So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition

murphyebass

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

Altered Beast gets a bad rap but when it came out it was undeniably really impressive. Belt scrolling action games are a fun genre that doesn't get enough love as well. Not giving the player the choice of stopping lends them a certain rhythm like a shmup.

Good analogy on the shmup.

Yeah I saw online it didn't get a lot of love which I thought was a bit odd alright.

Retr0gamer

murphyebass wrote: »

Played a bit of Altered Beast on Megadrive last night.

I'm ashamed to say I'd never played the game before. Looks a bit blurry at the moment without my incoming rgb cable but still playable and I liked it !!

Cool how you turn into different animals. First boss is mental. Throwing heads or something at ya is bizarre but in keeping with the games style.

I can only imagine how cool this must have been as a launch game.

Oh Christ no. That game is garbage. You've so much better to choose from on the megadrive.

As a launch title it was amazing with the massive sprites but now it looks far from arcade perfect and since the new sheen has worn off you realise it's just as awful as the arcade game it was ported from.

murphyebass

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Oh Christ no. That game is garbage. You've so much better to choose from on the megadrive.

As a launch title it was amazing with the massive sprites but now it looks far from arcade perfect and since the new sheen has worn off you realise it's just as awful as the arcade game it was ported from.

Seems a bit harsh but I know there's better games out there.

I just always wanted to play it and never had a chance.

I'm going to try and pick up games like that where I didn't get a chance to play when I had the console as a kid.

Cool spot is another one that I know most think isn't great but I'm dying to play it.

Shapey Fiend

The trick with Altered Beast is play it on extra hardest setting.. did you have to put in a code to unlock it I forget? They throw loads more enemies into the mix and it gets quite frantic. It's still fair, if somewhat memory testy, which I don't think the arcade version is as much.

You have to look at first couple of years of MD titles in the context of their time. The colour palette looks kind of ugly till they found some workarounds but it was TONS of colour back then.

The forced/belt scroller I like best on the MD is Wonderboy III: Monster Lair. Again, maligned by a lot of people nowadays, I've seen it turn up on lists of worst Mega Drive games, but I must have completed it a 100 times. Again, the extra hard mode is where it's at. Throws extra enemies into the mix you don't even seen in the regular game.

Retr0gamer

Altered beast isn't a total train wreck. I just find it really shallow and boring. Much better games to play.

Get yourself Gunstar Heroes and Rocket Knight Adventure's!

Cool Spot isn't a bad game but it's not great either. Real middle of the road platformer. The problem with it is all the dave perry games use the same engine and all feel the same.

Shapey Fiend

Yeah I've never been mad on the Dave Perry platformers either although they're very good as European platformers go. The visuals are very slick but repeat from screen to screen so much (memory restrictions?) the levels aren't very memorable. Either that or the level design just isn't great in general.

Noel82

Ran through Final Fight 3 last night. While probably overshadowed by SOR 2, it's still a really enjoyable beat em up with lots of moves and extra abilities. Although FF3 does have more than 3 enemies on screen at times, the FF series on the snes could have been much better if they used smaller sprites so they could have more enemies consistently. Games like turtles in time managed it easily.

Capcom for the most part used fairly shoddy programming and rushed a lot of games onto the snes, Konami will always be king of that era imo.

MEGA BRO WOLF 5000

Sim city on the snes. Left it running for two weeks and my city is at metropolis level 😂, almost 100k in the bank too.

When I tried that as a kid I was told to turn off the console, only had the telly in the sitting room so my games of sim city would only last hours.

wheresmahbombs

The classic Sonic games are some of my mainstays.

Mr.Saturn

Noel82 wrote: »

.

Capcom for the most part used fairly shoddy programming and rushed a lot of
games onto the snes, Konami will always be king of that era imo.

Am I being glib in saying Konami built a beat-em-up dynasty on the back of essentially re-skinning the same well-made game with different popular licenses?

murphyebass

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Altered beast isn't a total train wreck. I just find it really shallow and boring. Much better games to play.

Get yourself Gunstar Heroes and Rocket Knight Adventure's!

Cool Spot isn't a bad game but it's not great either. Real middle of the road platformer. The problem with it is all the dave perry games use the same engine and all feel the same.

Both of those games are on my to get list but no rush. I don't want to just build a collection. I want to play the games I get too, and unfortunately time isn't my friend these days, but I'm ok with that.

Its the other reason I don't want to get an everdrive or play rooms in general. I just end up with millions of unplayed games.

Anyway Coolspot reminds of a time when there was a shop with a load of mega drives in it hooked up to tellys in my local town and you could go in and pay to play. I was just about old enough to be going in to those shops on my own and then they closed down. I remember my brother saying he played cool spot there and showing me magazines with it in them. Looked "cool" dare i say.

Anyway looking forward to playing lots of different megadrive games in the year ahead. Thinking robcop v terminator next. Looks class and again I never played it back in the day.

The other game I have is a three in one with Monaco GP, alienstorm and Super Thunder Blade. I like the first two a lot. Both great games, to me anyway. Super Thunder Blade is cough choppy cough. Seriously though the system just can't handle it very well and it's trying to do a lot. But maybe that's just me.

CiDeRmAn

Mr.Saturn wrote: »

Am I being glib in saying Konami built a beat-em-up dynasty on the back of essentially re-skinning the same well-made game with different popular licenses?

Well, they weren't alone.
Capcom have been peddling the same scrolling beat'em up for decades, with minimal differences, from Knights of the Round, Final Fight, Aliens, same thing again and again with a new wrapper.
I may be biased however....

Retr0gamer

Robocop vs. Terminator is pretty bad as well. It's like a badly made turrican.

I was obsessed with it back in the day but it was really only because of the gore. When I play it now I realise the game underneath was kind of bad. When it comes to run and gun its severely outclassed by the likes of gunstar heroes, contra hard Corp and revenge of shinobi.

As for Konami and capcom I feel their belt scrollers did enough to differentiate themselves from each other even if they were all using the same Base engine. Capcom more so. I feel their later belt scrollers were the finest ever made with AvP being a personal favourite. Linn in that game was insane when you got good. You could pull off some devil may cry **** in it.

Robocop v Terminator is an excellent title.
Universal soldier was a badly made Turrican. Good soundtrack though if i recall correctly

Shapey Fiend

I feel like if they'd had a block/parry button in these scrolling fighters they could have been a bit more interesting. Stuff like Golden Axe 3 implemented some sort of blocks but not well.

Been playing a fair bit of Sonic with my 3 year old. When it gets down to it there aren't a lot of games they can handle. Starts to make sense to me why touch screen stuff became wildly popular.

Noel82

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

I feel like if they'd had a block/parry button in these scrolling fighters they could have been a bit more interesting. Stuff like Golden Axe 3 implemented some sort of blocks but not well.

Knights of the round has a block system that works well, snes port is decent.

Shapey Fiend

That reminded me of another Capcom game we had at the snooker hall that everybody was crazy about for a few months called The King of Dragons. I haven't played it since 1991. Seems it has blocking as well.

o1s1n

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Robocop vs. Terminator is pretty bad as well. It's like a badly made turrican.

You shut your dirty mouth!

Retr0gamer

o1s1n wrote: »

You shut your dirty mouth!

Ah come on. Take the tommy tellarico soundtrack and license away and it's a bland euro shooter.

o1s1n

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Ah come on. Take the tommy tellarico soundtrack and license away and it's a bland euro shooter.

I don't think it's top tier but I do think it's a good, well executed game. There's a great sense of destruction in it and IMO is one of the few examples where digitised sprites actually worked, the art direction and animation can be really nice at times.

Plus as mentioned, the soundtrack is brilliant. Gotta love that sexy female 'Terminator' voice sample

Retr0gamer

I always find once they replace the enemies with terminators I get really bored of the game.

murphyebass

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I always find once they replace the enemies with terminators I get really bored of the game.

A come on SPOILER ffs!!













.. Kidding

wheresmahbombs

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

Been playing a fair bit of Sonic with my 3 year old. When it gets down to it there aren't a lot of games they can handle. Starts to make sense to me why touch screen stuff became wildly popular.

Cool. What Sonic game(s) have you been playing with them?
Touchscreen games are generally very accessible, so that's why they have become popular.

Doge

Retr0gamer wrote: »

revenge of shinobi.

That reminds me, i still have yet to play through Shinobi 3. Will do it once i get my hands on OSSC.

Shapey Fiend

wheresmahbombs wrote: »

Cool. What Sonic game(s) have you been playing with them?
Touchscreen games are generally very accessible, so that's why they have become popular.

Mostly 2.

He's mad to play Quackshot but it's a bit beyond him at the minute.

o1s1n

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

That reminded me of another Capcom game we had at the snooker hall that everybody was crazy about for a few months called The King of Dragons. I haven't played it since 1991. Seems it has blocking as well.

Was one of my favourites from when I was a kid. Actually managed to pick up a broken PCB a few years back that had died due to the suicide battery. The Last Bandit revived it, works perfectly now!

wheresmahbombs

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

Mostly 2.

IMO, S3&K is the best out of the original classic games to come out on the Mega Drive.

Shapey Fiend

I politely disagree for reasons I've said on forums so many times I'm feeling like a bit of a broken record. Concise version is I feel like Sonic 2 is the most concise game which is what you want in a Sonic.

Sonic Mania is a very close second right now. Dramatic switch ups in style from act to act give it almost as rapid pacing.

That's class Oisin. I remember when that game arrived in Ennis people were proper hyped about it. Most kids didn't have a whole lot of 20ps at their disposal so one or two people would be playing a game with like 5 people watching and telling them they sucked. People think Xbox live is mean? Pshh! It was merciless. You'd 3 player games like Super Offroad before that but people still mostly played it 1player. When King of Dragons came there was either 3 or 4 people playing it at once or none at all.

wheresmahbombs

Mania had awesome act-act transtions in style, say Chemical Plant and Stardust Speedway.

Retr0gamer

Left the pc at home this Xmas to focus on retro games. So far I've been blasting through megaman legends. It predates the dual analogue controller so controls are quite clunky but it's fine once you get used to them. Exploring the world is the most fun part and it's very studio ghibli esque. The overwork town is bright and colourful and full of quirky characters and you have an underworld filled with dangerous robots.

There's a metroidvania vibe to exploring the underworld as you gain new abilities to access new parts of the ruins. It's very reminiscent of Laputa Castle in the Sky, right down to a band of antagonist sky pirates with hearts of gold.

I've also been playing super Mario bros vs. It's like the original but designed by a complete bellied. 1up mushrooms are missing and the levels have subtle changes that make them much tougher. The biggest changed are the bowser castle stages that have been changed almost entirely and are way tougher. Definitely an interesting game to play and the vs system colour palette seems a bit odd.

wheresmahbombs

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I've also been playing super Mario bros vs. It's like the original but designed by a complete bellied. 1up mushrooms are missing and the levels have subtle changes that make them much tougher. The biggest changed are the bowser castle stages that have been changed almost entirely and are way tougher. Definitely an interesting game to play and the vs system colour palette seems a bit odd.

The poem from Peach though...

And I've got a hankering to play Symphony of the Night via the ePSXe emulator. I had it on my PS3 and quite enjoyed it, before the thing was sold. I'll see if it emulates well.

The Japan-exclusive Sega Saturn port isn't up to par with the PSX version, despite its extras over its PSX counterpart, for reasons explained from 1:15 to 5:16 of this Game Sack episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dobr4u7eohE

Retr0gamer

Saturn port is garbage. The extra areas arent great loads if the visual effects are missing or replaced with ugly dithered effects and there's tonnes of slowdown and loading. Saturn is capable of so much more.

wheresmahbombs

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Saturn port is garbage. The extra areas arent great loads if the visual effects are missing or replaced with ugly dithered effects and there's tonnes of slowdown and loading. Saturn is capable of so much more.

Especially if the Saturn is known for the 2D monster it is.
Accessing the map is a pain in the *** on the Saturn port.

CiDeRmAn

Some time ago I realised that Outrun 2 HD was available at one time on the Xbox 360 service and, sure enough, there it was, as I had bought it in the past, forgotten and in mean time was removed from the store.
However, having bought it in the past, some two or three 360's ago, it was available to me to download!
Woohoo!
However, as much fun as it was it was pretty limited compared to the Outrun 2 and 2006 titles.
Imagine my joy, un-confined, when I saw that Outrun 2 on the Xbox worked via BC on the 360, and that the 2006 game also works!
Sadly, I don't have the latter on Xbox, only on the PS2 and PSP, so I've thrown an offer on one this morning on Adverts.
Nevertheless, Outrun 2 remains a stunning title on the 360, 14 years later, hence why I'm comfortable posting it here on the Retro forum!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=intavQCN8HQ

What's also of relevance to the retro community is that, outside of emulation, it's the only way to play at home tracks from both Scud Race and Daytona 2.

Scudrace, and the Outrun Stage built from a series of Scud race tracks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwDgtolPsXQ

Dayona 2, and the Outrun 2 stage built from it's tracks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=045QgQHB78U

Retr0gamer

Are those tracks available for the pc version?

The Xbox version of outrun 2006 on Xbox 360 BC isn't great. You can play a half hour of it before the sound starts to become corrupted then about 30 minutes later it will crash.

emeraldeye

I'm pretty sure those tracks aren't available in the PC version, but I do think the PC version of Coast 2 Coast is the best version to get.

Coast 2 Coast includes all of the tracks from OutRun 2 (with the exception of the special tracks and an old MAME emulated version of the original arcade).

It can run at 1080p, 60fps (most likely higher if you have a higher res./refresh rate monitor), uses the same textures as the arcade, and if you tweak your graphics card settings you can add features like anti-aliasing or improve anisotropic filtering etc.

I have the original Xbox OutRun 2 aswell, which is very impressive, runs very well. I also tried this on my Xbox 360 and it works, although if I remember there are some minor incompatibilities; stuff like details in the scenery not rendering correctly. I haven't tried it in years so I could be wrong

CiDeRmAn

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Are those tracks available for the pc version?

The Xbox version of outrun 2006 on Xbox 360 BC isn't great. You can play a half hour of it before the sound starts to become corrupted then about 30 minutes later it will crash.

Noooo!
Don't say that!
Well, perhaps Outrun 2 is fine....

CiDeRmAn

Outrun 2 runs so well on an Xbox as the original arcade hardware is pretty much an Xbox as well, just with twice the RAM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_arcade_system_boards#Sega_Chihiro

On the other hand, Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast was a console only title, but I suspect the Xbox version is the superior, though it was a discontinued console by the time it was released, being succeeded by the 360 in '05.

The PSP Outrun 2006 is amazing, tbh.

emeraldeye

I think the texture quality was reduced on the Xbox version of OutRun 2 compared to the arcade, but it is a really impressive conversion

I have Coast 2 Coast for PC, it's superior to the Xbox version (I have that aswell)

PSP Outrun is very impressive, although I do find the frame rate is pretty choppy at times, still it's amazing that it ran on a handheld back then

CiDeRmAn

It's a pity with licencing issues it was never brought to the more modern devices, that would run it at a silky 60fps.
For now I had hopes pinned on the 90's Racer project, but seems to be dormant, now called 90's Super GP and being published by Nicalis.
Hopefully something will be announced there soon.
https://www.nicalis.com/games/90ssupergp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il7dx5XR4u8

accensi0n

Been playing The Bugs Bunny Blowout on the NES, completed it there. I had been referring to it as 'Birthday Blowout' in my head, but just realised thats what its called in North America, but they removed the 'Birthday' in Europe for some reason.
The game gets better as it progresses, the final boss is a bit disappointing though, he was the easiest to beat.

End screens after completing it:

Shapey Fiend

90's Super GT looked so slick, so early, it's a wonder it got held up so much. Probably got bogged down trying to do it on loads of platforms. Should have just gone Steam to start with then port. Sega should have bought the bloody thing it looks 10x prettier than that new Daytona update they're flogging.

wheresmahbombs

PS1 emulation isn't quite working out for me. I tried Crash Bandicoot on ePSXe to no avail. I wanted to give that a go before SotN by the very chance that I would have trouble getting the latter to work, and I really didn't want that. In RetroArch's case, the PS1 .bin files aren't being detected.

Inviere

wheresmahbombs wrote: »

In RetroArch's case, the PS1 .bin files aren't being detected.

You need cue files for those bin files. Beetle HW in Retroarch run most everything I throw at it (some games brilliantly, others, not so much), though that said, PS1 emulation still has a ways to go. It's improved a lot over the last 8/12 months.

o1s1n

As I'm usually at least one gen behind of current consoles, I finally got around to picking up Super Mario 3D World for the WiiU. It's definitely as good as the hype made it out to be. Absolutely love it.

My only criticism, and it's not really a criticism, more a lack of tech, but the lack of 3D that you have in 3D land really takes something away from it. Feels like it should be a game with 3D capability.

wheresmahbombs

Inviere wrote: »

You need cue files for those bin files. Beetle HW in Retroarch run most everything I throw at it (some games brilliantly, others, not so much), though that said, PS1 emulation still has a ways to go. It's improved a lot over the last 8/12 months.

I just found the .cue file for SotN. BTW, what's SotN like with Beetle PSX HW? Might give it a go tomorrow if it emulates well.

CiDeRmAn

o1s1n wrote: »

As I'm usually at least one gen behind of current consoles, I finally got around to picking up Super Mario 3D World for the WiiU. It's definitely as good as the hype made it out to be. Absolutely love it.

My only criticism, and it's not really a criticism, more a lack of tech, but the lack of 3D that you have in 3D land really takes something away from it. Feels like it should be a game with 3D capability.

The game has taken some flak for not being Galaxy 3, but it really works as a SMW series sequel.
A lot of folk didn't enjoy the 3D of the handheld and so the full console experience of the console title wasn't hurt by its inability to display in 3D.

I do think that, like the maligned Sunshine, 3DWorld will benefit from a more objective POV with time, while we can simply be satisfied with knowing we are 100% right, that it's a great game!

Retr0gamer

3D world has some of the most generous post game content with it giving you even more new levels than the base game. In fact I feel the game doesn't really reach its full potential until the tougher post game stages.

o1s1n

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

The game has taken some flak for not being Galaxy 3, but it really works as a SMW series sequel.
A lot of folk didn't enjoy the 3D of the handheld and so the full console experience of the console title wasn't hurt by its inability to display in 3D.

I do think that, like the maligned Sunshine, 3DWorld will benefit from a more objective POV with time, while we can simply be satisfied with knowing we are 100% right, that it's a great game!

After the initial hype and novelty of 3DS 3D, I didn't care too much for it either, but I found Mario 3D Land was a great example of how it's not only just a visual trick, but actually (at least IMO) enhances that game.

There was something that just clicked between the diorama type levels and the sense of space that 3D can bring. It really aided with Mario's movement too. Would have been great to experience that in 3D World too, but alas, no 3D on the WiiU.

CiDeRmAn

o1s1n wrote: »

After the initial hype and novelty of 3DS 3D, I didn't care too much for it either, but I found Mario 3D Land was a great example of how it's not only just a visual trick, but actually (at least IMO) enhances that game.

There was something that just clicked between the diorama type levels and the sense of space that 3D can bring. It really aided with Mario's movement too. Would have been great to experience that in 3D World too, but alas, no 3D on the WiiU.

I think this is key, and delivered the same kind of experience that Luigi's Mansion brought on both the GC and later 3DS titles, that sense of a tangible place just beyond the screen surface, like the display is a window onto a world of form, rather than a set of fancy polygons of little real substance.
Dark Souls achieved the same thing, I think Riddick on the Xbox was similar too.
Once upon a time it was cool to see a game making use of the latest tech, so you have filled polygons, shaders, voxels even, and the visible presence of these effects somehow added to the experience and probably brought us to where the PS4/Xb1 are now.
Other games, like the one's mentioned and often on the Nintendo wanted to use the available power to build worlds instead, to use the tools as a palette, paints and brush, rather than a statement of console heft.
Never more so prevalent in a literal sense, with Okami on the PS2 and Okamiden on the DS, by Capcom.