smoreon

@-wc- Judging by the HUD's proportions, this game seems to already be optimized for 16:9 displays!
I don't remember seeing a widescreen mode in the options, but maybe it's a system-level setting. Plus, I haven't played GT3 in a while.

@-wc- Too true, unfortunately. Even the good ones arguably take more liberties with the source material than they need to.

That said, I find Anderson's Resident Evil movies to be cheesy fun, and some of them (particularly the second and... was it the fourth or fifth?) do make an effort to draw from and connect to the games. It is really weird that he's seemingly trying to make HotD legitimately scary, but I'm not going to completely write it off just yet.

"It’s going to be immersive and very, very scary."
"it reflects the experience of playing the video game"
These two lines are contradictory. Does he know what The House of the Dead is?

@Zenszulu How many games in 1998 or later were still in mono?
As far as I'm aware, almost everything was in stereo by then (even a majority of Game Boy and GBC games, if you plugged in external speakers), and many games also offered an option to choose.

@AJB83 I'm glad that Xbox 360 and Nintendo 64 were some of the first systems chosen for this recomp technique, as they both have so many potentially great games... and such poor technical performance holding those games back!

@N00BiSH Check out PCGamingWiki. Looks like Generations is known to have issues on Windows 11, on top of the other stutters we were talking about, but there are unofficial patches that can fix these things!

@N00BiSH Not surprised that the remaster changed something for the worse, however small it was (it's basically inevitable). Wonder if anyone has reverted things using mods.

I did experience a single, noticeable, inexplicable framerate drop in modern Chemical Plant, and this is a known issue, but it was otherwise perfect, as far as I recall. (This was with a GTX 960 on Win7.) I wasn't aware that some PCs/OSes had worse issues.

@N00BiSH When someone recompiles Generations?
That game has had a native PC version for a long time. It's a little harder to get in its original form now, as the remaster with Shadow's campaign has replaced it, but that should be an equally good experience if your computer isn't too old.

Or were you just hoping for easier mod support? I'd assume there's a decent selection of mods already, but haven't looked into it.

PS: Series X doesn't run Unleashed smoothly? I saw a video showing that it powers through even the infamous problem spots in the Adabat level... albeit at the original game's sub-HD resolution. Does it have issues elsewhere?

As much as I usually like Yuzo Koshiro's work, most of the good tracks in SoR3 were Motohiro Kawashima's!

Interesting to see that Kawashima worked on Amazing Island. I've tried the game briefly, but never looked into the soundtrack.

@RetroMasters I wouldn't say Nintendo in general is overlooked, but yeah, the SNES modding/homebrew scene is still maturing. It will be interesting to see if/how it grows, and what these talented homebrew devs come up with in the future.
The SNES is a pretty powerful piece of hardware in the right hands... especially when it's not being underclocked and running a game from a teensy 1 MB cartridge.
Give it 8 MB (64 Mb) or so of FastROM, and it'll really shine!

@RetroGames Not at all! My comment on the price was based on it being an emulated SNES ROM (contrast this to how much Ninja Five-O, an emulated GBA ROM, is going for!), and the bit about the box art was regarding any promotional art with the game, including the box art view on Steam.
I wouldn't expect a physical SNES game to go for less than $50-ish.

I'm not familiar with this game, though I will say it looks good- and the price is reasonable as well.

But with such an authentically '90s localization, they need to have some bad American box art to go with it!

@Zoinkity So basically, they're dynamically mapping 12 MB worth of addresses into 8 MB of physical RAM (which works fine because it's a simple game that never needs all of that memory at once)?

Interesting about the 4 MB of extra RAM... I assume the modders patched the game to reroute the higher addresses to the Expansion Pak? (The Pak adds 4 MB of memory to the N64, putting it on par with an Aleck64.)

It's one thing to take issue with violence in video games, but when you're the owner of an action movie franchise full of all kinds of violence, it comes across as hypocritical, or at least hilariously out-of-touch.

And the movies don't even come with a giant "16" age label on the front, the way the games do! How do we know they aren't falling into children's hands? (Think of the children!)

There are more people using audio cassettes and VHS tapes than playing on old consoles?

@PinballBuzzbro $60 each, or $140 for the two (go figure).
I hate to think of what this would cost in Canada, once you factor in taxes, shipping, and exchange rate. Well over $200 for sure. Probably around $250.
And these aren't even good games!
(I actually would be interested in playing these, partially as a curiosity, and partially because of the music. But that's more in $5-10 Steam release territory. There are much better things I could be spending my money on!)

From what I've read, the memory card slot maxes out around 3 MB/s, which is faster than reading the inner edge of a DVD, but slower than reading the outer edge (which is just over 5 MB/s). That sounds bad, but might not matter so much in reality.

The memory card doesn't have moving parts, which means no seek times- removing a major factor that caused some games to load slowly. Well-optimized games tend to load from the outer edge of the disc with minimal seeking, so that would probably perform worse from a memory card, but those games can probably afford a small increase in loading time without becoming unbearable.

The PS2's DVD drive is 4x speed, so it's several times faster than it needs to be in order to play DVD-quality video, and dozens of times faster than it would take to play audio, so that's no issue under normal circumstances.

@markran Thanks for the detailed response!

It's frustrating how the current system is stacked so heavily in favour of both the "big guy" as well as... let's say the "aggressor" in general, as- like you touched on- it's not necessarily the actual rights holder, but potentially an overzealous legal team or even an outright troll. If they so much as growl, it's often deemed safest to just give in, even if they really don't have much of a case on their hands.

And yeah, it's a fair point to distinguish between the actual rights holder and their lawyers who advocate for them (and who are incentivized to be aggressive). Though when a company like Nintendo (just as the most infamous example) is so widely known to have consistently overzealous lawyers, they should be able to rein them in a bit to save their reputation- and a bit of money as well!

About the fair use angle, I wonder if the focus on a single franchise weakens that a bit. Not that this explains every recent case of legal threats against these books, but a Final Fight book might be riskier than, say, a general look at '80s arcade games, or 2D beat-em-ups.

Not so sure that I'd find the gameplay itself all that interesting, but the art style is cute, and I do have a soft spot for the N64. Will check on this later and see how it turns out!

"Hupke did not specifically name who exactly sent him this message"
So it was Nintendo, then?

More seriously, is a book like this actually infringing on anyone's property? There are plenty of books about games, TV shows, etc., which mention the trademarked names and even show the occasional screenshot, and these have existed for decades without issue. But several of these books have just recently been stifled, censored, and/or threatened with legal action.
Is this kind of book a grey area without much legal precedent (or even technically illegal, but rarely seriously pursued by the rights holders until now), or are companies just throwing their weight around with no real backing or justification besides "I have more money and better lawyers than you"?

The parts were good enough to keep the systems running for what, 5-10 years? Not saying that it's justified, but I can easily see it being within the range that a company would consider acceptable.

@UtopiaNemo Not just kids- adults are always comparing the SNES and Genesis "chip tunes" against each other, as if they're two variations on the same thing!

And it's hard to blame them. Many SNES games used tiny, looped samples, effectively bringing them more in line with the technique used by the Turbografx, the Famicom Disk System, the N163 chip, and the Game Boy (small, repeating, custom waveforms). Sometimes these samples were taken from FM synthesizers as well, making them lo-fi copies of what the Genesis was doing natively!

So whether it was a guitar chord, a cymbal crashing, a seagull's cry, or a human laugh, it was usually made up of a tiny snippet of sound, looped to stretch it out, and then with pitch bends added on top of that. The SNES was absolutely capable of playing full recordings of these sounds, but ROM size limits (and audio not being given the space/priority it needed in that ROM) led to fake, "synthy" results.

There was a big difference between what the SNES's audio hardware was capable of, and what it actually did in the average game. Perhaps more than any other system!

@Sketcz So basically Ecco: Harmony of Despair?
I don't know how playable that would be, but it's a fun thought. Navigation would be a lot easier, at least!
(By the way, 4K is on the low end for an Ecco level! The larger ones are over 6000x4000, or about 3 screens worth.)

I never really delved into the world of Mugen, but this looks pretty insane- even by Mugen standards! Definitely looks like one to check out.

@NinChocolate Analogue video outputs are the best thing about using dedicated consoles instead of emulation! Or at least I think so; others seem to prefer getting as close to the emulation experience as they can without actually using emulation. Which is fine, I guess, but not my thing.

I agree that demand for this could increase as the original consoles break down... but on the other hand, as the consoles are dying, so are the CRT TVs. So maybe, maybe not?

@KitsuneNight You joke, but I'm pretty sure some of those (at least the NES mini) have been done already.

Knuckles is actually using English words there? I always assumed it was some nonsense yell: something along the lines of the "shaa" he sometimes says when launching off a ramp.

Also, while this was a bit questionable in itself, it's not as bad as Sonic Rush Adventure's boss music with its "beat kicks the rockin'" vocal bit, which 110% sounds like the f bomb when it's chopped up like that. I don't know how that slipped past the ratings boards.

@KitsuneNight Yeah, there's supposed to be a clear-cut divide between the "good" and "bad" versions, at least according to public opinion, but I just don't see it. Half of Vista's issues were resolved in a short time, and the other half remained in 7 onwards, so people got used to them. Regular 8 was pretty bad in some ways, but 8.1 was again basically just Vista/7. Then 10 had worse performance and way more bugs.

I jumped straight from Windows 7 to Linux Mint. Dual-booted frequently at first, but did so less and less over time. It's great how, even out of the box, it has a lot of customization, modern features, and some of the stuff I liked about XP/7 as well! Things like gaming can still be a pain in those ~20% of cases, but I don't think I'll ever go back to Windows for general use.

PS: Nope, he's still rocking the boom box! He's in one of the Spider-Man movies, and I just learned that he recently returned to Star Trek as well.

@MARl0 It's not too bad on Normal difficulty (though I feel like it still goes on just a bit longer than it needs to), but it really is a slog on higher difficulties.
Still not as bad as the NA version of Streets of Rage 3, though!
I came decently close to finishing Expert mode in FF2 (I think I did okay in Sor3 on Hard as well), but it was just too monotonous and time-consuming for me to give it another try.

@KitsuneNight I see that pattern mentioned all the time, but I've got to disagree. 7 is almost identical to a patched version of Vista, and 8.1 isn't all that different from 7 either.
10 was where I really felt that things went downhill: slower performance, more spying, and no way to stop the updates from running at inopportune times (that pause button doesn't quite do the job).
11 just took what 10 was doing, and cranked it up to... well, 11.

More on topic, it's interesting that you mention Nvidia being more problematic on Linux, as I've had less success running my games (on an Nvidia GPU) than others seem to have. An impressive number of games "just work", which is great, but a considerable percentage (let's say 20%) have major issues or refuse to start at all. Some of them are listed in ProtonDB as working. It's great that I can keep gaming on my old PC without having to boot back into Win7, but ultimately, I'm still going to have to get Windows for my next build.

PS: Speaking of even-numbered Star Trek movies, did you hear that Punk on Bus has been making a comeback?

@nocdaes I think they've been tying their own hands with NSO, same as Xbox is doing with GamePass. When you're offering your whole catalogue for a flat rate, it means there's a lot less financial incentive to add content or improve the service. Obviously, the service as a whole has to be good enough to attract subscribers, but is better N64 emulation really going to help gain/retain NSO subs?

While their previous Virtual Console service had its downsides for sure, I found it a lot more appealing. If only they had ported it over instead of switching to subscriptions only... and then drip-feeding the whole library all over again!

@Greenmanalishi @gingerbeardman MVG's video does demonstrate that performance on Simple64 is poor, even on surprisingly decent hardware. But yeah, I've gotten great results on Project 64 (on a roughly equivalent CPU), so I think the issue is less that emulation is in a bad state, and more about there being many different options of varying speed and quality.

More thoughts:

• A reasonably recent build of PJ64 with the GlideN64 plugin gets accurate results with many trickier games and effects, though I admittedly haven't spent much time with the Factor 5 games yet.
• A Pentium 4 from over 20 years ago could run N64 emulation in HD at full speed (and even '90s PCs could run a few of the earlier games decently), but this is essentially cheating, as the accuracy wasn't there. As soon as you switch to an accurate configuration, you'll need something a lot beefier to run it.
• FPGA solutions, as well as some of the latest emulators, focus on accuracy above all else: you're getting the original resolution and FPS. But when it comes to N64, does that really make for a good gameplay experience?

@Captain_Retro YouTube also has a box you can tick to restrict your video to 18+, though this limits the ads (and therefore monetization) associated with that video.

As with video game ratings, the age-gating system is already in place, but censorship is still being applied, as if the gating isn't sufficient... or as if it's actually adults who need to be protected.

@BulkSlash @GravyThief I'm surprised that you guys aren't seeing the scanlines at all, but I do agree that the effect is often exaggerated these days.
On a 20" NTSC TV running 240p games over composite cables, the effect is there, but it's subtle. With 480i, the interlacing overwrites the gaps with a new picture so quickly that they aren't visible at all!
I do remember the lines/gaps being more visible on a bigger TV, though.

Personally, the biggest draw of a CRT has to be the smoothness, where pixel graphics (or low-res renders) somehow look smooth and rounded around the edges, often with a lot of detail packed in, and it's hard to believe I'm looking at such a low resolution output. Yet some CRT filters completely skip this, and instead present jagged pixels covered with a bunch of things I don't even care about, like scanlines, curvature, chromatic aberration, etc., so it would seem that not everyone agrees with my opinion on that!

@X68000 Yeah, I can't see Sega's games being very fun with the default layout, though it should be possible to wrangle the controls (as well as those of most other systems/games) into a playable state with remapping.

On the subject of 6-button controllers, why is a handheld console the one that's combining a 6-button layout with analogue sticks, and not a full-size PC/console controller? Last I saw, we had to choose either a 6-button retro controller, or something weird and niche like the N64 controller, or Xbox's "Duke".

@87th Bit of a tangent, but yeah, it's crazy to look back at that time and all of the changes that happened in gaming, and then to realize how short of a time span it was.
Majora's Mask launched at the same time as the PS2, and was pushing the limits of last-gen gaming in some ways, despite immediately being so outdated that Nintendo was bundling it up in a collection just 3 years later!
It's also interesting that games like Pokemon and Animal Crossing both made use of real-time clocks to deliver a realistic sense of time and persistence, while MM was doing similar things on its (very accelerated) time system.

More on topic, hidden content like this is fascinating, and so is The Cutting Room Floor. Prepare to lose hours if you explore it!

@KitsuneNight "And they cant gank the games out from under you."
That part is essential. Fully-on-disc physical and DRM-free digital is ideal, though most of the Sega retro releases have generally been fine as well. (Their delisted games still work, and you can even pull the ROMs from the Genesis/Mega Drive collection and use them elsewhere.)

NSO subscriptions and Denuvo-protected releases just don't cut it, nor do game cards with half of the content missing.

EDIT: Though in the highly unlikely case that I purchased, say, a Saturn game, and Sega tried to pull it from my library, I'd feel perfectly justified in just downloading the ISO elsewhere, which isn't difficult at all. I'm willing to pay for these games legitimately, but not-so-legit fallbacks are plentiful!

@RoboJ1M Zombie Revenge and Power Stone?
This just reminded me that Capcom Fighting Collection 2 is going to finally bring Power Stone 1 and 2 to modern platforms!

But yeah, I don't really care to buy more mini computers. I just want the games. It has been a treat to discover the likes of Nights, Ikaruga, Guardian Heroes, Daytona, and Panzer Dragoon on PC/Xbox. And I hope to eventually see more classics that I missed- both must-haves and oddities: Maybe try out Burning Rangers and Popful Mail for the first time. See why people keep raving about Dragon Force, Skies of Arcadia, and Panzer Dragoon Saga. Experience a truly good Alex Kidd (as the Genesis one was just okay.) Actually own Chaotix for real. The list goes on!

@Wartogh ...and the PlayStation Classic apparently didn't even have quite enough muscle to run all of its games flawlessly!

I'd be fine with- or prefer, even- skipping the hardware and just releasing the games (or a collection of them) on PC.
Like you said, an emulation box powerful enough to run these would be expensive. And for me, it doesn't really add any value. I'm willing to pay for the games, but dropping an extra $100-200 to have them on a separate device has little appeal!

At first, I was afraid (but maybe also hoping) that this actually launched the balls. Would've been a lot less safe, but a lot more authentic!

@jamess Does that mean we're going to be back to 8 bits before long?

@Andee There are ways to bypass that arbitrary CPU check, if you want to get a few more years out of that computer.

Microsoft has made some frustrating moves lately (what else is new?), and I get why it's making people want to ditch them. (I've largely switched to Linux myself, though I can't completely leave Windows, thanks to its unmatched gaming compatibility.) Personally, I could never switch to a Mac, considering it's literally double the price of an equivalent PC. But I don't know your use case, so do whatever works for you!

@Sketcz While I find it hard to fault them for dropping Win7 support (as even Win10 approaches obsolescence now!), the problem is twofold: you need a stupid launcher to play your games, and there's no way to reject updates to the launcher... or the games, for that matter! I suppose these come with the territory of mainstream game distribution, but it's still kind of lame, considering that the vast majority of games on Steam would run fine on a half-decent PC from 10 years ago, if the launcher would get out of the way.

As far as stores with mandatory launchers go, Steam provides a good user experience, and is about as pro-consumer as I could expect... but I wish more people would consider GOG, as that's ultimately where it's at, if you really care about owning games and replaying them a few decades down the road. I get the convenience of having everything in one place, but relying 100% on Steam might not be the best practice. Plus, having no (mandatory) launcher means that GOG games can be integrated into other launchers like Steam without issue.

@-wc- I just figured that, with their commitment to preservation, they'd want to keep their games accessible indefinitely, the same way they do for delisted PC games. The problem, however, is that everything has to go through Nintendo's store... plus, come to think of it, Nintendo is opposed to GOG's philosophies by nature.

PS: You could disguise your computer as a game console with some game library front-ends... or did you already try that?

@Sketcz Just two, actually, and even those were just variations of the same course, with the easy mode moving a barrier to block off the hardest section of the track. The whole game was around 2 or 3 MB (excluding the loading screen and CD music tracks), which put it squarely in SNES ROM territory. It must've been a sight to see in 1994-95, though!

I only played it after experiencing the N64, so the presentation didn't especially impress me, but I found that the gameplay was surprisingly compelling and encouraged a lot of replays.

Also, it has actual reverse races instead of just the utterly useless mirror mode that other games rely on, so that gets it some bonus points.

@-wc- How would that look, if GOG collaborated with Nintendo on Switch 2- something along the lines of GOG becoming one of the platform's major publishers and porting a bunch of their games over (with the guarantee that their servers would still allow for re-downloads, long after the console is discontinued)?

@RetroGames You mean shadows cast by the characters? The only shadows I can see on the characters here are baked into the textures.

Though yeah, the overall point stands, as there were Saturn/PS1/N64/SNES(!) games with reasonably accurate real-time shadows casting on the ground, as well as GameCube/PS2/Xbox games that had self-shadowing (where characters' heads, arms, etc., could cast shadows across their torsos and legs). Yet there are much newer games that struggle to implement either of these.

@KitsuneNight I wouldn't say the GameCube was a failure, either. Not a huge success, sales-wise, but it did okay. Just not as well as Nintendo hoped- or it arguably deserved.

And its library had some real quality, too!

As far as accessibility and reputation in the present day, I don't see how that would make a system any more or less of a success... it's not even like Nintendo kept pressing more GameCube games for back compat during the Wii era, the way some companies did for other platforms (e.g., PS1 games like Metal Gear Solid being sold for PS2). But yes, I think it has seen a resurgence in popularity. Lots of people now see it as an underappreciated gem.

@gb_nes_gamer I'd like to buy some of the previous minis, but they were... well, delisted. Sold out. Whereas I can still buy and download decades-old games on GOG and Steam, thanks to the unlimited "print run" of digital. Pros and cons to both, of course!

Plus, there's nothing preventing them from releasing, let's say, a physical Xbox/PlayStation disc containing 10 Saturn classics.