partious

The fundamental problem with this question is that the term "retro games" doesn't actually mean anything in particular.

 The Japanese equivalent of Retro Gamer magazine was just called "Used Games". That made more sense to me in that it was a magazine that covered games that were generally not being sold new at the time. I suppose in practice it's the same outcome (they covered everything up to the generation before whatever was current). 

I don't care about the age of a game. The important distinction for me is that in the 80's and 90's the mainstream market in many countries was dominated by Japanese companies and pick up and play/arcade style games. There was a decline in that market alongside the rise to total dominance of western AAA games(and western AAA inspired big budget Japanese games).

I suppose the death of the Dreamcast is as good a point in time as any to represent the rise of a certain type of experience and decline of the older market. Dreamcast was basically the last console that went all in on arcade experiences. 

Sure, PS2 had a lot of arcade style games in its massive library, but they weren't the main event. In later gens than that, fans of arcade style experiences have been living on the occasional crumbs tossed their way by a big company alongside low budget indie games. 

Uncharted might be an old game depending on the age of the person you ask and their gaming history, but the idea that it's necessary to call it "retro", as if it's somehow a fundamentally different affair than Uncharted 4, is laughable. 

There's a case to be made that the massive changes in technology from the 8 bit 2d era to the 32/64 bit 3d era might have seen significant enough changes to make games that were 10 years apart seem massively different, but the idea that now any 3rd person game where you shoot people between cinematics that is 10 years old is " retro" due to having a lower resolution and puddles that aren't quite as shiny as the latest version doesn't make sense to me. 

Anyway, whoever popularized the terms "retro games" and "retrogaming" really messed up. You don't see this issue in the world of movies. People there seem capable of making more meaningful distinctions between silent, black and white, westerns, comic book movies, 80’s horror, whatever, as opposed to making some silly blanket distinction between anything that came out more than x years ago and more recent stuff.

Thanks for the info. 

I have a spare GBP in great condition aside from a completely destroyed screen (someone else's doing), so I'm interested in getting whatever the cheapest screen replacement option is. The IPS options seem to involve case modding/replacement to fit the screen in. The terrible battery life on the pocket doesn't bother me that much since you can just pop in another pair of rechargeable AAA batteries and I'd be using original carts and not a flash cart.

I've seen GBA and GBC front lights online but no mention of pocket ones. It seems like something that should exist considering the issues with backlighting but I can't find any mention of them. I'm not really in the mindset of needing the "best" modern screen replacement going. If there was a washed out looking frontlight option for a fiver, I'd probably prefer that to an IPS screen for £50+. 

I already have a backlit (but not biverted) DMG, an original sp (front light version) and an unmodded pocket, so I'm used to sub optimal screen experiences  Also I'd sort of prefer keeping the original screen with a subpar light than a nicer modern screen that just feels somehow inauthentic... Maybe that makes little sense.

To be honest original gameboy looks acceptable to me on the frontlit sp, its only really the GBA games that suffer from looking unevenly lit/dim in my opinion. Maybe I'll look into a putting a front light into a gameboy color. I regularly see cheap Pockets, Colors and GBAs here. Don't see too many cheap dmgs these days though. Probably because people are buying them to backlight mod and resell.

Couple of questions about mods.

Where is the cheapest place to buy replacement screens, IPS or otherwise, for the various models of gameboy? Not the highest quality screen, just the cheapest ones that work. Same for backlights etc.

Is there such thing as a gameboy pocket frontlight mod? Peeling the reflective layer for a backlight mod without damaging the ribbon cable seems to be much more delicate work on pockets than on DMGs. 

I put a backlight into a DMG gameboy but not a bivert chip because A)I don't have one and B)even if I did its a more substantial job than soldering two wires for a backlight. It's nowhere near as bad as I expected, totally playable. IPS screens are very nice but there's also a balance between "better" and authentic feeling and at some stage maybe you're approaching something closer to the experience of a modern emulation handheld than an original gameboy(or maybe that's just something I'm currently telling myself to avoid buying a pre-modded one).

I have a pocket with a broken screen and I've been eyeing up IPS screens but they're quite pricey and I've read the battery life on IPS modded pockets is less than two hours... Shame you can't buy a replacement original screen (without the reflective layer would be even better).

What's the battery life on the gameboy in the picture above like? 

9 minutes ago, Swainy said:

I run my MiSTer on CRT’s and two weeks after I got mine I put the majority of my hardware away. 

Are you mainly into home computers? (I have that impression from reading your posts over the years). I can definitely notice that playing C64 or Amiga on mister just feels better than playing on an emulator and is less hassle, but for Japanese 8/16 bit consoles it's less obvious to me.

Just out of curiosity, for the 8/16 bit consoles how superior do people find the actual gameplay experience of a mister vs software emulation like a raspberry pi? 

I have 2 misters, some pi 3s that I run on a CRT and all the original hardware so this is the type of thing I like to ponder..

I think the experience on the mister/original hardware is better than emulation by some tiny amount, but there isn't really much between them, is there? The whole discussion of FPGAs kind of comes with an insinuation that all software emulation is noticeably laggy or something, but it isn't really, is it? Been noticing it again recently with the "release" of the analogue pocket and discussions around that.

Just curious what others who've compared the two experiences think.

Mister blows away software solutions in terms of ease of use, instant boot time and just feeling more like a console. Is this what most people think or do others find a noticeable difference between mister and pi gameplay.

FPGA Saturn will be a game changer though. FPGA Saturn vs software emulators will be a bigger deal than FPGA SNES vs bsnes or whatever.

The fact that some people have about 30 of them might also explain the difficulty in finding them  

There must be plenty of collectors with a hoarded collection of boxes of the things, just in case. 

19 minutes ago, Phantoon said:

We're getting to the point when that isn't true anymore. The X18S (and I think the Retroid Pocket 2+) can play at double resolution for most things, and PSP and Vita may exist but they aren't getting any more affordable.

 

Don't get me wrong, original hardware is almost always superior. If that specific hardware isn't your only focus, however, the metric shifts.

That's true enough. I'm happy to have a bunch of handhelds for different systems but I know some people are looking for the one that does everything.

I should add I recently got a rg351v, mainly for pico 8, and I think it's an excellent device. I'm really pleasantly surprised by the build quality, the shell and buttons etc.

Also, this is just a guess, but they don't take up much space or require any special tvs/upscalers etc so are a good gaming nostalgia purchase compared to a console etc. 

That said, I wasn't aware they were pricey. What's the going rate over there now?

I put a backlight into an old DMG I had hanging around a couple of days ago, fixed some vertical lines on the screen etc.  Might buy another to have a spare

You'd need to have a very high tolerance for glitches and framerate issues to actually go through anything above ps1 on one of these things(as opposed to just playing for 5 minutes).

Can't imagine suffering through a PSP game on one of these things all the time knowing that the PSP/Vita exist.

51 minutes ago, Retroguy said:

I haven't done any PC gaming in a while- would anyone be kind enough to tell me if my ageing gaming PC would be able to run any games connected to an Oculus Quest 2, or whether it's just not powerful enough? It's an running i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40Ghz, 8GB RAM and GeForce GTX970. Thanks!

Depends how high your expectations are and how much you can tolerate turning down the resolution. I recently played Half Life Alyx on something similar (gtx780ti and an overclocked i7 at 4ghz that's several gens older than your i5 ) and I really enjoyed it and found the experience very impressive. I'm sure it helps that I'm only comparing it to the psvr I've had since launch (it was more impressive than anything I've played on that). I'm sure it was awful compared to what it could be like on a newer PC.

Took a bit of messing around with the graphics settings at first. I was using a quest 1 though, so less demanding in terms of fps and resolution than the Quest 2 defaults. I've tried other older and less demanding pc vr games too and they run fine. 

The oculus app insists on displaying a warning that my PC can't handle vr every time I open it. 

I have no idea how accurate these are as they were just what I found when I typed "series x 在庫" or some such into google recently, but I found these two twitter accounts.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ps5zaiko

https://mobile.twitter.com/xbox_zaiko

Which seem to be linked to this website.

Anyway, I spotted some of the amazon updates last week about 10 minutes after the tweets went up and when I checked amazon there was nothing. My guess is it's a mixture of a few things. 

i)Japan is getting a pitiful amount of stock compared to places like the UK, if the Japanese people complaining online are correct.

ii)All the shops here (aside from amazon I think)do those awful lotteries which you have to be a member for etc. Becoming a member of 10 electronics chains just to enter raffles for the chance to maybe be able to pay rrp for a console seems like a bit more effort than people in the UK are talking about.

iii) Scalping is widespread here unfortunately. A local game shop had a series x for 85,000 recently and one of the big den den town retro shops has a cabinet full of ps5s for around the same price. So yeah, almost no stock plus you get to compete with online scalpers and also everyone's beloved retro shops for whatever there is.

13 hours ago, partious said:

From reading this forum for the past year I quite envy the relative ease with which people in the UK (and everywhere else that isn't Japan I guess) seem to be able to get the new consoles. Xbox in particular seems like anyone there who wants one can get one at RRP if they make some relatively light effort. 

And this thread proves my point. The difference between the new consoles being nonexistent unless you want to pay one of the many many scalpers double the rrp and "you have to spend a few minutes/hours occasionally checking a few websites to get one for rrp"

From reading this forum for the past year I quite envy the relative ease with which people in the UK (and everywhere else that isn't Japan I guess) seem to be able to get the new consoles. Xbox in particular seems like anyone there who wants one can get one at RRP if they make some relatively light effort. 

I just finished the Jeff stage. 

3 hours ago, papalazarou said:

Skybox on the quest is a great virtual cinema app slows you to stream files from your pc

 Was hoping that wasn't going to be the answer since it costs money and was on sale until a day ago.

Are there any free alternatives on steam etc?

Also, what are the best virtual cinema apps for both PC and standalone quest? Not for watching VR stuff, just for watching normal videos in a 3d environment.

I'm not much of a fan of online gaming with strangers in general but the online side of this thing is really just particularly awful, isn't it? The average age of the userbase seems to be about 8. 

44 minutes ago, Broker said:

Every time new motion controllers come out everyone says they’re finally great then you use them and they’re still janky shit that can’t track anything naturally and wildly vibrate your in game character occasionally. I’ve not used whatever the ones that came out for half life Alyx are called but the oculus and vive ones are just as shit as move controllers and Wii remotes. 

 

I’m yet to play a VR game that impressed me. I think maybe I just don’t want to wave my hands about when I’m playing games. Short of some insane setup with wireless hand tracking and and a wireless headset and an omnidirectional treadmill and some method that makes it feel like in touching something and adds weight to my hands if I’m not holding anything I can’t see VR ever working for me. I find the half arsed, pretend this stick you’re holding is a hundred things interaction, the weird moving while sitting still and the getting tangled in wires or walking into something every time it threatens to get immersive massively offputting. Maybe in 20 years.

 

 

Nobody managed to meaningfully improve upon the collections of mini games Nintendo made to demonstrate the controllers at launch. There’s nothing on the Wii that’s fundamentally different from Wii Sports or Wii Play. It’s like Nintendo went “here’s some cool ideas, what will other developers do?” and all the other developers went “we’ll just do that same stuff” and Nintendo were all “same lol. Also let’s ruin a Mario game with dogshit steering sections and endless pointer and waggle bits”.

Leaving aside the parts of this post that are just wrong, such as Vive and Oculus controllers being janky shit that can't track and are just as bad as wiimotes, I think this post is a decent illustration of the split between the audience for VR and traditional gaming that I mentioned earlier. 

Whereas you seem totally content with sitting down playing with a regular controller and dismiss VR motion controls as waving your hands about holding an item that doesn't magically change to the size and weight of what you're holding in the game, I'd be in the group that sees motion controls, even if imperfect, as a whole lot closer to matching the actions your character is performing in the game than just vegging out on the sofa wiggling your fingers and your thumbs around. I find it satisfying in a way that the abstracted traditional controls in 3d games have never been. 

To be honest I've been bored by the idea of increased TV/monitor resolutions,better reflections or shadows etc as a justification for hardware upgrades for a good while now.  I skipped the entire PS3/360 gen due to just being bored with the whole idea of mainstream gaming, and I'm still there regarding AAA games played on a TV with a regular controller. My return to modern gaming was with the Wii U and the appeal there was local multiplayer and gimmicky wiimote and gamepad stuff.

   VR is a massive advancement in immersion, which for me is more important than pretty much any of the other things that are being discussed in this thread. The VR missions from Ace Combat vs the regular game on a tv. RE7 psvr vs TV, Half Life Alyx with its motion controls vs any single player fps game played on a tv with a traditional controller.

If that isn't progress, I really don't know what would be. I've been reading for decades about how mind blowing Mario 64 was at the time. I played it at the time and sure, I thought it was a fine game, but even as a kid I wasn't in any way blown away by the switch from 2d games on a 2d screen to 3d games on a 2d screen in the way others seem to have been.

VR was basically the first time in my life that I really felt like I was experiencing a game changing advancement in gaming.

 I wonder if it's a matter of imagination or something.  I've always gravitated towards arcade style gaming as it's instantly gratifying and based around exciting moment to moment gameplay. Always found story/campaign based games quite boring and never really experienced much in the way of being immersed in a game before VR. Maybe others find it easier to become immersed in non-vr games.

I've been wondering if VR and TV gaming will just end up as two distinct things with essentially two separate fanbases with little crossover.

It always seemed to be assumed that VR was a natural progression that gamers would embrace but the last few years make me doubtful. I think it will always be too much effort for a lot of people. Even if it's stand alone/light/cheap, you still have to stand up, clear a space, put something on your head and move your body. Its a different proposition to sitting on the couch after a day's work playing a game on the TV using a controller.

The split is already noticeable to an extent with the lack of coverage of/interest in the Quest 2 and VR in general among a lot of mainstream gaming media and on the other hand VR centric forums/subreddits where people seem to have largely moved away from TV gaming in favour of VR.

 I`ve never played HL2 and only a bit of HL1 in my early teens, but I recently picked up a cheap Oculus Quest 1, so when I saw that Alyx was heavily reduced in the sale I couldn`t resist, despite the fact that my PC is definitely way below recommended specs, overclocked ancient i7 and gtx780ti.

Absolutely everything I read online would have given me the impression that it wasn`t going to run at all but I took a chance on it and... a couple of minor graphics settings tweaks later it runs totally acceptably. Smooth enough and massively more impressive graphically than anything I've played on my psvr.

I was getting randomly kicked to the Oculus Quest dashboard at first ,which I thought might be a CPU issue (but seemed odd because the game was otherwise running OK) but turns out I was just using the wrong USB port. After years of owning this PC I have discovered that the red USB ports are in fact faster than the blue ones... No issues since figuring that out.

I`m about 11 hours in now and I`m sure whatever I could say has already been said many times. Amazing game, manages to make me feel like it will be hard to go back to both flat FPS games and also the vast majority of half baked VR games out there. Also, this is the first VR FPS I can play for hours at a time without the slightest hint of nausea. I`m not sure how they`ve achieved that but it`s certainly promising for the future of VR.

3 hours ago, Floshenbarnical said:

 

Yes. Even in "good" VR games like Beat Saber the move controller system shits the bed and your lightsaber detaches from your hand and floats uselessly ten feet in front of you

 The move controllers are atrocious and were never fit for purpose with VR. The Quest controllers are massively better.

On 22/07/2007 at 05:16, Droo said:

EDIT: 300 quid! More expensive than a bloody neo geo!

lol, those were the days. What's the going rate for these things in the west these days? In Japan it's about 100,000yen for ones that aren't broken. The fact that most of the ones that come up for sale are broken gives the impression they might be a bit of hassle to maintain, compared to something like an Amiga or C64.

I watched this as a fan of Consolevania/Videogaiden and not the original GamesMaster (never really watched it as a kid). I think I might be in the awkward age bracket of being not quite old enough to be nostalgic about GamesMaster but sufficiently old that the bits that were designed to appeal to teens etc weren't my cup of tea either. 

Robert Florence did a good job as main presenter, it's just everything else that didn't work for me.

10 hours ago, schmojo said:

 

Obviously you could get BoxVR on Steam and play it wirelessly. There's also the new PowerBeatsVR for Quest which isn't subscription, and Thrill of the Fight is always great exercise.

Have you tried Creed and if so, how does Thrill of The Fight compare in terms of exercise? I have Creed for psvr but recently got a quest and was thinking of buying Creed again due to the lack of wires/massively better tracking etc. I've noticed that Thrill of The Fight is quite a bit cheaper. 

Does Thrill Of The Fight have training activities like Creed does, or is it just fights?