Comments 232

Re: The Making Of: FIFA International Soccer, The Game That Launched A Billion Dollar Series

Zenszulu

Was never really a fan of older FIFA games especially the 16 bit ones as I always thought they were way to slow and controlled poorly yet they always seemed to get high review scores in magazines. FIFA 95 was definitely a big deal though for how much it offered and being a Megadrive exclusive. But even at the time I never found them fun to play. Really is interesting that EA had to essentially be talked into making the game by a few employees based in the UK. How times have changed.

Re: Random: This New N64 Graphics Demo Looks Incredible & Runs On Real Hardware

Zenszulu

@smoreon well 16 times as many textures that are on show still isn't going to make a game that has much variety or be very large in size as a result. While I am not doubting all of what you said but any game made using this kind of technique would have to be very small or use the same repeating for most locations. This is also without any interactable objects or enemies or something like that on screen too then even 16 times the amout of texture shown here wont go very far.

Re: Random: This New N64 Graphics Demo Looks Incredible & Runs On Real Hardware

Zenszulu

I seen this the other day after following him for the Portal demake. it's a great tech demo but until someone removes the 64MB sile size limit that even flash cartridges have to stick too then this kind of method wont be practical. It really does show that such a small maximum capacity held back the N64's potential although understandable for the time as producing anything larger would have cost way too much at the time anyway and CDs probably would have loaded too slowly for this to work effectively.

Re: Best Amiga Games Of All Time

Zenszulu

@Andee it's one thing I have noticed when going back and playing games on both the Amiga and C64 recently with the option of using a controller and many of the better regarded platformers were like this. It was a smart design choice for sure.

Re: Best Amiga Games Of All Time

Zenszulu

One thing the Amiga unfortunately suffered from was the fact most joysticks available only used one button despite it being capable of using two button ones. As a result most action games really suffered especially any games that used up to jump as it always felt to me as the jumping was often made too floaty to compensate for the poor joysticks at the time. I even would question if games like Zool, James Pond 2 and Superfrog should be considered among the best since much like any of the one on one fighting games on it they were only considered good due to how average or bad the majority was. I may have also included Syndicate on this list too but that's just because I spent too long playing it over one summer perhaps.

Re: PS1 Puzzler Devil Dice Was Never A 'Net Yaroze' Title, So Why Does The Internet Think It Was?

Zenszulu

I always find that some information from back then in magazines was never fact checked because they had such tight deadlines or sometimes they came across the information right before having to print it and put it in anyway. Something that was also probably also to do with a bad translation and the two seperate things were assumed to be one in the same. Then after years these things get passed down as facts as there are very little sources that remain from the time and others share the false information as a result.

I do kind of miss those days only to learn years later how wrong the magazines of the era got stuff.

Re: Talking Point: Will Hand-Drawn Pixel Art Still Be Viable In Ten Years Time?

Zenszulu

There was a period at least in the west during the 32/64-bit era that many games coming out that used pixel art were shunned by games media as being a step back and it was mainly only fighting games for the most part that were still praised for it. If publishers and developers are still having the same conversation nearly 30 years later then it's a sign it's not going to stop being viable in the next decade because those same people seemed to think the same thing back in the mid 90's.

Re: Random: The GameCube's Lid Holds A Secret, But Did You Know About It?

Zenszulu

I did know that because of CUBE magazine. I used their cheap plastic nameplates for about a week or so and thought it made my Gamecube look a little tacky and the inserts they gave away weren't exactly good and just basic images of Nintendo characters. If they had given away more artistic designs I may have used it more and at the time I didn't really have a high enough quality printer to design my own.

Re: Flashback: How Medal Of Honor Spawned Call Of Duty, The Series That Killed It

Zenszulu

The fact that EA gave up on it in favour of adding a single player campaign to Battlefield games. It did seem at the time EA was doing to choose either one or the other long term and the one that sold better was always going to be the one they would keep. It's easy to say that the last game only sold 3 million and it was too low but when you as a publisher have a game series that is it's direct competition the some of that is on you too. They could have quite easily alternated between the two like Activision did by bringing on extra dev teams to work on different games.

Re: Flashback: The Story Behind Ico's "Terrible" North American Box Art

Zenszulu

Even the original cover isn't exactly something that drags you towards it and make you want to take a look. If I recall it was one of those games that reviewed well but it had zero marketing behind it. That probably had more impact than anything. People at the time were also looking for more fast paced or flashier looking games and Ico did look a little drab in comparison so the images on the back more than likely did convince people any more than the front.

Re: Review: 8BitMods MemCard Pro GC - A Next-Generation GameCube Memory Card

Zenszulu

@KingMike I recall that SD card adapter too they even had a picture of one in a magazine called CUBE here in the UK. I think it came down to the fact they would have made no money from people using SD cards at the time as the adaptors would have been dirt cheap to sell. Also getting a hold of there largest official capacity ones (8MB) was very hard in most places and it didn't help they had compatibility issues with some older games and was probably one of the reasons behind it not being as readily available.

Re: The Making Of: Grand Theft Auto Advance, The GTA III Prequel You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of

Zenszulu

I was definitely aware of this but for the most part because I owned all three consoles available at the time I barely had any time to play GBA games. I did find it odd that the GBA got versions of games that the GameCube didn't though until years later that I released how poorly it was selling and some publishers didn't want to split their games over multiple discs either. I will say developers were trying some pretty crazy stuff on the GBA too just to make the games stand out and was probably the last system they could really do that on.

Re: Croc HD Is In Development, Says Argonaut Founder Jez San

Zenszulu

I am starting to think both the article saying people should be remembering Croc as much as Banjo Kazooie and the making of Croc were all just conveniently done to making this announcement. I am starting to think the person who compared the sales of the two games did so to try and make the game sound like a big deal.

Re: Talking Point: Does Video Game History Have A "Nintendo" Problem?

Zenszulu

Croc was heavily promoted at the time as the Playstation's answer to Mario 64 and was probably sold to many parents as that. There is also the case that just because a game sold that many copies doesn't mean those who played it had fond memories as people from the Playstation onwards would often start to amass large collections of games especially when they came out on budget reprints and as a result probably spent very little time with the vast majority of what they owned often going back to their favourites. Simple sales figures don't really equate to fond memories.

While I don't think gaming history has a Nintendo problem I do for the most part it is often told from a U.S. point of view way more. Things like the video game crash that happened in the 80's is made out that it effected the whole world when in Europe and Japan it had very little impact as Atari wasn't really the biggest in those regions.

Re: Poll: What's The Best Wonder Boy Game?

Zenszulu

I always wanted a Wonder Boy game on either the Saturn or Dreamcast and thought Sega had a ready made Zelda style game there that could have also been more Metroidvania.

I find it difficult choosing between the Dragon's Trap and Monster World though for my favourites.

Re: The Making Of: Nintendo Magazine System's Street Fighter II VHS - The First 'Let's Play' Video Ever?

Zenszulu

I still have some books that were given away back then that were actual players guys, not just little pull out things but full on books. even during the late 90s I think it was 64 magazine would still do book guides and they were much easier to store on a shelf. I can't imagine the production costs of some of these free things given away. Although I also have fond memories of the C64 magazines of the time having one or two tapes on the cover containing both demos and full games. I think it was expected from certain magazines to have something free given away for a long time.

Re: "Go For It!" Is An Upcoming Fighting Game For Your Sega Mega Drive/Genesis

Zenszulu

@RetroGames One of the main reasons so many games are being made for the Megadrive/Genesis is because one person went and made a good development kit that opened the floodgates when people started realising they could now make games for the system far easier. Unfortunately until someone actually does the same with the SNES it may not happen any time soon as most people doing stuff on Nintendo systems tend to make full game hacks of the most popular games. The only exception seems to be for the most part for the NES where there are a bucket load of homebrews.

Re: Atari Buys Rights To Over 100 Retro Games Including Bubsy

Zenszulu

It's quite amusing how they have to buy back their own Infogrames games that they once had to sell. Although with Night Dive studios they may look to branch out and remaster some of those older games. Saying that it almost seems inevitable that this version of Atari will file for bankruptcy at some point with in the decade like all previous entities having the Atari name.

Re: The Making Of: Soleil / Crusader Of Centy, Sega's Answer To Zelda

Zenszulu

The game looks nice for sure but even in the article they admitted they were really focused on making a game as good as A Link to the Past. Also I feel because the main character is much smoother in animation and can attack in more directions actually makes it at times harder to control and attack as accurately. They may have not wanted it compared to Zelda games but when their focus was so much on matching it and even basing the look in a similar way then you should really expect that comparison.

Re: The PlayStation Performance Analyser, Ken Kutaragi's Secret Weapon In The 32-bit War

Zenszulu

It's certainly something was way ahead of it's time especially when you consider how developers had to adjust to making games in 3D at that period. All you have to do is look at the difference between some of the early stuff from that generation and the stuff being released in the late 90s and it seems like a generation ahead. These days these kinds of tools are expected although they seem to be ignored when it comes to optimisation.

Re: Best FPS Games - Classic First-Person Shooters That Shaped The Genre

Zenszulu

For the N64 having such a small library overall it really did have a huge impact on so many genres. Both Turok and Turok 2 kind of blew me away at the time having such large levels and sometimes really having to search for keys to progress. In many way I enjoyed their single player campaigns over both Goldeneye and Perfect Dark not that I disliked them or anything.

Re: The Making Of: Metropolis Street Racer, The Origin Of The Project Gotham Series

Zenszulu

This was one of the few games I thought really showed what the Dreamcast was capable of because it wasn't just a ports of a PSone or N64 game with better textures which is what made the Dreamcast look less powerful next to the PS2, it was but I definitely think it was released at the wrong time as most developers couldn't take advantage of the hardware as they would use the PSone as base hardware for most games.

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

Zenszulu

I owned all Sega consoles released here in the UK with the exception of the Saturn because for the most part when it was out no where in my local area stocked it and the ones that did stopped by the time the N64 hit shelves in early 1997. So it's the only one I have no nostalgia for or experience with outside of emulation.

The Dreamcast probably came and went to quickly and suffered from ports of PS1 games that really held back the system before the PS2 killed it off.

That being said overall the Megadrive was by far the best for me as it had some fantastic exclusive games and I spent countless hours replaying certain ones and even today I enjoy discovering ones I overlooked back then.

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

Zenszulu

I tend to call most Japanese rpgs that stick to older gameplay styles a Jrpg usually those that are turn based or something like most of the Tales, Star ocean and Xeboblade games which lend heavily into traditional design of a Jrpg but with action combat. Something like Final Fantasy 15 felt more like an open world game with rpg elements in. I have never personally seen anyone use the term in a bad way just to separate the style of rpg the game is since they can be vastly different from a traditional western rpg or a strategy one.

Re: Poll: Is Metroid Prime The Best 2D To 3D Transition Of Any Game Series, Ever?

Zenszulu

I think Ocarina of Time is a slightly better transition than both Mario 64 and Metroid Prime. I don't think a game being a top down game should remove it from the discussion as games transitioning in the mid to late 90s from sprite based games to ones using polygons struggled and many took a few attempts to get it right. It was often the games of that period that had high expectations from third parties that didn't have the right direction.