Sketcz

@Diogmites
Thank you for sharing - heal well Diogmites.

@Diogmites
You delete a lot of comments? I am intrigued by this statement! I'll edit mine to correct errors, but rarely will I feel it needs a full delete (has happened sometimes). Would it be invasive to ask about the motivation behind this? I'm just very curious now.

@Diogmites
I read your comment, then it vanished? Deleted?

It was a good comment, noting that Abba's story would indeed be fascinating, and based on what others have said about him, he was a decent person.

@-wc-
High five fellow DCer!

Sorry, no, I meant hypothetically. Like if Sega had dumped its Shenmue budget to buy MGS2.

I have never heard or read of talks between Sega and Konami in this regard.

To be clear: I was fantasising, though perhaps chose poor wording to convey this.

I apologise - this is not even a rumour, it was a personal fantasy!

@-wc-
Glad to see so many MGS2 mentions.
I bought a Dreamcast, early adopter. Loved it. Of all the videogame playing boys at my school in my year, around 20 maybe, only myself and two others got a DC (10%?). All the others were waiting for the PS2, and every one of them cited MGS2 as the reason.

I didn't care for DVDs. I preferred VHS back then.

I am convinced that if Sega paid enough to make MGS2 exclusive, they would have won the console war.

MGS2 was like the coming of the Messiah circa 2000. (In Suffolk)

@amongtheworms I see! Thank you.

I had been thinking the environment must have been doing some lifting (ie: handling control input?)

So it looks like there's textures... Are these actual textures? Or does the code simple allocate colours on a 4x4 pixel grid and plaster that over a flat surface?

My programming is severely limited, so I'm trying to imagine the sort of clever workarounds maybe they used.

An injustice has been corrected. Nicely done.

Though it should never have happened in the first place.

How was it Bennun lost out despite being there on the night? Who at T2 orchestrated such shenanigans? Madness.

That was extremely good fun! How did this fit into 13kb? What's the science behind it?

Yoshi and Shadow the Hedgehog need to team up for a cross-over game.

Yoshi's dialogue needs to go full gangsta, but in that adorable squeaky voice of his.

Admit it, you want to see this.

@Poodlestargenerica
Same.

For all of the industry's gnashing of teeth over emulation, we're extremely fortunate something like MAME is even possible with videogames. These older electro-mechanical games have no such chance of being replicated and preserved.

I remember reading an article that some racing game on Dreamcast (a 4x4 game?) would have online cross-play with the PC version.

I remember thinking this sounded amazing on a conceptual level.

A quarter of a century later and I still don't see much in the way of cross-play, despite all consoles now being online. Though I've not really followed it too closely.

@KitsuneNight I totally agree - I just suspect the decision is down to the money men, who ask: "Will this bring third quarterly ROI and growth of 24% to placate our shareholders?"

Or something.

That's what they WANT you to think!

I already have two Saturns with an ODE, and a Dreamcast with an ODE, but I would totally buy a mini of these systems for HDMI output. (Yeah, I also have a DC VGA to HDMI upscaler, but a DC mini sounds like fun.)

@KitsuneNight
Probably purely cost related. The MD et all are just cheap emulators on weak hardware. Despite M2 making the MD mini, it felt VERY slapdash! The scanlines option did not align properly with my 720 resolution, causing banding. It didn't even feel as well made as Nintendo's SNES Mini. So I get the feeling Sega doesn't want to invest much if any money into these things. I was told by one of those on the MD Mini project the problems with the scanline filter were due to budget and time constraints.

A Saturn or DC could totally be done, but it would need a bit of investment.

@Mario500 My initial pitch was the main feature linked at the start of this piece, describing the three day conference and listing a few interesting talks which didn't warrant a standalone article. (The Little Wars book talk for example; great to learn about as the precursor to D&D and RPGs in general, but difficult to then write about.)

After this initial piece I envisioned several "satellite" articles based on specific talks (or groups of talks) which warranted a deeper look. As in: this mini piece now orbits the main starter feature like a satellite.

Really I just wanted to draw attention to what Jaro had made me aware of regarding CTW.

Electronic Games is fantastic. I own several.

I also own several VG&CE and... It's weirdly very racist. Maybe not "racist", but nearly every issue I own has an overt anti-JP sentiment.

"Do we want these Japanese games in America? Do you want us even to cover these Japanese games rather than good ol' homegrown American games?"

I'm not kidding. It's tonally bizarre. These issues are pre-SNES. Later it mellowed a bit.

An American friend told me this was common circa the late 80s, because of a fear of Japanese industry taking over.

My fave obscure mag is GAME ZONE, by the Your Sinclair staffers.

@Chocoburger Ghost dad racer and sick mother AC are sweet

Lonely Sonic kid is Black Mirror dark

@KitsuneNight Retro Revival is next week. I've asked Paul Drury, who is giving a talk, to ask around. Lots of old devs will be there. Fingers crossed!

@KitsuneNight I'm secretly hoping there's a veteran developer out there, like Jeff Minter for example, who happened to just put one after the other in a shed or the loft, and kinda forgot about them, but didn't need to move house, so they're just sitting there.

And then someone will tell someone, and they'll tell this person, and they'll be like: so someone wants all these old things? Sure! Come round and collect all 800 of them.

That's the fantasy at least.

Positive thoughts.

@gingerbeardman Thank you kind sir, for diligent service to the cause! I had been wondering who had been involved!

I've looked on those scans so often.

My point still kinda stands though. One of the people involved in helping preseve / disseminate this Japanese mag was an Englishman. Someone whose native language is different, and yet you still took an interest.

I hope we find CTW. Trade papers are fascinating. The tone is less about how cool stuff is, and usually more: this will make you money.

The tonal difference is useful.

Thank you Matt.

@RetroBillyT

https://www.timeextension.com/features/the-race-is-on-to-save-a-valuable-resource-of-video-game-history

Towards the end.

Sherriff had made line graph with a steady incline, showing the total number of Smashes over 8 years. Averaged out it shows they actually didn't change the number awarded each month, generally. Fluctuations were small.

A second graph showed the number of games inthe charts which were CS awards. It starts off really high - I don't have it to hand, but more than half. And there's a steady decline over time.

Which can be interpreted in several ways as shown.

It was quite a technical talk, but if you were a Speccy owner it would probably be interesting.

A fair section was on how Smiths attained an 18% market share as distributor, and influenced what would be sold.

Pity it wasn't filmed. He teaches in London. You could tweet him for more, or I could send his PowerPoint, if you have a PPX reader.

@RetroBillyT Technically that list is just interesting stuff I saw, but wasn't sure about expanding on. So provided a quick taste.

There's a few panels, not listed, which I plan to cover more in depth.

My thinking was: short list of cool stuff, with a brief descriptor, then some short articles exploring specific others. Satellite pieces basically.

For example, Sebag's magic systems talk I didn't attend (3 ran at once and you had to pick 1). He described it afterwards though, and shared his slides, so I had to at least name-check it in the brief list.

But, one of the satellites is about Computer Trade Weekly, so I'll try to incorporate some of Sherriff's chart analysis talk into that, since the two had some connection.

I love Superman 64.

It's the best kind of awful. Caen's interview by Protonjon is deranged.

The pre-release beta is actually better than the retail game, because it was before WB meddling.

The game has easily accessed cheats, allowing you to skip to any level quickly. Bought a loose cartridge for £5 and spent several days dissecting it.

Ironically, the ring levels were the most "fun". Like a weird version of Pilotwings.

The interior stuff though? Wow. Not much to add to what's been said.

All the obvious bad design choices. The dumb Lex quiz. The broken camera. The collision detection, on real hardware, which will send you falling through the floor. The unrelenting vertical cliff of difficulty.

The best bit: you finish the game and it won't show you the proper ending unless you finish it on the highest difficult. Nice. Feels like the devs were just straight up trolling players by that point.

Like, I feel if they maybe just gave you infinite lives and halved the damage enemies did, and removed time limits, it would be crap but not so insidiously difficult. Like you could play through it to the end comfortably.

The astronomical difficulty makes it very hate-able.

@Zenszulu Indeed! Emulation also helps, as do flash carts. Before, they had to burn EEPROM chips to test. Or possibly use an in-circuit emulator, but that tied you to the computer.

I will only ever see David Hayter as Snake.

On my lottery to do list:
Hire Dave to record all the lines spoken by Sutherland and release this audio as a free fan-patch.

@Zenszulu In the earlier article Komabayashi talks about multi-layering the sprites to work around the 3 colours + 1 transparency, inherent in all FC/NES sprites. It's an expensive technique because the more sprites you use this on, the less you have for individual bullets and enemies. I think the NES allows 64 sprites? Plus of course too many on any given horizontal row causes flickering (more than 8); he covered that too.

It reminds me of the ZX Spectrum, and some developers describing how, with very careful effort, they could create graphics without any colour clash, but you had really control how elements interacted.

Also sorcery. Actual sorcery was employed in making this.

@LowDefAl @_NetNomad

Both astute points. Actually, this is all part of research I dug up for something which is going to be published in a few days - this being a side diversion.

There's an interview between Miyamoto and Endou, where Miyamoto describes having the Druaga cabinet in his office at Nintendo. So there is absolutely a direct line of influence.

Miyamoto doesn't mention Hydlide, that I've seen. But Tokihiro Naito, creator of Hydlide, admits to taking direct inspiration from Druaga.

However! We also know that Japanese companies scouted out the UK for computer games. Hudson sent Takashi Takebe to London to research the ZX Spectrum. This ultimately led to Eric and the Floaters, and other Hudson games. So JP companies were aware of the UK's output. It's a gloriously complex tapestry!

Sneak preview, you can see Sabre Wulf in the top row of games, chronologically:
https://x.com/kierannolan/status/1793953899386130460

@Kushan No, there's no link - this was in a group email Devin sent to us. Thinking about, he should really put it online (in TCRF page for example), rather than leave it confined to email.

What an era to have lived through.

In my youth I dreamed of being a game developer - and it was specifically this era I imagined working in.

In hindsight I'm glad I never went down that path, because today's world of gaming is so far removed from this 1997 footage.

I'd probably have ended up doing textures on rocks, a faceless drone in a team of 200 people, working on some lame online-only DLC season pass garbage.

Still. At least I got to live that era and will always have the memories.

@Poodlestargenerica True, but when I've encouraged this I'm told Saturn emulation is more trouble than it's worth. I've even gone as far as making bespoke zipped emulator packages for friends - to show them it's not.

Stunning.

I wish every human being on Earth had easy access to the original Panzer Dragoon Saga. Not a remake; a remaster only if it the changes are miniscule.

Because the original is an absolute masterpiece.

The low polygons and texture resolutions of the Saturn enhance's the feeling of a decayed world filled with mutated creatures.

This Saturn art enhances that even further.

(Though Azel's face is a little wonky in that top image...)

@Poodlestargenerica Same. I always disliked how similar the pink and orange are, aesthetically.

Also, no mention of Skyblazer? Published by Sony. With those symbols in its password screen.

It was devved by Ukiytoei (spelling is wrong). Always wanted to know.

Reminded me of the ghost dad racer story, and the one where someone got letters from their late mother in Animal Crossing (right in the feels). Also that depressing Sonic short film about the lonely kid.

Interesting that we've reached an era where film makers who grew up with games are increasingly incorporating them.

@GhaleonUnlimited Good luck! I like CJ, we chatted back in the HG101 days, but he seems like he stretches himself waaay too thin. I use a MCD ODE flashcart on PAL modded MD - email me if you guys want a tester for SR.

I just thought of another Saturn exclusive thanks to @DexTepa

BOMBERMAN!

You think every system has BM?

Not 10 player.

It dissapointed me hugely that online BM ganes on PS3 and X360 did not support 10 player games, despite higher resolution and online capabilities.

I played it once in 10p mode. At the Barbican Gane On exhibit. Technically it was 6 player, byt we set the other 4 as CPU.

No other home system has 10 player Bomberman. Only Saturn. (I think...)

The more I ponder it, the more I feel the Saturn was my fave of the PS1/Sat/N64 war. Purely for these unique oddities.

Plastic and silicone particulates breaking down and saturating the air?

I met the programmer on this in Germany. We exchanged business cards. Semi-regularly I email him asking about an interview. He's undecided out of concern that it's still an active property, even though he's long since moved out of game development.

Sometimes I email him funny frog videos. Sometimes personal artwork based on the game. Next I'll be sending physical letters written in Japanese.

I might harvest public statements from English fans, from various sites running news stories on this. Make like a collage, to show how loved it is.

I will note rest until Frog Bell has a making of!

@KitsuneNight A quest? I must see this now. There are unpleasant depths to this genre which intrigue me. Thanks.

As for Rise... The worst thing is it's without any ambition. Even that Shadow Succession at least looked like they... Wanted to make something. Rise has dull backgrounds, no moves, and boring characters.

I hacked infinite health and rinsed the SNES version. There is so little there.

I've been going through the 3DO's entire library recently (and Jaguar).

Way of the Warrior honestly isn't that bad. It's better than Kasumi Ninja on Jaguar. it's also infinity times better than Shadow: War of Succession on 3DO.

That YT vid saying WotW is the worst fighting game clearly hasn't played many. Kazumi Ninja is... too difficult, but tolerable due to its weirdness (selecting characters after beating them).
Rise of the Robots is terrible. Primal Rage is shallow. War of Succession is hot trash - this is the actual worst fighting game. Fight for Life on Jag is also one of the absolute worst. Way of the Warror, is kinda goofy fun.

If we're looking only at the 3DO library, sure SSFII is better and Sam Sho too, but honestly, in the grand pantheon of one on one fighters - Way of the Warrior offers some enjoyment. I can imagine being a kid back in the day, and being impressed with all that shiny CG and digitised sprites.

Oh man. I just had to reset my password to log in.

Into my account. Shows my PSIO.

Unregistered.

Fine, I'll just register.

Except I need to download a menu system, install it to PSIO, to generate a file, to put back on my computer, to upload, to prove I own it, to then download a firmware update?

Is that right? Hell, may there are more steps - I don't even know and I will never find out!

Cybdyn and his entire crew can go whistle. Screw that nonsense. I am NEVER going to that much effort just to play some games.

Bought one new from Cybdyn, and even posted them my PS1 to solder the board on. It works great, and has worked fine since the last firmware upgrade.

Did I register? I don't even know.

Can I find my log in details? Nope.

Can I be bothered to jump through hoops? Not on your life.

Eh. Everything I want to run works after the last update (was waiting for Ghost in the Shell - it's now supported).

None of these extras look like they're worth my time.

Are there any cool obscure games which have received support with the recent update? Because if not, then maybe I'll just never bother updating again.

I really don't feel like bricking this thing because the manufacturer expected me to keep track of stuff. Not how I roll, mother-funsters!

@norwichred Three? LOL. OK, I retract my previous statement and will read further, it seems I was not fully informed of all events (I guess we both weren't).

As for the film: I genuinely loved it.

I read a lot of retrospectives that said it was just a cheap advert for Mario 3, and I found this weird. The game is shown only briefly at the end.

There's a whole story about brotherly love and what family means.

The videogame parts were well integrated.

I've never really gotten the cynicism towards it.

It was on UK Netflix a few years ago, but then they removed it.

@norwichred I can't comment on the actor playing Wayne. But I followed the Savage claims.

His former female co-star defended him on The Wonder Years:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/entertainment/fred-savages-wonder-years-co-star-defends-actor-against-decades-old-sexual-harassment-claim.amp

As for the newer allegations, Fox conducted a full investigation and officially stated they found zero evidence of wrongdoing:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/fox-stands-fred-savage-investigation-194859754.html

So far we have a credible female character witness as to his earlier career conduct.

And the results from a full investigation into the 2018 allegations.

Unless they're both lying, Savage seems to be the victim of slander.

Today's society is way too gleeful about finding fault and demonising people.

Allegations must be taken seriously and investigated, always. But when no wrongdoing is found we need to acknowledge this. And those making false allegations need to face consequences.

I don't even like Savage. But I take a zero tolerance approach to anyone falsely accusing someone for personal gain. You can't just cry wolf for fun - people's lives are at stake. I don't mean you, I mean in general in society.

We need to focus on facts and follow due process.

@GhaleonUnlimited I thought I better check this, and it turns out the Sega Ages remake of DF1 was being fan-translated:
https://twitter.com/cj_iwakura/status/1444876124941651969?

I missed that. However, it's by CJ, meaning it'll probably never get finished. He has a habit of starting projects and then abandoning them. Happened with Shadowrun on Sega CD, and other games, and then browsing that twitter thread, looks like it happened with SADF too. God damn.

I wouldn't care, except the community tends not to start work on another's project out of... politeness? Only after decades go by do others tend to restart on abandoned work.

I kinda wish CJ would stop announcing stuff. It basically puts a "reserved" marker on that game, meaning when he inevitably abandons it, nobody else is going to work on. So in effect, it kills off any chance of ever seeing an actual translation. CJ saying "I'm working on a fan-translation" is like the kiss of death.

<sigh>

This frustrates me.

@GhaleonUnlimited Well, I love DF so much, finished 3 campaigns, that I forced myself through DF2, in English.

It was tolerable?

The problem with dual classes is it never really makes sense. You typically end up with one doing the grunt of the fighting, and the other running around dying off.

I guess the idea was an enemy would have two classes, and you would match their two. But in practice it doesn't quite work like that. I longed for the purity of DF1.

Keep at it a bit more. You'll appreciate DF1 more afterwards.

I voted for NeoPets. Not because I believe in it, but because I don't advocate vox pop democracy, so like to disrupt it every time I can.

@GhaleonUnlimited What else is like Dragon Force?

Dragon Force 2! Though I don't know why it's so drab. I finished the fan translation. The balancing felt weird. Mixing and matching units also wasn't great.

There's also the "Spectral Force" series by Idea Factory. Not all of them, but one of the PS1 entries, and a DS entry, copy Dragon Force.

Watch some vids. It's a cheap clone or copycat, but because it's by Idea F***, it's basically hot garbage. They're almost all in JP, except for a DS version. But it was one of the worst games I'd played - just bad design.

Playing a Spectral Force game makes you realise they captured lightening in a bottle with Dragon Force.

Edit:
Spectral Force 2, even ripping off the screen layout and UI

https://youtu.be/aX4NRSm-XoA?si=tprt3WLJjc6eKt5L

@Diogmites For ODEs I use Rhea and Fenrir. Both do the job but I prefer Fenrir, even though it doesn't support multidiscs. Rhea does, but...

Rhea only accepts super weird file types, like CloneCD proprietry images, meaning I had to burn isos and bins to CDRW, rip with CCD, erase, and then repeat. Technically Rhea can run bin, but only if there is no redbook audio, so not a lot of games. The guy making it is also... Eccentric. I kinda hate Rhea actually. PITA.

Fenrir gets my vote, based on price and super ease. Zero hassle. Unsure about Mode.

@Diogmites Based on the games you mentioned (I do enjoy Mystic Defender too), I think you'd love Taromaru.

Wait until the stage where you're inside a frog!

It's also a showcase for great 2D graphics on the Saturn, mixed with some discrete and pleasant 3D environments.

Sadly it's insanely expensive (isn't everything these days?), but if you have an ODE or emulation option, go for it.

I'd urge ODE if possible, because those 2D visuals really work nicely on a CRT.

Fun fact: I was in Japan in 2001, in some remote-ish mountain town with my class (school trip; it was the hills outside Beppu City), and I went into a little mom and pop video rental / game store. They had Taromaru for like £10 used. I liked the look of the 2D, but ultimately I passed on it for Sin & Punishment on N64. I'd never seen anyone else talk about it so didn't realise its rarity. To this day that moment haunts me.

@smoreon Really? Interesting. It auto-updated for me, and I was curious to see what would actually happen. I assumed maybe I could just load old installs but not new. But it did this weird thing... Where the Steam browser sort of popped up, and there was the menu, but just black beneath, and then it would crash. Buggy as heck.

I have a Win10 desktop, but it's a toaster. I prefer Win7 for multiple reasons. Including the ability to hack the registry and disable auto arrange in folders. With Win10 Microsoft were hellbent on NOT allowing anyone to disable auto-arrange, ever, so would keep updating the security to disable anyone's attempts at a registry hack that disabled.

I hate auto arrange so much. Despise it.

There's also certain utilities and programs that only work properly with Win7. If anyone has any intention of truly "using" their rig, and not just for Word processing, art packages, and the internet, but all sorts of nifty little programs, then Win7 offers the best options, plus legacy progs that will not work on newer OS.

Heck, I keep an offline XP rig, for the really old stuff which won't work on Win7.

If I can save up I'll probably just be forced to buy another game rig, Win10, but only use it for Steam. Then keep the Win7 rig for proper work, since it's easier to parse folders.

Like seriously. How does any other human being look at an auto-arranged folder and even "see" what's there. I'm going to invent a new term: folder dyslexia. It's where your brain just switches off when you see rows of folders. I need to move them about into distinct clusters based on purpose (todo, WIP, finished, junk, images, pages, etc.) for each new project folder.

I owned all 3 back in the day. Technically I only got the Saturn after it died. Guy sold me his, most of the must haves, £60. I think he wanted to buy an N64?

(We were not rich - my dad bought the yellow papered Diamond Free Ads every week - people selling old tat before eBay existed - I scanned that paper religiously, and picked up used bargains like the Saturn.)

In hindsight, the Saturn is my favourite.

Not for nostalgia.

Not for volume.

But because there's a tiny handful of games, which are so good, and have no real equivalent elsewhere, that the only way to achieve that experience, out of 50 years worth of games history, is to own a Saturn.

For me it's not Sega Rally or Virtua Fighter. Plenty of racers and fighters elsewhere. It's Panzer Dragoon Saga. Dark Saviour. Bulk Slash. Shinrei Jusatsu Taromaru. Burning Rangers. Guardian Heroes (X360 ported). Nights (ported). Dragon Force.

My god, it's 2024 and there are still so few equivalents to Dragon Force. A lame sequel. A JP only PS2 remake. A copycat PS1 series which is JP only and terribly balanced (I forget the name).

A few games were ported. Most are trapped on the system.

Yes, the PS1 has more games. But there's a unique flavour I can't get anywhere other than Saturn.

It's not bias. I ask anyone to direct me to games on other systems that match those I mentioned. (OK, Alissa Dragoon is pretty close for Taromaru, I will give you that... But the rest?)

@GhaleonUnlimited
Good call on those fan translations. For holy grails, mine is Cyber Doll. Insane story, totally original combat system, gorgeous 2D graphics.

As for the PS1 launch, I agree. The games sucked so badly, I went back to my SNES and wondered why people cared. (Rapid Reload was an exception - JP/PAL exclusive, but I never saw it here in UK)

I would say it's an insta-purchase, but Steam no longer works on my gaming rig since Valve abandoned Win7 in January. (All my installed games also stopped functioning.)

Here's hoping it comes to GOG.