Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

Gabriel

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    4,766

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Posts posted by Gabriel

  1. Posted

    Barring anything with randomized loot boxes, I'd say Dead or Alive 5: Last Round is up there. I think the Dynasty Warriors style games have a considerable amount of DLC in terms of costumes and missions.

     

    Some JRPGs have an insane amount of item packs, levelups, bonus characters, bonus costumes. The Tales games seem to have been absolutely consumed by this.

     

    Then of course there are the rhythm games.

  2. Posted

    I play Vita games on the PSTV, but same thing.

     

    The game I've played the absolute most is Super Robot Wars V, with 5 complete playthrus so far. I LOVE IT!

     

    Currently I'm working on a second playthru of Super Robot Wars X. It's good, or else I wouldn't be on a second playthru, but V is the better game by far.

     

    I also spent a lot of time with Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart. It's the only Neptunia style game I've completed, due to the fact that it's a TRPG and even as grindy as it is, it's not as grindy as the main series games.

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    So background aside, is the pacing and ship movement in Exerion for sure similar to what you remember?

     

    It feels familiar, and that's about the best I can say. Playing it feels like scratching some kind of long unaddressed itch. I'm not entirely sure if it's because it's legitimately that old game I've searched for so long or if it's just because I generally enjoy death from above games of this style.

     

    Those little pastel satellite enemies and the birds seemed super familiar tho. As in, when I first saw them, I was like "Is this it? Have I finally found it?" The NES version has some spinny disc enemies that similarly seemed like some from the game I remembered.

  4. Posted

    I'm bumping this thread from 15 years ago because I've decided on what game I'm going to say is that game I played in a gas station in the long ago summer of 1989. Note that I didn't say I'd definitively found the game. I've just decided the game I found is as close as I'm ever going to determine.

     

    I've looked for the game for all these years, but my faulty memory of what the game actually looked and played like certainly hampered me. I find it interesting to see that 15 years ago I was certain that the game was a vertical screen, because somewhere along the years I changed my mind and recalled the game as a horizontal screen.

     

    The only other thing I seemed to recall about the game was that I associated it with Pleiades for some reason. If my recollection is correct (and it's already highly suspect), I recall the game having a strange title. The title reminded me of Pleiades which I knew was a sort of follow up to Phoenix, and something about the game made me think it was a follow-up to Phoenix.

     

    I also seem to recall the game was made by a company I recognized. Even though I say above the copyright screen read 1987, that memory also warped to the point where I had started recalling the copyright screen reading 1985. But the game I recalled was more at home in 1982.

     

    Anyway, long story short, the game I decided this was is EXERION by Jaleco and the cabinet version I saw was likely a Taito version. The ship and the way the ship moves feels familiar to me. The enemies also seem familiar, and the presence of bird enemies gives some traction to my recollection of a pseudo connection to Phoenix.

     

    The big catch is that I don't recall the game I originally played back in the day having a background at the bottom third of the screen as Exerion does. I also distinctly recall not realizing the player ship could move vertically as well as horizontally until I played the game for a while and was scoring high. Playing the game in emulation, it's hard to believe that I could ever have played Exerion without moving vertically and done well.

     

    Anyway, I remember playing this game at a gas station convenience store which was situated on my way home from the job I had in the summer of 1989. If I had some quarters after work I'd drop in there and play a few rounds of this game. I never went back there after quitting the job I had, so I haven't played the game since. I think the gas station was closed down sometime in the early to mid 90s, and has been boarded up and closed ever since.

     

    The gas station was recently in the news. It seems it's the property with the most back taxes due in the entire city. So many things from back in those days are gone, bulldozed away, with new things built over. It seems absolutely bizarre this gas station is still standing, boarded up and rotting for over 25 years.

     

    Part of me almost wants to believe that the old machine I played was still in the building when the gas station closed. I envision this dark place filled with decay, and a gutted cabinet sitting near the front of the store. In my mind's eye I see the purely imaginary smashed monitor, and the bashed in side panel covered with graffiti applied by trespassing vandals. But in this vision, the marquee is still miraculously partially intact, and the title is just waiting there to be known.

     

    It sucks being old. I will never be able to know with 100% certainty that Exerion is that game from my youth. The memory is so dim and distorted. This game wasn't my first like Space Encounters. It wasn't a particularly good game. It was just something I played to wind down after a 12 hour shift of busing tables and washing dishes. There was no one I played it with. There was no great love of the game. It's only real claim to fame is that it's a blank spot in the boundary between my childhood and adulthood that I've been frustrated with my inability to label.

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    Of course Super Breakout was my first game. I forget how long it was my ONLY game. I was just happy to have the 5200 at that time, so you've never seen someone so overjoyed to play Super Breakout.

     

    I forget what I got first. I'm pretty sure I got Qix, Countermeasure, and Star Raiders all in short order. I think Star Raiders was my first separately sold game. I'm not 100% sure, but I do know I got it very early and Star Raiders was probably THE game I was most excited about.

     

    Later I got Defender, Football, Baseball, and Star Trek.

     

    I'm pretty sure the final new 5200 game I got back in the day was Pole Position. I didn't score any new 5200 goodness until post-2000.

  11. Posted · Edited by Gabriel

    I hold in Neutral until the counter reaches 1. Then I hit the gas. As the counter ticks 0, I release the clutch and start. First gear.

     

    I don't hesitate at all. I immediately shift again to second. So the start of the race is gas, release-tap. Second gear.

     

    Now I hesitate. It takes a split second for the Tach to reach the red. At that point I shift. Third gear. This kind of feels like gas, release-tap, tap.

     

    From there it's another moment's hesitation. Then shift. Fourth gear.

     

    Now I try to squeeze in four pops of the clutch/wheelies. This gets the tach higher. This is the part I really don't have down, but when I can get it right It's four pops.

     

    On the last pop, I release the gas and hold the clutch. If I've done it right, the tach will be maxed out and I'll be releasing the gas a split second before both the engine blows and I finish the race.

     

    I've gotten quite a few 5.87s. My top so far is a 5.81. I'm still a long way away.

     

    I think my problem and what I'm trying to improve is that I'm too heavy on the shifting. You just barely need to tap it. A sensitive controller would go a long way.

     

    And I'm not telling anyone this with this strategy. The optimal 5.57 strategy is out there for everyone to see. What I'm trying to convey is the feel of it. Dragster is a game which you really have to feel a good run to have any inkling of the game. What's strange is that when I have an exceptional run, it always feels so smooth and almost lazy that I initially think it's a bad one.

  12. Posted

    I'm pretty sure my first one was a baseball game. Kids at school were getting Mattel Football and other LED games. It was something of a status symbol to have one of the LED sports games of the era (late 70s). I didn't like football, but I did like baseball at the time. I think I chose a Caprice Pro-Action Baseball, or something similar. The design of that one looks most familar to me. I recall it being important to me that it have a flip cover for the pitcher controls, and I distinctly remember a sort of stadium design to the unit.




    I didn't really enjoy it much. I only really begged for it in a misguided attempt to fit in with the other kids. I probably went through the battery and never messed with it again.


    The only other LED game I ever owned that I can recall was an Entex Space Invader. It was given to me as an unprompted gift. I can't recall if it was a christmas or birthday present. I loved this one and played it a lot.




    I have a specific memory of playing it one night while the animated Hanna_Barbera Charlotte's Web was on TV for the umpteenth time. That night is when something finally clicked for me and I beat the game. I think I rolled the score a few times before I stopped.


    One day my poor little Space Invader game didn't boot up properly and changing the batteries didn't help. By that point I had Atari, so it wasn't a great loss. But it was like saying goodbye to an old friend, one I had outgrown, but which I'd had good times with.


    I always wanted the Coleco tabletops, particularly Pac-Man and Galaxian. At one point I sorely wanted the Mattel Missle Attack game (for some unfathomable reason).

  15. Posted

    The Street Fighter 2 craze seemed a bit manufactured to me at the time. I regularly went to the arcades back then. There was never any local excitement over the original SF2. I recall lines going outside the arcade to play Steel Talons. I remember huge crowds mobbing the 6 player X-Men machine. I even recall how the arcade would be packed with people watching someone play Time Traveller (bonus points if you even remember that one). Street Fighter 2 was that machine that sat over on the left wall of the arcade that no one ever played.


    When my friend told me he rented Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior for his SNES, I thought he was talking about Fatal Fury. He played Fatal Fury at the local 7-11 all the time. When I played his rental with him, I wondered who all these people in the game were? Where was jacket and hat dude? Where was spiky hair kickboxer? Truth to tell, I didn't really like SF2. Yet, there was something that kept me coming back to it. I suppose I felt the game was taunting me for not being able to do the special moves. Plus, the multiple characters and play against friends kept some interest level going.


    It was only after my friend bought the game and Champion Edition was announced for the home systems that I started to see some genuine signs of SF2 mania. People started playing that lonely machine in the arcade. The arcade bought another machine, and another, and another. Crowds started to form around the arcade machine. Within a year, the arcade was almost entirely fighting games. The giant arcade machines like Steel Talons, X-Men, or Ninja Warriors were replaced by giant coin pushers. It stopped being worth going to the arcade because there was no variety, and it was more fun to play fighting games at home than pay 50 cents for each play.


    Anyway, I got caught up in the Champion Edition hype, which became Turbo hype. I wanted to play those bosses, dammit! I remember buying SF2 Turbo edition for the SNES. The game was $85 on my McWage, so it hurt. Then I wanted some control sticks. I bought these two multi-platform SF2 branded sticks which were $80 each. They were AWFUL. Yeah, I spent a lot of money on a game series I didn't really like all that much. My friends and I played a fair amount of Turbo, though.


    I remember I read about the picture you get if you beat the game on difficulty 8. For some stupid reason, I decided I was going to beat the game and see that picture. Keep in mind that I'm a total scrub and I was even worse back then. Still, I brute forced my way through, and finally beat M. Bison to see the picture. After I did it, I wondered why I had ever bothered wasting my time to see a digitized version of a promo picture which was plastered everywhere in relation to the game. Still, I can say I did it, I guess.


    I didn't go to the main arcade anymore. As I mentioned earlier, it was nothing but fighting games and coin pushers at that point. Instead I went to an arcade next to a movie theater which was nearby. They didn't have a lot of variety either, but I could at least play a shmup or Battlezone if I didn't want to play a fighter. One day they had Super Street Fighter II in! The machine was empty so I decided to play. I was doing OK for me when a little kid about 12 comes up and drops a quarter in (another reason why I went to this arcade: games were just 25 instead of 50 cents). I get ready to play and HE COMPLETELY ANNIHLATES ME. I stuck my tail between my legs and went off to play Battlzone.


    In terms of home ports it's been all SNES so far. I hadn't ever bothered with Champion Edition for the Genesis, my preferred console. I did pick up Super Street Fighter II for my Genny, though. SSF2 was probably the home port I played the most. I liked the ASCII SG-6 sticks I had for my Genesis best, so that was the SF2 variant I made everyone play at my place. After I got the equivalent sticks for the SNES, I had to admit that Turbo was a somewhat better game. So SNES Turbo is probably my preferred port while Genesis Super is my nostalgic port.


    Really, my friends and I were more Mortal Kombat fans. MK was what really got me and my friends hyped. We played a ludicrous amount of MK1 and 2 on the Genny, and then MK3 and Trilogy on the Playstation. I always liked the look and lore of MK over SF2.


    Back to SF2. I lost interest in the game with Super SF2. I rolled my eyes at SSF2 Turbo. My impression is that a lot of people did. I didn't bother with the 3DO SSF2 Turbo port even though I had a 3DO. SSF2 on the Genny was good enough for me. Like most people I didn't care at all for SF3, and that was how the Street Fighter glory days ended for me.

  16. Posted

    Well, if you're including Ultima 1-9, then I guess I'll nominate Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior)


    Dragon Warrior 1 - 4 are available on the NES.


    Dragon Quest 5 and 6 are available on the Super Famicom and weren't brought to North America at the time.


    Dragon Quest 7 is available for the Playstation.


    Dragon Quest 8 is on the Playstation 2.


    Dragon Quest 9 is for the Nintendo DS.


    Dragon Quest 10 is a MMORPG and doesn't count.


    Finally, Dragon Quest 11 is for the 3DS and PS4.


    So, there's the problem, right there. Dragon Quest is all over the place.


    It's possible to get Dragon Quest 1-6 on the SNES. There are fan translated Super Famicom remakes of 1, 2, and 3.


    The 3DS is also a good way to play Dragon Quest. Remakes of 4, 5, and 6 have been made for the DS, which is compatible. Entries 7 and 8 have also been remade for the 3DS. So, with a 3DS it's possible to play official releases of entries 4-9 and 11 in english, making it the best bet if you are a western Dragon Quest fan.


    Dragon Warrior 1 through 3 are also available as Game Boy Color remakes. There was also a Japan only Dragon Quest Collection for the Wii which contained the original Dragon Quest 1 - 3 for Famicom as well as their Super Famicom remakes.


    And Dragon Quest is so sprawling that I'm almost certain to have gotten something wrong.

    • Like 1

  18. Posted

     

    Also, why did those first two guys both happen to choose 5.51 as the time to fabricate? The progression of the records published in the newsletter had been 5.61 and then 5.57, so if you're going to fabricate a time, why 5.51? For that matter, how did either of them even know that 5.51 was a time that could actually be displayed? Omnigamer examined the code so he knows which times can be displayed and 5.51 (as well as 5.54) can be. The times that can be displayed are in increments of something like 0.0337 seconds (I can't remember if that's the exact number or not, but it was somewhere around that), but without knowing the inner workings of the game, you can only observe that the increments are either 0.03 or 0.04 seconds. If you saw that the record had been 5.61 and then 5.57 (a difference of 0.04 seconds), wouldn't you expect the next times to be 5.53 and then 5.49? Of course, that would be wrong; the next two displayable times are 5.54 and 5.51, and then it goes back to a 0.04 second increment for the next displayable time (5.47). Whether it is a 0.03 or 0.04 second increment depends on how the more precise internal increment gets rounded for the displayed time.

     

    All times end with a 1, 4, or 7. This is easily observable. There's no need to work out increments.

  20. Posted

    I went to college late. So mine was the PS1. I didn't buy games while I was in school, but I did buy Final Fantasy Anthology and Front Mission 3. I remember coming home from lab and sitting down to play Front Mission 3 or Final Fantasy VI for the rest of the evening. I also played a lot of Time Crisis and Need for Speed 3.

     

    Gameplay time with friends was usually tabletop RPGs, but when we played video games it was usually Soul Blade, Tekken 3, Battle Arena Toshinden 2, or Mortal Kombat Trilogy.

  24. Posted

     

    My question is, have you booted a game you were immensely good at, but then just crashed and failed with?

     

     

    Oh, most definitely. Not Lynx related though.

     

    I used to be insanely good at 5200 Qix. I used to play it with default controllers on expert difficulty and score in the 500K range on an average day. I tried it on default difficulty for the 5200 HSC a few days ago, and the experience was humbling. All my skill at the game is just gone. I struggled to even complete the first level.

     

    I wasn't spectacular at 2600 Yar's Revenge, but I could reliably get to the third/grey enemy shields. Now, as soon as the shield turns purple, I'm dead. I'm pretty sure BITD I could get a score of a few hundred thousand. Now I'm lucky if I can even break 100K.

     

    Any time I pick up 5200 Defender after a long absence, I have a few games where I suck and can't even score 50K. Then I get back into the groove and can play forever.

     

    I used to be marginal at arcade Galaga, easily scoring over 100K each game. Now it's a major event if I can get to the second extra man at 70K.

    • Like 1

  25. Posted

    Speedrunners might as well set up their own thing. TG is irrelevant at this point.

     

    Ages ago I read about how the speedrunning community had issues with TG and butted heads on a semi-regular basis. My understanding is the speedrunners didn't like TG as gatekeepers and as the face of professional gaming. Like me, they saw TG as a good ol' boy network, and that was a problem because speedrunners are forming their own good ol' boy network. TG was making rules which propped up their own celebrities while hindering the speedrunner celebs.
    You want specifics? I can't give them. This is just my impression of things, and may or may not be an accurate observation.
    Then this mess explodes, and my impression is the speedrunning community is the primary group trying to expose TG. So, it comes off like a power play to invalidate TG in the public eye as well as to shame the TG good ol' boys. Todd Rogers was the easy target in order to throw into disrepute because nearly everyone who has seen his records questions their validity. Now they've gone after the golden boy Billy Mitchell.
    That's not to say the investigation isn't revealing truth. I'm only questioning the motivation. Gaming is becoming professional, and there's money in it if you're the gatekeeper to the media. A motivation with that as a background rationale is a lot more believable than "the integrity and honesty of videogame high scores."
    Or that's what my innate paranoia and half assed observation tells me, anyway.
    • Like 2
AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...