BulkSlash

@Damo Awesome! BTW I like your white Game Gear. 👍

Instabuy! I loved Blazing Chrome, this looks like a love letter to Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi, so I’ll be grabbing it as soon as I can.

Does this have gyro? I put a pre-order in for the SteamDeck when I found out it had gyro controls, but the size of that device does concern me somewhat. A smaller machine like this might be a better fit for me, even if the battery life is poor.

I’m really enjoying these debunking articles. There’s probably lots of stuff from the early years of gaming that has become accepted fact when it‘s actually based on someone’s poor recollection of a dodgy translation of a Japanese interview that was printed in a Western games mag. Chinese Whispers at its finest!

Impressive stuff, they even managed 4 simultaneous enemies on screen at once which beats the vanilla SNES version's 3 enemies.

I'm hoping the chap who romhacked Final Fight 2 to display 5 enemies simultaneously also does the same for Final Fight on the SNES at some point.

I think the arcade version hits something like 12 enemies on screen at once, it gets really insane on the later levels! 😂

I had the demo for my PC back in the day, and it ran terribly. IIRC even with Direct 3D it still ran badly. It did look better than the Saturn version as it ran at 640x480 (and I think it had an 800x600 mode) but the Saturn version had a much more stable framerate.

The PC port of Daytona CCE had similar problems. These days I just play the arcade machines or the Saturn versions! 😅

That’s a good list, I’d put MGS1 first personally as even after I got over the stupid decision to make Raiden the main character, the plot is still silly, culminating in that ridiculous scene on top of Arsenal Gear where all the surviving bosses turn up to tell the others they were secretly double, double, triple crossing them. 😓

Well, I’m definitely sold… 😉

Shekhana! It truly was a magical time back then. I remember reading in the back of Mean Machines that Konami were rumoured to be maybe, possibly porting their TMNT arcade game to the NES.

I went down to Shekhana and they had the finished game already in stock! 😵 Of course the Famicom release didn’t work properly with my PAL NES, the backgrounds were all shifted halfway down the screen for some reason. So I then got my NES modded to run US games and bought the US version of the game which ran fine.

That experience triggered a lifelong fascination with how games can differ from region to region as there were lots of little changes between those two versions.

@Ogbert It's OK, it's only Hitler. 😉

Sadly I never had a Game Genie but I did have the Action Replay for my GameBoy.

I remember actually having quite a lot of fun using the code finding facility, where you would tell it you were looking for a particular type of value and then you'd play the game, push the reset button and tell the Action Replay if the value you were looking for was greater or smaller than the time before and eventually it would home in on the correct value.

GameGenie was probably the better of the two products I think, purely because it could be used to make changes to ROM code while Action Replay was limited to fixing RAM values. So while Action Replay could give you infinite lives, GG could do more varied stuff like edit sprites, change background colours or alter gameplay (as long as you have enough code slots!)

@LavaTwilight I was always a bit disappointed in what these cheat carts could do too. The advert reproduced in the article promises being able to jump higher, punch harder and run faster. 99% of the time most games just had a code for infinite lives and that would be it.

Man, 5th November ‘99, I’d have been in my final year at university and working hard on my final year project. There was always time for a bit of Sega Rally 2 and Soul Calibur though. 😉

I love the Dreamcast, I've got a few of the Japanese special editions and my prize possession is the Maziora Dreamcast which has an amazing pearlescent paint finish that shifts between green, blue and purple.

My everyday Dreamcast is a regular PAL machine in a clear case with a replaced PSU and an optical drive emulator. I still need to replace the fan so it can run totally silent. I still enjoy Sega Rally 2, Daytona USA, 18 Wheeler, Soul Calibur, Jet Set Radio, Mr. Driller, Crazy Taxi, Code Veronica, Ikaruga and of course Shenmue 1&2.

I'm still hoping someone does a demake of Shenmue III for the DC. I really feel the DC deserves that closure.

Sadly I don't have a CRT so it's been a while since I've played House of the Dead 2 and Confidential Mission.

@DrDaisy Honestly I should have just booted my N64 up and checked. It’s literally on the desk next to me. 😅

I did genuinely know about this (IIRC it's the Honey control scheme, I think all the control schemes were named after Bond girls), but I've never really bothered to try it as I was always very happy with the default control scheme and I thought it would make changing weapons and going into the menu more difficult as the buttons are harder to reach.

It might be an odd way of playing by today's standards but the game was basically built around playing with a single controller so it's not like it's impossible to beat without using a second controller.

That said, I've always thought it was a missed opportunity for things like the recent RetroFighters controller to not come with a second analogue stick and two connectors so you can play twin-stick GoldenEye from a single controller.

I’ve honestly never had a problem with the DC controller. I’ve never had cramp from the handles and I think the analogue is wonderfully sensitive without the huge dead zones that seem to prevail on modern controllers. The analogue triggers are probably still the definitive implementation too, with just the Xbox 360 coming close to matching them. I guess I just like odd controllers, I love the N64 pad too.

Just gave this a go and it's really good! I'm certain the precision needed for Ryu's shoryuken has been lessened as I've never been able to consistently pull that off in the past even on a JAMMA cab, but here I'm pulling it off all the time.

My only gripe would be it's still got the "go away and play it again on a harder difficulty" ending system. I was hoping to see the tidied up endings without needing to beat it on hard with all the characters.

I’ve got the USB-GDROM ODE, and it’s definitely worth getting an ODE for your Dreamcast. I really want to get a replacement PSU next as when you remove the GDROM drive for an ODE the PSU gets extremely hot.

Time Crisis 1 and Daytona USA cabs plz!

@Damo Thanks Damo, I think I’m going to have to get one. 😉

Anyone have any feedback on how well the save states work for regular Megadrive games? I’ve got an old EverDrive and the save states are basically useless (I like to be able to save my progress and turn the machine off, rather than use them to brute force my way through a game). On the EverDrive they 99% of the time lock up or garble the screen when restoring a save. If this can do better I’ll definitely look at saving up for one.

@NevG I might be mis-reading it, but it says it needs 32X hardware to play 32X games so it sounds to me like the FPGA isn’t simulating the 32X hardware, it’s just compatible as a Flash cartridge for it.

You’re right about it saying it supports all Megadrive mappers, so that does sound like it could include the SVP!

That’s pretty damn cool. Now if they could add 32X and SVP support to the FPGA it would be an essential purchase. I wonder if it could be used with the Nomad or does the Mega-CD need that side port on the MegaDrive to communicate?

When they say HLE do they mean high level emulation? As that's a term usually associated with the technique of fast but inaccurate emulation, which seems a bit of a poor choice for something that's supposed to be a premium system.

I've had mine for a couple of months now, it's well worth the money if you're into your MegaDrive games.

Be a little bit careful if you find one for a good price on eBay, apparently the first batch of controllers had the d-pad rotated clockwise a little bit too much, causing the occasional diagonal press instead of directly up, all the newer ones are fine though.

@Damo I wanted to avoid quoting too much , would you say the DC looks better using SCART through an OSSC over VGA? I've got an OSSC and have my DC connected through its VGA port, but if SCART looks better I'll definitely look at switching.

"It's not quite as sharp as the pure VGA signal, nor does it seriously challenge the RGB SCART signal"

@Damo Is the SCART output of the Dreamcast better than VGA? I've always thought VGA gave the best picture.

@TheIronChimp Yeah I noticed that too! It looks like their footage is using a widescreen hack as well.

If we ever invent time travel the first thing I’ll do is go back to ~1993 and tell Sega to dump the 32X and Saturn and to convert their Model 2 arcade board into a home system. If Sega had launched that with arcade perfect ports of Daytona and Virtua Fighter I would imagine the PlayStation 1 would have been Sony’s only foray into gaming and we’d all be playing on the Dreamcast 4 at the moment.

@Ras I just did some googling and you’re right it did get a US-only release on 3DS too. It’s a pity we didn’t get a UK release as I would have bought it!

@Jimsbo The NES version of Donkey Kong released on the Wii VC was actually hacked to include the missing level. I believe it’s not been re-released anywhere else since, although it might be possible to get it on the Wii U via the Wii mode.

I was pretty disappointed by Twin Snakes. It was a competent clone of the original but it was lacking something. I still prefer to play the PS1 version even today.

My biggest bugbear is the hand-to-hand combat. In the cut scenes Snake is a highly skilled ninja with dozens of exciting moves. As soon as gameplay resumes all he can do is the same mundane punch, punch, kick over and over. They should have made it more like the Arkham games and strung together random moves when you hit the attack button. It doesn't need a full beat em up engine, it just needed more dynamism.

The other disappointment was how similar it was to the original. After the brilliant Resident Evil Remake on GC which added lots of new areas to explore it was displeasing to see Twin Snakes had no new sections and didn't deviate once to give players something new.