mega Drive II+CD II with 20 games in 1996 for £60! When I was 13 this was a lot of money, but I wish I’d have kept it to show my kids.

The Virtual Console did a decent job for me, and I could just download some ROMs but the experience of cartridges, wires pads and a CRT is still missing. It’s like listening to an MP3 when you used to have it on vinyl.