So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition

Retr0gamer

I think the creator of Desert and Jungle had no involvement with Urban which is why it went a bit off the rails.

Soviet Strike has one of my favourite missions were you have to escort Boris Yeltsin's armoured car while it's under attack from terrorists and halfway through the mission it takes a detour to an of license so he can buy some vodka. I think that was changed in later version to him getting a 'burger'.

barryribs

I never realised that Future cop was linked to the strike series but it makes sense given the gameplay. I played it to death on our PC. I think it was in a bundle with Need for speed 3 and trespasser. Trespasser....

barryribs

LIGHTNING wrote: »

I love Trespasser! Was a few patches away from being something really great

It's much maligned now, but it was really something when it came out. I ended up completing it and loved the atmosphere and the story. There was a real feeling of being the only person on the island. I reckon it was running at about 8 fps on that pc.

Retr0gamer

It was a massive influence on Half-Life 2 and did regenerating health in a FPS before Halo (although Faceball did it before it again).

Retr0gamer

Jungle Strike takes a turn for the nasty once you hit Mission 6's snow level.

Danger zones everywhere meaning enemies have more health in them and do twice as much damage while firing twice as fast. And it's filled with some pretty hardy tanks and choppers that are a pain normally but chew through you in danger zones. You really have to pay attention to the missions. One of the last missions is to take out power lines which are patrolled by said tanks in a danger zone but it you read the fine print it says the area is protected by a radar that is creating the danger zone.... Guess who didn't read the fine print.

Retr0gamer

LIGHTNING wrote: »

So I finally got a place to myself and I went to get all my retro stuff from my folks gaff. I have a lot more than I thought. Its going to take up a lot of space. Trying to decide if I am going to sell the entire lot. Will probably keep one or two of the collection. I am emulating most stuff these days. Decisions decisions

Gradius

Retr0gamer wrote: »

o1s1n

I find things look a lot worse and space consuming when they're in boxes stored away. Get the games and that out into a bookcase or two and it's a lot more manageable space wise.

o1s1n

Excellent, you'll have to stick up some pictures when you have it all sorted

One great thing about Ikea bookcases is being able to add extra shelves, can really get a lot more games in if you bring the gaps between the shelves as low as the game cases themselves.

CiDeRmAn

I'm going to have to look at improving storage in my cave of wonders upstairs.
I now have PS3/360 stuffed into every nook and cranny, need to find a better place!
Is it really possible that I have finally reached a state of maximum gameage?

Retr0gamer

Finished Jungle Strike at the weekend. Not much else to say about it other than it was really good and a big step up from the first game.

Also started Urban Strike. Seems very similar to Jungle until I experienced my first ground mission....

What the hell happened here? The main game runs really nicely and has lovely smooth scrolling. The frame rate in these areas isn't bad it's just the scrolling.... I would describe it as MSX scrolling but even the MSX managed smooth scrolling. It's literally tile by tile. What went wrong here. It's like these areas use a completely different engine. They also aren't any fun at all.

And after my rant about Novotrade/Appaloosa I started Ecco, the Mega CD version.

The Mega CD version is a big improvement on the cart. The music is quite simply gorgeous and the game uses a lot more sampled sound effects that sound great. There's new levels as well but I've not gotten to them. The biggest addition is checkpoints to many of the levels.

I'm up to the ice world and the difficulty has really ramped up. To a silly degree, I'll stick with it though as I'm actually enjoying it although it's not as well designed as Tides of Time.

CiDeRmAn

LIGHTNING wrote: »

I never even got close to finishing any of the Ecco's I just swam around enjoying the view.

Same!

Chris_Heilong

LIGHTNING wrote: »

I never even got close to finishing any of the Ecco's I just swam around enjoying the view.

They are not that long and really good game, I would describe them as the best sci-fi/puzzle game on the Megadrive, Most people dont even know it gets dark later on.

o1s1n

Was going through my SNES carts this evening and saw desert strike. Decided to give it a go as I've been playing a lot of it on the Megadrive.

I remember the sound was pants on the SNES version, as was the resolution - but one thing I hadn't noticed before, it's an absolute game killer;

When you're flying along, you're pressing start a lot to look at the map. I'm in and out of it all the time.

In the SNES version, there's a delay of what feels like about a second!

So you're flying along, press start for the map, that comes up instantly, press start to to back to the game - Black screen for a second.

It completely ruins the pace of the game and makes it downright unplayable IMO.

CiDeRmAn

I was going to ask about the Snes version.
I must throw the MD version on.
I've the Retron5 and a decent emulation pc, which one, or try to find the time to play the original cart on original hardware?

Retr0gamer

o1s1n wrote: »

Was going through my SNES carts this evening and saw desert strike. Decided to give it a go as I've been playing a lot of it on the Megadrive.

I remember the sound was pants on the SNES version, as was the resolution - but one thing I hadn't noticed before, it's an absolute game killer;

When you're flying along, you're pressing start a lot to look at the map. I'm in and out of it all the time.

In the SNES version, there's a delay of what feels like about a second!

So you're flying along, press start for the map, that comes up instantly, press start to to back to the game - Black screen for a second.

It completely ruins the pace of the game and makes it downright unplayable IMO.

SNES versions especially of jungle strike and onwards are also ruined with slowdown

Retr0gamer

And speaking of strike games I just finished Urban Strike and it's massive disappointing.

Jungle was amazing. It was more than twice the size with 9 levels and improved on an already amazing game.

Urban goes 1 better with 10 levels. However 3 of those are ****ty on foot levels which are awful. So you have 7 real levels.

Then the game feels incredibly rushed. The cheesy cutscenes from the original games are replaced with the same 3 screens used over and over and the ending is awful, basically a single unanimated screen that looks terrible. Jungle let you watch the antagonists end in a horrible death.

The rush job extends to the missions. There's way less variety in them and the number of unique vehicles is way down on jungle strike. Things start off good but they get lazier. The final mission in particular is set in a non descript grey are and is awful with no real thought or effort put to it.

So there's only 6 levels worth playing and even then only the san fran level is a little bit challenging and 2 of those aren't that great.

Retr0gamer

LIGHTNING wrote: »

I did reply Soviet Strike not too long ago and its great. The cut scene's are extra cheddar but the overall game play very nicely. Anybody played Brigador? Its kinda a modern version of Strike, but it just lacks something. I can't put my finger on it

I played a bit of it. It's a lot of fun but it's missing the strategy of the Strike series. You're really just going around mowing people down. It feels more like syndicate than Strike.

Might give the PS1 trilogy of strike/future cop games a go.

o1s1n

Nuclear Strike is the one game from the whole series I've never played.

Don't know why, I bought all the rest back in the day but Nuclear Strike always evaded me!

Will pick it up on eBay now actually if it's not insanely expensive.

Gradius

Always liked desert strike!

I dusted off an arcade board (literally) and was giving it a bash the last while. Black Dragon by Capcom (or black tiger).

If you like ghosts goblins it's definitely worth checking out. Difficult, the whole losing your armour thing, but with rpg elements and non-linear levels and shops etc. Very, very good, an obscure gem





Huh, pictures are rubbish, coming out low resolution for some reason

Retr0gamer

I played it after hearing a lot of people rave about it. It's grand, feels like a side scrolling gauntlet but don't think it has the finese of GnG, it's a bit too chaotic. Got to a Dragon boss that killed me and I couldn't credit feed past him, basically if you die on him and lose your upgrades you are totally screwed.

Gradius

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I played it after hearing a lot of people rave about it. It's grand, feels like a side scrolling gauntlet but don't think it has the finese of GnG, it's a bit too chaotic. Got to a Dragon boss that killed me and I couldn't credit feed past him, basically if you die on him and lose your upgrades you are totally screwed.

I think ghosts n goblins has the simplicity going for it. Black Dragon is definitely chaotic if you go too fast but slow it down and it's a lot more methodical. Lots of stuff coming at you, especially the traps. A boulder drops down in front of you, you run the opposite direction off a ledge and die. But if you go right to the edge it disintegrates, some good design in it.

It's set to no continues as it is, might be asking a bit much

o1s1n

I was playing Robocop Versus The Terminator this evening on the Megadrive, have played it an absolute million times through as I had it from when it came out originally. Remembered that there's a cheat code to unlock 'violent mode'

Press start at any point during gameplay and then press:

C, B, A, B, B, A, B, B, C, B, B, C, C, B, B, C, B, C, A, C, C, A, A, A, B, B, B, A, C, A.

As well as adding female enemies and some extra animations to Robocop's death, you can also catch fire. It's not really a 'violent mode' as advertised online and more of an 'unlock the true game' mode.

I never really played through properly with this cheat enabled as I only discovered it a few years ago as more of a curiosity and a 'I can't believe I played the game and never knew that!' kind of a way.

Decided to activate it today on my playtrough and just noticed something I've never really paid attention to.

In the game there are fire hydrants. You can shoot them and water spurts out, always thought it was just there for effect and kind if is, just a visual flare and a bit of scenery interaction.

Not so when you have this cheat enabled.

Once enabled, and you get hit by a molotov cocktail or flame weapon, you catch fire.

You then stay on fire with your health ticking down until you get to a fire hydrant, shoot it and then put yourself out with the water. It can actually be quite stressful as your health is going down and it adds a level of urgency to the game.

It's a great little mechanic that I honestly do not know why they removed from the final version. Might have made it a little too hard? You actually make contact with fire quite a lot if you're not careful.

It's still in the game, so not REALLY removed, just the cheat code is so long and convoluted (you'll probably make an error inputting it!) that I 100% didn't know about it at all, for a good twenty years.

Worth a go if you're familiar with the game just to see how it changes things up.

Partially posting this here for posterity as I went looking for the cheat and had a hard time finding it.

And no Retr0, it's not a **** game only saved by Tommy Tallarico's audio production :pac:

Retr0gamer

It stinks of euro shooter. It's a poundland turrican with a good soundtrack and juvenile violence :pac:

Doge

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Jungle was amazing. It was more than twice the size with 9 levels and improved on an already amazing game.

That was my favourite of the series also, although I've only played the first level of urban strike briefly.
Never did manage to beat the drug lord in the last level of jungle strike thoug so must give it a whirl again.

I do remember being in my friend's house back in the 90s watching him play it and he couldn't find one of the hidden places where they show you a mountain / hill as a clue with no coordinates on the map.

My friend couldnt figure out which mountain / hill to shoot so I pointed out

that there was only a few mountains that had the specific shape and to ignore any other mountains. Took him a while to listen but low and behold he tried it and wasn't long finding the right one.

Retr0gamer

The last level has a very not fun level where you have to find a load of vehicles all over the map and no indication where they are. Tough mission when there's a severe shortage of fuel on the level but it defo got my heart racing for the finale!

Retr0gamer

So I've been playing the first King's Field (the japanese one, King's Field 2 was localised as King's Field for the West).

I was initially a curious look to see From Software's very first game and where the whole Dark Souls phenomenon was birthed. As one fothe very first PS1 games the graphics are laughable, the framerate is a crime and is really janky and slow.

And slowly... I've come to love it. The atmosphere is creept, the level design is excellent, very Dark Souls esque and I've discovered there is nuance to the combat. The dungeon diving feels like Etrian Odyssey as you push forward but have to balance whether seeing what is around the next corner is worth it as you might not have the resources to make it back to a save point.

Retr0gamer

So had my PS3 and decided I'd play a silly FPS game to tide me over and take a break from the weird **** I was playing.

I made the big mistake of downloading Resistance Fall of Man.

I remember it being bad when I tried the demo at the PS3 launch but my god this game is rubbish. This game was the launch game to sell the PS3 and was up against Gears of War and it's utterly laughable. It's so dull and there's nothing special at all about it. The ropey dialogue, the bland set pieces, the chronic framerate. And everything looks so incredibly flat. I mean there's PS2 games like Black that give this game a run for it's money in the looks department. The game seems to not use any pixel shaders on the textures to give depth.

CiDeRmAn

The Resistance games and the first two of the Killzone series seemed to be convinced the entire world was composed of shades of brown and that humankind would be defeated by walls of an inch high or taller, which the player couldn't step over.
And to think that Killzone was supposed to be the Halo-Killer on the PS2...

Retr0gamer

I found Killzone 2 utter rubbish as well. Technically impressive but sooooo dull and levels were tiny (which is the same in Resistance, levels are really short and feel so small).

Colonel Panic

Whatever Killzone came out on PS3... Was is 2? The input lag, holy crap!! It was like the whole game was underwater.

I enjoyed Resistance: Fall of Man a bit more, but I've got a soft spot for mediocre FPS!

CiDeRmAn

Cold Winter on the PS2 is pretty great, or at least was.
It played a lot like a massive single player focused Goldeneye with the world conspiracy elements of Deus Ex thrown in for good measure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XgOUYQiGsA

o1s1n

Was it yourself that liked Warhammer Fire Warrior years back? I remember someone getting stick here for being a fan of that...

Speaking of FPS games, I've been playing a bit more Delta Force: Urban Warfare on the PS1.

Incredibly bad frame rate and jankyness at some points, but it really does feel like the developers thought they were making a game for the PS2.

Retr0gamer

o1s1n wrote: »

Was it yourself that liked Warhammer Fire Warrior years back? I remember someone getting stick here for being a fan of that...

Firewarrior is garbage and anyone that likes it brings shame to their family.

Coldwinter is alright, as in it's good for a PS2 shooter but FPS on the PS2 never came close to the likes of Halo and they feel very dated now, coldwinter among them.

LIGHTNING wrote: »

Loved the Delta Force games on the PC, I am a bit of a Voxel Engine slut :pac:

I remember all those voxel games on PC, mostly in simulation games. Delta Force on PS1 definitely doesn't do voxels. The only console 32 bit game I remember that had a voxel engine was Amok. Voxels were touted as making a comeback recently with them being excellent for the likes of dynamic environments but there's two things holding them back. The industry is geared towards polygon rendering and animation is difficult to do with voxels. Polygons at joints and the like can be stretched and pulled with the movement whereas voxels would have to go back to early PS1 where characters were made of rotating parts or else a form of AI interlopation to add and remove voxels.

o1s1n

As someone who knows diddly squat about game engines and modelling, would it be possible to create a game using polygon models but in a voxel environment?

barryribs

I absolutely adore the PS3 but the sea of brown in those games is really difficult to go back to. Its disappointing looking back at it but a lot of games just seem to flatten the colours and add bloom to everything and it seemed to be across all consoles. I'm fully convinced the reason I enjoyed the ballad of gay Tony much more than GTA 4 was because there was actually some primary colours in it.

Those early PS3 games were rough all round though

LIGHTNING wrote: »

Loved the Delta Force games on the PC, I am a bit of a Voxel Engine slut :pac:

I loved them too, used play a lot of Land Warrior on dial up back in the day

CiDeRmAn

Urban Chaos: Riot Response is pretty great, on the PS2 and Xbox, from Rocksteady Games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eisQb2d1EhI

Retr0gamer

o1s1n wrote: »

As someone who knows diddly squat about game engines and modelling, would it be possible to create a game using polygon models but in a voxel environment?

Not only possible but many games did that, most notably the Delta Force games we were talking about. Plenty of others as well like Outcast.

There's a big problem with all the post processing and effects that have developed over the years have been all polygon based but a proper ray traced engine with voxels is kind of a holy grail if they could sort out the animation issue.

Plenty of new games use voxels in their engines for effects. Modern games use voxel based lighting effects such as RDR2 and Resident Evil Remake but that might end up a thing of the past with ray tracing.

I'm also pretty sure No Man's Sky builds its world out of voxels.

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Urban Chaos: Riot Response is pretty great, on the PS2 and Xbox, from Rocksteady Games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eisQb2d1EhI

I did really enjoy that. Just how it embraced the arcade stupidity of it all with you blocking RPG rounds with a riot shield. Would love a HD port on PC.

Retr0gamer

So I finished From Software's very first game, King's Field. You can certainly see where the Souls series got it's influence from. Interesting game. I initially recoiled in disgust from how janky and bad it looked but I stuck with it and found a fantastic little dungeon crawler.

Retr0gamer

LIGHTNING wrote: »

Just looking at some Longplay on Youtube. It looks like a mix of Ultima Underworld, Witchaven and Stonekeep.

Not familiar with Witchaven but it's most similar to Ultima Underworld than Stonekeep. More so a mix of Ultima Underworld and Demon's Souls. It's missing the quests, lore and NPC interaction of Underworld and more focused on combat and exploration. I hear the sequels are a big improvement with the third game (king's Field 2 in america) being a real hidden gem.

If you do decide to give the original a go be advised that you have to will have to patch the fan patch as there's a bug that crashes the game when you try to save.

badboyblast

Playing Pang, R Type, Bubble Bobble and Outrun : ) amounst loads of others

Retr0gamer

I beat Ecco. I enjoyed it even if there was a few unintuitive sections. The Sega CD version is a blessing with mid level checkpoints.

However the end is Ninja Gaiden levels of bull****. The penultimate level 'Welcome to the Machine' is an insanely tough autoscroller that lasts 6+ minutes. If you die to the last boss that comes up after this level you have to repeat this level. It's ridiculous to go through it to have another shot at the boss. The japanese version of Ecco lets you continue from the boss if you die but they kept it in for the CD version. I just save stated at the boss. **** it.

Shapey Fiend

Playing Total Annihilation in multiplayer quite a bit. It's definitely still my favourite RTS even if Supreme Commander has a few quality of life features you'd miss. It's just so fast and responsive and all the micro tricks like line bombing and nano blocking feel satisfying to use.

It's a **** to get running properly in Windows 10 mind you I still don't have it working perfectly. Community is working on a patch sort it out.

Lots of active modding still going on for it. Excited to try a new one that's essentially a Pro mod that tweaks the base game in subtle ways without reinventing the wheel like most of them do. I started a similar mod about 15 years ago and never finished it but another guy took up the mantle recently.

o1s1n

Picked up my GDEMU Dreamcast in the post yesterday, been playing it non stop since.

Really amazed at how instantly games boot from it. Best thing of all is not having the disc drive reading! No more 80s fax machine sounds coming from under the TV.

Going to get stuck back into Shenmue 2 this evening, never did get around to finishing it (said fax machine noises were driving people mental!)

Shapey Fiend

LIGHTNING wrote: »

Used to play Supreme Commander on LAN's but we stopped when we released that after about 30 mins the game slows down. Took as a while to figure it out but units that would say take 30 seconds to normally build were taking 2 mins. It was a known issue that was never fixed

That was due to the synchronous engine (as opposed to TA's asynchonous engine) which I believe was a cost decision made by the publisher rather than the developers choice. Faster modern processors and all the modding the Forged Alliance Forever team do has alleviated this quite a lot but there's still a .5 second lag before units respond to commands a lot of the time. There's an article goes into a lot of detail about it: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/126022/Opinion_Synchronous_RTS_Engines_And_A_Tale_of_Desyncs.php

Because TA had an asynchonous engine it played pretty well on 33k modems and full speed even with pings of 500, assuming there wasn't a lot of packet loss. TA used have other issues with longer games where the pathfinding of units would break after there were a few hundred units on the map but the community patched a fix for that. It's still a bit of a hodge podge of patches to get the thing running but they're hoping to get that sorted and use the FAF multiplayer client to do autopatching and mod switching on the fly in the next year or so which should make things a lot more user friendly.

Retr0gamer

Got myself a retrobit saturn controller. It really is the best controller ever made.

o1s1n

They're absolutely lovely aren't they? Seems to be built like a tank too, I've used it a lot now and it's still functioning great.

My poor Megadrive 8Bitdo, not so much. Buttons and all are still perfect, but the D pad has started squeaking something terrible.

Retr0gamer

Only had a few minor niggles. Wouldn't work with retroarch but autoupdating the config files fixed that instantly.

On Steam it went absolutely mental but if you switch the from Dinput to Xinput (not sure which) by holding start and b for 5 seconds it was working perfectly. Felt so good playing Mega Man 6 with it on the legacy collection.

DaveyDave

Played some Road Show in Pinball FX3 last night. Apparently there's custom options, would love to see Twilight Zone in there...

Retr0gamer

And the hori n64 knock off from retrobit also arrived. Looks like I can play mischief makers now. On a bit of a treasure buzz at the moment.