PunkySkunk

Here are some minute long samples I took from Adventures of Pinocchio (except the "Extra Live" theme, that's the full tune), since I didn't feel like searching for a program to record, and sndrec32 has that ridiculous 60 second limit Title Theme: http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=211806 The title theme is very cool, and rather lengthy. As you'll tell, I didn't fit the whole theme in. It's got that unmistakable European flair (and wouldn't you know, it seems many of Bit Managers' releases are EU exclusive, as well as the fact that they made some filmation-style games...) like so many great old computer games, and has some very epic riffs like Solstice at around 0:24 in particular. Still want to destroy your own body? Main Theme: http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=211807 The main theme. Might be the only theme, I haven't left the woods yet. At any rate, it's a pretty good song. I particularly like the little riff at parts like 0:13 and 0:30, and the one at 0:47. Somehow, it seems very fitting, especially to a forest setting. I definitely like this song! The "Extra Live" Theme: http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=211811 If you're wondering, I quote it like that, because the screen that plays this tune says "Live" instead of "Life". A girl, who I can only presume is supposed to be the blue fairy, appears with some cool effects, and it's probably the most impressive thing graphically in this game. The music, as you can tell, is also very good. It has this very haunting and calming feel. Not a lot of games can get something like this down, this small tune is really a treat! As for Light Crusader, I'm a pretty big Treasure fan, I've played everything from Gunstar Heroes and Radiant Silvergun to Guardian Heroes, Dynamite Headdy to Ikaruga, Mischief Makers (SHAKE SHAKE!), Alien Soldier, Sin & Punishment, Ronald McDonald Treasure Land, Wario World, hell, I may as well start listing the ones I haven't played at this point, but that was always one of the very few Treasure games I never got around to playing. I'll have to try it one of these days, that video looked pretty cool.

I just looked at both of those links. Just so you know, Video, Adventures of Pinocchio was posted by highretrogameblood. I've run into his videos countless times. He seems to have a hobby of loading up every single gameboy rom he can find in his favorite emulator, going down his list of games he got from a full Gameboy romset torrent, recording them with whatever godawful software he's using, and thankfully never narrates them. There's no real quality to them, he just goes down a rom list and plays them for a minute. Because of that, though, he seems to have a video for just about every Gameboy game out there, and it seems that it IS the only video for it on YouTube. I already knew the music had to be better than that, since I've seen many of his videos, and the sound quality is always really, really, really bad, every time. Go ahead and look at his other videos, any one of them. The people who bother to comment on his videos (about something other than to do something about the terrible sound quality) have probably gone deaf by now. He seems to dislike isometric games, as he says both Pinocchio and Altered Space are "one of the worst gameboy games I've ever played" and "a huge pile of crap", in a way only a seasoned and unbiased reviewer ever could. I loaded up the rom for myself, and the music is actually pretty catchy. The theme that plays on the extra life screen, I believe it was, is particularly nice. It definitely has a bit in common with the filmation style. There's no exploration, instead just single screen levels. It's simple and fun, like a lot of more obscure games like Bubble Ghost. The physics are just a little iffy, and unlike Altered Space and Monster Max, the animation isn't nearly as good, the levels aren't really amazing, and the sprites are small and somewhat difficult to make out. It's definitely not nearly on the same level, but I've played far worse Gameboy games and this one might actually be worth tracking down. As for Sylvester & Tweety, I've been playing that for a little bit now. It seems both games are actually from the same developer, Bit Managers! It seems to be a hybrid, but from the GameFAQs reviews, it seems that the side-scrolling is extremely minor throughout the game (about as small as the first chase sequence), and the isometric style, unlike Pinocchio, is very much like a filmation game. The physics, again, are just a little off (much better than Pinocchio, but this time things feel rather slow), but unfortunately there seems to be some notably bad transition time. When you die or go to another room (and considering how often that happens...), the screen turns white and it takes about 2-3 seconds before you can keep going. I've already ordered myself a copy of the game (unlike Adventures of Pinocchio, it took no effort to find, and was pretty cheap). Thank you very much, BrianC. You've been very helpful. I just knew there had to be at least one more game like Altered Space and Monster Max on handhelds. I was beginning to lose hope. If you happen to find any more, let me know. I have a feeling that I may have already dug up everything in the mine, but at the same time I feel like there's still more I may be missing out on.

It's great. I don't like a lot of the new stuff, so it's pretty much like "nobody ever releases any games", and when a retro-style game comes out, it's like "finally, a new game". NSMBW is really good (which was surprising, as I thought the first NSMB was bland, and I still don't get the hype for Super Mario Galaxy), Retro Game Challenge was pretty alright, I don't know a thing about No More Heroes except that it didn't look interesting to me in any way and don't really see how it fits in this argument, and I bought Megaman 9 and Castlevania ReBirth day one, and intend to do the same for Megaman 10. As for game collections and 2D fighting games, I eat them up. Everything from Sonic Mega Collection and Sega Genesis Collection to Capcom Classics 1 & 2, Street Fighter Anniversary Collection & Alpha Anthology, pretty much every SNK release on PS2, Atari and Activision collections, Taito Legends 1 & 2, etc. Don't get me wrong, I like newer games too, but I'm very old-school.

I've never actually gotten around to playing LandStalker, but isn't it supposed to be like an action RPG? As for Lady Stalker, I'm looking it up now. It actually looks kind of cool, but it too seems to be an action RPG with an isometric perspective. Do either of these games have a large amount of puzzle-adventure aspects? Is there a lot of exploration to the point where you'd probably want to draw a map, or not so much? Just wondering.

Thank you so much for answering! I was beginning to think this topic was invisible! I should clarify, that the purpose of finding these games is simply curiousity. My horizons are reasonably broad (well, I don't like newer games that much, they usually bore and confound me...), I'm just looking for something very specific at the moment. In fact I play ZX Spectrum games on my DS frequently (ZXDS is by far the best Spectrum emulator I've ever seen, and one of the most well-made emulators as well). I'm actually a huge fan of the graphics of the Spectrum, it's style is terribly unique and lovable. You can always spot a Spectrum game instantly. I think you misunderstood. I'm very well acquainted with the Spectrum most of the classic filmation-style games. It's mostly games of this style outside of old computers I'm looking for. After discovering Altered Space and Monster Max, I became curious as to just how many of these kind of games ended up on handhelds. I looked up that Spindizzy, and... well... that's not really what I'm looking for. It actually looks quite a bit like Marble Madness, and not much like Knight Lore, Head over Heels, or even Equinox (which is also on the SNES). Well, it is a niche that was lucky it lasted as long as it did after the Spectrum, but I thought there might've been more than two filmation-style games on handhelds. As for Chimera, it's pretty close to what I'm looking for, but I didn't really like Chimera much... >_> At any rate, you seem knowledgeable enough on the subject. I can't say I'm too surprised, but I guess Altered Space and Monster Max are the only notable entries after all! Just want to make sure I'm not missing out on a third one, you know? As far as NES-era and after goes, console and handhelds, the only games I actually know are still just Solstice, Altered Space, Equinox, and Monster Max. Somebody will probably bother to bring this up, so I'll throw in "Mr. Robot" on the PC before somebody says it. That just barely counts, since it was inspired by Alien 8 and has some similarities aside from 90% of the gameplay. I'm really not looking for PC games anyway. So yeah, to anybody just popping in, if you know of any filmation-style games from NES-era to today, any at all, just list them off. I'll pick through them and see if there's anything of interest to me.

I'm bumping this back to the first page.

I have two games for the Gameboy, Altered Space and Monster Max, that play like Filmation style games. They are puzzle adventures that play from an isometric viewpoint, with the action divided into rooms as opposed to scrolling. Ultimate Play the Game made this style of gameplay popular with their 1984 ZX Spectrum classic "Knight Lore". Altered Space is from the creators of the NES and SNES games Solstice and Equinox: Solstice II. Monster Max is from "Head over Heels" and "Batman" (the 1986 game) creator Jon Ritman. Both are relatively rare, especially Monster Max which is usually around $20. They also have a bit of history, both being made by previously recognized developers of the genre. I wouldn't be surprised if they were the only two games like that on Gameboy, but are there any more? More broadly, I'm interested in knowing just how many filmation-style games there are on handhelds, period. Even ports of games on computer and console count. As far as I've been able to find, those are the only two handheld filmation-style games I know of. I'm sure there's got to be more! I'll say this now, that games like Q*Bert, Marble Madness, and Snake Rattle N' Roll don't count (though they're all very awesome, just not what I'm looking for), neither does a handheld version of a console (i.e. Sega Nomad) or emulation (i.e. ZXDS emulator on Nintendo DS).

I see. That's very cool, thank you.

I couldn't figure out that clrmamepro. However, I am experienced with MAME, and the way these roms are packaged is totally different from what I've seen. Normally, a MAME rom is a zip file with a bunch of files that make up the rom. The arcade roms on this collection are in folders, with *.wav sounds and a single *.rom file for the rom. I hope this isn't against the rules (I'll remove it immediately if it is), but I've attached the folder for the arcade version of Millipede from the collection, and put it in a zip file. I'd just like you or anybody else to take a look at it, to see what exactly it is, and if these files can be used\converted\etc to work in MAME. Millipede.zip

First of all, I'll say right now that I'm new here. I've browsed the site a bit, and originally came to this site the first time to ask about modding an Atari Flashback 2 but never got around to it. Well, during this holiday sale I just got the Atari collection for $5 on Steam. It's pretty good, but nowhere near as good as playing on an Atari (that's a given, especially for paddle games), and I have suspicions that it might have adware, as AdAware found some new things in my daily scan today, and I haven't had anything show up in at least two months now. Then, I went on Amazon and saw people complaining that the retail CD version seems to have adware and spyware..... >_> I own a good number of the games on this collection, on a real Atari. I mostly got it for the convenience of tying the games to my Steam account, as well as the bonus material, which is actually pretty good. The presentation leaves a lot to be desired, but it readily works with joystick and mouse so Centipede can be played with a trackball no problem. Unfortunately, the 2600 versions have no mouse support, so you can't even use a trackball for Millipede. At any rate, I decided to check something. I remember buying Combat a few years ago, and one interesting thing about that game is that it included a legal rom of the original Combat, and even an emulator to play it. Unlike this collection, it was a legitimate Atari 2600 emulator and this was pretty much just hidden on the disk as a goodie for anybody curious enough to look. I decided I'd try looking in the Steamapps folder, and what do I find? In the resources folder, it's a bunch of roms! There are folders for the arcade games, and a separate folder called "Atari 2600" with a bunch of Atari roms. They all work in Stella, it's the real deal. All the Atari 2600 games in the collection can be played in your favorite emulator. However, the arcade games are packaged differently. Instead of *.bin files, they are *.rom files, included in their own folder for each game, along with the arcade cabinet pictures used in the collection to display the borders, and a bunch of *.wav files of the sounds. This is an odd setup, and doesn't work in MAME, much less Stella. So, I legally own roms of the 2600 games, but what about the arcade games? Has anybody else played this collection and know if there's a way to play the included arcade games in MAME? It's not a big deal, I'm just kind of curious about this. I think it's really cool when they include roms on the disks like this. I wish every collection (even the ones on consoles, especially since most collections I own are on PS2) let you put them in a computer and take the roms off of them, it feels more like you really own the game.