bplus

31 minutes ago, strider said:

Been playing Ocarina Of Time via the Retrotink 5X. It looks fantastic. 

 

How does that compare to an ossc? I gave up on my ossc for n64 games. But after seeing what retro arch was doing to control inputs via that control stick test rom, I'm tempted to go back

6 hours ago, merrychan said:

I rented the PAL PS1 version of Alpha and didn't enjoy it as much but liked the artwork.

 

Played Zero3 on the Saturn and thought it was incredible and much later played Zero2 and I'm pretty sure that's my favourite SF ever

I have alpha 3 on the Dreamcast , did know it was a Saturn game too.

Did anyone else not get on with street fighter alpha (any of them). I'm not sure why the graphics are supposed to be an improvement, it doesn't look as good.

2 hours ago, Shimmyhill said:

 

I had a C64 first and no one I knew had a NES - a mate had a master system and having played it (when I had a C64 but before Amiga, I think) I was blown away with the graphics and the lack of loading so I had to get a Master system. I had that for a while and another mate got a Master system but again no one I knew had a NES… as far as I was concerned Nintendo were nobody and Sega were king! 

 

It was only when I went to high school and was exposed to the bants from Snes owners and finally played one that I saw the error of my ways, the Snes is probably my fave console of all time but there is a soft spot for the Megadrive for sure.

 

SF2 was Snes all the way tho, even if Anthony at school said the Amiga version was better… ahahahahahhaahahahahahahahahah, poor lad  

 

I remember seeing screen shots of the Amiga version and thinking it looked better. It's higher res than the snes or something. But alas no, on YouTube seeing it running, it's diabolical. Also there's a YouTube video explaining that super sf2 on the Amiga is actually a great port, it just looks awful.

Apparently the megadrive version of sf2 is more accurate, it allows "cancels" or something like that, but the snes doesn't. 

On a slightly weird tangent:

It's really odd, I'm starting to think, childhood exposure to sf2 and its surrounding hype has permanently done something to me. A few months back I purchased all the street fighters bar alpha for the super Famicom. Ive wanted NTSC versions of those games since I was 10 (because mean machines explained 50 Vs 60hz). Maybe it's harmless, but it is a bit weird.

34 minutes ago, Rex Grossman said:

The first import game I ever preordered for my Super Famicom.

 

Bought it from Krazy Komsoles who advertised in Mean Machines. Cost £40 when other were charging £60.

I think I would have murdered my family if it meant I could have an SFC and street fighter 2 at home!

9 minutes ago, cancon said:

I don't really understand this obsession with Japanese games being better.  Just don't see it, you guys should love your own contributions more.  As a Canadian I admire European video game talent.

I don't think it's necessarily jap Vs euro. Rare are English and only Nintendo created more polished games. I think the difference was investment and team size. Europe had a tradition of 8 bit games (arcade game conversions like outrun on the c64) being hammered out on a shoe string.

1 hour ago, Shimmyhill said:

I wish I had an interest if fighting games / was any good at them but I still have a soft spot for SF2… As a Sega Master system owner I wanted a Megadrive when they came out and went to John Lewis to buy one, they had run out but had a new ‘Super’ Nintendo - pffft, said I, dont want any of that rubbish so I waited for a Megadrive to come into stock. Some time later when I’d played on a mates Snes I was desperate for one and finally got one around the time it was bundled with SF2 turbo! It was the only game I had for a bit and I did hammer it and got ok, as soon as I went to the arcades it was clear I was no good at it 😂

 

Its one of those games that I recognise as being brilliant, have some fun with it but just can’t get into them due to my crapness - I’d love to be able to pick up a lovely arcade stick and be able to play it well!

What made you want a megadrive so badly? I sold my Gameboy and lots of games to buy one, only liked sonic. Few years later got a snes, it felt like a different generation to me. Hrm actually that's a controversial opinion ! I actually play  megadrive games quite a bit these days!

1 hour ago, Goemon said:

Linked to this I remember the action replay boasted that you could ‘play the bosses’ in Street Fighter 2.

 

I was so hyped by thought of being able to play the bosses I went and bought an Action Replay.

 

Was a complete con!

 

Basically you put the code in, the game would put a picture of the boss in your character window, the plane would wig out on where it was flying to and when the fight loaded it broke with no sprite being loaded in.

 

It was pretty much ‘play the bosses…for the duration of the flight UI’

 

The action replay was swiftly returned.

 

 

Before that code came out , me and my mate spent a day trying to figure it out ourselves, we got to a point where the boss portrait would be shown pre-match then crash. NMS mag showed a screen shots of a boss code, but the boss character sprites completely corrupted as just showing bits of flag sprites or something. Thinking about it, they probably made it up.

Does anyone else remember magazines saying "get an action replay for your snes and you can speed street fighter 2 up", so I persuaded my mate to buy one instead of f zero. What a load of shit, speed up code completely broke the game.

Same here, a shit hole smoke filled arcade called the treasure trove on castle Street Belfast, I was ten maybe younger.

I still remember looking at it the first time, blanka stage, blanka Vs guile I think. The whole thing looked organic, so smooth, everything moved or pulsed somehow. I wasn't even playing it. I was used to spectrum games not this!

Of course it only had 3 buttons, melted on purpose with cigarettes, which was the style at the time (in Belfast arcades at least).

I then spent a year drooling over screen shots of the snes version in mean machines. The hype build up was insane. Best Xmas present I've ever got, snes plus street fighter 2. My brother and I discovered stashed in parents wardrobe and went into town to buy a second pad (wtf were Nintendo thinking shipping that pack without two pads!). Saved Xmas morning by buying that extra pad!

I then spent a very long time noticing the pal version was squished compared to NTSC screen shots in mean machines (not to mention slower). Still, we had street fighter at home, and that's all that mattered. How on earth capcom converted that games to the snes I'll never understand, genius.

1 hour ago, MikeJ said:

Out of your list the only console I have seen with obvious capacitor problems is the Super Famicom (surface mount caps leaked and turned a bit of the shield green, still worked OK but would eventually have caused damage). Original Xboxes lower than version 1.6 will have a super capacitor that holds the time etc. and they leak badly so need doing.

 

Other than that from your list I would just inspect them and leave alone if they are working properly. The other consoles you have listed are either outside of known dodgy capacitor (i.e. leaking causing damage, primarily surface mount ones from late 80s to early 90s) eras or use through holes and are generally OK.

 

In terms of doing it yourself, if you have basic soldering skills and equipment recapping is generally very straightforward but start off doing something cheap (Super Famicom would be a good option).

 

Amazing. Thanks

I am considering doing this for my super Famicom, jap megadrive model 1, PS1, ps2, dreamcast and n64 (and possibly an original Xbox). But I'm not sure it's really necessary.

Has anyone here done it themselves. Given my lack of soldering experience and lack of free time (children + job) I'm thinking of paying for it to be done. Console passion did my nes as part of an RGB mod. Any recommendations?

One thing about gdemu, it doesn't have 100 percent compatibility: no hydro thunder

I take it all back, well sort of, it's a bit of a pain to configure, but I've been playing time crisis on a ps1 emulator, amazing!

Speaking of, what's the best time crisis game? (Not sure I can emulate PS3 but can definitely do PS2)

Had a mid life crisis and ordered one of these. Arrived today. Name of Christ, the docs don't make it clear what to do. I've given up and gone to bed.

Ran the light gun exe, think I configured the gun correctly.

1. How am I supposed to do anything in windows if I'm running the light gun exe, the mouse is flying everywhere. This really isn't clear to me.

2. I switch on a border with alt b, start retro arch and the border disappears?

3. How am I supposed to configure retro arch?

Gave up on retro arch, tried dead containment demo, gun trigger seems to work about 25 percent of the time. Wtf is going on?

I might be an idiot but I work as a programmer for a living so I'm used to configuring things, I should be ok at doing this. Any advice or help would be very much appreciated

I had a similar idea, kind of "what's the best way to play x" with ranked options.

So for street fighter 2 last would be on a spectrum. First would be an arcade I guess.

On 02/05/2023 at 11:59, merrychan said:

I get this...a lot, I remember enjoying the C64 versions since that was my only option at home but at the time the Amiga ports in my mind were arcade perfect....in later years you revisit stuff like this and Robocop and it's very much not the case.

I guess having the Amiga shots on the boxes didn't help any  

My experience too, one guy on our street had an Amiga, we used to talk about it being an arcade machine because the games were definitely the same as arcade in our 9 year old brains. Well compared to my f##king spectrum they were

Stuck this on tonight, megadrive version is Uber tough with a different layout of first stage which I couldn't get anywhere with.

Pc engine different layout again, bit easier, started enjoying it.

Master system, too zoomed in but graphically very good. Shit framerate though.

Nes played ages ago and can't remember it.

(I don't think I would have made it as a games reviewer!)

Funnily enough I've been messing about with the model three emulator. I thought I should try spike out, but as far as I can tell it's dreadful, maybe I'm doing it wrong.

I wouldn't have thought to try the Harley Davidson game as I suspected it would just be branded awfulness, I'll check it out and that ambulance one too. I'm waiting on a sinden light gun to arrive so I can play model 3  Jurassic park (and a load of other games for other systems).

I've been watching a few you tube videos trying to find arcade racers. So far "side by side" on ps1 looks good. I believe it became "battle gear" on PS2 and arcade. And are somehow related to initial D. I haven't tried any of these games though...

Anyway not exactly an answer to your question

I've got my NTSC nes modied and the results are ridiculously good. If this had been available at the time I would have done this instead (well I would have had to buy a Famicom too!)

4 minutes ago, Festoon said:

 

Yeah, but it's on the more frustrating end of the scale, control-wise. it always felt to me like it had been slightly underplaytested in comparison to 1080 and Waverace and consequently I found it more frustrating to play more often than not.

That's probably a fair comment. Wave race and 1080 are nearly perfect (I still play them). But I played the shit out of excite bike at the time, it's a top five n64 game for me.

23 hours ago, Tomdominer said:

Is Excitebike 64 still worth playing today?

Did you like 1080 and wave race? I'd say excite bike is similar in that it has deep rewarding controls, always feeling like you are holding on for dear life. It is one of my favourite games but I haven't played it in a long time.

Also it requires a bit of patience before it starts feeling really rewarding.

3 hours ago, cancon said:

It's true that the Amiga didn't excel in 3D but I finally got Genetic Species to work on my WinUAE last night and it's definitely the best looking Amiga exclusive FPS.

 

 

I don't know that much about Amigas so bare with me, is that running in some like an Amiga 500? Or close? It's ridiculously smooth.

19 hours ago, matt0 said:

 

Thanks!

 

This is all stuff I've spent a lot of time thinking about over the years so I've been getting carried away a bit in this thread...

The stuff about east Vs west development is also something I've thought about a lot about. I remember realising when going from a spectrum to a Gameboy , the quality jump in the games was just huge.

38 minutes ago, matt0 said:

 

This is a fascinating subject for me, the differences between Western and Japanese development over the years. Another giant post, so apologies in advance.

 

I'll get the tech bumf out of the way first though. In no way was the Amiga more powerful than a GBA, all the previous explanations of how the Amiga hardware is different to the consoles applies here but the GBA is a generation of tech further down the line on top of that. You can broadly think about the GBA as a beefed up SNES even though architecturally they're very different. The GBA has the capability to do all those fancy effects the SNES could do and the Amiga couldn't convincingly replicate - but it has a much (much!) faster processor and some new stuff too like smooth hardware sprite scaling and rotation (the SNES just had the playfield rotation and integer sprite scaling where you could draw a sprites at different pixel sizes but not scale them smoothly). And despite having no dedicated 3D hardware the GBA could comfortably outperform a stock A1200 with wonky but technically jaw dropping versions of Driver, Monkey Ball, V-Rally 3 etc. (and less impressive versions of Doom and Crazy Taxi - although still a huge step up from the Amiga) - the smaller display resolution obviously helped it a lot here so for a fair comparison look at the small display window on Alien Breed 3D and how Team 17 still had to double the pixels up on a standard A1200 to get the frame rate out of single figures.

 

Then it comes down to the game design itself.

 

First it's worth baring in mind that the big Japanese developers had bigger teams and bigger budgets than your typical Amiga developer. Some of the American companies were gearing up for these kinds of high production value titles but they were already leaving the Amiga behind for the consoles or increasingly powerful DOS PCs. Amiga development was a specifically European bubble that the wider world was leaving behind.

 

And I also think there was also just a different development philosophy going on between Japanese developers and Western developers - and then specifically UK developers.

 

Unofficial Who brought up Exile which started life on the BBC Micro and in many ways is a far more sophisticated game than the generational equivalent of NES Metroid. Exile has procedural physics, behavioural AI with friendly and hostile characters and particle effects. It has a single large free roaming scrolling map (as opposed to Metroid's connected rooms). One puzzle that always sticks with me is where you have to carry water in a vase, and if the vase gets knocked over or you flip upside down carrying it (you fly around with a jetpack) he water spills out in a stream of blue pixels.

 

For a game that can run on a BBC Micro with 32k RAM (or a C64 with a 1mhz processor!) it's a thing of wonder. It's also a dog to play, with a clunky inventory system, fiddly game world interactions complicated by the physics and full of ways to soft lock yourself out of making progress by using too many resources, or dropping something in the wrong place etc. You see this over and over again with some of the most ambitious UK developers. A drive for simulation and systemic sophistication over tightly controlled designs and interactions. Or to put it another way, Geoff Crammond would never have made Ridge Racer.

 

I've got a pet theory that these different design philosophies were shaped over time by the nature of the hardware available to developers. The big Japanese companies like Capcom, Nintendo, Sega, Konami etc. all started as arcade developers and then moved primarily in to console development (although Konami were big supporters of the MSX) - so from the start they had either custom hardware designed for the specific games they were making or they had hardware that was built specifically to closely reproduce the type of experience you would get from an action arcade game. Nintendo designed the NES specifically to reproduce their arcade offerings. There were Japanese developers who focused on home computers too, but with a handful of exceptions we didn't see any of their work over here - when we think about Japanese 8 bit and 16 bit era games, over here we think about the work of companies who grew through arcade and console development.

 

So the developers of these hyper polished console games never had to sweat to figure out how to do smooth scrolling on a ZX Spectrum and still have a game running over the top. They could focus on the polish and the detail and as machines became more powerful, they had built up the skills to refine that polish to a fine sheen, while over in the UK you have an interview in CU Amiga where the lead coder of Brian The Lion is saying something along the lines "look, we got it to zoom in to the map and there's loads of parallax just like a SNES" - in a way they weren't wrong - they got the thing on to the screen. Just like whoever it was made the Spectrum version of Terra Cresta got the thing on to the screen. What more do you want? And if you try to do more, well maybe you just can't - Western developers hadn't refined that specific skill set. Maybe you try to make Zelda for the Amiga but you make Speris Legacy? Maybe you try to make Puyo Puyo but you make Gem X. Maybe you have the best coders in the business, and a decent art team, and you go all out, and it's all there on the screen - the linescroll, the big sprites, the parallax, you even managed to get all that in and still use the overscan! It's a technical masterpiece but... but it's Elfmania.

 

Or maybe you lean in to it and make something good. Maybe you're at Midway and you know you can't compete with the visuals in Street Fighter 2 at an artistic level, so you make Mortal Kombat instead.

 

I think you could make a fine Metroidvania on the Amiga with 30 odd years of hindsight and game development theory and YouTube breakdowns about what makes any specific classic game so special. But in the 90s maybe it wasn't so clear what the Metroid games were doing with game structure and environmental design - we didn't even have the term Metroidvania to provide some focus. There was a mini glut of Zelda clones right at the end of the Amiga's life but the developers didn't seem to understand LTTP at all, they just made the same old action adventures they'd been making since the 8 bit days, but with a few visual cues from Zelda. None of the physical interactions of LTTP - the arrows sticking in shields, the secrets hidden under bushes, the swarms of angry wasps emerging from trees. They didn't have the back and forth structure of an unfolding overworld, then an unfolding dungeon that gives you more tools to unfold the overworld. Then the merging of the dungeon and overworld environments and the introduction of a whole new dimension to the overworld in the second half of the game... And even realising that's what's happening doesn't necessarily mean you can reproduce or expand upon those ideas.

 

Also Super Metroid came out in 1994 when the Amiga was entering it's twilight years as a commercial platform and developers were still chasing after Doom but on the Amiga, Street Fighter 2 but good on the Amiga, Zelda but on the Amiga. Super Metroid wasn't a game that I remember making a ripple in the Amiga press at all - it passed the Amiga bubble by.

 

But then we get to the 360 / PS3 era where things flip. Where suddenly you can't handcraft every specific detail meticulously - it's too much now - the environmental detail, the high resolution textures with the layers of normal mapping. Maybe you need procedural physics and you've no experience of that. Maybe you need a entirely different workflow. PC design and development practices folded neatly in to Western console development but Japanese console development goes in to crisis - people leave for mobile and there's a bigger focus on handhelds than in the West. It takes a while to re-centre. To go from a hyper specific approach to a more generalised one. But you can carry the philosophies and ideas from the earlier era over intact too.

 

So in the interests of fairness: Why doesn't the Amiga have a Metroid is a bit like asking, why didn't Nintendo make a Geoff Crammonds F1 or Midwinter. I think there's a degree to which the only people who were going to make something like Super Metroid in the 90s were the Super Metroid development team. The only person who was going to make Midwinter was Mike Singleton. Plenty of people were trying to make something like Geoff Crammonds F1 GP, but maybe it was only Geoff Crammond who could've pulled it off on the Amiga.

That was a good read