Cafeman

I haven't felt like I have had much extra time. I've spent many hours getting groceries and other support for my extended family and an older person we know, disinfecting everything, and working from home every day. I suppose i have been wasting time more and feeling lethargic. Did grass and yard work a couple days for a few hours. It was nice to enjoy the Spring which came early this year. On the 5200 front, I did enjoy a couple hours of Qix last weekend for the 5200 HSC! Also I got Star Wars Episode 9, watched it and all the bonus documentaries. It is amazing how many of the effects are practical! Son cut his hand badly last week, and we've had to hit the E.R. and follow up doctor, right in the middle of this pandemic unfortunately. No extra time for much homebrew coding recently, but maybe starting about now it might be possible to get back to some projects!

I feel like I may have known this years ago, but I have forgotten. So what is the reason of using a melody board if it doesn't have an arm on it? More ROM memory? Regardless, Ladybug really impressed me and it is fun!

As I blogged about earlier, Panzer Dragoon Remake made me want to hook up the Saturn again to play though the original. Now I'm mostly working on Panzer Dragoon Zwei, which is one of my favorite Saturn titles. I am up to level 6 which is the assault on the huge flying imperial ship. I died at the boss fight, so I'll try it again next time - this game allows a Save End option to continue later. It has been so long since I had played Zwei, that I keep getting killed off. I don't remember the strategies or patterns, and that makes the game a lot of fun all over again. In fact almost all the levels killed me off at least once. Level 5 (I think) where you battle in the high-up snowy skies killed me the most so far. I finally remembered the secret to beating the boss - have enough health of course, but also don't lock-on at all because his rotating shield blocks all missiles. Just keep following him and button-mash fire at him until he's gone. I also popped in my Williams' arcade classics disc and enjoyed a round of Bubbles, Defender, and Robotron. For Robotron I have to angle my controller a bit because the firing buttons aren't laid out in a perfect diamond. for Up/Down/Left/Right shooting, but I adjust pretty quickly. Love using the Saturn japanese pad for gaming. I didn't even have to take a carpal-tunnel-syndrome break like I often have to with other controllers (my hands go numb). Maybe next time I fire up the Saturn, I'll finally beat all of Zwei and open Pandora's Box.

Oh, I thought it was a melody board game. I don't even remember posting that.

Here are some demo vids if Adventure II XE since you never heard of it. It would be cool for someone to make an all new and unique Adventure homage for 7800. It could easily support scrolling, colorful displays with multicolored sprites and no flickering. I would not advise naming it Adventure III however, else you risk litigation! Mind you, a 5200 / XE version could likewise support more detailed player sprites and scrolling if programmed with those things on mind.

I found that NTSC value $34 was the most like red and not too dark. Brighter hues look more pink. The at $40+ values you start seeing magenta and purples. Didn't some of us just talk about this same subject recently.

I've played a lot of Volfied. I still prefer the purity and simplicity of Qix! The 5200 version is fantastic. There was an earlier Qix for the 400/800 , it featured extremely slow drawing / filling in of the boxes, far too slow to be fun.

It would be great. I just got done playing 2 hours of 5200 Qix. I have never understood how the games logic is programmed. How does it know you have split a Qix? How are the sparx paths programmed To follow the outside edge? How do the Qix see the open areas and never bleed into the filled in areas, even when it is tight? It looks like 5200 Qix is in a bitmap mode like antic D or E. I don't have any idea how a character map design would work!

250,956.

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REDACTED!

@tjlazerAlso however, I did put in a programming fix as well, based on your bug report. After the fix, I wasn't getting stuck on plants any more when using the knight helmet. It's still possible to get stuck somewhere I'm sure .. then you can hit Revive button to go back to a checkpoint.

Yes, I feel motivation is easily depleted. I blogged about this subject too a while back. I must have deleted it later. But the forum bot saved a record of the text if interested. See if this link works ...

#4 ... L.E.M ==> L.E.G. ? #9 ... Mappy ==> Zappy ?

I was thinking Mappy ==> Nappy. oh well.

The control issues and lack of impact sounds is troubling. The OG game has fantastic sounds and fast accurate controls. Although Zwei's camera rotation and frame rate seems much quicker than the OG.

Sega's 3rd party released Panzer Dragoon Remake for Switch, which I don't own and don't really intend to buy right now. I've always been a bigger Sega fan than an Atari fan. I almost picked up a Switch when the newer Virtua Racing came out last year, but didn't. So I dug out my Saturn from the closet o'doom and hooked it up. I have to use composite with my Panasonic 42" Plasma since it doesn't support S-video. I see there are Saturn Component and HDMI cables and I'm looking into them, but the Saturn's composite ain't that bad to be honest. Well I fired up Panzer Dragoon and played it about 2 hours over the weekend. I couldn't beat it. It was way more difficult than I remembered. But my 4-in-1 RAM cart has pre-loaded cheats like infinite energy, so I played the game through cheating. I honestly don't know how long it has been, because I didn't remember the 2nd to the last stage at all! You are flying over water with a city and bridges around you on the land. I'm sure I'd have died had I not had infinite energy. I did remember the final boss fight. The game ends super classy with hand-drawn art and more superb music. I love Panzer Dragoon. Tonight I'm going to play through Zwei again, no cheating (at first). As I heard the music and the shots and explosion sounds from Saturn Panzer Dragoon, I had flashbacks of playing the system years ago - there's something about the sounds quality that I really like. I'm running in stereo of course but through my Onkyo 5.1 system - sounds retro and great. I love the controller too. And I think it may look , play, and sound better than the version on OG Xbox Panzer Dragoon Orta, which at the time seemed washed out to me. I'll have to try it again - I think that version is based on the original PC version and there is a difference in feel and look compared to the Saturn original. I watched the entire Panzer Dragoon Remake (skipping through it a bit), and it is very faithful to the original - same enemy placement, same soundtrack. It isn't AAA quality, but I didn't expect it to be. Some of it seemed quite beautiful to me. I hope it comes out on PS4 this year. Else I'll have to rethink buying a Switch sooner rather than later.

No, but the 5200 seems to be more obscure and not always included. I use DASM for 5200 / A8 too, what else would I use?

I wrote about that, check earlier posts.

Panzer Dragoon, Saturn. 90 minutes.

Thanks for explaining the sometimes there / sometimes not video quality options on Twitch. For this latest broadcast, the 720p and other options were there , so I did watch most of the show on my 720P tablet. It's not a problem, I can always go grab my laptop if only 1080P date is there, and knowing the reason why it happens has stopped me from reloading Twitch over and over! I need to get a newer tablet!

I picked up some sweet finds at Goodwill years ago, like a VCR that I used as intermediary between 2600 RF and HDTV using Composite. $5 or $ 10 bucks and the VCR worked great. I used to find plenty of Sega and Atari games, but those days are over now. The last couple of times I visited, there was nothing in the store that I'd buy. Lots of clothes and housewares. A couple SNES and PSX games behind glass.

I continue to enjoy the show, and I've been able to watch all the shows on Twitch lately because of temporarily working from home full time, but I now have to use my Win10 laptop. Starting last week, I can no longer see the picture when trying to use my Galaxy Tab A tablet, which is a max 720P device. It used to work, in fact I could adjust the video settings as I'd like, but I'd usually just let the Auto option automatically pick the 720P option. But as of last week, the video option is no longer there on the option screen. Auto is checkmarked, but it no longer is clickable and the video settings info is no longer there. I loaded other streams and did not have these same problems. Could there be a setting on the channel itself that is enforcing 1080p and not allowing lower resolutions? I don't need a reply, I'm just reporting the technical issue.

I dug out PS4 Injustice 2 and decided to play through some of it. 5 hours. I've owned this for a year, have not played it much. Finally finished story mode and unlocked Braniac to use as a playable character. Im conflicted over the pros and cons of this game. It has a lot of characters and interactive locations, superb job done on the graphics, voices, and animations. And the fighting engine seems playable enough. But it is soured by the Injustice tone which I don't enjoy for long. Also it is very grindy, I keep playing single fights and Multiverse scenarios, it seems my goal is to keep earning stats and points to unlock gear and costumes. After a while I'm fed up with it. Of course there are several teased characters that I can buy for a whopping $5.99 each, no thanks. These characters should be able to unlock through gameplay but it does not appear it is possible. Overall the framework seems overly convoluted and complicated to me. I still don't understand all the stats and rules.

I hope the ps5 has a quiet fan.