General Arcade & Retro Chat' Special Championship Edition

DaveyDave · 13-08-2024 1:52am

Anyone ever check out videos on the World of Longplays channel? Even if they're tool assisted, I'd never be able to memorise a game. Speedruns are similar.

I checked out Shinobi 3, it's interesting to see what they do differently, whether it's platforming in different ways or just waiting a second for an enemy to move to a certain spot to make your next move easier. To this date, despite playing it over and over for the last 17 years and being one of my all time favourite games I have never beaten the game. The stage with the flying rocks or whatever they are always messes me up. I think I might have gotten past it once, but I lose too many lives/abilities that would put me in an impossible position to finish the rest of the game especially as there's an insane difficulty spike on the last level. One day...

Speed runs too, I always find it amazing how people discover glitches and shortcuts but even then, you still need to memorise the game. The RNG, the patterns enemies take, the hit boxes etc. My favourite games that I know inside out and can play with my eyes closed I'd still never be able to speed run. I never got the achievement on the XBLA version of Sonic for beating the game in 45 minutes, although I got the one for beating Sonic 2 in under an hour. Just couldn't do it!

Retr0gamer · 13-08-2024 8:44am

To think that Google made their name on a search engine that just worked. And now it doesn't. The only reason they are still going is that competitors like bing are complete dog ****.

o1s1n · 13-08-2024 10:01am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122497024#Comment_122497024

The only game I've ever come close to memorising to those levels is the first Sonic the Hedgehog. Playing it is more meditation than playing a game really, I just zone out. It's actually a great stress reliever! 😁

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122497261#Comment_122497261

It's crazy when you think how many search engines there used to be. And you could use specific search engines for looking for certain things.

I used Yahoo as my main hub in the late 90s/early 2000s. Had a Yahoo mail account, was always in the Yahoo Chat rooms and then the Yahoo search engine. How things have changed.

Still find it mad to think that chat rooms have basically vanished completely. They were such a cornerstone of the internet back then.

Retr0gamer · 13-08-2024 10:19am

I used to use different search engines to find specific roms. I actually discovered Google that way. Back then people could only upload a small curated selection of a few roms so it took a lot of searching through geocities and angelfire sites to find a working rom you wanted.

I remember the likes of cult of kefka and mame.de being incredible that you could get such a big lost of games from!

o1s1n · 13-08-2024 2:08pm

Oh I remember the Cult of Kefka website too! Actually I'd zero knowledge about FF VI back then so the name was completely lost on me. 😂

You have to wonder how many of the roms dumped back then are still the ones in use today, or were there loads of redumps over the years?

Steve X2 · 13-08-2024 2:50pm

I used to love mame.dk back in the day(around 2000-2001 i think). I would download roms in work as the internet was slow at home and spend the evening playing away. Ahh Compaq computers, thanks for the internet :)

bugs · 13-08-2024 2:51pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122498504#Comment_122498504

You can bet loads of the dumps made back in the 90's are still in use. However, REDUMP, NOINTRO, etc. have dumped pretty much every systems images/roms multiple times per year. Each release is not a complete redump of the entire sets but over time I'd guess they've caught everything.

Retr0gamer · 13-08-2024 3:40pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122498716#Comment_122498716

I remember going to college so I could download the enormous 80MB rom of metal slug 3 and take it home on my 100MB zip disk.

There were times I spent the entire day in college in the library downloading roms.

o1s1n · 13-08-2024 3:53pm

Always wished Zip disks went a bit more mainstream than they did. They're a bit like the Sega 32X of data transferring. Everyone had moved on to CD before they really ever got a chance.

Steve X2 · 13-08-2024 9:08pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122498977#Comment_122498977

I still have my Clik disks and PCMCIA drive around here somewhere. Never had a need for them, but they were cool at the time(in my head anyway).

CiDeRmAn · 13-08-2024 11:44pm

I would be sitting in the internet cafe, and split the zip across a couple of floppies, before bringing home and reconstituting the game on my hdd.

Exciting times indeed!

That would have been 1995/6

The_B_Man · 15-08-2024 1:40pm

Are these worth anything?

Just the boxes, no games, but has all the inserts etc.

Retr0gamer · 15-08-2024 9:40pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122506289#Comment_122506289

They're quite common unfortunately. I looked up the price of them and they weren't terribly expensive but im sure a collector will be looking for boxes for inboxes copies they have.

Retr0gamer · 15-08-2024 9:41pm

Fitted the Rexus Nexus and it's working like a charm and an easy install. I might have a power brick now but it's not the worst compromise.

The_B_Man · 15-08-2024 9:51pm

Grand so. Will lob them up on adverts for free.

Is this code any use?

Retr0gamer · 15-08-2024 10:59pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122508098#Comment_122508098

You'll get something for them I'd say.

The codes are useless with the online service down now but you know collectors will love those pristine codes.

sniper_samurai · 24-08-2024 2:50pm

Seems Smyths are getting in the new Speccy.

https://www.smythstoys.com/ie/en-ie/gaming-and-tech/retro-gaming/the-spectrum/p/243333

Tom Mann Centuria · 24-08-2024 3:07pm

^Man behind that is the same man who was part of the Spectrum Vega+, and despite jumping from a sinking ship his fingerprints are all over that fraud.

Not the same audience but for very similar money you could get a brand new fully functioning Spectrum using a ZX Pico in a brand new replacement shell and keyboard membrane. Only down side would be VGA output rather than hdmi.

CiDeRmAn · 24-08-2024 6:49pm

I'll definitely be picking one up

Tom Mann Centuria · 25-08-2024 1:17pm

Not a fan of giving Andrews any money but if it was in a nice big sale.... Mind you, even then I'm not sure I'd bother, having a Spectrum with no Sinclair and "The Spectrum" on it, just reminds me of Sorny or Panafonic, or those knock off Nes minis from AliExpress.

Maybe that's a placeholder image and he'll replace the crappy "Retro" with Sinclair if he can get the rights, and "the" with ZX.

Inviere · 25-08-2024 1:24pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122542003#Comment_122542003

Yeah never noticed that on the pic, that does look a bit cack alright.

sniper_samurai · 25-08-2024 2:26pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122542003#Comment_122542003

I think it's just The Spectrum to keep it in line with the other ones they've released like The Amiga A500, The C64 and The C64 Mini.

Tom Mann Centuria · 25-08-2024 2:34pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122542242#Comment_122542242

Yeah probably, the Retro where Sinclair should be is shíte though. Maybe he'll have second thoughts and just leave it blank instead which would be an improvement.

Inviere · 25-08-2024 3:00pm

I could live with The Spectrum, but agree with that awful RETRO label, that's bad and would be better blank than that.

Tom Mann Centuria · 25-08-2024 5:41pm

There's some good games on it, not that it's difficult to find them, and your bandwidth won't suffer downloading Spectrum Games :pac: but it's a nice blend of old and some good new homebrew.

I think a better collection than the C64 mini had at launch anyway, which is surely the only concern 😀.

Talking of Paul Andrews previous misdeeds I just wish some clever soul would come up with a Pico based board for my Vega + shell that's sat on the shelf looking at me.

https://armchairarcade.com/perspectives/2024/08/24/the-spectrum-game-list/

Retr0gamer · 26-08-2024 2:59pm

What if I told you the Nintendo 64 being 64-bit was kind of a lie?

So yes, the N64 was capable of 64 bit operations, so it definitely is a 64 bit machine. But there more than likely isn't any game that used the 64 bit instruction set because it takes exponentially more processor cycles to process a 64 bit operation than a 32 bit one. In fact most console cpus after were 64 bit (some were 32) and probably didn't use any 64 bit instructions either. If a process could be performed with a 32 but number there is no advantage to processing massive 64 bit integers for the same thing. The 64 bit processing is mostly just used for security checks. Of course there is some large bit processing happening on the GPU side of some consoles and there's also moving of large amounts of data between processor and GPU that need large bit sizes but it's mostly been redundant in videogames. The only game I know of that uses 64 bit floating points is star citizen.

Retr0gamer · 27-08-2024 9:49am

Hearing a lot of these old retro shops are closing:

https://twitter.com/ShaneWatch/status/1828197356380266806?t=m-yz3PM0f75p-9o3-bEaAA&s=19

o1s1n · 28-08-2024 4:45pm

This is pretty cool, some old footage of the canned Rayman on the 32X.

Was playable at E3 1995 but then vanished.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dv_rylhAcs

Inviere · 28-08-2024 5:38pm

I wonder if that's on actual 32X hardware, as it looks very good all things considered.

o1s1n · 28-08-2024 6:56pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122555671#Comment_122555671

Be gas if there was actually a Jaguar hidden behind the display!

General Arcade & Retro Chat' Special Championship Edition

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