I was in college at the time and there were a few of us with Dreamcasts. I bought my games (and still have them), but there were guys with literally every single game in the library burned to disc.
I was in college at the time and there were a few of us with Dreamcasts. I bought my games (and still have them), but there were guys with literally every single game in the library burned to disc.
That's all true. It wasn't until the last 15 years, give or take, that handheld screens could really handle fast motion.
Persona 3 FES and Persona 4 were PS2 titles. Aside from Infamous and Demon's Souls, the rest were multi-platform. I bought a PS3 at launch, but my game library for it was always small.
Same. It can play PS1, PS2, and also cook up a hamburger. It reduces the fat!
The same way you beat any game in the 1980s and early '90s: lots of pattern memorization based on trial and error. In the arcade, that means lots of quarters.
Once a game like Dragon's Lair was memorized, you could play through the entire thing on only a couple quarters, to the astonishment of arcade bystanders.
Kids and teenagers had more time back then because smart phones and Instagram and YouTube didn't exist. People underestimate what a huge time sink those can be.
No one had Internet access. You could play a game, play an instrument, read a book, go to the mall and the arcade and maybe catch a movie, go outside, or watch whatever happened to be on the 3-4 network TV channels (or possibly cable if your family had the money). And TV back then was mostly terrible.
So if you had $10 in your pocket, that was an entire afternoon of entertainment at the arcade and movie theater.
Lots of great quotes from this game.
"Listen, Yuffie. I don't care about the history of Wutai or your feelings." — Cloud
"Those who sacrifice themselves for their jobs aren't pros... just fools." — Tseng
I was a senior in high school at the time and even back then I thought this kind of advertising was crass, gross, and unnecessary. No nostalgia here, just second-hand embarrassment.
It's an interesting video, I suppose more so if you didn't experience game history in real time like those of us who did. No one ever thought Half-Life looked real. But wow, if you experienced games starting with text only and colored squares like I did, each new capability was incredible.
In Zork, you were wondering around an entire dungeon, simulated in text. Anything was possible!
Then a game like Ultima VII came around. The world was so huge, and it felt like a whole world where I could do anything. It was to me how Skyrim was in its time.
Ultima Underworld (or Wolfenstein 3-D or Doom for most people) felt incredible because it was movement in a 3D space, but without step transitions like the earlier dungeon games. When I walk, I actually see my movement in real time!
Each step was bringing us closer and closer to reality, and when you get to a game like Half-Life, where it feels like a small section of a world was being faithfully simulated, it was incredible.
This stage was tough, but it wasn't unfair; I beat it many times. The next stage, the one with the Turtle Van—that one was tough because of the mob enemies and because I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Watching long plays of it later, it's really obvious why I only beat it a few times. The Mechaturtle boss was also brutal!
I never did make it past the airport. This game was ridiculous.
Like castor oil, or..?
This is a very complicated question. Reverse engineering a public game server via network traffic sniffing is legal in the general sense because you're doing it without direct knowledge of the server code. However many game EULAs forbid exactly this, or even forbid playing on private servers. And you have to agree to the EULA in order to use the game client. When in doubt, read the EULA.
However, speaking practically, many game companies don't enforce this.
This plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color games and you have to build it yourself.
Analogue Pocket comes preassembled and plays Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance out of the box, plus Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket, NGP Color, and Lynx with adapters. If jailbroken it plays pretty much anything from a card. And Analogue OS has a ton of options, what are you talking about?
I'm glad we have more FPGA consoles coming out; after all, the RetroUSB AES is better and cheaper in many ways than the Nt Mini. But Analogue also created the market and is constantly pushing the envelope on technology. Analogue builds good products and this Game Boy Color alternative sounds great too.
Not having a nose is probably an asset in a medieval war camp.
They didn't want you to rent it multiple times. They wanted you to rent it once, be unable to beat it, but be intrigued enough that you purchased the game from a store. If you could play and beat a game in a single rental, there was little incentive to buy it (so the developers thought, and I imagine had some data to back it up).
I played this again many years ago on Xbox when the Disney Afternoon Collection came out, along with Rescue Rangers 2, DuckTales 1 & 2, and Darkwing Duck.
The music for these fans was really great, owing to Capcom. DuckTales is basically an unofficial mini Mega Man soundtrack at times (Moon Stage, Transylvania Stage, Mine Stage). Many of the themes from Darkwing Duck also sound like they come from Mega Man 3 specifically, like the ending theme (very bluesy).
Every small electronics company is dealing with this if they source high-quality parts. It's just gotten much harder in the last several years to source quality components in large numbers from China, and the big hardware manufacturers always get the lion's share.
Follow any similar companies and you see a similar stop-start pattern, quickly selling out, and yearlong preorders.
The National Videogame Museum appeared to know little about the deal for it to take on the cabinet and added "As far as we’ve been told, there has been some recent water damage to the unit, which might make it impossible".
It later said it hadn't been contacted before the purchase and, because of its current condition and storage implications, it would not be accepting the cabinet.
PSA: This kind of thing happens far too often. If you're planning on buying something to donate to a museum, contact them before purchase! Involve them in the process from the beginning, especially if the condition is in question.
OK, I'm a big text adventure fan too, as well as a programmer and hobbyist electronics tinkerer, and you gave me a great idea.
I want to take this cheap wireless home theater keyboard and see if I can replace the touchscreen with a tiny OLED display and power it all with a simple board running Linux for text adventure games. The biggest challenge might be getting everything to fit properly in the case, but if I can make it work I'd have a portable text "game boy"!
I think they're going for the Analogue market. Real hardware for real cartridges, built to modern standards (like HDMI).
Two problems:
Analogue consoles are all FPGA. This isn't. It's more like the Hyperkin consoles from that perspective.
I'm not sure how much demand (read: nostalgia) there is for these older consoles these days. At retro game conventions I haven't seen much. It's mostly NES and later.
Atari probably could have won over some of that market if they used an FPGA, but they've gotten this wrong again and again by contracting with companies who put an emulator on a SOC in a box.
Ordered mine a year ago, and still waiting for it to arrive in the mail. Between this and my HDMI mod I need to apply, I think my Dreamcast may be coming out of storage soon.
Up voted for recommending real Roland hardware. I have an MT-32, CM-32L, and SC-55mkII to cover all my compatibility bases.
I picked this one up when I was in high school. Never did get rescued... I looked the other day and prices for this one are pretty high, so apparently we're not the only ones who remember it!
Edit: And apparently there's a lot of sequels? Who knew? I guess it was called Lost in Blue later on. They all sound like they have the same basic story...
"Leaks"
Before last year, I had only played Final Fantasy I & II in the PSX Origins collection for the numbered entries. I had also played Tactics and Tactics Advance, which I was obsessed with when they first came out.
Then starting last year I played VII (the original), Crisis Core Reunion, Final Fantasy III (Pixel Remaster), and I'm currently mostly through IV.
VII never captured my imagination as much as it probably would have in the '90s, but I enjoyed it. I had this impression of the game taking place entirely in a cyberpunk world, and I was slightly bemused to discover that only the first quarter of the game is like that. After that it becomes a standard Final Fantasy game. I did laugh when
::: spoiler end game spoiler the kaiju attacks started and they started playing a riff on the Godzilla theme music. :::
I mean, what a weird and eclectic game. I think it would have been stronger and more cohesive if it stayed in the cyberpunk theme rather than switching gears to bright and sunny, chocobos, and snowboarding...
My friend had one. I had a Game Gear. Between us, we probably singlehandedly kept an entire battery factory in production.
I bought three games and two manga adaptations from this collection, so nothing super rare. But they were all in very good condition.
Unfortunately there's just not that much appetite at museums for displaying the crazy in-depth game collections of some folks. As the article says, most such museums are geared at showing an overall history. If only I were a multimillionaire who could afford to build a museum and put in place enough security to guarantee the safety of the items on display...
To add to that, I think this may have been the game that started that trend. There was always a difficulty ramp, but the sudden spike level came later in the series. Any Mario platformer these days has a crazy difficulty spike near the end.
I mean, New Super Mario Bros. 2 had an entire DLC called "impossible levels." And don't get me started on The Final-Final Challenge in Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
Boy. It's really hard to justify that price unless you only play on original hardware.
I have a bunch of original consoles, but I also own a bunch of Analogue FPGA consoles for direct HDMI output. MegaSD for Sega CD FPGA. GameCube has the Carby. Wii U for Wii games. And I'd probably be more inclined to play PlayStation 1 & 2 on my PS3 with hardware backwards compatibility and direct HDMI output.
So that leaves Dreamcast, which I just need to sit down and mod for HDMI since I already have it ready to go; Xbox, which just recently saw an HDMI mod (although I have the original component cables and an old Onkyo component to HDMI receiver I could set up if I were so inclined); Nintendo 64, which also has HDMI mods available; and PSP, for direct TV output (knowing I could get a PSTV if I were really so inclined).
So the question is, is upscaling to 4K worth the trouble on its own if the original signal is digital to begin with and I'm playing on a good LG 4K TV? And if so, is it worth $750 when I could theoretically use that money toward a few classic games in near mint condition instead? Hmm...
Do you have a list? What condition are they in?
Congrats! I've beaten most of the Zelda games and this is one of my favorites. (I tend to like the quirky first sequels where they tried something different, even if it doesn't quite work: Zelda 2, Mario 2 (USA), Final Fantasy 2 (Japan), Castlevania 2...)
That's a fun cover illustration!
Sinistar was terrifying back in the day. Every time he came after me I'd start to panic, haha.
Thanks for clueing me in to incube8! I subscribed to their newsletter and signed up for release announcements for a few of the upcoming games currently in development.
Have you had a chance to play this game? If so, what are your thoughts?
I mean, does it need to happen at scale? How many people are clamoring to replay Atari games with real cartridges who haven't been satiated by the many previous releases at much cheaper price points? FPGA would at least make them stand out from those other attempts and might have gotten me to bite the bullet.
Analogue seems to do OK and has a much larger built-in audience (more nostalgia for NES era and newer). And their 16-bit consoles have been around the same price point as this.
This looks well-designed, but I think it's a misfire at the conception stage based on its (presumed) intended audience.
Nice collection. Where did you get those Amiibo cases?
This author seems to lament that its a computer doing it, but the way the summary functions is really no different than if a human did the same thing.
It's entirely different. Scale matters.
You say this like you're correcting the person you're responding to, but they didn't dispute this. Both can be true.
Is this the moment John Romero finally makes us his bitch?
But seriously, I have the big box version of the first SIGIL and it looks like I'll be picking up one for this too.
I don't know what that patch is, sorry.
The Game Gear was only good for 2-3 hours on six AA batteries, so you basically had to play tethered to the wall or invest in lots of rechargeable batteries. The library also wasn't as strong overall as the Game Boy's, although its top games were previous-gen console quality (because they literally were in other territories).
Both screens were also just awful about blurring during fast movement. Nintendo wisely avoided it altogether, while Sega was bound by their flagship brand. When you really got going in something like Sonic Chaos, particularly considering the small viewing window, you were really just letting Jesus take the wheel.
Source: I was a Game Gear kid.