Ristar24

@Masacheez It's some time since I played the remake, so I can't recall it that well but it made less of an impression. Visually I remember neither frame rate option was smooth (on Switch at least).I didn't find the graphics as appealing despite the technical upgrade, lots of obvious pop in on Switch too. Something about the dragon's movement was not quite right and the targeting seemed a bit strange. It wasn't bad, but it didn't match the original's appeal for me, maybe I'll redownload the game and give it another try at some point as I think it had a few patches. One day I'll also get around to the sequel on Saturn which I never owned, Saga and Orta I did play.

Speaking of racing games, my most played Saturn game was probably SEGA Rally, remains a favouite to this day.

I got this game with my Saturn... amazing music and fun to play. The remake on Switch wasn't great.

Street Fighter 2 was massive, I used to play it in a video rental shop around the corner from where I lived. They'd got Champion Edition in initially and later had one of the odd non official versions. Once I had the Mega Drive port became my most played game until I could beat it with every character.

I still put the Saturn disc in a CD player now and again.

@avcrypt I don't think so, just an observation for fans! The article game some useful context though as I wasn't sure what it was when I saw it in the options of the new collection.

The Times level is in the new collection on Switch too, along with 60fps widescreen versions of the classic graphics.

Weirdly reminds me of the computerised comic book Tom Hanks character pitches in the movie Big.

I used to buy my C64 tapes in WH Smith's in Croydon, so Black Mirror 80's recreation was even more uncanny. It's a shame to see where the high street has gone now. I do go in Smiths where I live now and I'd always rather buy in an actual shop than online, so be a shame to see yet another one gone. At least a HMV has reopened near me which is great and it has seemed to be pretty busy, I'm already back in buying records.

@Damo Yep, Flood of Power, it's an apt name for the first tune. That intro with the jeep speeding in is iconic for me, even if the first version I played at the time was the weird flick screen Atari ST version.

@AJB83 SEGA Rally on Saturn brings me back to music, those Saturn arrangements of the arcade tunes made you glad the game was on CD.

Midnight Resistance on the Mega Drive. Loses some colour and the 2 player mode, but the outstanding music on the MD absolutely betters the arcade and the control system in place of the rotary joystick is perfectly manageable. Shame the cartridge is so expensive.

@WheresWaveRace Yeah would look better on a CRT than a modern TV, but 50Hz was mostly not optimised on N64 and that RF cable out of the box looked really poor to me even at the time, particularly compared to the Saturn which came with a RGB SCART. I like the retro hardware but don't really have the space these days, so the convenience of emulation often wins out.

To be honest emulation may not be perfect, but booting up a PAL 50Hz N64 with an RF cable which was the actual experience of the console I had at the time... I'd probably take the imperfect emulation as preferable for now. Still, always interesting to hear this kind of analysis.

Still have my modded Saturn and games. Bought my first Saturn second hand when it was a current console. Played SEGA Rally and Virtua Fighter 2 a lot on Saturn and I used to go the the London Trocadero around that time and play the arcade versions. Later bought a modded console, was good to be able to play imports and have a 60Hz Switch for those non optimised PAL games.

To be honest I have the NES, SNES and Mega Drive mini and I never really play them. When you get to Saturn and Dreamcast and their controllers you'd be looking at more expensive devices to create, maybe with fairly limited audiences. I still own both consoles and grew up a SEGA fan, but I'd probably not buy mini versions. The Mega Drive mini is OK but has some noticable audio lag. I didn't buy the Mini 2, it was such a limited release and now it's far too expensive.

Delisting retro games and not continuing the SEGA AGES games as digital releases is perplexing though. There are so many great SEGA arcades thet have never seen home ports.

Looks good, I've never played this one but looks more Golden Axe in style than the first two.

Turbo OutRun was the one that got me, why didn't it get a digital or physical release outside of Japan. If the 3DS was region free I would have imported it. SEGA should have continued the AGES series on Switch.

Ah Viz, we occasionally had some issues in our house. Classic bad taste stuff... those characters made enough of an impression that I still remember them.

@dunk Sadly yes, I was lucky as there were some great import shops I used to go to in London for Japanese and US games, and I managed to obtain a region modded Saturn, so I still enjoyed those Neo Geo ports and Capcom fighters. Not having Resident Evil 2 was disappointing though, but like a true SEGA fan I waited for the Dreamcast port, ha!

I played on Saturn! Was disappointing when the sequel wasn't arriving for my console of choice as I really enjoyed the game.

What damaged the Saturn to a degree I think was those later multi platform games, and the visual appearance of launch titles like Daytona next to Ridge Racer. SEGA Rally looked greatly superior to Daytona and VF2 looked very impressive, but Saturn ports of trendy titles like Destruction Derby and Wipeout looked bad next to the PS1 versions. The popular view was the Saturn was less fashionable and the games looked worst. I was a Saturn fan myself and had a region modded console for imports, but it was a shame. When big titles Tomb Raider 2 and Resident Evil 2 both skipped the Saturn, it just added to the popular view that Saturn couldn't run those games.

Certainly VDP2 could do some things the PS1 couldn't, and those wobbly vertices and dithered graphics you'd see so often on PS1 seemed less of an issue on Saturn. Was an interesting generation no doubt. Burning Rangers was very impressive and I often wonder how Shenmue would have looked, beyond that one video we have.

I generally find it fine I guess, I've played through a few games on the various apps and the lag for me is not generally noticeable as poor.

The Wii VC was good in principle but in PAL regions it was also almost exclusively 50Hz, which made the service a lot worst for those of us who could not access NSTC versions.

Now, if you connect a bluetooth speaker and a 3rd party wireless controller to Switch at the same time, you learn what unplayable lag really is.

Summer Camp was great fun and remains so to this day. As a fan of old movies even as a kid, I also recognised the music 'The Trail of the Lonesome Pine' from Laurel and Hardy's Way out West.

@LowDefAl I think Frank was talking it up as 'arcade quality' if I remember right.

My friend had a CPC 464, but I preferred the C64 and the Spectrum. The GX4000 was in East Enders once I recall, Pete Beale and Arthur Fowler were gaming at Christmas (I think) and Frank Butcher was trying to flog the consoles. I never saw one in real life.

@JackGYarwood Yep, it's a good game, as fun as Quackshot I'd say. Chirpy tunes too! Thanks for the informative article, was an interesting read.

Ha I still have my Master System cart, it's a tough game.

@Dehnus It's great... makes we want to get my Saturn with the Japanese version OutRun out for a play through!

The OutRun start line is one of the most iconic images in video games for me. Stilll possibly my favourite game of all time, I even have the soundtrack on vinyl. I like this!

I'm sure a PSP and DS version of Last Ninja were on the cards at one point, recall reading that in Retro Gamer. Very interesting interview, really glad to see the series coming back in a Switch compilation as I still play the first two occasionally on the C64. Loading LN for the first time really impressed me, the music and the graphics were great, those isometric jumps somewhat less so, but hey, I liked thst you could continue to play each stage as you reached it. Made the multi load much less annoying than was often the case with tape versions of Ocean games. International Karate is also one of my C64 favourites.

System 3 have some other enjoyable C64 games too, like Turbo Charge and Vendetta.

@-wc- Yep, it went from paying once to own something, to paying in perpetuity to own nothing.

If I travel back to the time in my memory (I did buy SEGA Power) I'd probably say that's wicked man. Also rhyming 'dealer' with SEGA, I always pronounced it See-ga myself back then.

That's a great little time capsule, 'nah man were stayin' in to check aut our brand new sega console'.

I was a SEGA console owner from the Master System onwards, and a big fan of the Saturn. SEGA seemed to have it right with Dreamcast, the demo units with Ready to Rumble were really impressive and arcade ports lined up popular games. It was a shame that VF3 TB and SEGA Rally 2 both felt a bit lacking around launch, after the Saturn had great versions of VF2 and SEGA Rally.

I played the Deamcast for years and Skipped PS2 at the time, I bought a GameCube next. Shenmue 2 was a great late release in Europe at least. Still have my console packed up, great memories of that era.

International Karate and Last Ninja were really stand out games on the C64. I still remember loading up the first game (purchased on cassette in WH Smith) with that amazing tune by the late Ben Daglish, and International Karate with Rob Hubbard's riff on what I later learned to be Sylvian and Sakamoto's Forbidden Colours. I still play LN and LN2 if I feel like playing some C64. For me this is really great news, though be interesting how they handle the 50Hz originals on 60Hz hardware. The Turrican collection managed it though. Having said that, those isometric jumps in the first stage of the first game frustrated me a lot as a child (without save states).

I also remember at one point System 3 was pitching new DS and PSP versions of Last Ninja, I recall seeing a screen shot of the latter at some point but they never materialised.

@KingMike Wow that takes me back to all the trouble I had getting my Wii points back for LN3... and encouraging Nintendo Life (or was it VC Reviews back then) to mark their Wii VC review score down, which they did. I still have the disc Retro Gamer magazine gave away where you could progress to the second stage stage, so there is hope!

The big thing for Wii was making it the default controller, it defined the system as a result and the rest is history.

The Dreamcast triggers can hurt after extended use in something like Crazy Taxi... I really enjoyed this console, from seeing an import version running SEGA Rally 2 in CEX Rathbone Place window, to the Ready to Rumble demo units in Game, to playing Sonic Adventure for the first time. The annoying 'beep'when the VMU battery was dead and towards the console's end playing Shenmue 2 with its cliff hanger ending. The Saturn analogue controller seemed to be a dry run for the Dreamcast model.

If it's like the C64 will have a 'classic' boot option. I had a C64 at the time but will get this, nice it has The Great Escape (which I enjoyed on the C64) and Where Time Stood Still (which had no C64 version and I've always meant to get around to playing). I remember having to choose between the Spectrum 128 and C64 as a child, but really I would have liked to have both and an Amiga. Now all three have will have a Retro Games version.

Just read your 2600+ review, I was unaware there were issues with the hardware when playing PAL cartridges. I'd not really thought about that as my old Atari was connected with a RF cable back in the day, and was before I was even aware of 50 / 60 Hz. I'll certainly look into this more if I consider a purchase.

I've bought two peices of their hardware, the original handheld which now won't fully charge, and a VS that was faulty out of the box and wouldn't update (so was sent back). I have a bunch of early carts so might consider the VS-R, once it's out. The new portable doesn't appeal to me as they removed the HDMI out.

I played the first game originally on Saturn, replayed on the remastered collection. Original tank controls are best for these game anyway in my opinion, but having the games on Switch makes this release not something I'm interested in.

My favouite thing on Evercade was probably the Mega Drive version of Midnight Resistance, just as an actual real copy costs almost £100. I also liked the Oliver Twins collection too as never played the NES Dizzy ports.

I started gaming on the Atari 2600, probably around 1982... darn, I am getting old.

@Carck I don't dispute the question why, just the suggestion it's new. You could write a whole book on the history of this topic in games specifically.

It's not new though is it. Streets of Rage 2 and 3 were censored, along with many other games. The main difference was there was no internet for people to go to, that's what's really changed the most.

@Blast16 Seems there is a Switch Demo in the UK eShop at least, I tried it the other day.

This game had great atmosphere, on the Spectrum. The C64 version I played years later and it's a poor port. Wouldn't mind this on my Switch.

Perhaps in order to gain publicity? Seems to work.

I still have the PC disc released version, I installed it on my laptop a year or so ago and it ran quite well. I usually play 2006 on the Xbox 360 via backwards compatibility as I don't have a PC that can run the game properly. The emulation has a few glitches but it mostly works. It's such a shame SEGA can't officially sell this game now, it's one of my favouite ever arcade racers.

@Bod2019 Wow, now I know why I never owned it. I did manage to play the game (I think a friend had it), looked great at the time, but I was suprised by the limited amount of tracks. I don't think I'd played the arcade version at that point.

I went on to buy the Saturn port years later, and still play the game now and again on Switch.

I can't recall how much it cost in the UK at the time for the game, too much for me is all I can remember!

@Daniel36 Yep, I went from Zzap!64 to reading SEGA Power and SEGA Force mostly, but had a Game Boy so also had the odd issue of Total (or read at my friends house). Those guys put together a great magazine, really memorable to everyone who read them I'm sure, I just can't believe was 30 or so years ago.

Hopefully you get around to Dizzy one day, if not on the NES, on the Spectrum or C64.

That's really sad to hear. I was thinking recently about Total Magazine as I think I had issue two after my friend bought the first one and showed me the mag. I remember a few of the photos you have in this article from the magazine, where they were reviewing the NES piano thing. Back then in those pre internet days you tended to read a mag a lot if you had one, and Total was a funny read, I still remember those first issues to this day.