Justin222
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Posts posted by Justin222
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I got mine in the mail a while back and have been meaning to thank you. What a great cart.
When are you going to finish your slug game?
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Making something from nothing: creativity.
Using the structure of something that already exists in order to replicate it elsewhere: not so much. Engineering: yes. Problems solving: yes. Boring: highly probability.
The difference is that my point is sound logic and yours is subjective opinion.
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My opinion is that taking the code to a game and making it work on another platform lacks a creative process.
I would agree if the platforms were the same. Since they aren't there has to be some degree of creativity involved.
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My feeling is that anyone who says another controller is the worst (of all stock/standard controllers) has never experienced the Color Computer joystick. After that, I don't see how anyone COULD say another controller is worse.
Basically this. The only exception is if someone wants to exclude computers from their list. But, if you're going to bring in the U-Force, Power Glove, and the like then you should at least consider standard controllers for home computers.
"Why is the disc so bad?"
It's not precise. It's difficult to get it to go in the proper direction. It's also not ergonomic. It's also slow in terms of response.
As for the 5200 joystick, the mushy tiny side buttons are more of a hindrance than the 7800's large buttons are, regardess of where they're mounted. I will also pick the 7800 controller over the Intellivision any day, in part because its buttons were much larger and thus easier to press. The joystick is also better than the disc and there is no coiled cord to deal with.
The Fairchild shouldn't have been designed with such thin gauge wire. That's what causes the "up" direction to fail. It happened on my console and I took care of it. When I started reading about the problem on the Net I saw that it's widespread and due to the use of very thin wire. This is a severe design flaw, particularly for a hard-wired controller and a system where the first controller was required for some games, so moving to the second one (which was less likely to be broken) was not an option. Even in 1976 it would have made sense to use thicker wire to avoid the issue, especially for a system that lavishly used a zero insertion force cartridge mechanism.
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I'd say it was a nominal backlash, though features like the two button controller and one controller port certainly didn't help it look equivalent to what the Genesis and later SNES were offering.
I remember quite a bit of hay being made over it not being "truly 16-bit". My impression of it back then was that it didn't have graphics and sound on the same level as the Genesis and SNES. The games on offer also didn't seem to be as compelling.
Sam Hart: When the Sega Genesis was released, its dramatically more impressive graphics, sound and gameplay turned the TurboGrafx-16 passé overnight.Ultimately, NEC was to blame for this. Having never produced entertainment software before, NEC designers had taken a casual approach to producing games. Many games had all the flash of a 16-bit title, but with little by way of depth of gameplay. NEC also depended on third-party developers to build a library of games. However, most developers were contractually obligated to Nintendo, and could not produce software for NEC. In addition to all of this, the TurboGrafx was not true 16-bit. While its graphics processor was 16-bit, its main CPU was merely 8-bit (a 6820, to be exact).
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bloody hell
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IIRC, the TG-16/PCE used a 16-bit GPU.
Right, but it did get a backlash because of the 8-bit CPUs. So, the Jag wasn't the first console to feel the backlash for that type of marketing.
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My faves are pinball nes and pinball fantasies jag.
Nes Pinball is so awful but it's also strangely addicting. It just makes you feel like you have no life when you play it.
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They did that because Sega and Nintendo pulled that card in their advertising of Mega Drive and SNES. When the MD came Sega was all about it being 16-bit instead of the old 8-bit. We swallowed it as basically being twice as good. bits equaled the overall technical power of a system. Nintendo followed suit and mentioned it along with 32000 colors in their ads all the time.
First one to do it, as far as I know, was NEC. It called the TurboGrafx 16 a 16-bit system even though it used 8-bit chips.
On the opposite end is Mattel which didn't make the fact that the Intellivision had a 16-bit CPU much of an issue.
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That issue combined with the aggressive advertising trumpeting the superior 64-bit architecture (with nothing to back up the words)Cybermorph was superior to SNES and Genesis games, in terms of the tech. I was very impressed when I played it the first time and so were my friends. Tempest 2000 was also very impressive.
What I was not impressed by was the selection of games. That struck me as decidedly low-budget. Trevor McFur? Seriously? Having vaporware like Tiny Toon Adventures on the box also soured things, since I was planning to buy that since my best friend and his brother both liked the NES game a lot.
What the Jag needed was a game or two with the depth of a Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, FF VI, or Zelda: Link to the Past -- games with exploration and not just action. Instead, Atari did the usual arcady thing -- the same routine as with the XEGS and 7800. Arcade action is fine, but a platform needs more than that. A fighter the quality of Tekken on the PS1 (within reason given the Jaguar's hardware), coupled with a pro controller as the standard system controller, also wouldn't have hurt. I realize that AvP was fairly deep, but it wasn't the sort of game that appealed to me so I didn't play it. It is really more action than adventure, too.
If the Jag had come with the pro controller, had been CD-based (to avoid having to squish games to fit inside cheap carts), and had been able to get a major publisher like Square to release a deep game, it would have been easier to live up to the 64-bit hype. Of course, even getting Square (which was really unlikely due to the cultural barrier) could have meant getting a mediocre game like Secret of Evermore or Chrono Cross.
It was the depth of games that made the NES a success more than any other factor. The Master System had similar tech specs but it failed because it was all action, pretty much. The only exception was Phantasy Star which was $80. The NES was bundled with a deep action adventure from the start. It was heavily advertized with deep titles like Zelda. It made Atari's simplistic arcade game model look antique, especially when the company trotted out 1979 hardware with the XEGS and miniscule games on miniscule carts to be played with a 1977 joystick.
When I bought my Jaguar, I was very concerned that Atari would keep up the same business plan, especially due to its financial situation (the XEGS and recycling of the 2600 and 7800 reeked of desperation). The three button controller was a hint at continuing simplicity, and the keypad was another hint about a company being stuck in the past (even though a keypad can be useful... gamers tend to be too lazy to deal with overlays). However, when I played Cybermorph I was impressed. When I looked at the games on offer, though, I didn't have high hopes. Raiden was OK, but it looked like a 16-bit game and had that huge panel covering a lot of the screen which made the system look weak.
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Didn't I see somewhere here on AA the Ti joystick is the worst?
I've never used them, but they don't look worse than the CoCo. The top one looks worse, like it was designed as a tabletop joystick but is too small and light to be used that way. The button placement in particular looks awkward when held in the hand.
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People have praised your boxes for not having input lag. Does this new design add any lag?
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Are any of them cycle accurate? And, do they support syncing with one's monitor and audio to avoid having to drop frames often?
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Welcome to the Mac emulation experience!
Mac emulation used to be more competitive with Windows/DOS. Back in the OS 9 days there were, for the time, good emulators like ColEm, iNES, SNES9x, and so on.
One didn't have to rely on Bannister and his "emulator enhancer" to get simple things like a scaler. Some people were unhappy that he wanted full price for the version 2 of that (no discount for version 1 buyers), moved his emulators to requiring version 2, and deleted the versions that worked with version 1 from his server. John Stiles, as I recall, offered an enhancement module for his emulators but he didn't make the video output in the basic emulator ultra-tiny to force people into it.
I think it would have been less annoying to me if he had charged a small price for an emulator rather than releasing them as crippleware.
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Part of the "Emulation Experience" is having nice aesthetically pleasing hardware and software to work with. Has anyone used a NUC for their setup?
I bought an ECS LIVA for a friend as a gift. She does voice recording so it's nice because it's fanless and portable. It's cheaper than Intel's NUCs, but it does have a lowly processor. It should be fast enough for some systems, but I don't know if it can handle something like a PlayStation.
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If you decide to do another run of these at some point after running out of the originals, maybe consider something like these (original shown for comparison):
The new logo you made is vastly better than the original but also a tad cluttered. I'm not big on the Flashback font in particular.
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"collectors started to complain when the number increased"
Let them complain. Personally, I think it's stupid for a collector's desire for rarity to trump access to games that people enjoy playing. If it's a game no one wants to play that's just sought after due to rarity that's one thing. But, the idea behind homebrew, in my opinion, is to keep a system alive. It's also nice for the game makers to make a profit. Why go to the trouble of making games if their distribution has to be drastically curtailed to please a few people?I used to work at a department store and collectors used to come in all the time to try to get me to open boxes of Hot Wheels and so on to get out the rare car for them. I opened a bunch of boxes and found that the collectible car was missing from every box except the ones that held the neon green Beetle — the least rare of them.Moral of the story? It's better for kids to be able to play with that cool neon Beetle than it is for some collector to put it into a box to sell on Ebay someday. The fact that most of the cars were stolen prior to our store receiving them just shows the wrongness of the entire thing. So, when I found those collectible cars I bought them and gave them to my young nephew to play with. Toys are supposed to be fun. They're supposed to be played with and enjoyed. If people want to make dull profit they should play the stock market.There are some exceptions, like items that were recalled and destroyed (e.g. Earring Magic Ken). That toy is worth preserving because of its unique cultural baggage. But, in general, I think the focus should be on a living platform rather than a dead one. (Plus, collectors can certainly choose to put their game into a box and keep it pristine.) Let the games that haven't been produced since the 80s remain out of print but let the new games reach as large an audience as possible while maintaining a profit incentive to keep people making new games.Also, apparently a few people have the ultra rare APL/S cartridge for the Video Brain but refuse to let preservationists/enthusiasts dump it. That's the sort of thing I have a problem with. Their desire for rarity does a disservice to the community. I could be disappointed that my working Apple Lisa has been devalued by the creation of a Lisa emulator and YouTube vids, both of which offer an approximation of the once very rare experience of using a Lisa running the Lisa OS and apps, but I think I'll live.-
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Does any of this add input lag?
Besides the blurriness issue, is there any other reason to choose the Framemeister?
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A Raspberry Pi and a ColecoVision emulator would probably be cheaper.
Does it have enough power for cycle accurate emulation?
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Wow... that Mr. Do! artwork is inappropriate. It looks nothing at all like the game or its flavor.
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FFX has actually been voted as the second most popular FF after VII in Japan on several occasions.
It has the deepest story of them all, just allowing the most emotional investment. I'd go even further: Best RPG alongside Suikoden 2 imo. And both of them my favorite video games ever throughout my over 25 years of gaming. It's a clear case of popularity not reflecting quality. However, I can definitely see part of the problem being that I was too old for it when I played it. I may have been able to take it seriously enough to play through it had I been 12 or so.
VIII was at least playable. X is just plain annoying — the characters, especially. I think I recall it having cheesy voice acting, too, but it has been a while.
A lot of people go for super caricature, simplistic, and obnoxious — so I don't put a lot of stock in popular RPG opinion. A prime example is the Dreamcast game Grandia II. It has received a lot of praise and it's a callow bunch of nonsense. Even the artwork is ugly. FFVII had aspects of that childishness but it also had some strong points. Voice acting in particular tends to really emphasize the immaturity of RPG games, in terms of the target audience.
FFX was better than Grandia II and the dreadful Ys game I played on the SNES, but that's not saying much. IX was better, and it was a rather dull game with bland juvenile characters.
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Probably a minority opinion when it comes to comparing it to VII, not so much comparing it to VI.
Hmm... All the comments I've seen over the years have people rating either VI or VII above VIII. Perhaps that opinion has changed more recently because of remakes of VI or a newer generation being less inclined to look favorably upon SNES-era graphics and sound.
"I think with all due respect for FF VII, it does live a bit by nostalgia, being so breathtaking in its time that people tend to rate it just by how they felt about it back then, rather than how they would feel to it compared to other games that followed."
When I first saw it my cousin was playing it and it didn't look particularly special to me. But, once I played through it I appreciated the music in particular and some aspects of the game like the intro. The materia system was clever, and disc 1 especially had a decent amount of non-linearity. There was a lot of detail put in, like being able to steal weapons from enemies (e.g. getting a better weapon for Aeris in the trainyard). I missed the ability Gau had in FFVI to acquire enemy tactics, though.
I have played through FFVII, FFVI, and FFIV twice. I didn't finish FFVIII. I even finished IX. VIII didn't hold my interest. The only part I liked was the card game.
"FFVIII and all that followed are not held in less regard simply because they are lesser games; but more because VII was the biggest single step up from before."
FFVIII has been criticized for being more linear. It didn't hold my interest. The characters were less interesting (although I was no fan of the over-the-top caricatures of Barrett and the inclusion of that silly Red creature) and the combat was nothing special either. The setting was also less interesting.
"FFVIII also holds a 90 metascore by reviewers, and an 88 by users, so it is by all means still regarded as excellent."
I don't care much for professional reviewers' opinions of games. As for user ratings, fans of the game are going to inflate the score, most likely. Also, consider its competition. FFX was just dreadful. I haven't paid any attention to the line since that stinker.
"So is FFIX and my personal favorite X, as well as XII."
X is your personal favorite? I see.
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I finally looked at that IGN guy's article and it's even more crazy that I thought. He actually put the Jaguar controller up against the U-Force and determined that the former is worse than the latter!
ROFL
And this...
The article is just empty-headed, period. It's bad enough to make the absurd claim that the Jag controller is the worst standard controller to ship with a console. But, to compare it with garbage 3rd-party gimmicks like U-Force and the Power Glove and then determine that it's worse is beyond asinine.
Even the CoCo joystick was better than U-Force and the Power Glove.
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When did everyone start piling on the Fairchild controller? It's an impressive design even to this day (three control axes? in 1976?), and well-suited to the games the Channel F played. Could have used a thicker gauge of wire for the cords though, and the "trigger" button Zircon (?) added to the front would have been nice to start with, but it's still a more than respectable effort for what amounts to the first game controller (Odyssey and Pong systems notwithstanding).
1) It was wired to the console so the thin wire problem was magnified. One Fairchild expert even felt that the company did this purposefully to get more money from repairs.
2) Using a button feature causes you to have to stop moving your player (whether you're twisting, pushing down, or pulling up).
3) The thin wire problem.
It's extremely limited in terms of functionality, it's unreliable, and it's very difficult/costly to repair. Those are all major strikes against it.
"The Atari 5200 controller is great when it works, but that's the hitch right there. The Atari 7800 controller addressed several problems with the 5200 design but created a few more serious ones of its own."
Really? I found the 7800 controller much better. It wasn't as good as a NES pad but I didn't have any serious problems with it.
"The Intellivision controller must be one of those things where you either love it or hate it...though 'love' is a strong word here; it's not a 'great' controller but I've never had problems with it or the Intellivision II version. At least the fire buttons are on the same side, unlike the 7800 and Coleco controllers."
In comparison with the Jaguar controller it's truly poor. It's also significantly worse than the Coleco and 7800 controllers because of the disc and the tiny hard buttons. It's also hard to hold because it's thin and, as I recall, its coiled cord pulls it away from the player. It was a controller that I wanted to like because it looked nice.
"The NES controller isn't even in the running, sorry. I have yet to read an argument that makes me even consider that the NES controller might be one of the 'worst ever;' such arguments often amount to feeble complaints about it being 'backwards,' or simple anti-Nintendoism. I'll grant that its ergonomics are a little lacking, but the Master System control pad is far worse in my experience, and it's the square D-Pad that ruins it. It's too easy to move diagonally when you don't mean to, and difficult to move cardinally when you DO mean to."
I think the NES controller is one of the best ever.
"As I said in another thread recently (I forget which; too lazy to look/link), the standard Color Computer joystick comes to mind as objectively one of the worst controllers. It's good for the kinds of games you'd use a mouse, trakball, or paddle for -- early games like Polaris, Clowns & Balloons, Popcorn, and Project Nebula make great use of the CoCo joystick -- but it's horrible for everything else, especially games from ~1982-83 on when most CoCo games were designed with digital movement in mind. Many games are literally unplayable with the standard Color Computer joystick, and it makes many others really hard to play."
I didn't know anyone else recognized the CoCo joystick as being the worst ever. Props.
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FS: Fairchild System (Channel F) Multi-Cart, pre-order now.
in Buy, Sell, and Trade
Posted · Edited by Justin222
I have a good number of cartridges I bought from Ebay years ago that were not stored well so the connectors are corroded. However, the shells should be in okay condition. Do you have any use for donor cartridge shells or do you need the edge connectors to be in good shape? My understanding is that you only need the shells. If so, when you make the next batch of multicarts or PacMan games I would be interested in trading. I can post very detailed photos of each one so you can avoid the "beauty mark" problem. You can look at them and tell me if any don't make the grade.
I already have a multicart but one with the new homebrew game(s) would be nice, or a PacMan-themed cart. I like the idea of a PacMan theme with the multicart feature as a bonus, as you described. That would be a nice addition to my collection, since I have a regular multicart. But, either way...