Eltigro

Shadows of the Beast was one of those games that I always thought looked nice in screenshots, but I never liked the way it moved. The main character doesn't really move left or right on the screen. He just changes directions and the background moves the other way. It just never looked like real movement to me, if that makes sense.

The family resemblance is so strong, it just looks like the same sprite. Strong genes... lol

I'll second Asteroids on the 2600. The default, first game mode can be played indefinitely.

Messing with MAME... Okay, this week was mostly spent playing some emulated arcade games... I've got a ton of them somehow... anyway... Arcade AeroFighters - 30 min (I love shooters, so while many of the games on my MAME list are going to be curiosities that I check out once and then rarely if ever come back to, the shmups are the ones that I'll surely be returning to. AeroFighters is a vertically scrolling shooter with modern day jet fighters. I chose the F-16 looking one for this play. It's a great game, but I do have one little issue with it. When a power-up comes on the screen, it seems to stay too near the top of the screen. I know there should be some risk vs reward, but 90 percent of the time when I go to the top of the screen to get a power up, something comes on the screen and crashes into me. I swear, in the entire play through, I think I only got past the second power up twice.) Darius - 15 min (And here I thought that the extra wide play field would allow me to see danger coming from a long way off and make the game easier. No. I was wrong. Still tough game. Doesn't help that the powerups seem to go off screen too fast most enemies are behind obstacles or take multiple hits to kill. Oh well... still looks super cool.) R-Type - 10 min (I did okay... got to the second stage end boss pretty easily, but got killed a few times there so stopped. My joystick is a little loose and hinders me sometimes on precise movements... which you kinda need for a game like R-Type.) Scooter Shooter - 5 min (I had no idea what I was doing in this game. lol) Rampage - 128 min (I kept quarter feeding this thinking, "I'm gonna just quarter feed my way to the end." Well... found out Rampage doesn't have an ending. So there I was on day like 115 with cities starting to repeat before I finally looked it up. I mean, I had fun, but I probably wouldn't have spent as long if I knew then what I know now.) SeaWolf - 5 min (A periscope type submarine shooting game. Not bad, but the gameplay was a little shallow... lol) I think I actually played a lot more, but didn't time stuff or write things down. I'll do better in the future. Honest! lol

Pat and Ian talking about the mini Vectrex... and reading this thread... (Unfortunately, he starts off saying AtariAge, but then mixes us up with Nintendo Age.)

My closest Goodwill never has anything. I think in the three or so years I've lived in this town, I've found one game that I bought (Tiger Woods game for OG Xbox). The next closest one is about a 30 minute drive away and is a little better. Best deal I ever found there was a GameCube controller for $5. Also found an Atari power supply for a 400 or 800 or something...don't remember now. I sold it because I didn't have a use for it, just knew it was worth more than the $3 they were charging. Other than that, the best ones I found were half a country away near Portland Oregon (I live in Texas.) Lots of games and accessories. One had one of the original Playstations (not the PSOne) just on the shelf. That at one of my local ones would have been behind lock and key.

My times... TurboGrafx-16 Psychosis - 45 min (Watched a streamer play a bit of Paranoia (the PCE version) and decided to get mine out and play a bit. Back in the day, I completed the first loop with one man. My best run this time was getting about half way through the fifth stage with one man.) Ninja Spirit - 9 min (A fun ninja game. Similar to something like Revenge of Shinobi or Ninja Gaiden, but much easier.) Legendary Axe - 14 min (Just messing around with this one... played until my first death. Died at the boss of Zone 3. Don't usually have too much trouble with them, but couldn't get the timing right.) Sega Saturn (emulated) Gunbird - 35 min (So I was talking to someone about how I wished I had a Sega Saturn Arcade stick and a way to convert it to USB so I could play some shooters and stuff on my laptop, when I remembered I have a PS1 arcade stick and a PS/PS2 to USB adapter. So I played some Gunbird, on my laptop, with an Asciiware PS1 arcade stick. That joystick is not in top form... the joystick feels off... like it's broken or sticking or something, but it still works. I took it apart one time, but didn't see anything obviously wrong with it, so I put it back together. oh well... Gunbird is a Japanese title. It is a vertically scrolling shooter with several cartoonish/anime type characters to choose from. They each have different weapons and speeds and such. I chose the one that looks like a witch on a broomstick for my play this time around, but there's one that looks like a cross between a robot and a pot belly stove that I've used in the past. Fun game, but can get pretty hectic (as all shooters should).) Arcade (emulated) 1941 Counter Attack - 20 min (An excellent game. Another vertically scrolling shooter, set in the titular year, and the World War that was going on. I really like the 1943 NES game, and this is no different. There are some hard parts... the screen scrolls in all directions in some levels and there are sections where you are having to maneuver through tight passages with enemies firing at you from behind... this was made to munch quarters though...) Bosconian - 10 min (Played through until my first game over. Playing this with the PS1 joystick setup described above. This will now become my preferred way to play Bosconian. Don't remember what level I got to, but my high score was 66600. lol) Twin Hawk - 5 min (Another vertically scrolling shooter with a WWII theme. Much harder than 1941. Will have to try some more later, I'm sure.) Neo Geo (emulated) Metal Slug - 40 min (I'm pretty sure this was emulated through MAME, but it's a Neo Geo game, so I put it in a separate section. It was emulated as an arcade game, with having to enter credits and such, so who knows. I've always liked the Metal Slug games even though I suck at them. I have probably played this one the most, but still have to brute force my way through it with a lot of simulated quarters. It was while playing this that I noticed how off the sound was on my setup. I had my laptop connected to my TV via HDMI. I have a Samsung sound bar, but noticed the sound was lagging behind the video. I quit playing for a while to figure out how to adjust the delay on the sound bar, and that ran into another thing and to another thing... so I quit playing for the day. Now I'm fighting other demons with MAME so I can get more games going.)

I was at my sister's house by myself playing my brother in law's N64. I was sitting in the living room floor playing Mario 64. I'm not sure, now looking back on it, if I was doing the second Koopa the Quick race or what, but I kept getting blown off a ledge or falling while trying to long jump or something... anyway, I got frustrated and punched a pillow that was sitting on the floor next to me. I was sure that the pillow would be enough of a cushion to prevent myself from doing any damage (like hitting a punching bag). I was wrong. I broke the fifth metacarpal in my right hand. I had to get pins put in. I did eventually beat Mario 64 with all 120 stars, and I did it with pins sticking out of my hand. I told everyone that the phone was ringing and I was running to get the phone and hit my hand on the door. There have been times I have thrown my NES controller at the system and hit it hard enough that the cartridge popped up. One time I threw it and missed the console and instead hit my VCR and cracked the plastic on the front (the clear plastic where the 12:00 flashes...) These could have been during any game, but probably something like Castlevania. I also have a TurboGrafx controller with bite marks in it from when I got particularly mad at some game and bit the controller. It's all really pretty embarrassing, really. I don't get this mad anymore. If something frustrates me, I just turn it off and play something else or do something else entirely.

Haven't played Gyruss since I rented it back in the 80's. lol Remember having trouble with it back then, didn't like the control scheme. But since I've been playing a lot of Tempest 2000 with the Jag d-pad, I might get the hang of Gyruss now...

Heh... speaking of Super Hydorah... Limited Run games just tweeted this... https://twitter.com/LimitedRunGames/status/1066027097154600962

I only played one TG shmup yesterday. Psychosis (Paranoia on the PCE). Watched a twitch streamer play some of the PCE version and started noticing differences... title screen, order in which the powerups drop, even levels... the 2nd and 3rd levels are swapped. Back in the day, I beat Psychosis with one ship. Mainly because, if you die in the later levels, it's too hard to get powered back up, so every time I died, I'd just reset... like I was some weird speed runner or something. lol Yesterday, I got somewhere in the middle of the fifth level before dying... and resetting. Edit: And after watching that long play... I'm pretty sure I only got through the first loop with 1 ship. lol...

I've seen several of the NES Classic clones with DB9 connectors... wonder if anyone's tried different controllers on those to see if anything works.

FYI... Raiden IV: Overkill is on sale on PSN right now for $4.49. Sale lasts until Nov 27.

Part two of Ben Heck's Mini Mini Neo Geo build...

NVM just posted another tweet... looks like they got it working... https://twitter.com/nvmusa/status/1064664310595637248

My gaming this week... 2600 Draconian - 63 min (Got a new high score again... 172440 I think it was on Quadrant A. Went through and played some of the other Quadrants this time. Some pretty interesting patterns for the bases. Including some that had the horizontal and vertical bases super imposed on each other, so you had to shoot out all the cannons to kill them. Throwing surprises at me!) MsPac Man - 20 min (Played with both the CX-40 and my Genesis arcade stick. The Genesis stick is more comfortable so I'd definitely recommend it for this. There's no real need to use the buttons, so you can easily use it with either hand. Missing the intermission scenes of course and scaled back a good bit on graphics and sound, but still a solid port with the mazes pretty well translated.) Pac Man - 10 min (Who hasn't played this one? lol We all know this version. Bonk bonk bonk boop boop bonk bonk popop... The graphics are sub par, the maze is nothing like the arcade and the fruit in the middle doesn't even look like fruit. I remember back in the day, we always said it was a Starburst candy chew.) Arcade? These were all played via the Namco Museum 50th Anniversary on the original XBox. I think they are pretty decent arcade emulations, but if someone knows better, let us know! Bosconian - 15 min (Much harder than Draconian I think... certainly a bit faster. But I do wonder if the difficulty is because I'm having to use the d-pad on the XBox controller instead of a real joystick.) Ms Pacman - 25 min (This one looks and sounds great. Very similar to the arcade. Differences are probably down to being played on my LCD instead of an actual CRT. I will say that this game (and Pac Man) REALLY suffers from not having a joystick. These games are just terrible to play without a proper joystick. That being said, I still had fun and actually ended up playing it longer than I figured I would. I'll also say, I don't know if the machine I played in Portland was sped up or what, but this started off a LOT slower than those machines.) Pac Man - 10 min (Never enjoyed the original as much as I enjoyed Ms Pac Man. Not sure why... probably the cutscenes and different mazes and such. But always remember playing much more of Ms in the arcades.) Jakks Pacific plug and play not sure exactly when this plug and play came out, but I've got a couple of them... including a pic of it so you can see which one I'm talking about because I think there's about a million of these... Ms Pac Man - 10 min (This doesn't look nearly as good as the XBox one, but it has the advantage of having an actual joystick! It's not a great joystick... but not too bad. The worst part of it is the same as using the CX-40... trying to hold the base still while using the joystick. The game itself is pretty much the same as the XBox one. Can't remember anything specific for differences now that it's been a day or two since I played them.) Pac Man plug and play Bosconian - 11 min (This is pretty much exactly like the XBox one. And this has a joystick, so it's a little easier to play. However, this is probably the mushiest joystick ever. Seemed imprecise and like I was fighting it more often than not. Sometimes I couldn't go diagonal... in Bosconian, you need to go diagonal.) Pac Man - 8 min (A good emulation. But suffers from the same issues as Bosconian... that darn joystick. I know a good gamer shouldn't blame his controller, but this thing really is mushy. Has anyone else played on one of these? Did I get a dud? I've mainly just had this on the shelf to look pretty for almost a year... haven't really played it since I first got it.) Dig Dug - 5 min (Same issues as before, really... but then I've always felt the control in Dig Dug was a little bit of a mystery to me. But one thing that playing this did show me is that this plug and play saves high scores! I haven't had batteries in this thing for probably a year, but when the high scores for Dig Dug came up, it showed my initials on a score that I'd gotten back when I got it! Pretty surprising, really.)

"Do you guys not have phones?" But seriously, I've rarely used the streaming services available on my consoles. The interface is usually clunky and searching and such is a chore (for Youtube... haven't really used the others even on other devices). Maybe if I had a keyboard that would work with them, but at that point, I'd rather just use my laptop.

Ben Heck is taking apart the Neo Geo Mini... planning on making it more mini... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2mkHTdN4w0

Well, I've got the 2600 versions which will obviously go here... the ones from the Xbox which I think are emulations, so I'll put them here... but also some from a plug-n-play. I'll just put them all here.

So I'm sure this has been answered before, but asking again... On a game like Namco Collection or whatever it's called for the OG Xbox... I'm playing older arcade games, but on game for a newer system... do they go in classic or modern? I'm kinda going back and forth comparing 2600 versions of games with other versions I have of the same game (Draconian/Bosconian, Ms Pac Man, Pac Man...). I think this kind of thing usually comes down to "is it a port or is it emulating the arcade" doesn't it? Anyway, any input is appreciated. Edit: I'm leaning toward putting them here...