Cafeman

The wait could be worse …

This week I played through Xian Temple, Floating Islands, and finally finished Dragon's Lair and Epilogue last night. I was reminded and a bit impressed at the level design and how the paths wrap around each other, getting the most mileage from each room and location. I had over 30 gas grenades saved for the final level, so I defeated the animated stone soldiers and the dragon pretty quickly. The soldiers did kill Lara several times as I tried, I'd get stuck in a corner and get impaled on their 2 pole swords. I had forgotten that you also have to quickly remove the dagger from the Dragon's chest to defeat it, or it heals. So, I beat Tomb Raider 2, this is likely only the 2nd time I played through the entire lengthy game. On the one hand, Core Eidos gave gamers their money's worth of game play. On the other hand, TR2 levels wear out their welcome several times, some are too long and tedious in my opinion. But since you can save anywhere and multiple save files, it is more manageable and fair than with TR1's original Save Crystal idea. The Remaster graphics were quite nice, especially the fire rooms stood out. I rarely activated the OG uglier visuals for long. Next up is the TR2 Gold game. I started level 1, The Cold War, it starts with Lara in arctic water grabbing sunken harpoon ammo to kill a shark.

I finished Tibet over the weekend. Monks, Ice Palace, Yetis. I remembered one part clearly, in a dark giant room with cages of Yeti, but some of this I didn’t remember at all. I started to wonder if I level skipped some of it, bitd. I started the Xian Temple stages last night, Lara is back at the Great Wall, and I didn’t remember much here either until I ran into some giant spiders, I did have a vague recollection of that. It’s lengthy and complicated and good thing you can save anywhere, because there are traps galore.

*** PLACE ENTIRE CONSOLE ON LAP

Regardless of which key it is, by the time you've found it, your ship has exploded.

I've been itching to hook up my Wii, also to play some GameCube games on it. My disc spin started to make a noise, like the edge is barely touching the lid or something, which is distracting and I never had it fixed. I think it's been 4 or 5 years since I played the console. My son used Wii far more than I did (Animal Crossing / Mario Kart / Smash Bros / Paper Mario). I never loved most of the library at the time. Personally, I had a good time with Excite Truck, Donkey Kong Country, and Punch Out (I didn't use motion controls however). I hated the forced inclusion of motion controls in many games that we rented, but Wii Sports was much fun when people came over. We had a Rayman Rabbids screen shooter that was fun and different. Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 are high quality. I got great satisfaction at slinging/ whipping the controller to shoot Mario from a star. Endless Ocean was peaceful yet sometimes eerie ocean exploration - bumping into Goblin Sharks or other unexpected sea critters often startled me in that game. Didn't Metroid Prime Trilogy get released on Wii, with wide-screen added? Those would be awesome if you didn't already play the GameCube originals.

I still have mine. Curt sent it to me.

For 5200 Adventure II, the following is probably correct for the 7 possible rankings. It isn't too hard to get the best ranking, if you are familiar with the game. (The XE version is different, and has 16 possible rankings which are also affected by which character you play as). If you Quit the game before winning, Block Head If you Quit and are in Eaten State, Square Meal if TimesEaten >= 4, Duck Food. Else: default ranking = Peasant if you won game and killed 2 Dragons, Castle Guard (3rd highest ranking) if you won game and killed 3+ Dragons, Swashbuckler (2nd highest ranking) If you got a good ranking so far, and you didn't revive more than 1 time, and you killed 3+ Dragons, and found at least 1 Bat Egg, you get the best ranking.

Kill at least 3 dragons , don’t get eaten more than 1 time, and I believe find at least 2 bat eggs. Don’t hit revive too many times - 5? I can’t remember. Bring the chalice back and complete the game. You should get the best ranking. Or at least the 2nd best. Duck food probably means you were eaten too many times, 3? 4? 5? Can’t recall.

We had a Y2K compliant code change to the Atari Fuji boot up logic to the bios for Adventure 2. If your emulator has its own 5200 bios ROM, My guess is that’s why it may not work in your emulator. You have to use the original Atari 5200 bios ROM. I have to do the same thing in the Altirra emulator to get A2 or Koffi to work on it. Should be no big deal though.

Railroads as well as various state companies and organizations still often use old technology. Usually this means Fortran, natural/Adabas, and COBOL. I still get hits from LinkedIn for jobs using these technologies. The article says they use DOS applications, but it’s hard to believe that it’s tied so literally to 5 1/4 inch floppy though and this will take millions to change. I am assuming the cost is for the entire application to be replaced and its interfaces.

7530.

Is there much of an Atari console / games presence? Any homebrews for any systems displayed?

Same here at first, I kept getting blown up by black missiles on a black background. I upped the brightness on my TV and I pay closer attention as well.

I never put time into this game before. Truth be told, the initial impression made me not like it. But now I see the gameplay and strategies of this version. The final wave of each series is tough to get the first couple Invaders without dying once or twice.

6851.

2287.

Lara has made it to Tibet. Snowmobiles and snow leopards. I got fed up a couple times in the Maria Dora, Living Quarters, and The Deck sunken ship levels, so I read tips at Stella’s TR walkthrough site. I keep wondering how I figured out some of these puzzles back in the day, especially with low res and dark lighting requiring flares of the PSX era. It’s a bit too much for my time limits now.

I got through Offshore Rig and Diving Area levels, more complex than I remembered, lots of back and forth running and hitting switches and opening doors, sprinkled with some gunfights. Don’t let the flamethrowers burn you or Lara will burn up entirely. I resorted to a guide for parts of these stages to speed things along. of all the parts of the game so far, I found that I had very little memory of these challenges. I do make it a practice to not save after everything I do, replaying a few jumps or rooms helps me to remember where I am in level and doesn’t take long to retry if necessary. in the offshore rig part, you initially need to get into the floating sea plane to get your pistols. There is a switch to open a hatch underneath it to enter, but I didn’t find it at first and found a way to jump and enter through the top of the airplane. I thought that was good design, it made the level a bit less linear. Now I am on the 40 fathoms level. Even though a real adventurer would be stupid to reach the ocean floor without any oxygen, I still really like playing this sequence with lack of oxygen, swimming blindly, and avoiding great white sharks. I remember feeling claustrophobic playing through this part on the old PlayStation.

I finally finished Venice just now. Bartoldi's Hideout and the Opera House. Even though I've played through this before, the Opera House was once again difficult to figure out. The new visuals and lighting are nice and do help though. Nice textures. I thought I had soft locked my game at the final room, with 2 tough thugs and 2 Dobermans. I got there with no health packs, so I tried 15 or 20 times to find a way to kill them all before their sniper shots did me in. It wasn't going well, then I realized I had unused gas grenades. Those quickly took care of the dogs and the thugs, who dropped ammo and a health pack. I hit the switch, exited and jumped onto the sea plane to start the next level, Offshore Rig. I noticed in these levels, there were one or two doors that opened just by walking up to them. This was different from the usual rules of the game, which usually require a switch or key. Also, somehow I beat the watery Venice part without having to drive the boat up a ramp and smash through to the other side, a fondly remembered sequence. I thought that part was mandatory, but evidently not.

I completed Unfinished Business tonight - Temple of the Cat. It's also temple of mummies, gators, and panthers. I noticed there is a sky box even in the OG graphics mode, unlike Tomb Raider which just had black as the distant background. I started Tomb Raider 2 next, I played through The Great Wall (its not very long) and a wee bit of Venice. Swam around, drove 2 boats, got shot. The thing is, I am really not looking forward to the ocean floor shipwreck parts, those dragged on too long, I felt. I also learned there is a photo mode if you click L3 + R3. This doesn't really interest me much. I experimented with a dead T-Rex in The Great Wall, but the photo was nothing great. You can use photo mode to look around your current stage, zooming way out and moving the camera around. I will try to avoid this temptation as I play.

this was my score. Not 15k as posted in the list above.

I waited until after the first patch before buying this for my PS4. I've played these all in the past, on Playstation. So, I played through Tomb Raider and beat it in about 13 hours. It was really cool to switch between the 90s pixelated graphics and the remastered 60FPS visuals. The retro style looks pretty rough and framey at times depending on the camera and scene, but almost always brighter. It plays exactly as I remember it. I had forgotten many of the rooms and puzzles; some were much more complicated than I remembered, others I tackled more quickly than I expected. The new textures in Atlantis really drive home the feeling of being in a hellish womb for those mutant creatures. Ech! I laughed to myself, after playing in the bleak and suspenseful environments the other night, I felt a twinge of fear as I walked up the stairs in the dark at 2AM, like I had an urge to look behind me. The game's mood had affected me. The OG game Tomb Raider holds up quite well IMO. What a great team effort, and it is just the right length, not excessively too long. With this remaster, I could see myself replaying TR1 every year or so. Here is the real reason driving me to post a thread: After completing TR, I anxiously began a new game of Unfinished Business, extra levels I had heard of, but never got to try. Well, the 2 Atlantean levels are CRAP. They seem like a sadistic modder hacked these levels together, with none of the fun of OG Tomb Raider as you guide Lara through the stupidest designs, unclear objectives and most obtuse paths and jumps ever. Around every corner await multiple mutants which will attack every few steps. If you want more challenge, it's here. Even so, because of the easy save system, it didn't take too long to beat the 2 Atlantean levels. Now I am just starting the Egyptian bonus levels which already seem much better designed and rewarding. Lara revisits levels from the OG game, but they are flooded now, totally changing how you tackle each room.

Are there two duplicate posts about this problem? In the other one it appears you found the main culprit and resolved it.