Comments 411

Re: Interview: Meet The Man Who's Upgrading SNES Doom With The "Super FX 3" Chip

BulkSlash

This is quite encouraging, it sounds like it basically is an overclocked SuperFX with access to more ROM space. I was concerned they might go the route of Doom on the Mega EverDrive and just have the FPGA run the game with the SNES just being a dumb passthrough.

It will be cool to see if things like StarFox and Stunt Race can be upgraded to be smoother, I’ve played them with an overclocked SuperFX and the problem is they also run faster, which isn’t ideal.

Re: Want Your Very Own Sega Neptune? You'll Need A Spare $2,600

BulkSlash

@obijuankanoobie I got a 32X a few years back because my brother had one back in the day and I enjoyed Virtua Racing and Star Wars Arcade. It was quite impressive when StarFox was the best 3D I'd seen! 😅

It's not an essential bit of kit at all but it's unbelievable how the prices for them have skyrocketed lately. I remember when you couldn't give them away on eBay but nowadays you'd be lucky to get one for under £250.

Re: PSA: Check Your PSP Battery Right Now

BulkSlash

I've no idea where my old PSPs are in the garage, I use a PSP Go as my daily driver and so far, the battery seems OK. Hopefully it doesn't expand as there's no easy hatch on the back like on the larger models!

Re: Pre-Orders For FPGA N64 'Analogue 3D' Open Next Week, Will Cost $250

BulkSlash

I recently retired my HDMI modded N64 and went back to an RGB modded one to use on a CRT. It looks so much better over a CRT, there really is no comparison.

I’d consider one of these as a spare if my N64 ever dies but knowing Analogue they won’t make enough and then they’ll dole out limited amounts of new colours which will also sell out immediately. When they stop doing that I’ll buy from them again.

Re: Review: PlayCase Turns Your iPhone Into A Game Console, With A Few Catches

BulkSlash

It's a good idea, definitely better than carting around those bulky controllers that fit round the ends of your phone. I think if it was made from stronger plastics and not 3D printed it would be better.

I would also prefer something that just has all the controls on-screen at once, rather than needing to swap to different layouts for different consoles.

Re: Don't Hold Your Breath For A Tekken Collection

BulkSlash

I love Tekken 3, Namco managed to squeeze a huge amount into the regular PS1 compared to the upgraded PS1 hardware they used in the arcade version. I still enjoy playing it today.

The one weak spot of Tekken 3 was the Tekken Force mode, it just wasn’t very good. So Michael Murray citing that as the thing he’d want to play from Tekken 3 doesn’t inspire much confidence in his ideas of what makes a good Tekken game.

It sort of reminds me of Jim Ryan’s infamous “why would anybody play this?” quote.

Re: Anniversary: The Best Burnout Turns 20 This Month

BulkSlash

@Poodlestargenerica Dominator is actually my favourite I think. While it does tend towards the brown/bloom look of the era, I really enjoyed the way you could recharge your nitrous bar while using it. It was possible (but not very easy) to boost for an entire race as long as you kept taking risks to recharge the nitrous.

I think it tends to get overlooked because it doesn't have a crash mode and it was released after the 360 launched so people had moved on by then.

Re: "Star Fox CD" To Take Advantage Of Super FX 3 Chip, Will Feature Rumble Support

BulkSlash

That's weird, doing SuperFX AND MSU-1 at the same time? I always thought you could only have one enhancement chip per game, and I think on the SD2SNES it's actually a memory limitation that you can't do both. Maybe it will be an FXPAK Pro only feature? If you can use as many enhancements chips as you like, why not throw an SA-1 in there too to speed up processing! 😂

Re: Time Crisis Is Coming To Modern TVs Thanks To A Plug-And-Play, AI-Powered Light Gun

BulkSlash

I own the arcade machine so technically I don’t need this, but the gun does intrigue me. The OG light gun worked by drawing a fully white frame when the trigger is pulled and because it’s scanning the screen at such a high rate it can tell where it’s pointing.

This AI gun could look for a 16:9 rectangle with a bright white 4:3 square, but there’s the issue of input lag, the gun would see the white frame several frames after the game has processed the collision. So maybe the AI just recognises TVs and infers where you’re aiming based on that?

Re: Review: MiSTer Pi - A $99 Gateway To FPGA Retro Gaming

BulkSlash

I'm confused by the name. It says "Pi" which suggests it's using a Raspberry Pi but as far as I can tell it's entirely FPGA based. It seems odd to pick a name that suggests it's yet another Pi based emulation system and not an FPGA when that's the key selling point. 😵‍💫

Re: Anniversary: Tekken Is Now 30 Years Old

BulkSlash

That’s hilarious seeing how many times the Mishimas have thrown each other from a great altitude. You’d think they’d learn by now it doesn’t stop them coming back!

I never really got into any of the Tekken games after the third, although I quite enjoyed the JAMMA version of Tag Tournament. After that the games just felt a bit uninspired and I missed the unique CGI endings you’d get for each character.

Re: FPGA PS1 Teased Ahead Of PlayStation's 30th Anniversary

BulkSlash

I thought this was going to be official at first, I thought Sony were finally going to make amends for the mess they made of their PS1 mini last time. I should have known better! 😅

I am very tempted by that PS1 themed PS5 Pro, but as it’s only limited numbers I’m most likely going to miss out to all the scalpers who will have them on eBay for twice the price.

Re: Think PS5 Pro Is Too Much At $700? The 3DO Would Like A Word

BulkSlash

@Razieluigi I’m in the same boat, this is the first console generation since I’ve been earning my own money where I’ve not bought at least one system at launch.

I was hoping the Pro would be a bit cheaper, I need to decide if I really want to pay that much. I might wait for some reviews to see how well it performs. I mostly want it for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Stellar Blade. There just aren’t many games this gen that actually excite me. 😢

Re: This Computer Is Learning To Play Mario Kart On A Real SNES

BulkSlash

I watched for a few minutes, it managed to get as far as the second corner a couple of times. It seems it's designed to fail and reset as soon as it touches the edges of the road.

I wonder if they could speed things up by disabling the emulator's frame limiter? It seems it will take forever for it to learn and it might just end up learning how to beat one track. Or it might learn that not accelerating at all allows it to avoid the edges of the road forever! 😂

Re: Sega Almost Created A Wii Remote-Style Controller For Dreamcast And VR Headset For Saturn

BulkSlash

Seems very plausible. House of the Dead 2 in the arcades used an array of infrared emitters around the edge of the screen which the gun could "see" so it would know where it was aiming, which basically is how the Wii pointer works. The fishing rod controller had basic motion control sensors.

I could easily see Sega looking into these technologies, especially when the approach of LCD screens meant alternative methods to the old light guns would be needed.

Re: Interview: How Retroware's Castlevania Parody 'The Translyvania Adventure of Simon Quest' Pokes Fun At Konami's Series

BulkSlash

I’m really looking forward to this one, the expanded moveset like the slide move allows for all sorts of cool actions like kicking an enemy’s projectile back at them.

The funniest thing I saw was a video of Simon beating a boss and pulling off some cool moves to collect the sphere and the game rates you on how cool your finish move is. 😂

Re: Star Fox Will Take Advantage Of The New Super FX 3 Chip, Will Feature Rumble Support

BulkSlash

StarFox, Doom and Stunt Race are the ones I'd most like to see get enhanced frame rates. I'm genuinely curious as to how this FX3 can improve performance. We know you can overclock the SuperFX 1 & 2 which makes the games run faster but until now no-one had cracked getting more frames per second without the game also running too fast.

I kind of hope the new chip isn't doing too much work and is authentic to what would have been possible back in 199X. You can run the full version of Doom on a Megadrive using a Mega Everdrive Pro, but it's basically running the whole game on the cartridge and just using the Megadrive for controller inputs and image output which feels like cheating to me! 😂

Re: ROMHacking.net Is Winding Down After Almost 20 Years

BulkSlash

@RetroGames I don't know if what I'm referencing is related to the people who were being unpleasant. I remember there was a Mega-Man fan game uploaded which caused concerns about copyright and resulted in the full games section being closed to new submissions.

Someone uploaded one or more patches made by someone else who didn't want them posted on RHDN and there was quite a lot of disagreement over whether they should be kept or taken down. I think there was something to do with a Pokemon patch too. I think the whole moderation process was in upheaval at the time.

In all cases there were people who were adamant that the item in question be kept/deleted, which polarised things quite a bit. Although from the sounds of things there was a whole other thing going on in Discord totally separate from the website, so possibly none of the above is related.

Re: ROMHacking.net Is Winding Down After Almost 20 Years

BulkSlash

I just saw that earlier, it's a real shame as the site is one of the ones I usually check every day to see what new hacks are out. I noticed something going on last year when there was some sort of controversy over certain hacks submitted to the site, so I suppose this isn't entirely out of the blue. Hopefully romhacks.org will be able to fill the gap they're leaving behind.

Re: Castlevania: Bloodlines Is Being Unofficially Ported To SNES

BulkSlash

I love Bloodlines (although I do prefer the Japanese name for it!), so seeing this ported to the SNES would be really cool if it gets finished. There's some clever line scrolling use in this game, it would be interesting to see if it can be replicated or if something like Mode 7 gets used instead.

Re: Konami Butchered This SNES Classic, So We Fixed It

BulkSlash

@sdelfin I don’t think I’ve had that glitch, but I’ve been caught more than once with a glitch in Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts where taking a shortcut on level 4 doesn’t load the rest of the level. 💀

I think I know the Strider patch you’re taking about, I downloaded it but it was for an older version of the game not supported in MAME anymore. I wonder if it’s possible to port it…

Re: Konami Butchered This SNES Classic, So We Fixed It

BulkSlash

@sdelfin I love a bit of Strider as well, I finally managed to 1cc it a month back! It wouldn’t surprise me if there are glitches, I tend to play the Japanese release and you can occasionally see small garbage pixels at the edge of Hiryuu’s sprite where it overlaps with another sprite in the ROM. Some versions re-use level 1’s music on other stages instead of having their own unique tracks too.

Re: Konami Butchered This SNES Classic, So We Fixed It

BulkSlash

@Sketcz I haven’t uploaded any of them, as I wasn’t sure anyone would want them. In some cases they could probably just be made into Game Genie codes as they don’t change much. The Contra Spirits one is a bit bigger though as I needed to jump to the end of the ROM to add some extra instructions. 😅 Also I tend to mod the Japanese releases as those are the ones I imported back in the day, so I’d need to also do the US ROM before releasing. I probably should do it at some point!

@sdelfin Yeah Super SFII Turbo’s difficulty is broken, it always starts on hardest. For the rest of them, when you set the difficulty dip switches it reads that into another part of the memory when starting a new game and increments it after each fight you win, I find it eventually becomes impossible to win. I think it’s supposed to drop the difficulty when you lose, but I’ve never noticed it get much easier.

Many of the Capcom games from that era increase the difficulty the longer you play for, Strider is one of them. When you see those little robots flying in from the top or bottom of the screen you know the game wants to kill you and make you put more money in! 😂 Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts and Final Fight have it too IIRC.