Anne Summers

Raccaccoonie!

Resi never actually scared me, though. Whereas I remember AITD being terrifying the first time I played it. I think the slow pace of everything (I first played it on a relatively underpowered PC and the frame rate was probably about 10fps or something) added to the creepiness. Just the slow stumbling nature of the enemies and the fact that when you tried to run away from anything it was like running through treacle! The scariest bit by far was the ghost sitting in an armchair who didn't do anything unless you got too close to him, at which point he would turn into a bubbling mass of gas or something and kill you instantly. Partly I guess it was just because AITD did the environment thing first, so the shock had worn off when I saw Resi a few years later. Also I think the downright silliness of Resi ("You're the master of unlocking, Jill!") Help to stop it becoming truly scary, even though it was certainly thrilling at the time.

Quite a cool article here about how/why they were putting together DM on the FM-Towns. Doubt they had any idea people would still be making and using DM construction tools like the one they describe, 32 years later ...

Actually having read the issue now - although that statement was clearly an exaggeration - there's an interesting element of truth behind it ... A number of the larger companies that we definitely don't associate with those sort of Japanese micros apparently were creating FM Towns versions of their most popular games at the time. This wasn't because they thought they were going to crack the Japanese market and make loads of money, but mainly so they could get to grips with the ins-and-outs of producing CD-ROM software. So they'd be ready to go when the expected surge in home CD-ROM drives eventually happened. This is why there are FM-Towns and PC Engine CD versions of games like It Came From The Desert, Dungeon Master and Ultima floating around out there!

What is PVM?

XBox is the only current gen gaming device I don't own and I just can't justify buying one, even though I have a Gamepass Ultimate sub (which I mainly use for PC games). If they made it work better on Smart TVs I would get a lot more value out of it by playing the Xbox games there (and possibly wouldn't renew my top-tier PSN sub when it runs out next year). I have top-tier subs for Sony, MS and Nintendo online gaming services now - I am probably spending more per month on gaming now, than I ever have in the past. And spending less actual time playing ...

The other cloud gaming services (PSN, XBox, Nvidia) need to up their Smart TV game. The services all work great on PCs and mobiles* but who wants to sit and play a console game on a PC or a mobile? NVidia works well if you have one of their boxes (so basically you need a console sitting under your TV and taking up an HDMI slot). PSN doesn't have a Smart TV app at all, I don't think? *Not sure about PSN - perhaps this only works on a PS console?

Don't they cost about the same as three or four CRTs though?

I've used a 14" Toshiba that I picked up on here for all of my retro consoles since I started re-buying original hardware a couple of years back. It's small but it's what I did all of my gaming on from the Spectrum through to the Dreamcast so it feels right for retro gaming to me. 14" is just the most nostalgic way to play 80s and 90s consoles and computers, for me. The first TV that I used for gaming that was bigger than 14" was a 32" CRT widescreen that I bought to use with the Xbox 1 and Gamecube.

Hmm, memory playing tricks after 20 odd years. Some of them very odd. Not the first time that's happened.

Yeah, it wasn't even called Resident Evil 3: Nemesis when it came out. It was just called Resident Evil: Nemesis. I think because it clearly just used the same engine and was more like an extension of 2 rather than a new game. It would be DLC these days. I also seem to remember it came out with very little hype, totally unlike Resi 2 which was hyped for ages. With Nemesis it was just like "Here's a new Resi game!". Mind you, CV wasn't called Resi 3 either. Or Resi 4. Funny how Nemesis got retroactively given a number but CV didn't.

He's been involved in a lot of things to do with retro. But not normally for very long.

Two more issues added to my collection - April and May 1990. I feel they have got a bit overexcited in the intro to the April issue where they said that two developments that year would make it the most significant year for gaming since the launch of the Spectrum in 1982 - the launch of the CDTV and the arrival of the PC Engine in the UK.

Fucking hell, that is Lenny Henry isn't it!

Can't you hold fire and press up? I had G'n'G on the Amiga and don't remember it being that broken.