@YANDMAN Thanks for letting me know about that. I'll have to check it out. It was clear the Genesis could do a good version of Double Dragon that could stand up to the arcade original, so it was a shame it was deficient. I haven't played the arcade games in a while. I know the first game has slowdown. I remember it more in the second game, and that it was really bad, but it should not have been in either and probably hurt the series in the long run.
@DestructoDisk Yeah, it's a good time in the retro gaming community in a lot of ways. I know I said this to you before, but I was very interested in FPGA when I first heard about it. And that was before there was RunAhead available to reduce lag on the software side, so that was one reason I was interested. It just took so long for a real product(as opposed to fake ones like the Coleco Chameleon....lol) to materialize that I realized I was already happy by the time the MiSTer came out. There were also certain specific factors that made emulation work better for me. But I think it's cool and am glad it exists in a form people can buy, and in this case at prices that aren't inflated due to shortages or whatever. I'm glad to see some of the comments from happy users up above as well.
These are good times as you say. I remember not that many years ago Dreamcast emulation was stagnant. It didn't have the arcade support it has now. I've seen other cores improve in recent years. On the FPGA side, I've been impressed to see that they've managed cores beyond what was expected initially from the chips used, and that's thanks to some smart people. On the software side, RunAhead is such a clever idea and almost seems like magic. And then you have these ways to bring light gun games to modern TVs like that Time Crisis box in a story today. It sounds like it works similarly to the Sinden gun, which a friend of mine picked up. He lent me one of them because he wanted someone to show him how they worked. We have to get back together for that part, but having used it, it's very cool to see how well it works. It may not stack up next to your setup, but it's a good option, especially as most people won't have a CRT. It also kind of feels like magic.
At the end of the day, games are meant to be enjoyed(except in stretched 16x9, screw those guys). Having good options to do that is a great thing so I'm right there with you in your overall sentiment.
@DestructoDisk Because I use software emulation, I consider light guns to be a special case. I have no choice but to do so. All my CRTs are long gone anyway, so even FPGA wouldn't work for me there. I think, simply based on the odds, that most people who might want to get into FPGA won't have CRTs either, though I'm sure the subset of people who do have them are a significant portion of the audience as they would be enthusiast types. And in that case, score one for FPGA. As for the rest, you and Damo have pointed out that there are so many devices, many of them low power, that lag mitigation would not work for many of them. I guess you can say the lack of hardware variation is another plus for FPGA. With that said, it is trivial to acquire the kind of hardware that can do lag mitigation well these days. A lot of people may have old computers that can do it just fine. In that case, they don't have to buy another device(unless they simply want to). My aim here is the same as it was before, to simply dispel some misconceptions. Like I said above, the "best software emulation", which is what was mentioned in another comment, will use mitigation features(otherwise it's not the best) which will provide consistent and reliable performance to achieve next-frame response, which will be exactly the same as an FPGA box on a modern screen. If people know that and they still want to go with FPGA, perhaps because they think it's easier or some other reason, then good for them and I hope they enjoy it because it would then truly be a matter of preference.
@Bonggon5 "Even the best software emulation has lag." Yes. But the best software emulation can subtract the lag through RunAhead or Preemtive Frames. You can even go lower than the original hardware technically speaking. Of course that wouldn't be good unless the game has lag built into it, and equally among all inputs. Even then, it would be like cheating. The point is, and I have said this here many times, myths about lag persist and that thinking is many years out of date. The only way you can get better latency with FPGA is if you have a CRT and the specific game is reading inputs and outputting the results mid frame.
And I tried Punch Out with lag reduction. It's great, though I personally don't enjoy that game anymore. You can totally react to Tyson. I think the game has lag built into it, though. I've seen other people besides Ex who have beaten Tyson using software emulation. It's no big thing.
The trailer doesn't show a ton. My preliminary reaction is that it doesn't look very appealing. The Double Dragon franchise has been very spotty since the beginning. I think one of the problems it has today is a huge inconsistency within it. Most recently we have seen Double Dragon Gaiden which goes for a goofy look to it which is not like other entries. I think that inconsistency hurts the franchise, or at least holds it back now.
I loved the first DD as a kid. The Master System port was one of my favorite games of the day. I still enjoy the first arcade game. DD2 arcade is a bit of a mess, in my opinion. Genesis port is terrible. NES port is pretty good. My favorite version is the PC Engine Super CD version. Double Dragon 3 existed. I never played DD4, but I remember there were complaints. I seem to recall it didn't have V-sync. My favorite Double Dragon is the GBA game. That is such a good beat-em-up and it does a good job retaining the feel of the original while adding a lot to it. I think DD Advance should be the starting point for any modern versions because it's hard to go wrong with that core gameplay. The only downside to the game for me is the low resolution of the GBA.
@-wc- Android does provide some benefits for something like that. I didn't realize Huntdown was on Android. I finally got around to playing it on PC after having purchased it a while back. I was sick for a few weeks over the summer and working on my game backlog was a way to help me feel better. Huntdown was one of the highlights, so I think you're in for a great time. Playing it portably sounds interesting as the screen isn't too small. Have fun!
Pro tip: Playing Cuphead while very ill is not much fun. Like, why did I even hit a button that's not mapped to anything?
@Lanmanna The draw is the idea that it's more accurate and recreates the systems at a hardware level. It's cool and I have no problem with it. Will most people actually see a difference with that kind of accuracy? No. There's a definite placebo effect. There have been studies done where you can change people's perceptions of the same thing depending on the description provided or the presentation. It's a psychological thing. I think that largely applies here. Some people just like knowing their emulation box is more accurate, even if it doesn't amount to anything for them in a practical way.
On the accuracy front, FPGA cores can be inaccurate too. That just comes down to the quality of the emulator or the core. Some emulators are extremely accurate. I just recently encountered my first emulation glitch, a very minor one, in quite a few years. But there's a ton of misinformation out there about lag. People talk about lag like it's counted in seconds. In a good emulation setup, the lag is often one or two frames, usually one for me. That's very playable. But it's also a moot point since good emulators now have the ability to subtract the lag so you can get it to respond next frame. This appears to work on everything up to PS1 right now.
Fun fact, I tested out Simpsons arcade a few months back and it had zero lag without any of the lag reduction I was talking about. I was quite surprised to see that.
@BulkSlash As I recall, the original name was Mr. Pi. I get what they were going for. It's like the MiSTer(Mr.), but also similar to the Raspberry Pi in terms of size and form factor. It was clever, but perhaps too clever. However, I remember that there was supposed to be a name change with a twitter poll determining the winner. The winning name was "Retro FPGA" which was much worse in my opinion. I didn't see any stories about another name change back to a variation of the original. Perhaps that other name was too generic to be a usable product name they could trademark. I don't really know what's going on in that regard.
@JohnGuyJohn It would also be a throwback to the sports team in King of Fighters '94 and '98. The basketball guy used the ball as part of his fighting style, so it wouldn't even be unprecedented.
I wonder how many of these they can produce. It's probably not going to amount to much. I do wonder where they're getting the systems or parts at low enough cost to make this viable. They could be new-old stock, damaged stock, surplus boards, along with broken systems, perhaps otherwise meant for electronics recycling. I don't love the idea of good whole systems getting sacrificed for stuff like this, but that may not even be the case. This might actually be salvaging systems and keeping more out there, even if not in original form. Of course, there are far better ways to play Saturn than this. I know Saturn has a reputation for being hard to emulate, but that reputation is from almost a decade ago and is outdated. Saturn emulation took a big step forward around 2018 and a lot of modern hardware can run it easily now. It has only gotten easier since then as I assume further optimization has been made. Then there's the FPGA side which is also a good way to do it if the cores are in good shape.
Incidentally, I have two Saturns, my original from 1995 and a model 2 I got in 2015 because my original one stopped reading discs(could be a few things). That second one developed issues with the power supply a few years later. My original Saturn also needed two trips to the warranty department back in the day. I love the Saturn and I may just be an outlier as I haven't heard a lot of stories like that, but it was easily the most troublesome system for me.
As someone said, it's remarkable how far removed EA is now from how it was started. But that's how corporations are. People change, and different people are making decisions there. The modern EA has a long history of not being a great place to work and for making questionable decisions. In some ways, Steam got to be so successful because of the crazy DRM methods the big publishers were pursuing. EA doesn't have a lot that particularly interests me these days, but I made a conscious choice to not buy anything of theirs again. It did come into play once. I intended to get Mass Effect 3 when it came out, but by that point I was exasperated with EA. Part of that was withholding the game from Steam to push their own distribution. I seem to recall their own platform was a bit of a mess at the time too. Who could have imagined that?(me....many others) I'll just have to live with the Mass Effect sage uncompleted for me. Such a shame because I heard the saga's ending was very satisfying(sarcasm).
It is funny to hear they had that reaction. Perhaps some looked down on the Marvel characters for being from western comics. Perhaps it was just that they were not prominent in Japan compared to Street Fighter at that point and could make SF less popular. It worked out though and they did a nice job making it cohesive. The Marvel characters are the best sprites Capcom ever worked on in my opinion.
If anything tarnished Street Fighter from my perspective, it was the minor updates to SF2 as opposed to making a proper SF3 at the time. When they came out with Alpha instead of 3, it felt like a practical joke.
It's so strange that Gimmick got such a limited western release at all, in the Scandinavian region. I assume it was originally supposed to get at least a wider European release, especially since localizing required some arrangement to the music and those countries used PAL.
I almost posted a comment on the FPGA toxicity about how the retro-development scene is largely the same at its core, whether it's FPGA or software emulation. Sadly, toxicity is a part of this scene. I've never used Duckstation, though I have heard good things. Duckstation was the center of prior drama a little while back. The reason he's saying he knows how licenses work is because statements he made the last time indicated he didn't understand how they work and people have pointed that out. As I recall, he was claiming that Duckstation was only partly GPL which makes no sense as far as I can tell. I also don't think changing the license or going closed source applies retroactively. It has already been forked. Even if it is the best PS1 emulator, there are other PS1 emulators that work great. I'd rather not see development shut down this way, but PS1 emulation will be fine either way. Also, people can't "take issue" with license violations they don't know about. I don't know if the rest of his grievances are sound, but his prior statements seemed questionable and there's no detail here to go on. Regardless, it's his right to change the license, but, once again, the forks exist.
I don't want to make it sound like I am certain this developer is the problem. I know this is not their job and they don't owe anyone anything in this regard. There's plenty of toxicity in the development community directed at developers. I remember Dreamcast emulation being a bit of a roller coaster for a while. And more recently, the developer of PS2 emulator AetherSX2 stopped development due to apparent death threats and other nastiness, which is absurd behavior to direct at a software developer.
@PopetheRev28 I definitely enjoyed the Saturn more than the Dreamcast. Perhaps timing had something to do with that. There's no question the Dreamcast was more capable. Saturn had the better standard controller though. For me, it comes down to the kinds of games that were popular in the mid 1990s. When the Dreamcast came out, developers were looking to try new ideas and a lot of those weren't for me. I enjoyed the Dreamcast as well, but the library wasn't as much of what I wanted compared to the Saturn.
I do believe that physical makes more sense for video and audio media. Films and albums don't need patches. Digital makes more sense for gaming. Luckily, we also have digital platforms for PC that seem to do things better than some of the big video streaming platforms and other competitors in the market. Some games just aren't suited to physical distribution. Even if major releases were held back to not need those major day-one patches, there is still a need for patching and updates. Some games are still very well suited to physical releases. Games like Shovel Knight and Cuphead are perfect for physical. The only downside there is that any DLC content, in Shovel Knight's case it was DLC that was planned and known from the beginning, often means physical releases have to be held back and players can wait years to get the full physical package. This is a good argument to use a mix of digital and physical as a player. Both of those games are excellent with DLC to match. In both cases, I bought the games through GOG so they are completely DRM-free so they are fully preserved for me as they are now.
I do understand the preference for physical for many and share the view for video and music. While I did find the idea of digital distribution intriguing early on, I've seen the downsides of that as well, so I have bought more DVDs and BDs in the last handful of years than I ever did when those formats were at their sales peaks.
It is a valid view, and it wouldn't be the only game or movie or show that depicted a bit of a rivalry between the two nations in fictional terms, but as previous posters said it may simply be coincidence as it may not be what the designers intended, or it could be viewed as a friendly rivalry. An explanation that is just as valid, if not even more plausible and compelling, is that Japan and the United States were the biggest arcade markets for Capcom so they wanted the two main guys to be representative of those two countries. There are probably a number of other plausible explanations, but never underestimate the idea they simply found the designs cool and fitting for the two countries.
@KitsuneNight I know what you mean about the technical stuff. And I prefer PC at this point, but as my tastes are far more retro, I've always been able to get by without really caring about GPUs as the integrated graphics have served me well in about 98 percent of cases. I've always found the GPU market confusing compared to everything else. Keeping track of CPUs I like. But I'm an enthusiast in a strange way, as I like used machines, and low-power stuff. But the reason I'm even replying is I have just been shopping over the last couple of days for my first actual GPU card in a very long time. I found it exhausting. I was looking for a good second-hand deal(anything above a certain number just made no sense for me) on something old. But what was the reason? I just wanted to finally be able to play Guilty Gear Xrd on it. I actually bought that on Steam early last year on a sale(four bucks!) with the expectation to get something to play it later. There will be other benefits, but that should cover most of my PC needs for a very long time because I find older stuff more fun for the reasons you say. And I'm also the type to enjoy the same games multiple times which makes me a bad consumer to those with something to sell.
It does seem to be an odd choice to not include the drive and stand for what will be their premium console. It is reminiscent of the Sony that was marketing the Vita when it was new. It seemed like a nice system, but they just couldn't resist gouging on the memory cards. It didn't turn out all that well. Maybe their calculation is to get some sales from the hardware enthusiasts(similar to whales for online games) and then drop it later, but the PR hit seems like a high price for them to pay to sell it at such a high price.
I'd rather have a disc drive than ray tracing. 3DO wins this round.
@KingMike Gauntlet 4 is also prone to the PCB issues. People have said there's some oxidation involved. Some have reported some success by cleaning the through-hole vias on the PCB. I had previously only heard of the transplanting, but was reading about this cleaning method earlier this year as I was curious about Gauntlet 4 carts. I've come across a couple of people saying they've acquired two or three Gauntlet 4 carts and someone told me, after I mentioned it, that they weren't getting a signal on all the pins. So I may have helped a guy salvage a couple of copies of it.
I bought the original series and it's on my list to watch sooner or later(I'm stockpiling). This looks pretty interesting and I'll keep an eye on it. But he's so tiny in most of it!
@PopetheRev28 There are many myths about lag. As others have said, this is not Bluetooth, so unless they screwed up their hardware, it should be essentially lag free. To put it in perspective, I tested out my two oldest Bluetooth controllers which are about a decade old on Android tablets(which are also claimed to add lag) with various cores on Retroarch. Straight to the point, the Bluetooth controllers had no additional lag compared to USB on the tablets or compared to PC USB. Things have only gotten better for controllers since then and the wireless hardware in these things is likely way faster than the Dreamcast processes inputs. If it somehow has measurable lag, they would just be a failure of implementation.
Day one? I was seven or eight months ahead of day one. Being a Saturn owner got me very comfortable with importing. Luckily, by the late 1990s, importing didn't carry a heavy premium, so I ended up ordering an Asian region(outside of Japan) Dreamcast because I just couldn't wait. It was a lot of fun, and very cool having it well before most people did. It arrived on the perfect day too. As I recall it was right as I was off from school for a week. It was a fun time.
Looks a lot like a Saturn controller. I definitely approve of that. In fact, the best controller I ever used on a Dreamcast was a Saturn controller, thanks to an adapter.
@IceClimbersMain Sadly, the worst examples of software emulation have been official collections. There's a long history of companies putting out shoddy emulation collections and products. I used to be able to rattle off about a dozen examples without thinking about it, but it was such a common occurrence I stopped keeping track. Software emulation can be done very well when the developers care about it. The same goes for FPGA, as the cores have to be well implemented. As far as I know, NGP emulates just fine in software, is trivial to do, and is likely better than those collections.
@Blast16 I'm glad my comment was helpful. If you're curious, you can see comparison videos. At first, the difference with the camera doesn't look like much, but because it's tighter to Croc on the Saturn, you start to see problems when enemies are behind you(harder to see them), and when there's platforming to do(harder to judge distance). The platforming issue is even worse in caves as platforms get in the way of the camera more often on Saturn. The PS1 is also likely superior in other ways due to it generally having better 3D graphics in most cases with multi-platform games. And if you're after a physical copy, I figure the PS1 version should be much more common as well. So the PS1 is definitely the way to go in every way, I'd say.
Back in 2019, I was in an odd mood to play a 3D platformer(I'm by far a 2D guy) from the early days of the genre which did not use analog controls. I did say it was odd. I remembered Croc and that's what I decided on. I originally had the Saturn version when it was new. I hated it due to the camera. But when I revisited it, I played the PS1 version.
The PS1 version has a better camera setup than the Saturn version. For the PS1, the viewpoint is a bit zoomed out by comparison, which helps a great deal with visibility. I enjoyed revisiting Croc and felt like I got my money's worth out of it finally. I ended up enjoying the game a lot more than some of its much higher profile competition when I revisited other stuff. I enjoyed the relatively small stages and sections. I liked rescuing those little creatures. So I like the idea of Croc getting spruced up with an HD update. I hope they do add analog controls, but I also hope they keep an option for digital controls, because they worked just fine.
Tosaki has spoken extremely highly of Nintendo, so I don't think this is a case of trying to steal some of their thunder. I think this is plausible. Sega, with their arcade ties, were always trying new things. Their deluxe arcade games were practically rides. They worked with holographic visuals. Sega, Namco, and perhaps others saw the utility of polygons quite a few years before they had their 3D boards. Same thing with various companies and CDs.
@RoboJ1M I agree with you that DVD would have been a great feature, as it was for the PS2. The only issue is that Sega would have had to pay licensing fees for that, some of which would have gone to Sony. I'm not sure how much that would have been, but it might have seemed to be unnecessary at the time. The Dreamcast launched at a strange time with both the move to DVD drives and major advancements in 3D hardware happening after the hardware was finalized. That timing put them in a tough spot.
From a different interview with Tosaki that I saw recently "It was the game developers that didn’t want dual analog 3D sticks at all." What's not clear is whether they were looking into it and the developers were adamant about not wanting two, or if it's more along the lines of what he says here and that there was no demand at the time for it. It could be a translation thing. Also, dual analog was still fairly new at that point and perhaps it wasn't seen as particularly useful when they were designing the Dreamcast.
The Dreamcast controller is one of the worst aspects of the whole package. The cable coming out of the bottom was a minor annoyance, but still annoying. The reduction in face buttons from six to four wasn't great, especially for the Capcom fans. I was fully on board the SNK train by then, so four was good for the fighting games I wanted to play. The change to that stiff, cross-style D-pad was a huge step down and was probably the worst thing about the controller. That thing legitimately hurt my thumbs playing King of Fighters. It was the first system to do that to my hands since the NES when I first got one. On top of that, the novelty of the VMUs wore off for me pretty quickly, and the L and R triggers were not nearly as durable as the ones on the Saturn 3D pad and could break fairly easily. That happened to me and I was always really careful with my gaming stuff. I've opened both controllers and saw how much better built the triggers were for the Saturn 3D pad.
Happy anniversary King of Fighters. I have a soft spot for KOF as it really helped shape my tastes at a time when I was getting into a rut. A friend of mine brought me to a local shop to see Street Fighter 3 for the first time. He was impressed. I could see why, but I just didn't like Capcom's character designs in a lot of cases. Right next to it was King of Fighters '97. It was technically less impressive than SF3, but the animation was still excellent, along with the sprite work. The characters were more stylish and the gameplay looked great. I was mesmerized. I didn't play it there, but I did get it for the Saturn when it came out a few months later and I loved it. I had that experience a few times where I just knew I'd love a game almost immediately upon seeing it. It reignited my enjoyment for fighting games, and 2D games with nice pixel art. And it was a nice late addition to my Saturn library as the system reached its end thanks to the looming release of the Dreamcast later that year.
I missed the Gamecube(been a while since I used one of those cotrollers), the Gamate, and the Euro Mega Drive six-button pad. I'm surprised the other ones I had to guess went my way.
I like the Prison City demo from a year ago. Finally picked the game up about a month back, when I was pretty sick and was catching up with my Steam and GOG games to pass the time. Fun game. It gets pretty tricky in spots that remind me of why I love save states so much, but I have been enjoying it. I have to jump back in and resume it. Hearing that this is by the same guy makes me more interested, though I already liked the creative title and some of the comedy elements with this one. It's a game I'll definitely read the review for when it's done. I like the claw machine in one of the screenshots above.
I had the game as well and enjoyed it for quite a while as I was looking for a change of pace from Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. I got good enough to beat the game somewhat reliably. Those familiar with the final boss will know what that's like. As far as adapting this property, on the one hand, compared to most other fighting games there's more meat on the bone as far as story elements go due to the premise and different time periods. On the other hand, there's no audience for this, unless they think they can brute force it through the marketing.
I saw the headline and thought it was like a real-life Stonehenge moment from Spinal Tap. Even the expectation it would be larger is there. The fact that colossal is part of the game's name and it ended up in a tiny box is quite amusing.
Unfortunately, situations like this one are inevitable. There are so many of these things that some will remain in the hands of private collectors with no digital version available. Perhaps these collectors understand how precarious the situation is because of the nature of data that they have dumped the ROM, even if it's not made available.
Regarding the notion of making the ROM available affecting the value, I highly doubt that applies here. The sale prices of stuff like this are so high that it's purely collector value. People simply interested in playing this would not be willing to spend so much. Preservationist groups might be able to approach those numbers, but they have to pool their money each time to make offers and probably can't go back and forth with bidding. It doesn't appear as if those groups have any significant effect on sale prices. That just leaves the handful of collectors with large amounts of money to spend, and they're bidding against each other. If there's any effect on value from outside that bubble, it's likely tiny. It's not like when Radiant Silvergun was hard to come by and the Saturn version was several hundred dollars. It was still low enough that some gamers might go for it at those prices. That's where a digital version could hurt collector value. For this, it's a totally different situation.
Sakimoto was one of the best composers on the Sega Genesis. The Gauntlet 4 soundtrack is stunning. His music for Captain America & The Avengers is excellent as well. I recently became aware of Master of Monsters on the system, and he did at least some of the music there too, which was very good as well.
I was unaware of Jewel Master for a long time, but I recall a classmate in grade school with whom I did not usually talk gaming mention that she liked the game. I recognized the title many years later, but I also remember her talking about the rings. I might have seen it for rent, but I never did play it back in the day. The game came out before I got the system which explains that. I have played it in recent years. The game is not amazing, but it wasn't bad in my opinion. I think the main reason I finally tried it was because I heard the music was good. I'd definitely check out an improvement hack.
@Andee Yeah, it sounded like they prioritized samples for voices and some of the sound effects which left them with some strange limitations when it came to the music composition. I think they would have been better off starting with the audio setup from the prior game and just tweak it from there.
What's even worse about leaning on the PSG more is that some revisions of the system had issues with the sound levels of the PSG output which means the game would sound even worse on those systems.
@Diogmites I never did play either of the Bushido Blade games because they came out before I had a PS1(I was happy with my Saturn in those days), but I remember reading about them and thinking they were cool. I've helped people who enjoyed them back in the day but forgot what they were called remember the name, and it seemed to leave an impression on them. The concept is very interesting. It's definitely on my list of games to try at some point.
I recently was looking at video of the finished but unreleased SNES version of this. That one also looks like it's missing something compared to the NES version. If they can make either 16-bit version better, then more power to them. Sometimes, limitations can be helpful, and that's what happened with the NES version as it's much more stylish and memorable while managing some impressive visuals for the system on a technical level. It also helped that the NES version wasn't outsourced.
I've always appreciated demakes and ambitious, smartly-designed ports. I remember being impressed with Donkey Kong Land and the Zelda games on the Game Boy when they were new as impressive feats for the hardware. There's Metal Gear Solid on the GBC, which I don't like all that much due to the stage design, but it is technically impressive and well made. And this reminds me of the Daikatana demake for the GBC since it's the same concept of taking an FPS and making it a top-down action game.
Very cool seeing improvements like this. It was impressive how they improved Special Champion Edition, though I already thought that one was very good and is my favorite of the 16-bit console ports of the time(and the SNES games were the ones I had back in the day). The scratchy voices didn't bother me as much as they did others. With the benefit of hindsight, the PC Engine version handles the voice samples the best in my opinion.
Back to Super SF2. The SNES port is more to my taste than the previous titles because I think they handled the music better. I've said for a while that Capcom shouldn't have changed the music as much from Special Champion as that was pretty good. It would be cool to see the music improved from the actual sound hardware, but MD+ is cool and not a bad way to do it. I know I've enjoyed some of the MSU-1 stuff I've sampled on the SNES.
I'll have to see if I can get the demo running later. It looks pretty nice. The sprite work jumped out at me when I saw the thumbnail. I think the over-the-shoulder throw looks a bit off. I mean that as a constructive criticism. It's a work in progress so it could be on the list of things the developer intends to work on. I think that would improve the presentation. But it is looking good from the pictures and screen shots.
@AJB83 I've lag tested my own 8bitdo controllers in an emulation setup a couple of months ago. To my own surprise all the pads I tested, including some old ones, have so little added latency they are functionally identical to using them wired and other wired controllers I used for comparison. They added no additional frames of lag. That isn't to say 2.4GHz wouldn't be better, but as far as lag goes, their controllers are excellent, at least the handful of models I have. Perhaps there's more going on with regard to Bluetooth that is causing the lag such as particular Bluetooth hardware on the host device. Either way, I still vastly prefer wired, just for peace of mind.
@Azuris I think you're right that it's on the Switch's end. Even my oldest 8bitdo controllers, an early model of the Zero and the old 2015 FC30 have very good Bluetooth performance with minimal lag. That the Bluetooth audio is what triggers it pretty much confirms it.
I've pointed out in the past that some games are licensing nightmares and the Ghostbusters situation is a good example of that. There can be a lot of paths to go down to bring a game out. It's probably trickier when there is a current exclusive console licensee, though that might not be as big of a problem for these arcade cabinet replicas.
The early versions of Revenge of Shinobi would be another licensing nightmare, though at least they basically did various sprite hacks so the game can live on.
Comments 806
Re: Double Dragon Artist Says Double Dragon Revive Is "Cheap" And "Shows No Respect" To The Series
@YANDMAN Thanks for letting me know about that. I'll have to check it out. It was clear the Genesis could do a good version of Double Dragon that could stand up to the arcade original, so it was a shame it was deficient. I haven't played the arcade games in a while. I know the first game has slowdown. I remember it more in the second game, and that it was really bad, but it should not have been in either and probably hurt the series in the long run.
Re: Review: MiSTer Pi - A $99 Gateway To FPGA Retro Gaming
@DestructoDisk Yeah, it's a good time in the retro gaming community in a lot of ways. I know I said this to you before, but I was very interested in FPGA when I first heard about it. And that was before there was RunAhead available to reduce lag on the software side, so that was one reason I was interested. It just took so long for a real product(as opposed to fake ones like the Coleco Chameleon....lol) to materialize that I realized I was already happy by the time the MiSTer came out. There were also certain specific factors that made emulation work better for me. But I think it's cool and am glad it exists in a form people can buy, and in this case at prices that aren't inflated due to shortages or whatever. I'm glad to see some of the comments from happy users up above as well.
These are good times as you say. I remember not that many years ago Dreamcast emulation was stagnant. It didn't have the arcade support it has now. I've seen other cores improve in recent years. On the FPGA side, I've been impressed to see that they've managed cores beyond what was expected initially from the chips used, and that's thanks to some smart people. On the software side, RunAhead is such a clever idea and almost seems like magic. And then you have these ways to bring light gun games to modern TVs like that Time Crisis box in a story today. It sounds like it works similarly to the Sinden gun, which a friend of mine picked up. He lent me one of them because he wanted someone to show him how they worked. We have to get back together for that part, but having used it, it's very cool to see how well it works. It may not stack up next to your setup, but it's a good option, especially as most people won't have a CRT. It also kind of feels like magic.
At the end of the day, games are meant to be enjoyed(except in stretched 16x9, screw those guys). Having good options to do that is a great thing so I'm right there with you in your overall sentiment.
Re: Review: MiSTer Pi - A $99 Gateway To FPGA Retro Gaming
@DestructoDisk Because I use software emulation, I consider light guns to be a special case. I have no choice but to do so. All my CRTs are long gone anyway, so even FPGA wouldn't work for me there. I think, simply based on the odds, that most people who might want to get into FPGA won't have CRTs either, though I'm sure the subset of people who do have them are a significant portion of the audience as they would be enthusiast types. And in that case, score one for FPGA. As for the rest, you and Damo have pointed out that there are so many devices, many of them low power, that lag mitigation would not work for many of them. I guess you can say the lack of hardware variation is another plus for FPGA. With that said, it is trivial to acquire the kind of hardware that can do lag mitigation well these days. A lot of people may have old computers that can do it just fine. In that case, they don't have to buy another device(unless they simply want to). My aim here is the same as it was before, to simply dispel some misconceptions. Like I said above, the "best software emulation", which is what was mentioned in another comment, will use mitigation features(otherwise it's not the best) which will provide consistent and reliable performance to achieve next-frame response, which will be exactly the same as an FPGA box on a modern screen. If people know that and they still want to go with FPGA, perhaps because they think it's easier or some other reason, then good for them and I hope they enjoy it because it would then truly be a matter of preference.
Re: Review: MiSTer Pi - A $99 Gateway To FPGA Retro Gaming
@Bonggon5 "Even the best software emulation has lag." Yes. But the best software emulation can subtract the lag through RunAhead or Preemtive Frames. You can even go lower than the original hardware technically speaking. Of course that wouldn't be good unless the game has lag built into it, and equally among all inputs. Even then, it would be like cheating. The point is, and I have said this here many times, myths about lag persist and that thinking is many years out of date. The only way you can get better latency with FPGA is if you have a CRT and the specific game is reading inputs and outputting the results mid frame.
And I tried Punch Out with lag reduction. It's great, though I personally don't enjoy that game anymore. You can totally react to Tyson. I think the game has lag built into it, though. I've seen other people besides Ex who have beaten Tyson using software emulation. It's no big thing.
Re: Double Dragon Artist Says Double Dragon Revive Is "Cheap" And "Shows No Respect" To The Series
The trailer doesn't show a ton. My preliminary reaction is that it doesn't look very appealing. The Double Dragon franchise has been very spotty since the beginning. I think one of the problems it has today is a huge inconsistency within it. Most recently we have seen Double Dragon Gaiden which goes for a goofy look to it which is not like other entries. I think that inconsistency hurts the franchise, or at least holds it back now.
I loved the first DD as a kid. The Master System port was one of my favorite games of the day. I still enjoy the first arcade game. DD2 arcade is a bit of a mess, in my opinion. Genesis port is terrible. NES port is pretty good. My favorite version is the PC Engine Super CD version. Double Dragon 3 existed. I never played DD4, but I remember there were complaints. I seem to recall it didn't have V-sync. My favorite Double Dragon is the GBA game. That is such a good beat-em-up and it does a good job retaining the feel of the original while adding a lot to it. I think DD Advance should be the starting point for any modern versions because it's hard to go wrong with that core gameplay. The only downside to the game for me is the low resolution of the GBA.
Re: Think You Know Everything About Sonic And Sega? You Could Earn $130,000 A Year
I'd apply, but my confluence management and administration is not up to par. Also, what is confluence management and administration?
Re: PowKiddy Is Actually Doing Something Slightly Different With Its RGB20 Pro
@-wc- Android does provide some benefits for something like that. I didn't realize Huntdown was on Android. I finally got around to playing it on PC after having purchased it a while back. I was sick for a few weeks over the summer and working on my game backlog was a way to help me feel better. Huntdown was one of the highlights, so I think you're in for a great time. Playing it portably sounds interesting as the screen isn't too small. Have fun!
Pro tip: Playing Cuphead while very ill is not much fun. Like, why did I even hit a button that's not mapped to anything?
Re: Review: MiSTer Pi - A $99 Gateway To FPGA Retro Gaming
@Lanmanna The draw is the idea that it's more accurate and recreates the systems at a hardware level. It's cool and I have no problem with it. Will most people actually see a difference with that kind of accuracy? No. There's a definite placebo effect. There have been studies done where you can change people's perceptions of the same thing depending on the description provided or the presentation. It's a psychological thing. I think that largely applies here. Some people just like knowing their emulation box is more accurate, even if it doesn't amount to anything for them in a practical way.
On the accuracy front, FPGA cores can be inaccurate too. That just comes down to the quality of the emulator or the core. Some emulators are extremely accurate. I just recently encountered my first emulation glitch, a very minor one, in quite a few years. But there's a ton of misinformation out there about lag. People talk about lag like it's counted in seconds. In a good emulation setup, the lag is often one or two frames, usually one for me. That's very playable. But it's also a moot point since good emulators now have the ability to subtract the lag so you can get it to respond next frame. This appears to work on everything up to PS1 right now.
Fun fact, I tested out Simpsons arcade a few months back and it had zero lag without any of the lag reduction I was talking about. I was quite surprised to see that.
Re: Review: MiSTer Pi - A $99 Gateway To FPGA Retro Gaming
@BulkSlash As I recall, the original name was Mr. Pi. I get what they were going for. It's like the MiSTer(Mr.), but also similar to the Raspberry Pi in terms of size and form factor. It was clever, but perhaps too clever. However, I remember that there was supposed to be a name change with a twitter poll determining the winner. The winning name was "Retro FPGA" which was much worse in my opinion. I didn't see any stories about another name change back to a variation of the original. Perhaps that other name was too generic to be a usable product name they could trademark. I don't really know what's going on in that regard.
Re: Cristiano Ronaldo Is In Fatal Fury: City Of The Wolves, For Some Reason
@JohnGuyJohn It would also be a throwback to the sports team in King of Fighters '94 and '98. The basketball guy used the ball as part of his fighting style, so it wouldn't even be unprecedented.
Re: Please Stop Buying Unofficial "Saturn Mini" Consoles
I wonder how many of these they can produce. It's probably not going to amount to much. I do wonder where they're getting the systems or parts at low enough cost to make this viable. They could be new-old stock, damaged stock, surplus boards, along with broken systems, perhaps otherwise meant for electronics recycling. I don't love the idea of good whole systems getting sacrificed for stuff like this, but that may not even be the case. This might actually be salvaging systems and keeping more out there, even if not in original form. Of course, there are far better ways to play Saturn than this. I know Saturn has a reputation for being hard to emulate, but that reputation is from almost a decade ago and is outdated. Saturn emulation took a big step forward around 2018 and a lot of modern hardware can run it easily now. It has only gotten easier since then as I assume further optimization has been made. Then there's the FPGA side which is also a good way to do it if the cores are in good shape.
Incidentally, I have two Saturns, my original from 1995 and a model 2 I got in 2015 because my original one stopped reading discs(could be a few things). That second one developed issues with the power supply a few years later. My original Saturn also needed two trips to the warranty department back in the day. I love the Saturn and I may just be an outlier as I haven't heard a lot of stories like that, but it was easily the most troublesome system for me.
Re: Opinion: Electronic Arts Used To Empower Developers; Now It Looks To Replace Them With AI
As someone said, it's remarkable how far removed EA is now from how it was started. But that's how corporations are. People change, and different people are making decisions there. The modern EA has a long history of not being a great place to work and for making questionable decisions. In some ways, Steam got to be so successful because of the crazy DRM methods the big publishers were pursuing. EA doesn't have a lot that particularly interests me these days, but I made a conscious choice to not buy anything of theirs again. It did come into play once. I intended to get Mass Effect 3 when it came out, but by that point I was exasperated with EA. Part of that was withholding the game from Steam to push their own distribution. I seem to recall their own platform was a bit of a mess at the time too. Who could have imagined that?(me....many others) I'll just have to live with the Mass Effect sage uncompleted for me. Such a shame because I heard the saga's ending was very satisfying(sarcasm).
Re: Some Capcom Staff Thought Marvel Crossovers "Tarnished Street Fighter"
It is funny to hear they had that reaction. Perhaps some looked down on the Marvel characters for being from western comics. Perhaps it was just that they were not prominent in Japan compared to Street Fighter at that point and could make SF less popular. It worked out though and they did a nice job making it cohesive. The Marvel characters are the best sprites Capcom ever worked on in my opinion.
If anything tarnished Street Fighter from my perspective, it was the minor updates to SF2 as opposed to making a proper SF3 at the time. When they came out with Alpha instead of 3, it felt like a practical joke.
Re: "He Was Going To Crash His Car Into Sunsoft’s Gates" - Gimmick! Designer Tomomi Sakai On Making A Nintendo Masterpiece
It's so strange that Gimmick got such a limited western release at all, in the Scandinavian region. I assume it was originally supposed to get at least a wider European release, especially since localizing required some arrangement to the music and those countries used PAL.
Re: Creator Of PS1 Emulator DuckStation Threatens To "Shut The Whole Thing Down" Following License Change
I almost posted a comment on the FPGA toxicity about how the retro-development scene is largely the same at its core, whether it's FPGA or software emulation. Sadly, toxicity is a part of this scene. I've never used Duckstation, though I have heard good things. Duckstation was the center of prior drama a little while back. The reason he's saying he knows how licenses work is because statements he made the last time indicated he didn't understand how they work and people have pointed that out. As I recall, he was claiming that Duckstation was only partly GPL which makes no sense as far as I can tell. I also don't think changing the license or going closed source applies retroactively. It has already been forked. Even if it is the best PS1 emulator, there are other PS1 emulators that work great. I'd rather not see development shut down this way, but PS1 emulation will be fine either way. Also, people can't "take issue" with license violations they don't know about. I don't know if the rest of his grievances are sound, but his prior statements seemed questionable and there's no detail here to go on. Regardless, it's his right to change the license, but, once again, the forks exist.
I don't want to make it sound like I am certain this developer is the problem. I know this is not their job and they don't owe anyone anything in this regard. There's plenty of toxicity in the development community directed at developers. I remember Dreamcast emulation being a bit of a roller coaster for a while. And more recently, the developer of PS2 emulator AetherSX2 stopped development due to apparent death threats and other nastiness, which is absurd behavior to direct at a software developer.
Re: The "Sega Saturn Slim" Is Now Our Most-Wanted Hardware Of 2024
@PopetheRev28 I definitely enjoyed the Saturn more than the Dreamcast. Perhaps timing had something to do with that. There's no question the Dreamcast was more capable. Saturn had the better standard controller though. For me, it comes down to the kinds of games that were popular in the mid 1990s. When the Dreamcast came out, developers were looking to try new ideas and a lot of those weren't for me. I enjoyed the Dreamcast as well, but the library wasn't as much of what I wanted compared to the Saturn.
Re: Think PS5 Pro Is Too Much At $700? The 3DO Would Like A Word
@KitsuneNight thanks for taking the time to make suggestions. I'll see if any of those fit my requirements.
Re: "Sometimes The Only Way To Preserve A Game Is To Own It" - Japanese Publisher Superdeluxe Gets Physical
I do believe that physical makes more sense for video and audio media. Films and albums don't need patches. Digital makes more sense for gaming. Luckily, we also have digital platforms for PC that seem to do things better than some of the big video streaming platforms and other competitors in the market. Some games just aren't suited to physical distribution. Even if major releases were held back to not need those major day-one patches, there is still a need for patching and updates. Some games are still very well suited to physical releases. Games like Shovel Knight and Cuphead are perfect for physical. The only downside there is that any DLC content, in Shovel Knight's case it was DLC that was planned and known from the beginning, often means physical releases have to be held back and players can wait years to get the full physical package. This is a good argument to use a mix of digital and physical as a player. Both of those games are excellent with DLC to match. In both cases, I bought the games through GOG so they are completely DRM-free so they are fully preserved for me as they are now.
I do understand the preference for physical for many and share the view for video and music. While I did find the idea of digital distribution intriguing early on, I've seen the downsides of that as well, so I have bought more DVDs and BDs in the last handful of years than I ever did when those formats were at their sales peaks.
Re: Game Researcher Says Street Fighter II Was "USA Vs. Japan" And Japanese People Aren't Happy
It is a valid view, and it wouldn't be the only game or movie or show that depicted a bit of a rivalry between the two nations in fictional terms, but as previous posters said it may simply be coincidence as it may not be what the designers intended, or it could be viewed as a friendly rivalry. An explanation that is just as valid, if not even more plausible and compelling, is that Japan and the United States were the biggest arcade markets for Capcom so they wanted the two main guys to be representative of those two countries. There are probably a number of other plausible explanations, but never underestimate the idea they simply found the designs cool and fitting for the two countries.
Re: Think PS5 Pro Is Too Much At $700? The 3DO Would Like A Word
@KitsuneNight I know what you mean about the technical stuff. And I prefer PC at this point, but as my tastes are far more retro, I've always been able to get by without really caring about GPUs as the integrated graphics have served me well in about 98 percent of cases. I've always found the GPU market confusing compared to everything else. Keeping track of CPUs I like. But I'm an enthusiast in a strange way, as I like used machines, and low-power stuff. But the reason I'm even replying is I have just been shopping over the last couple of days for my first actual GPU card in a very long time. I found it exhausting. I was looking for a good second-hand deal(anything above a certain number just made no sense for me) on something old. But what was the reason? I just wanted to finally be able to play Guilty Gear Xrd on it. I actually bought that on Steam early last year on a sale(four bucks!) with the expectation to get something to play it later. There will be other benefits, but that should cover most of my PC needs for a very long time because I find older stuff more fun for the reasons you say. And I'm also the type to enjoy the same games multiple times which makes me a bad consumer to those with something to sell.
Re: Think PS5 Pro Is Too Much At $700? The 3DO Would Like A Word
It does seem to be an odd choice to not include the drive and stand for what will be their premium console. It is reminiscent of the Sony that was marketing the Vita when it was new. It seemed like a nice system, but they just couldn't resist gouging on the memory cards. It didn't turn out all that well. Maybe their calculation is to get some sales from the hardware enthusiasts(similar to whales for online games) and then drop it later, but the PR hit seems like a high price for them to pay to sell it at such a high price.
I'd rather have a disc drive than ray tracing. 3DO wins this round.
Re: Toaplan's Slap Fight & Grind Stormer Are Being Reissued For Modern Consoles
@KingMike Gauntlet 4 is also prone to the PCB issues. People have said there's some oxidation involved. Some have reported some success by cleaning the through-hole vias on the PCB. I had previously only heard of the transplanting, but was reading about this cleaning method earlier this year as I was curious about Gauntlet 4 carts. I've come across a couple of people saying they've acquired two or three Gauntlet 4 carts and someone told me, after I mentioned it, that they weren't getting a signal on all the pins. So I may have helped a guy salvage a couple of copies of it.
Re: 'Space Adventure Cobra - The Awakening' Is A New Sidescroller Based On The Retro Anime Series
I bought the original series and it's on my list to watch sooner or later(I'm stockpiling). This looks pretty interesting and I'll keep an eye on it. But he's so tiny in most of it!
Re: Retro Fighters Is Resurrecting Dreamcast's Best Fighting Game Controller
@PopetheRev28 There are many myths about lag. As others have said, this is not Bluetooth, so unless they screwed up their hardware, it should be essentially lag free. To put it in perspective, I tested out my two oldest Bluetooth controllers which are about a decade old on Android tablets(which are also claimed to add lag) with various cores on Retroarch. Straight to the point, the Bluetooth controllers had no additional lag compared to USB on the tablets or compared to PC USB. Things have only gotten better for controllers since then and the wireless hardware in these things is likely way faster than the Dreamcast processes inputs. If it somehow has measurable lag, they would just be a failure of implementation.
Re: Anniversary: It's Been 25 Years Since The Dreamcast's North American "9.9.99" Launch
Day one? I was seven or eight months ahead of day one. Being a Saturn owner got me very comfortable with importing. Luckily, by the late 1990s, importing didn't carry a heavy premium, so I ended up ordering an Asian region(outside of Japan) Dreamcast because I just couldn't wait. It was a lot of fun, and very cool having it well before most people did. It arrived on the perfect day too. As I recall it was right as I was off from school for a week. It was a fun time.
Re: Retro Fighters Is Resurrecting Dreamcast's Best Fighting Game Controller
Looks a lot like a Saturn controller. I definitely approve of that. In fact, the best controller I ever used on a Dreamcast was a Saturn controller, thanks to an adapter.
Re: Saturn FPGA Core Just Hit Another Important "Accuracy Milestone"
@IceClimbersMain Sadly, the worst examples of software emulation have been official collections. There's a long history of companies putting out shoddy emulation collections and products. I used to be able to rattle off about a dozen examples without thinking about it, but it was such a common occurrence I stopped keeping track. Software emulation can be done very well when the developers care about it. The same goes for FPGA, as the cores have to be well implemented. As far as I know, NGP emulates just fine in software, is trivial to do, and is likely better than those collections.
Re: Star Fox Studio Argonaut Is Back, And It's Remastering Croc
@Blast16 I'm glad my comment was helpful. If you're curious, you can see comparison videos. At first, the difference with the camera doesn't look like much, but because it's tighter to Croc on the Saturn, you start to see problems when enemies are behind you(harder to see them), and when there's platforming to do(harder to judge distance). The platforming issue is even worse in caves as platforms get in the way of the camera more often on Saturn. The PS1 is also likely superior in other ways due to it generally having better 3D graphics in most cases with multi-platform games. And if you're after a physical copy, I figure the PS1 version should be much more common as well. So the PS1 is definitely the way to go in every way, I'd say.
Re: Star Fox Studio Argonaut Is Back, And It's Remastering Croc
Back in 2019, I was in an odd mood to play a 3D platformer(I'm by far a 2D guy) from the early days of the genre which did not use analog controls. I did say it was odd. I remembered Croc and that's what I decided on. I originally had the Saturn version when it was new. I hated it due to the camera. But when I revisited it, I played the PS1 version.
The PS1 version has a better camera setup than the Saturn version. For the PS1, the viewpoint is a bit zoomed out by comparison, which helps a great deal with visibility. I enjoyed revisiting Croc and felt like I got my money's worth out of it finally. I ended up enjoying the game a lot more than some of its much higher profile competition when I revisited other stuff. I enjoyed the relatively small stages and sections. I liked rescuing those little creatures. So I like the idea of Croc getting spruced up with an HD update. I hope they do add analog controls, but I also hope they keep an option for digital controls, because they worked just fine.
Re: Sega Almost Created A Wii Remote-Style Controller For Dreamcast And VR Headset For Saturn
Tosaki has spoken extremely highly of Nintendo, so I don't think this is a case of trying to steal some of their thunder. I think this is plausible. Sega, with their arcade ties, were always trying new things. Their deluxe arcade games were practically rides. They worked with holographic visuals. Sega, Namco, and perhaps others saw the utility of polygons quite a few years before they had their 3D boards. Same thing with various companies and CDs.
Re: Here's The "Hidden Meaning" Behind The Dreamcast's Start Button
@RoboJ1M I agree with you that DVD would have been a great feature, as it was for the PS2. The only issue is that Sega would have had to pay licensing fees for that, some of which would have gone to Sony. I'm not sure how much that would have been, but it might have seemed to be unnecessary at the time. The Dreamcast launched at a strange time with both the move to DVD drives and major advancements in 3D hardware happening after the hardware was finalized. That timing put them in a tough spot.
Re: Here's The "Hidden Meaning" Behind The Dreamcast's Start Button
From a different interview with Tosaki that I saw recently "It was the game developers that didn’t want dual analog 3D sticks at all." What's not clear is whether they were looking into it and the developers were adamant about not wanting two, or if it's more along the lines of what he says here and that there was no demand at the time for it. It could be a translation thing. Also, dual analog was still fairly new at that point and perhaps it wasn't seen as particularly useful when they were designing the Dreamcast.
The Dreamcast controller is one of the worst aspects of the whole package. The cable coming out of the bottom was a minor annoyance, but still annoying. The reduction in face buttons from six to four wasn't great, especially for the Capcom fans. I was fully on board the SNK train by then, so four was good for the fighting games I wanted to play. The change to that stiff, cross-style D-pad was a huge step down and was probably the worst thing about the controller. That thing legitimately hurt my thumbs playing King of Fighters. It was the first system to do that to my hands since the NES when I first got one. On top of that, the novelty of the VMUs wore off for me pretty quickly, and the L and R triggers were not nearly as durable as the ones on the Saturn 3D pad and could break fairly easily. That happened to me and I was always really careful with my gaming stuff. I've opened both controllers and saw how much better built the triggers were for the Saturn 3D pad.
Re: Anniversary: King Of Fighters Is 30 Years Old
Happy anniversary King of Fighters. I have a soft spot for KOF as it really helped shape my tastes at a time when I was getting into a rut. A friend of mine brought me to a local shop to see Street Fighter 3 for the first time. He was impressed. I could see why, but I just didn't like Capcom's character designs in a lot of cases. Right next to it was King of Fighters '97. It was technically less impressive than SF3, but the animation was still excellent, along with the sprite work. The characters were more stylish and the gameplay looked great. I was mesmerized. I didn't play it there, but I did get it for the Saturn when it came out a few months later and I loved it. I had that experience a few times where I just knew I'd love a game almost immediately upon seeing it. It reignited my enjoyment for fighting games, and 2D games with nice pixel art. And it was a nice late addition to my Saturn library as the system reached its end thanks to the looming release of the Dreamcast later that year.
Re: Can You Match These Start Buttons With Their Consoles?
@KingMike I think I guessed Jaguar on that one too. I'm not familiar enough with it to know what its layout is by memory, other than that keypad.
Re: Can You Match These Start Buttons With Their Consoles?
I missed the Gamecube(been a while since I used one of those cotrollers), the Gamate, and the Euro Mega Drive six-button pad. I'm surprised the other ones I had to guess went my way.
Re: Interview: How Retroware's Castlevania Parody 'The Translyvania Adventure of Simon Quest' Pokes Fun At Konami's Series
I like the Prison City demo from a year ago. Finally picked the game up about a month back, when I was pretty sick and was catching up with my Steam and GOG games to pass the time. Fun game. It gets pretty tricky in spots that remind me of why I love save states so much, but I have been enjoying it. I have to jump back in and resume it. Hearing that this is by the same guy makes me more interested, though I already liked the creative title and some of the comedy elements with this one. It's a game I'll definitely read the review for when it's done. I like the claw machine in one of the screenshots above.
Re: Zelda Movie Screenwriter Is Working On A Live-Action Eternal Champions Film
I had the game as well and enjoyed it for quite a while as I was looking for a change of pace from Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. I got good enough to beat the game somewhat reliably. Those familiar with the final boss will know what that's like. As far as adapting this property, on the one hand, compared to most other fighting games there's more meat on the bone as far as story elements go due to the premise and different time periods. On the other hand, there's no audience for this, unless they think they can brute force it through the marketing.
Re: Sierra's Ken Williams Is As Confused As You About Colossal Cave's Tiny Box
I saw the headline and thought it was like a real-life Stonehenge moment from Spinal Tap. Even the expectation it would be larger is there. The fact that colossal is part of the game's name and it ended up in a tiny box is quite amusing.
Re: Dragon Quest SNES Prototype Worth $50,000 "Lost For Good"
Unfortunately, situations like this one are inevitable. There are so many of these things that some will remain in the hands of private collectors with no digital version available. Perhaps these collectors understand how precarious the situation is because of the nature of data that they have dumped the ROM, even if it's not made available.
Regarding the notion of making the ROM available affecting the value, I highly doubt that applies here. The sale prices of stuff like this are so high that it's purely collector value. People simply interested in playing this would not be willing to spend so much. Preservationist groups might be able to approach those numbers, but they have to pool their money each time to make offers and probably can't go back and forth with bidding. It doesn't appear as if those groups have any significant effect on sale prices. That just leaves the handful of collectors with large amounts of money to spend, and they're bidding against each other. If there's any effect on value from outside that bubble, it's likely tiny. It's not like when Radiant Silvergun was hard to come by and the Saturn version was several hundred dollars. It was still low enough that some gamers might go for it at those prices. That's where a digital version could hurt collector value. For this, it's a totally different situation.
Re: Interview: Legendary Composer Hitoshi Sakimoto Talks Final Fantasy, Vagrant Story And Sword of Convallaria
Sakimoto was one of the best composers on the Sega Genesis. The Gauntlet 4 soundtrack is stunning. His music for Captain America & The Avengers is excellent as well. I recently became aware of Master of Monsters on the system, and he did at least some of the music there too, which was very good as well.
Re: Game-Changing Patch Incoming For Underrated Genesis Action Platformer Jewel Master
I was unaware of Jewel Master for a long time, but I recall a classmate in grade school with whom I did not usually talk gaming mention that she liked the game. I recognized the title many years later, but I also remember her talking about the rings. I might have seen it for rent, but I never did play it back in the day. The game came out before I got the system which explains that. I have played it in recent years. The game is not amazing, but it wasn't bad in my opinion. I think the main reason I finally tried it was because I heard the music was good. I'd definitely check out an improvement hack.
Re: Fans Have "Fixed" Super Street Fighter II For The Sega Genesis
@Andee Yeah, it sounded like they prioritized samples for voices and some of the sound effects which left them with some strange limitations when it came to the music composition. I think they would have been better off starting with the audio setup from the prior game and just tweak it from there.
What's even worse about leaning on the PSG more is that some revisions of the system had issues with the sound levels of the PSG output which means the game would sound even worse on those systems.
Re: Tobal No. 1 Was Almost A Chrono Trigger Fighting Game
@Diogmites I never did play either of the Bushido Blade games because they came out before I had a PS1(I was happy with my Saturn in those days), but I remember reading about them and thinking they were cool. I've helped people who enjoyed them back in the day but forgot what they were called remember the name, and it seemed to leave an impression on them. The concept is very interesting. It's definitely on my list of games to try at some point.
Re: 'Batman: Revenge Of The Joker' For The Sega Genesis Gets Impressive Fan Overhaul
I recently was looking at video of the finished but unreleased SNES version of this. That one also looks like it's missing something compared to the NES version. If they can make either 16-bit version better, then more power to them. Sometimes, limitations can be helpful, and that's what happened with the NES version as it's much more stylish and memorable while managing some impressive visuals for the system on a technical level. It also helped that the NES version wasn't outsourced.
Re: 'Halo Combat Devolved' Demake Reimagines 'Halo' As A Game Boy Color Game
I've always appreciated demakes and ambitious, smartly-designed ports. I remember being impressed with Donkey Kong Land and the Zelda games on the Game Boy when they were new as impressive feats for the hardware. There's Metal Gear Solid on the GBC, which I don't like all that much due to the stage design, but it is technically impressive and well made. And this reminds me of the Daikatana demake for the GBC since it's the same concept of taking an FPS and making it a top-down action game.
Re: Fans Have "Fixed" Super Street Fighter II For The Sega Genesis
Very cool seeing improvements like this. It was impressive how they improved Special Champion Edition, though I already thought that one was very good and is my favorite of the 16-bit console ports of the time(and the SNES games were the ones I had back in the day). The scratchy voices didn't bother me as much as they did others. With the benefit of hindsight, the PC Engine version handles the voice samples the best in my opinion.
Back to Super SF2. The SNES port is more to my taste than the previous titles because I think they handled the music better. I've said for a while that Capcom shouldn't have changed the music as much from Special Champion as that was pretty good. It would be cool to see the music improved from the actual sound hardware, but MD+ is cool and not a bad way to do it. I know I've enjoyed some of the MSU-1 stuff I've sampled on the SNES.
Re: Metro Siege Is A Fantastic New Beat 'Em Up Coming To The Amiga
I'll have to see if I can get the demo running later. It looks pretty nice. The sprite work jumped out at me when I saw the thumbnail. I think the over-the-shoulder throw looks a bit off. I mean that as a constructive criticism. It's a work in progress so it could be on the list of things the developer intends to work on. I think that would improve the presentation. But it is looking good from the pictures and screen shots.
Re: 8BitDo's Anniversary Celebration Includes Gold And Silver Controllers
@AJB83 I've lag tested my own 8bitdo controllers in an emulation setup a couple of months ago. To my own surprise all the pads I tested, including some old ones, have so little added latency they are functionally identical to using them wired and other wired controllers I used for comparison. They added no additional frames of lag. That isn't to say 2.4GHz wouldn't be better, but as far as lag goes, their controllers are excellent, at least the handful of models I have. Perhaps there's more going on with regard to Bluetooth that is causing the lag such as particular Bluetooth hardware on the host device. Either way, I still vastly prefer wired, just for peace of mind.
Re: 8BitDo's Anniversary Celebration Includes Gold And Silver Controllers
@Azuris I think you're right that it's on the Switch's end. Even my oldest 8bitdo controllers, an early model of the Zero and the old 2015 FC30 have very good Bluetooth performance with minimal lag. That the Bluetooth audio is what triggers it pretty much confirms it.
Re: "Never Work With Movie Franchises" Laments Quarter Arcades Boss As Ghostbusters And RoboCop Cause Issues
I've pointed out in the past that some games are licensing nightmares and the Ghostbusters situation is a good example of that. There can be a lot of paths to go down to bring a game out. It's probably trickier when there is a current exclusive console licensee, though that might not be as big of a problem for these arcade cabinet replicas.
The early versions of Revenge of Shinobi would be another licensing nightmare, though at least they basically did various sprite hacks so the game can live on.