Comments 414

Re: Best Nintendo Systems - Every Nintendo Console, Ranked By You

Razieluigi

There's always something to quibble about in lists like this, but I can't wrap my head around the N64 being ranked so highly.

The N64 has a tiny handful of classics, for sure. But it overall aged like milk with very few games worth revisiting today while consoles like the NES, GBA, DS, and 3DS still have large and compelling libraries decades later.

Re: NBC Reports On Shocking 'X-Rated' SNES Classic Mini Clone Available On Amazon

Razieluigi

Amazon should be stopping a lot of nonsense happening through their marketplace. This isn't the only example of people getting shafted because they think they're buying a product from well-known retailer, but they're actually buying some worthless knock-off from a shady third party.

Walmart, too. I once took a chance on buying a cheap laptop through their website. I ended up getting a FedEx box with a completely different and very used model of laptop and a charging cable just rattling around loose inside the box.

It's ridiculous that these massive companies allow this to happen under their name, and that we put the onus on consumers to avoid it.

Re: Poll: What's The Best Nintendo System Of All Time?

Razieluigi

No great way to answer this. I feel like I have to go with the NES, just for how successfully it resurrected the video game industry and redefined console gaming. It is the foundation for everything we play today.

But it seems crazy not to acknowledge that the Switch plays a pretty hefty number of games from those earlier eras along with newer experiences. It's almost empirically the best Nintendo console. It's certainly the one I'd choose if I could only have one.

Re: Iconic 'All Your Base' Meme Gets Added To The Arcade Version Of Zero Wing

Razieluigi

Kind of cool? But it's really different from the console version, so I'm not sure who they're trying to please. Purists and the preservation-minded won't be thrilled with any changes to the original arcade ROM. And those who want to see the Mega Drive intro recreated on arcade hardware are going to be disappointed with all the changes they made.

Re: Poll: Should Japanese-Made Role-Playing Games Still Be Called JRPGs?

Razieluigi

As someone who generally prefers JRPGs to western ones (WRPGs?), I've certainly never thought of it as derogatory. But like most genre designations, it is necessarily reductive and can be misleading if that's the only thing you know about a game.

Especially as RPG elements have seeped into nearly every genre from action games to sports titles, the lines are incredibly blurry.

It would be hard to dispense with genres altogether. People like a bit of structure to help make sense of so many choices. But I think that most players understand that genre is a broad top-level categorization and that they'll have to read some reviews to get a deeper understanding of what the game is really about.

Re: Polymega's Next Trick? Ditching Dedicated Hardware

Razieluigi

@Coalescence Agreed. The main thing that differentiates products like Analogue or the RetroUSB NES is the FPGA hardware emulation. Even if you choose to run extra cores and play without physical media, you're still benefitting from hardware emulation.

And I'm not a purist. There's nothing wrong with software emulation for most people. But if you're going that route, you already have so many other options without buying into the Polymega ecosystem.

Re: Polymega's Next Trick? Ditching Dedicated Hardware

Razieluigi

Genuinely having trouble understanding the point of this. Just seems like software emulation, but with an extra piece of hardware thrown into the mix. Charging a subscription fee for something that I can already do for free seems like a dubious business model.

I guess the cloud aspect is novel, but call me crazy for being skeptical of their supposed lag-killing technology.

Re: Review: Retro-Bit LegacyGC - Perfect For Game Boy-Loving GameCube Fans

Razieluigi

@chefgon It's not just that it was too small (which it was). It's that, unlike the GBA, your thumb doesn't fall naturally on it when holding the device. Speaking personally, I like to have the d-pad in the "high" position in games that use them for primary movement.

While its use was limited, I have (and love) my old Hori controllers for d-pad heavy games like Soul Calibur 2 or Alien Hominid.

Re: Do Kyoto's Turtle Stepping Stones Have A Connection To Mario?

Razieluigi

Fun read!

It's hard to remember after three decades of Super Mario Bros iconography, but when turtles first appeared in Mario Bros, jumping on them wasn't an option. They could only be bumped from below.

When a revision of Mario Bros was included with all the Super Mario Advance games, turtles were replaced with Spinys to prevent confusion.

Re: Random: Hyperkin Wants To Make The Sega Dreamcast 2

Razieluigi

It's not clear what "Dreamcast 2" would even mean today. Just another console?

The Dreamcast is mostly defined by being graphically ahead of its time and having an arcade-centric library. Those are the reasons I still love mine today, but they also can't really be replicated in 2023.

Re: PlayStation Support Could Be Coming To Analogue Pocket

Razieluigi

@Hordak I struggled with this for a while, too. NeoGeo ROMs are just more complicated than the single-file ROMs that older consoles use.

1. Make it easier on yourself and use the Pocket Sync application to install it. This helps make sure you have all the relevant files in the right places.

2. Make sure you're using the "Darksoft" romset or it probably won't work. They need to be unzipped into the main "assets/ng/common" directory with each game getting its own folder. Just preserve the names as they were in the romset with no changes.

3. You choose games from the included list of JSON files, not from the ROMs themselves.

Once it works, it works great. But I definitely found it more confusing than other cores.

Re: Poll: Do You Use A Flashcart?

Razieluigi

I'm somewhere between the first two response. I'll still buy an original copy now and then if it's a game I love and the price isn't crazy. There's still something that feels special about playing off a real cartridge, even if it's a purely psychological trick.

But flash carts have opened up so many other possibilities in recent years. Sure, things like translations and mods. But also just easy access to games that are either too expensive or otherwise not worth buying (maybe I just want to see how bad Super Pitfall is for myself?).

All that said, I think the proliferation of MiSTer and high-quality FPGA consoles and cores will make them less important. It's getting easier to just fire up the Analogue Pocket, plop in in the Dock, and play whatever the hell I want.

Re: Analogue Pocket WonderSwan Support Is Here

Razieluigi

@SonOfDracula I believe there's skepticism that the Pocket FPGA could handle PS1 or newer, so probably not.

But I'm not an expert on any of this stuff. People much smarter than me are busy porting cores to the device and have a better understanding of what it might be capable of.

Re: Analogue Pocket WonderSwan Support Is Here

Razieluigi

@SonOfDracula Emulation is pretty extensive already via FPGA cores. Most classic consoles up through the NeoGeo are working really well, and there's a reasonable selection of arcade games that I hope keeps expanding.

It's the least user-friendly of Analogue's consoles so far, and I think they overcomplicated things with their half-baked "Analogue OS", but now that it's been opened up to external developers, it's a really nice device.

Re: Analogue Pocket WonderSwan Support Is Here

Razieluigi

@SonOfDracula They're still available. New Pocket orders are supposed to ship "sometime this year", but Analogue isn't great about keeping to any schedules (or informing their customers about it) so take their estimates with a grain of salt.

I wouldn't call their consoles "super-limited" but they do eventually stop manufacturing them. The Mega SG and Super NT are still available, although this is the final run of Super NTs.

Re: Poll: So, What's Your Favourite Controller Of All Time?

Razieluigi

Had to go with SNES. While controllers have made obvious advancements since then and the SNES pad would be useless for most modern games, it's also the last time a first-party controller had a legitimately great d-pad, and that breaks my heart. It's such an afterthought on modern controllers, even when Nintendo makes them.

The N64 votes are baffling. That controller was the weirdest combination of forward-thinking and hopelessly backwards. They correctly recognized the need for an analog stick and a d-pad, but just couldn't imagine why the player could ever want to reach both at the same time. What a mess.

Re: Analogue Pocket Is Getting WonderSwan Support Soon

Razieluigi

@KingMike Yeah, I just don't think it matters for most games.

In vertical mode, the Analogue's d-pad and face buttons correspond 1:1 with the WSC, and the A & B buttons are inaccessible and not really used. In some odd case where they were, they could easily be mapped to L/R.

And in horizontal mode, same thing. The "extra" d-pad is either not used at all, or is used for ancillary functions that can likewise be mapped elsewhere.

Regardless, the core is coming, so I'm sure these things have been considered. His other cores on the Pocket are excellent.

Re: Best Dreamcast Games

Razieluigi

I refurbed and modded a Dreamcast with a MODE last year, and it's a crown jewel in my collection.

The Dreamcast is fascinating because while it was very forward thinking with things like a built-in modem, it was also the last console that primarily looked back to the arcades for inspiration. Once the PS2 came out, "bringing the arcade home" was no longer a guiding principle for home consoles.

And that really makes the Dreamcast special. It's the most advanced console that really embodies that old-school spirit, and that makes it an absolute pleasure to experience even today.

This is a great list. If I could add one more game, it would be Cannon Spike — an absolutely daffy arcade shmup just bursting at the seams with Capcom fanservice.

Re: Poll: What Was Your Favourite Game Of Christmas 2012?

Razieluigi

Dishonored would be such an easy pick seeing as it's one of the best games ever made, but I just don't associate it with Christmas at all.

Christmas is cozy, cuddled up under a bit fleece blanket with a portable console.

And for that, Awakening is too good to ignore.

Re: Poll: Which Old-School AV Connection Is Your Favourite?

Razieluigi

Can't say I have strong feelings on the matter, but I probably have the fondest memories of component cables. It was a perfect storm at the time — TV size and quality were improving rapidly, I was just getting out of school and had disposable income, and the HD era was just dawning. After that, things became so standardized with HDMI that retro gaming enthusiasts must be the only people left on the planet who even think about any of this anymore.

Plus I had the foresight to order component cables for my GameCube back in the day. Never would have predicted that 20 years later they'd be one of the most expensive gaming artifacts I own.