sdelfin

@LowDefAl By that I meant it's so easy to play Super Mario Bros. elsewhere, and a port to C64 in 2019 is largely useless other than "because they could".

I appreciate seeing these as tech demos. This is more of a challenge to the coder than it is about the game. I think it's cool to see what is possible, even if it will never be anywhere close to the best way to play it. And I'm not a fan of Mario 64, so I don't want to play it at all. It reminds me of getting a demo of Tomb Raider on the GBA which I also thought was really cool. Incidentally, there is a 2D Tomb Raider that isn't bad and is probably better overall. It also reminds me that someone ported Super Mario Bros. to the C64 and there's no good reason for that other than they could, and I'm fine with that.

@mashk I've long thought that Sega's arcade experience with 3D ended up being detrimental to them. There are multiple examples of systems that were designed too soon for good 3D or the companies were just caught flat footed. 3DO and PC-FX come to mind. But back to Sega, their arcade 3D at the time was all done in partnership with Martin Marietta and I wonder if they decided there was no way to do 3D on low-end hardware they could sell as a console in 1994(and in development probably starting in 1992). It may have skewed their expectation of what was possible at the time, and may have also been why they went with quads instead of triangles. Sony was starting from nothing and didn't have the influence of having an arcade arm with expensive hardware. It's just an idea. Sega obviously knew where things were going, but they misread the timing of things.

Reading this, I wonder what it was about the PS1 that appealed to people that were not already into video games. I was already into that, so any further appeal was lost on me.

I kept up with the gaming market back in those days through magazines here and there, and some early gaming sites. I was decently aware of the reality of Saturn at the time, that it was doing quite well in Japan, and even vying for the lead prior to Final Fantasy 7. I knew it had a strong library over there in terms of both quality and quantity. In the US, the library wasn't as robust due to sales, but the library was largely high quality, especially from 1996 forward once they learned from mistakes around the launch period. There were times when I saw things on N64 and especially PS1 and wished it was on Saturn, but I was extremely happy as a Saturn owner at the time and was well aware that it had some unique, though niche, quality titles. I knew then that I made the right choice going with Saturn, and still feel the same way.

Regarding other systems, I eventually picked up a used PS1 after Saturn releases dried up. It was very much a supplemental system to my Saturn and I did enjoy it. There was nothing like Tenchu on Saturn and it was games like that which I appreciated in the PS1 library. The N64 is probably the major system I like the least due to its unbalanced library. Mario 64 was impressive in 1996, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me wish I had one, but the novelty wore off really quickly. I'm glad I didn't get the system. I think I would have been very frustrated with the library as the approach to 3D game design popular during the time wasn't to my taste. Issues in games like Mario 64 that bother me now also would have bothered me then, and did in other games.

Someone earlier mentioned Gamecube, and I also like the Gamecube a lot despite its sales difficulties. The Saturn is similar to the Cube in some ways. The Wii U's life cycle also reminded me of the Saturn a lot. You could question the hardware design and the marketing of the thing, but because of the lack of third-party support, it ended up with a high-quality library.

I think the narrative of the Saturn has changed a lot in recent years. Back in the day, it seemed people simply viewed it as a complete failure, which it wasn't. Now, people are more aware of the quality library and success in Japan. The narrative of its marketing and launch failure in NA are well known at this point. Both Sega and Nintendo made it really easy for Sony in that generation, looking back at it. To me, one of the biggest weaknesses of the Saturn's library in hindsight was also one of its strengths back in the say, which was strong arcade ports, especially 2D games. The problem is that many of those can be easily played elsewhere in their arcade form, but it was great having those games available on the system back in the '90s.

@Diogmites That Spider-Man game also was a big part of why I got the Genesis as well. I did have a friend who got the Genesis earlier in 1991 which allowed me to try Sonic, which I loved. Seeing those Spider-Man screen shots in magazines and catalogs removed any hesitation I had. I was recently thinking of playing it again soon. And I ended up really liking the game and played it quite a lot. They did a great job of making Spider-Man control and move well within the limits of 2D. I also happened to get into comic books that year, so I was very excited for the game, which I thought looked very impressive for the time. I last played it several years ago and still enjoyed it. I wasn't previously aware you can use web to slow Mary Jane's descent at the end and I finally figured out a reliable way to hit the Kingpin.

@GravyThief That's mostly true as I recall, though I think that offer came in very early on. They decided to bring the console to shows to be displayed for people to see it for themselves. They also had it repaired by Ben Heck as it was not functional. It's not necessarily that they simply thought they could get more. And I think that shows that there's a certain amount of hype that goes along with it. That big offer came in right after the system was in the news. I think they knew those offers were as good as they would get.

@Sketcz My guess is simply timing. The retro collecting market has gotten bigger since then drawing in more speculators along with more shill bidders and services to drive prices up before the bubble pops.

I was a very young kid at the time and I remember briefly trying Rastan in an arcade. I didn't do very well, but it was memorable. I was quite surprised when my mom got me the game for the Master System because it was not a special occasion, I didn't know it was on the Master System, and because it was a Taito game for the system(what???). I revisited it. It's a little clunky to go back to at first, but after getting used to it, I still love it. It was one of my most played MS games back in the day. The arcade version is a bit different, and brutal, but I like it too. Both are worth playing.

I've been making the distinction for a couple of years between the two as being "software emulation" and "hardware emulation" because they're both emulation despite what some people say.

I'm partial to software emulation. I was open to the idea of FPGA, but it took so long from learning about it to the time when hardware became available that I, in that time, realized that software emulation had no deficiencies for my situation. It made no sense for me to keep looking for something "better" when I was already very happy. I've noticed that there have been people who vastly overstate the issues with software emulation. I've seen some really tall tales even within recent years. It's not really like that and hasn't been that way for a long time with the right setup.

I recommend software emulation when people get started. It doesn't make sense to me to start with the hardware route because of the added cost if they're just starting and maybe not committed to it yet. You will hear that FPGA requires a lot of effort and tinkering, but software emulation can also be intimidating that way to be fair. I helped a friend out getting started because he found all the settings overwhelming and I knew what mattered and what didn't. In both cases, hardware and software, the options are there for a reason and it's better to have them than not, because things being too simple will often leave out things that are important. Whatever the route, there is going to be some tinkering and a learning curve. It's best to accept that and approach it as a project.

For most stuff, I can't detect any of the issues people bring up for software emulation. The games don't feel off at all to me. The horrific lag is a myth. I have been able to beat some very tough games and 1CC an arcade game or two where lag would make that either impossible or unpleasant to the point where I would not want to. However, in the article, one of the respondents mentioned rhythm games. That is a use case where FPGA would be better because any additional lag, however small, could make a difference. Another game which is famously brought up in that regard is Punch Out as the window of opportunity to react to the game's tells is small to the point where a tiny amount of lag makes a difference. I don't play any of those so I can't expand on that.

It's funny, there are lag-reduction features in software emulation and I tried that a while back on a game I know very well, Shatterhand on the NES. With the reduced lag, the jumping felt way too twitchy. It was a lot harder to control it that way. It's also worth pointing out that a certain amount of lag is built into the games, so reduction can only be taken so far before it's best to just play and enjoy the game for what it is.

I learned early on that third-party controllers were best avoided in the 1980s and 1990s. The few that I used were definitely inferior, though not completely awful. I don't remember which ones those were. It's funny how in more modern times, I've had more issues with official controllers as opposed to third-party ones. And then there's the joy-con drift.

As other have said Mad Catz's arcade sticks were really pretty good. I bought two Tatsunoko vs. Capcom fight sticks. I changed the PCBs in them and plan to add a couple of small side buttons. The first one I got already had Sanwa parts put in. I got the whole thing for an amazing price, especially because of the Sanwa parts. The generic parts they used really weren't that bad, and as far as I can tell, the non-Sanwa joystick is well constructed and can take Sanwa switch PCBs basically making it about equal at that point.

I bought a MOJO, but it was on clearance so it's okay. I just wanted to play around with it and see what it could do. I still have it and it runs fine. It did what I wanted it to do and I might hook it up again depending on my needs. It's decently made as far as the hardware. It came with the CTRLR controller. D-pad was way too stiff, but the analog and buttons felt pretty nice.

@InsaneWade I only ever had one Dual Shock 2 that came with my PS2, and I never liked it. The face buttons were not terribly responsive on mine. I think it was their pressure-sensitivity feature that was the problem. Most of my PS2 gaming I did with a PS1 Dual Shock.

Years ago, I saw an auction for either the first Metal Slug on AES or the whole set including it. Seller wanted a million dollars, which is absurd. More absurd was that it was local pick up only. Makes me think they didn't have the game, and if some sucker did bite at that price, they'd just buy the set for like $20,000 and then have the sucker come to pick it up when it was in hand.

@Kushan Is it possible you're mixing Cybernator up with Metal Warriors? That's common for a few reasons. Metal Warriors does have character portraits.

@KingMike When they were developing the Dreamcast, they had two teams. They were looking at GPUs from NEC and 3DFX. It was 3DFX that publicly commented and caused an issue.

Since the topic of the Genesis sound quality came up here and what its strengths were, I just finished the quest mode in Gauntlet IV yesterday, and that is just fantastic musically.

Stuff like this is cool as an option. I've appreciated having options on the SNES side with MSU-1 hacks. I will say that it does feel a bit odd with some of the replacement soundtracks as there is a mismatch with the visuals. That can happen with early CD games too, but a lot of the games on Sega CD, PC Engine CD, etc used more elaborate synthesizers and electric guitars which still sounded like they fit well the visuals.

I've used MSU-1 hacks in a few cases. I used it for Super Mario All Stars to restore the NES music. The pitch is off in SMB3, but it's overall better in my opinion as the SNES audio is too processed on that one. There are several tracks in Castlevania 4 that I just hate, so I replaced those with stuff from Rondo of Blood. And as good as Turtles in Time is on the SNES, I don't like the music nearly as much as the arcade game and there's a hack that switches it. There are a couple of levels that have no arcade counterparts, but they're among the better tracks in the SNES game so it works out well enough.. There are Genesis versions of those tracks in FM sound, but I haven't yet looked into if I could add them in. Those are the kinds of uses I like for stuff like this.

@MSaturn Video guides are more time consuming, but I've gotten plenty of benefit from them. It depends on the context whether a written guide or a video guide is more helpful. Sometimes, seeing a technique in action is what's needed, and it's helpful in situations that involve navigation. I just played through Gauntlet 4, and had to consult video a few times to help get me going the right way. A text guide would have been useless for that.

@Spider-Kev I've noticed that with controllers that are very slim, when the D-pad inputs are demanding such as with fighting games, I'll experience hand cramps. I've noticed this with original SNES controllers as well. I haven't used any DS in a while, but they're slim enough to likely do that to me as well.

Some elements of the concept sound a bit like Technos' Combatribes, so there's a game to try for a similar vibe as to what they were going for here.

I never did any of this or knew anyone who did. I didn't start importing any games until the end of 1996. I only have a few imports for the MD/Genesis. mostly just to have a couple I really like, but I did pick up the 2020 release of Mad Stalker because I love that game. In order to play it, I opted to play it with the top of the system shell removed. I wasn't going to mangle a vintage Genesis for that.

It's kind of amazing that people mutilated the carts instead of opening the systems and figuring out what to do from there depending on region. I guess people were more afraid or ignorant about opening up a game system, which is funny considering how simple they were. Those cartridge retention things were always a bit silly anyway, so best to just eliminate that. The best cart retention method I remember seeing was the PC Engine.

I'm surprised I had not heard of this, especially since it had a Famicom release. But I've also looked into the libraries of the various computers and don't recall seeing this project, though perhaps it didn't jump out at me. It's a fascinating concept and I love how it's from a time when people could try some crazy, creative ideas which would not make business sense today. That's scary how much he wore himself down to the point of blindness. I wasn't expecting to hear that it lasted several days. I can imagine it's similar for a lot of developers today with the crunch, but even less pleasant due to the sheer scope of projects. This was really interesting to read about.

@Spider-Kev To keep it simple and within the context of gaming, Hall effect refers to using magnetic fields for the purposes of analog control. The Saturn 3D pad and Dreamcast pad used Hall effect controls for the analog. Because it's less mechanically complex than typical analog mechanisms in game controllers, it should be far more durable.

I got my Game Boy probably a year after it came out. I ended up getting it in an unusual way, which is how I've never owned a copy of Tetris. My first game for it was Super Mario Land which I loved then and still love now. A friend of mine got the system earlier on. Getting to try the system for the first time was mind blowing at the time. It was such a step forward from the LCD games of the time. My unit developed dead lines, vertical and horizontal, in the screen after only a few years, unfortunately. It served me well for a while and helped pass the time when I needed it. I'm not as big a fan of the system as others, but I did have great experiences with it, including some favorites such as Gargoyle's Quest, Metroid 2, Final Fantasy Adventure, and Spider-Man(a lot of people hate that one, but I always loved that one), But thanks to the Game Boy, we eventually got the Game Boy Advance, which is one of my favorite systems.

Collecting video games in the 80s while in their 60s? That's pretty cool. Also, incredible foresight to recognize that video games would likely become collector's items. It's easy to see in hindsight, but when all the comic book and baseball card speculation was going on, no one I ever spoke to made the connection that video games would see a similar market develop down the line. It was an expensive thing to do compared to comics and cards due to the higher unit costs.

@Sketcz Yeah, the change in the music is unexpected and it's definitely not to my taste. I wonder if they were following some trends of the time. Even Doom 2 on PC started to go toward more atmospheric music compared to the first game. That might have had an influence. I also wonder if it might have been easier. For 2D platformers and shooters, short music loops were acceptable. As the scope of games got bigger with 3D(faked or real), short loops didn't work as well. For Doom, the musical pieces were more complex and the loops had to be longer, so maybe atmospheric sound was easier. In this case, they wouldn't have to compose new music as much as do new arrangements, so it might not apply — certainly not as much — but that goes back to my initial point about trends at the time.

I looked into Doom 2's soundtrack before posting and it's surprising how different it is. I did detect at least two references to Alice in Chains songs, but the energy level of the soundtrack is toned down from the first game.

This does come across as odd. Granted, Golden Axe isn't a huge property so if you're going to take something in a different direction, there are worse properties to pick. With this being Comedy Central and seeing who is involved, I expect it to be a zany comedy thing. I can't say I'm excited or optimistic about it, but I'll take a look at a trailer when it's ready. It reminds me of Thundercats Roar, which I oddly thought about a couple of days ago as a good example of trying to revive a property in a way that few fans of such a property seemed to want and which was poorly received as I recall.

Stuff like this, among so many other things, is why 3D printing is great. The result is lovely. Might be a good idea to win a race in Super Monaco GP just to make it official!

@KingMike The Genesis version certainly felt less forgiving. The bullets moved faster as I recall. On top of that, I had trouble seeing the shots due to the color choices. That's not a problem I've had that often. Even in Truxton's final stage, I can see the shots easier, and they're orange on an orange background.

@Diogmites And thank you for an interesting reply as well. Just a quick follow up to add context regarding the KB/Kay Bee Toys reference. The reason that's relevant is because when Sega launched the system early, in May of 1995, they had such limited stock of the systems for the initial shipments that they had to pick which store chains would get the system first, and they cut KB out of the deal at that point. As I recall, KB was a strong retail partner for the Genesis, so they were not happy and refused to stock the Saturn for a while, if not completely during its run. That left Sony as the big beneficiary in terms of retail presence(especially since the N64 was not a thing yet). I had a hunch from your post that you had a KB as a main store in your region.

@Diogmites I do think things were more regional back then in the ways you describe. I remember hearing similar things when the TurboGrafx 16 was trying to get a foothold in 1989 and 1990. Some people never heard of it or saw it anywhere. Sega had way better distribution than NEC then. I don't think things had changed much by the mid 1990s. I had and loved the Saturn and I knew 3-5 other people that also had it which I realize must be unusual. That's not counting knowing people online. I think supply issues factored into all this, especially in 1995. And if certain regions had certain stores like KB and not others like Toys R Us, then that further exacerbates that. If distribution was a difficulty, then Sony had a massive advantage that way.

While the 32X wasn't the only problem Sega had with the Saturn, it is a big part of the system's overall failure and is just a great symbol of what was wrong at Sega overall. And the 32X cost Sega money they could have used for marketing. Saving that money could have allowed them to absorb a bit more losses per unit to drop the launch price to 350-375. That along with marketing could have mitigated the PS1 "$299" moment because the PS1 wasn't really $300. Players still needed a game and a memory card which would bring the system up to $370 or so before tax. I do think Sony's approach was better, but Sega wasn't really that far off on price.

@Zeebor15 He was convicted. I thought the same and perhaps the reporting was off. But he was given a suspended prison sentence with a probationary period, so it's possible they can send him to prison still. There was also a fine he had to pay.

@GravyThief My read of it is that they likely got a really good deal at the estate sale and then turned around and sold them as reported here. In that case, the original buyers did hit a jackpot. The final buyers, not so much, but they're probably happy all the same.

Nice bit of trivia. I'm glad that all came together. MUSHA Aleste is an excellent game, and it's amazing it looks so good in four megabits. I know shooters don't need larger ROMs as much, but it still looks way better than other shmups of the time. I love the intro and have shown it to people, though more so to demonstrate the amazing music.

@-wc- SMB3 was just an amazing achievement in game design for its time. There's magic in that game. It's amazing how many ideas and details are in it. I remember back in the day accidentally triggering the white mushroom houses or the coin air ships. Mind blowing.

Zelda is one of those series where I think there's more disagreement among players over which games are best, especially 3D. For example, you didn't get on well with Wind Waker, but the other commenter and I did. Someone above picked Twilight Princess as the best 3D one, and I hate that game. Even Skyward Sword has a fan or two(couldn't resist that one).

Happy anniversary. A friend of mine had the game for the SNES when it was current. I wasn't much into RPGs unless they were called Phantasy Star 4, so I just watched a bit of FF6, but I remember it looking very nice. I always remembered that opening scene. I wouldn't play the game until a bunch of years later and it was the GBA version. Honestly, I lost interest in it about halfway through it. But I've decided to revisit it at some point, and to play the SNES version. I think I may be able to appreciate what the game is more now than I could back in the day.

I believe it was one of the earlier 24-megabit games too.

This was a very good excerpt. It was a cool glimpse into development during an interesting time. Factor 5 always seemed to be near the top of the industry in terms of technical prowess. I liked hearing about their approach to their software development tools and elements of game design.

A couple of things that stood out to me was their view of carts and the surprising(at the time) limitations of the N64. There were always pros and cons to carts for the system. It wasn't a matter of just that CDs were better and that's it. At the time, there were real limitations to CDs as well. The problem is that the industry was largely moving to optical media, so whatever pros the carts had for the N64 were rendered insignificant from a market perspective. But for game development, especially games focused on action without a lot of video cutscenes, carts were very good.

As for the N64 vs. the Playstation, it was hard to design systems that were superior in every way to the competition within time and budget constraints. The N64 has some odd quirks and limitations, such as the ones mentioned above. It also helped that Sony came up with that performance analysis tool, which allowed developers to really reach the limits of the PS1 and be competitive with the N64 technically in some ways. It also shows that even developers expected the N64 to be more than it was. With that said, it definitely had capabilities and features that were ahead of the competition and it was nice to hear how they figured out the best way to use it. Nintendo treating them like a first-party developer was wise.

It's hard to pick a definitive best game of all time. There are so many elements that go into it. Game mechanics have built upon the likes of Ocarina, but many of those newer games are less important. With that said, Ocarina has always been highly regarded, and made a huge impact when it came out, so I can't take issue with it topping the list.

I've thought about this before. Again, there's no way to pick a true definitive best game. I tend to favor Super Mario Bros. 3 as a good pick for greatest game. It was a huge leap forward in game design at the time and set a new standard going forward. It was a very important game and was an amazing experience when it was new and current.

I was also not especially fond of him for the same reasons as other people have already done a good job in listing. I have to say, that congressional hearing on game violence was laughably stupid, despite there being real stakes there. Nintendo's representative there shamelessly tried to use it as a way to market against Sega in a cynical way, but that's another matter. That lieberman said he would ban those games constitutionally sure says a lot, considering there was nothing unconstituitional about them and the required amendment would be difficult to write.

It was definitely a bad time to develop the next-generation systems as the 16-bit era was peaking and then winding down. As the article states, the Saturn's development began in 1991. Even if the bulk of the work happened in 1992, it would still be easy to not see that 3D was the way to go at that time and that 3D that was good enough would even be realistic. If you look at various systems(3D0, Jaguar, PC-FX), it really demonstrates that the consoles were developed in a strange transitional period, much like how the Dreamcast was finalized not long before a large leap in 3D technology.

This reminds me that I really need to try the HAL-developed games for the Game Boy and NES. I had the Master System adaptation of the C64 game. A business simulation with action elements was an odd concept. Somehow, at the age of seven or eight I had a pretty good grasp of it and could reach the last boss. I revisited a bunch of Master System games several years back and this was one of them. I was able to jump right back in without missing a beat despite not having played it for around 30 years or so.

Missing Playdate systems? I hope they catch the crank responsible for this.

@-wc- We're kidding ourselves. Everyone knows if they went with one of those edgy '90s names like BloodPuncher: Puncher of Blood, it would have been way more successful and they would have sold two billion copies.(just joking, of course)

I've always had a soft spot for top-down or isometric racing games. There was one flash racing game I remember enjoying in the early 2000s but I forgot the name. This one definitely looks interesting in that style. As for the scale of the cars, they remind me of the tiny Micro Machines that were micro compared to the regular ones. I do want to see more about how this one plays.

Toaplan's later shooters are great and some of my favorites in the genre. Truxton 2 is punishing, but it plays well, is very pretty, and has great music. I love Grindstormer/V-V (Vee Five). It's one of those games where I knew I'd love it just from looking at it. The V-V version uses a Gradius type upgrade system and is more challenging. Grindstormer uses a more traditional power-up system and bombs. It's not bullet hell, which I'm not into, but it puts a lot of shots on screen. Some of the bosses are really tough, but I'm amazed at how much I improved against them. The Genesis port has issues, but is surprisingly good overall. Dogyuun is also fantastic. I love the gameplay and weapon system. The music is a highlight as well.

I should say that Grindstormer and Dogyuun are challenging, but definitely beatable for people that are not experts(That's what Tatsujin means) compared to the Tatsujin/Truxton games. Though I did run into some bosses that took a while to figure out, but I did.

That once impressive 8.9 million score is pathetic(not really). Do you even Tetris, bro???

Joking aside, it's amazing how much he pushed the score up though. I know how when certain records are shattered, it's a bit of a floodgate opening, but I also have to imagine with these different people setting records rapidly that they were all working on this concurrently.

Interesting story. I'm not especially familiar with Tekken, so I learned things here. I was a Sega and Virtua Fighter in those days. In some ways, I viewed Namco as the enemy in those days, but it was out of respect because they were probably the only company who could go toe to toe with Sega in the arcades then. Much like Capcom and SNK's rivalry, their big fighting franchises are more closely related than it seems as they share creators. Fatal Fury is almost an alternate sequel to Street Fighter, which then spawned more advanced games that truly rivalled Street Fighter 2, and Tekken is like an alternate sequel to Virtua Fighter. It is fitting that Namco would be the ones to do it.

I understand the reservations on going with the name Tekken, as it does not mean anything to English speakers. However, it sounds cool, much like how English was thought of as cool in Japan. Instead of renaming it completely, perhaps calling it Tekken: Iron Fist or something like that would have been the best move. In hindsight, it didn't need such a boost to marketing as the game drew players regardless. But my hypothetical solution would give the word Tekken a meaning, since that what it is said to mean, and then you could drop the subtitle for the sequels since it would be known at that point.

In some ways he's wrong about the Playstation-based System 11 & 12 boards killing the arcades, but he's also right in other ways. They certainly played a role, but it was also inevitable. The perceived advancements in 3D technology was always going to shrink, and we see that in how much smaller the impact is of every new generation of game console. But the System 11 and 12 were not powerful arcade boards. Namco had to limit their games to work within their limits. However, the System 12 provided some impressive results, looking competitive with Virtua Fighter 2 which used much more expensive hardware. But I do think the decline of arcades was also due to fighting games reaching a saturation point and changes to home console games including more complex narratives, the rise of popularity of RPGs worldwide, and games with more hours of content(for better or worse). And in the arcades, I think it was the NAOMI that both extended the viability of arcades a little bit longer due to its versatility and low cost, but also "killed" it as it could surpass Sega's own Model 3 in some metrics, including raw polygon processing. There was no longer any point to custom arcade hardware in most cases, but also no point in home consoles being way behind either.

It's certainly coming along very nicely and is visually impressive. The scaling effect near the beginning needs a bit of cleaning up, but that was really the only issue. Even if it's a placeholder, the music sounds very cool. On his reference to looking for a unique music style for game like this, it makes me think of Bio-Hazard Battle which has such a bizarre soundtrack, though one that I really enjoyed.

It reminds me of several other racing games of the period, which isn't a bad thing. It makes me think that they should have put out a game called Seta Rally. It does look pretty good and looks to have been pretty far along in development.

@Azuris The battery will last a long longer than a month if they're actually using the system. I think the month without use is incorrect anyway, or there was some issue with that particular system. I don't remember the battery ever being that much of an issue for my Saturn when the system was current.

Zelda 2 was fun when I was a kid even though I didn't know enough to get all that far. It was a Nintendo Power game. I thought it would be tough to get back into because of cryptic elements and perhaps clunky mechanics. But I tried it anyway and I ended up enjoying it more than expected. It has issues which can be mitigated by modern conveniences like save states, so there is room for improvement. To my surprise I enjoyed grinding for experience early on with those skull things(turbo fire is a must) and then being overpowered from very early on. It's hilariously satisfying to one shot some of the early bosses.

Having to deal with loading time of the disk system version does sound unpleasant.

For me it's Shinobi 3. It's such a great game and I play it often. It's amazing it turned out so well as it got off the a rocky start and they scrapped a lot of it. At least they had the right people on it to fix it. I missed its release at first and was surprised to see it when I bought some used games from a friend. That was one of the games I played most on my Nomad.

But the Shinobi series is very good overall. I had some trouble getting into Revenge of Shinobi at first, but I came to appreciate it. I used to watch that game's attract mode in stores before I had a Genesis. It was mesmerizing. I played some Shadow Dancer in the arcades, but I think the Genesis version is a better game and I enjoy that a lot as well. The original arcade Shinobi is still very good. I had the Master System version when it was new and that's worth playing as well. And then the two GG Shinobi games are excellent, and may both be the best games on that platform.

I did play some Shinobi Legions, but after Shinobi 3, something seemed off about it, but it wasn't bad. And I've sampled a bit of the PS2 Shinobi, and its spin off Nightshade. I liked what I experienced of the concept and would like to play more.