gingerbeardman

@wiiware old news? tell that to the people whose lives have been affected.

Their shipping costs are ridiculous. You could say that they don't really care about the buyer.

I've been told that their distributor ultimately controls the available shipping logistics options and related costs, which doesn't sound like a healthy relationship. Especially since shipping can be less expensive with other providers.

With the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the West Bank I can't help but feel this is not a great time to be releasing a war game.

I expected so much more from new MSX than rebadged existing products.

@Damo Fair point regarding the RGB30 comparison.

With the Super Pocket it's not just about resolution but also how pixel aspect ratio is honoured.

Bubble Bobble seems to be centred, which makes sense given it runs at 256×224. Though maybe it should be stretched slightly to maintain the correct aspect?

Street Fighter 2 runs at 384×224 (even though it's 4:3 aspect) so would need to be compressed horizontally to fit.

On high resolution displays these odd pixel aspect ratios can be honoured without much loss of visual clarity, but on a 320x240p this could only result in either blurring or missing pixels. At least they let you choose which.

So I'd still like to see some macro shots of the display!

The resolution of the screen means the games don't really fit. I find the lack of closeup screenshots a bit worrying. But from the shots above the screen seems pretty bad quite grainy. And only 4 hours on a charge? And 9/10? In the same breath as the RGB30? You're having a laugh.

Have Limited Run ever made any statements about their similar delays? It's such a bad way to do business, yet these companies are all doing it the same way! Even the UK outfit Lost In Cult is doing it.

@-wc- I posted a wayback link to the oldest archived post but i understand some UK mobile and broadband ISPs block internet archive unless you call them to enable access to all "unsafe" websites (i guess somebody found a picture of a cartoon boob on internet archive and reported them)

Currently live link is https://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/708play/index.html

This has been happening for decades! Since 2008 at least https://web.archive.org/web/20080814043424/http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/708play/index.html

No system needs two of its logo on the case! Bleurgh.

In terms of FPGA I'm more interested in the Tang Nano 20K for a tiny device capable of 8-bit and 16-bit platforms.

I like OM (Odyssey of the Mind)

Fantastic. On that thread there's a lead that some i-app games were featured in Bomber Land 3 on PS2.

@imgrowinglegs that is reasonable, but to UK the shipping is $70, plus import duty.

Are the shipping costs still extortionate?

Great to read this again. At the time my friends and I considered any GBC/GBA game with the Crawfish Interactive "crustacean" title screen to be solid gold, even before playing, and they were heralded everywhere by the press which is even mentioned in this interview. So I'm not sure they were "underrated," but I do agree they were gone too soon and have largely been forgotten since.

This is how rumours start.

Great list! The only additions I'd suggest would be: the weird, isometric, terraformed Robotron-like game called Square Resort, a T&E SOFT golf game (though they're better on PC98), and recent homebrew game Ball und Panzer Golf (which I'm making a version of for Playdate).

PipitanTV is my favourite YouTube channel for X6800 content. And the refuge.tokyo website has good game listings with screenshots.

PS1 open world game Panekit also came out of the Game Yarouze endeavour.

Refreshing to see them push back on the somewhat loaded questions!

I'd add T&E SOFT's Golf to this list. The performance of that game compared to contemporary T&E SOFT golf games on other platforms goes to show just how powerful the Virtual Boy was: PlayStation-level, certainly.

Limited Run? No thanks.

It's a shame because I love Rey's work in all the years I've been following them.

Don't miss the 3DS update of Frogger, a hidden gem produced by the "extreme" legend Tak Fujii & developed by ALPHA UNIT. https://www.retrogameboards.com/t/rgb-recommends-frogger-3d-tak-fujis-extreeeeme-30th-anniversary-frogger-celebration/2783

Pilotwings Resort remains my favourite. Being able to perfectly complete it took all my skill and a ton of hours. I tried it again recently and I must have had a lot more time back then as it seems like far too difficult a task today. Also, on New 3DS it plays with a smoother frame rate!

I spotted a moai in this and also in another game mentioned in the twitter thread! now listed at https://moai.games and see https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/09/feature_one_mans_quest_to_catalogue_every_moai_in_video_games

@JackGYarwood no worries. Gun Trails is a phenomenal achievement!

Couple of things that have been lost in translation for this article: 50fps is the maximum full screen refresh rate on Playdate, for games that draw the whole screen every frame update.

But, the display can go much higher if you're only updating part of the screen - for example 200fps if you're updating one third the screen, or 60fps if you're updating two thirds of the screen. It's a little more complicated than that, because it's measured in the number of rows that you're updating rather than individual pixels. A bit of extra work and some tricks are needed to do this, but it's possible and has been done.

The one I count is a Joust arcade cabinet at Royal Video, Breckfield Road North, L5. Must have been 1982–1984.

Yeah the problem here is not the location of the files inside Activision (which of course is both ridiculous and unfortunate) it's the stopping of Microsoft's backwards compatibility endeavour.

@KingMike they didn't, the controller in question was made by a third party company HPI (Hot Products Inc). There were others: I have a couple of Logitech controllers and a couple of HPI controllers.

@-wc- NO, I'm not saying that at all.

I'm saying that, in my humble opinion, T3K isn't hugely better than T2K. It is the better game, but not by much. Often you will read that T3K is some sort of giant leap better and by far the greatest version of Tempest, but I feel this is overblown hyperbole because it's so rare not many people can check the validity of such claims. T3K is the best looking of Minter's versions, due to there being no visible pixels on NUON (some might call it too blurry) but in terms of gameplay each version is better than the last but not by any great leaps.

Still have my NUON, controllers (multiple) along with half of all the games (T3K, Merlin, Freefall, Ballistic) and most of the remaining games as CD-R.

I had great times with the VLM and saw some pretty trippy things appear on the screen (like seeing shapes/things in clouds, I guess). Ballistic is good and on par with the PS1 version.

NUON T3K is for only slightly better than Jaguar T2K, low frame rate being the major issue. I am hoping they somehow get T3K playable on the forthcoming Digital Eclipse Llamasoft anthology (shhh, I heard it's supposed to be a secret).

They have the wrong year for Tetris. It's 1985. But then they'd have to choose between it and Mario Bros. As for the rest of the list... 🙄

@killroy10 the version of Sensible Soccer is also great because it's to fast and smooth and the visible area of the pitch is larger than other versions.

Loved MiniDisc. My webpage about my collection is still online even though 99% of my collection is long gone. I value instant streaming too much to be making MD compilations these days. I do still pine for my old MD 515 hi-fi because it sounded so good and still looks like the future 20 years later, but I know in my heart I'd never use it.

Surprising you've not covered any of the dozens of Playdate Catalog games released since the store opened? There have been 7 waves of new releases so far, since Catalog opened in March. That's a handful of new games every couple of weeks.

Fantastic article. Thanks to all involved.

I do think that the majority of the games for this service will be preserved by Japanese retro gamers, but they won't share them openly because of their strict copyright laws. Same sort of thing happens with other Japanese-only systems.

Wow this really increases the space needed to store the device. Would no longer fit in my pocket, so means I'd need to carry a backpack or bag.

@Sketcz it depends, honestly. If the game was CPU-bound during busy times then it will see an improvement: an example would be Mega Man X3. The faster CPU mode of FastROM mostly means data can be shifted from the cartridge more quickly, so it depends how much transferring of data to/from the cartridge the game does. Think of it as widening the bandwidth to/from the cartridge. In some games these patches even fix problems with the original FastROM implementation! Top work by KandoWontu.

Holy cow. Crazy.

Also, the Reddit link is busted.

I'll await the demo, but I'm not feeling the new look and I worry that the analog controls mean this will be even further from the original.

Edit: apparently they're full from-scratch remakes - I don't trust them to get the details correct https://twinsenslittlebigadventure.com/twinsens-little-big-adventure-remastered/

I remember walking on the roof of a building in ROTT which blew my mind at the time.

Hyped about this.

My favourite line was "somebody set up us the bomb!" which they've cleaned up to be unrecognisable. Such a shame. Meh.

I find all this Nishi MSX stuff a bit disingenuous. This MSX0 device is an off-the-shelf unit made by M5. Only his software is "new" and even then it's based on open source. All the other "new" MSX hardware is designed by a a Russian guy who lives in Switzerland. Suffice to say, Nishi is just running PR and marketing vapourware on all this. Let's see something ship!

What the viral thread and subsequent coverage missed, because it’s not obvious from the photo they used, is that the controller is meant to be placed on a table and used sparingly. Ideal for small children or anybody with accessibility needs.

It has a hold switch that can be used to lock certain buttons as being pressed, and the Pingu characters aren’t just for decoration: the position of their feet cause the whole controller and its button face to be perfectly horizontal/flat when it’s resting on a flat surface. That’s also the reason it has shorter handles.

To hold, it feels a bit bulbous. Not bad, but not how it’s meant to be used.

Source: I own one

I believe it when they ship it. The title is somewhat misleading if they're not "ditching" the base unit.

Also, typos:
expressive > expensive
niave > naive

@BulkSlash I've uploaded my copy of Minotron to internet archive. And a decrypted version too. You'll need an old iPhone or iPad to play it. And maybe the touchHLE emulator will be able to run it at some point.

I'm amazed by how many "kind of" haven't been edited out of the text.

Magical Puzzle Popils #1

Wow. Even more for MSX fans to be excited about this year!?