gdement
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Posts posted by gdement
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Just about every game ever written can be discredited with the argument that it's a ripoff of something else. Video games are a gradual evolution, just like any other art form.
Good execution of a fun game is more impressive to me than being able to claim "I was first." Nobody is ever "first". Whatever you did, somebody did something similar before you. And somebody else did something similar before them. It never ends.
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Well, it could also be because Mario is in the same cart as Duckhunt, but both are close to the same as most played for me
This was a plain Duck Hunt cartridge.
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I don't know any great Atari ads outside of Warner ownership, but I think the best they had were the ads that just showed the games rather than dopey spokesmen.
My favorite Warner commercial is this one.
Overacted, but that's advertising.
I like that ad because, back then, many families really did play Atari together in the family room. The older generations never picked up on the NES or anything newer. Here's hoping the Wii becomes the next 2600.
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I'd love to see a NES high-score contest, but I'm not sure how that could be done with Duck Hunt. The difficulty depends entirely on how close you are to the TV and the size of your screen (the latter would be difficult to compensate for).
I recently picked up 5 games, one of which was an original Duck Hunt. I was interested to note that the Duck Hunt contacts were far more dirty than all the others. For all it's simplicity, this game obviously gets a lot of play.
"Top Gun" lost the contest as it was the cleanest cart by far. Of course my sample size is only 1.
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noteriety => notoriety. You're welcome! Oklahoma is OK!
Agreed. I wonder why anyone cares about TG. I know several people on this board hold records in a variety of games, but I never really understood what the big deal was...I play games for fun, not for some kind of noteriety.
Oops...misspelled...thanks.
what's up with the OK bashing?
You didn't know your neighbors make fun of you? Everybody has a neighbor state they joke about. When I used to live in Kansas, we made fun of Oklahoma. In Florida, we made fun of Alabama. In Illinois, we made fun of Wisconsin. Here in California... I think everybody makes fun of us.
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Well fair's fair...
As one poster pointed out with the NES you got the fun of flicker AND slowdowns.
-Ray
Yup, I always thought it was FAR worse on the NES. It could be pretty bad on the Master System too - Double Dragon for example.
Got that right. Flicker is so bad on SMS Double Dragon as to make the two player mode...UNPLAYABLE.
I am convinced this is why the 2 player co-op moder was left out of the NES version.
-Ray
This almost ruins River City Ransom also. If it wasn't such an awesome game I wouldn't have been able to stand it. RCR 2-player runs a lot better in emulation.
On the Atari, I agree with the earlier poster that flickering makes many games, like Asteroids, feel more eerie.
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I'd remove the board and wash it in clean water. Sugary drinks could cause corrosion. When electronics get something spilled on them, I believe the best thing to do is remove all power, disassemble it, and wash it.
I've washed motherboards several times and haven't had anything die on me. I wash them in the shower, then rinse them with distilled water to remove mineral deposits. Tap water will leave some residue as it dries. This is probably harmless, but rinsing it in distilled water will prevent that. I give boards about 24hrs to dry, even though that's probably overkill for an exposed board. The primary concern is water trapped underneath sockets and other places you can't see (and where there isn't much air), so I prefer to put the board over some heat (like on a lampshade) to help it dry.
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What? No 5-screw Rygar? In 25 games I somehow have something you don't.
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Was this interview broadcast live? Any debate that is "pre-recorded" means it will be edited. Only a live debate has any credibility.
I haven't watched it, but just want to point that out.
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Speaking of bootlegs in controllers, I remember that during Christmas time, Walgreens around here(NJ) were advertising these items in their circulars and in the stores. It's funny that a national chain would take a risk like that since it is illegal.
Wow. That's by far the highest-profile I've heard yet for these things. I was surprised just to see them being sold by the
sheister vendors at major shopping malls. Now they're at Walgreens? What's next, Sears?
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Ultima 7 was the best RPG I've played. This was really the peak of the "We Create Worlds" mindset. The world in Ultima 7 felt like a real place populated by real people. There are countless subplots and details tucked in every corner of that game. It's a masterpiece.
If EA had owned Origin during the development of Ultima 7, then it probably would have shipped 6 months earlier and been rather unremarkable. But great things happen when the people running the company are emotionally dedicated to the product.
Ultima 9 just feels like an incomplete prototype. Most NPC's don't even move! As much as I want to get into that game, it's impossible to become engrossed in it. U9 vs. U7 are a great example of why graphics have little to do with making a game world feel "real".
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Of all those, the only ones I have had any experiance with, is the C64, and the Apple II. And Just honestly, the Apple II was shit compared to the C64. Maybe I just played all the wrong games, but almost all were basic, and the few graphic ones would have been proud to call the 2600 daddy.
Agreed. I had an Apple //c, and I'm still fond of it, but I really think the Apple II's are overrated. They suck compared to the Commodores and Ataris. I'm not sure what they're good at, honestly. I guess they had slightly more memory at a critical moment in time when Visicalc came out. I really liked the IIGS though, and always wished I had one.
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A long time ago, somebody posted a hires demo on the 7800 mailing list using the arcade Galaga graphics as standins. They looked great. It had massive flickering problems, but that was because of a design flaw in the code. Galaga doesn't need very many colors, I believe the graphics would come out the best using one of the hires modes.
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It's perfectly fine to use Genesis controls on the 7800, the only drawback is only 1 button will work.
I don't know anything about the SMS, but I've heard that 7800 controls don't work on it. If you're using 6-button Genesis controls, maybe you need to hold down the "Mode" button while you turn on the SMS. I have no idea if Genesis controls are even supposed to work on the SMS.
There are some Genesis games (at least "Golden Axe II" to name one) which have control problems with the 6-button pad. Holding down the "Mode" button during startup will put the controller in legacy 3-button mode.
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That NASCAR (1) disc is interesting. I didn't know they made a "Sierra" branded version of that game.
That's the best racing game I ever played, and I swear it saved me from wrecking my (unfamiliar at the time) car on a rainy day once. I was aggravated waiting at a stop light at school, and having forgotten the road was wet I blasted into a left turn when the light changed. I began to spin out and was in a serious oversteer situtation with opposing traffic that had nowhere to go. But even though it was the first time I'd experienced this in real life, I had been through it countless times in that computer game. I went back and forth a couple times and recovered. Thanks Papyrus!
I never cared as much for NASCAR 2, it just didn't seem to add anything other than the spotter's voice, and Sierra's big-budget cinematics annoyed me. For whatever reason it just wasn't as fun as the original. I'm not sure it was as customizeable either, but I don't remember it well.
There is a utility that converts NASCAR tracks to run on IndyCar and vice versa. I didn't have IndyCar but I used the demo to put Laguna Sega into NASCAR.
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I have Callus, which runs Capcom 16-bit era arcade games very well. I also have Retrocade, DTMNT, and some other system-specific emulators whose names I don't recall. All of these are faster than MAME and worked well when my computer was slower. I haven't used them in a long time now, and my computer has caught up to where old MAME versions can do the same job. I don't see any reason to "upgrade" MAME, as the newer versions are just even slower and add nothing that I can see.
I also keep Nesticle around, because it has a unique ability to run NES games on old machines.
It isn't just emulators though, I keep old versions of computer software in general. By default I am grumpy about software "updates". They often don't work as well, waste memory, and run slower. So I keep an archive of old versions of every program I use. It's a bit excessive, but it doesn't hurt since the disk space isn't worth much. I see no reason to delete them, and once they're gone, they're often hard to get back. I was bit by that a few times before I started keeping the old versions.
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In terms of a coin-op perfect machine, yes it would have been ridiculously costly. The closest we got were the 16 bit machines of the 90's. But, they still weren't arcade perfect, in fact I was always suprised at some of the corners they had to cut, especially Sega.
I think the biggest hindrance was ROM sizes. I loved Genesis' Golden Axe, but was somewhat disappointed by the various cut corners. A long time ago I remember checking the size of the MAME image and it's something like 4MB. The Genesis version is 512KB.
The SegaCD version of Final Fight is outstanding, owing to the fact that ROM size is no longer a problem on that version. The Genesis version of Gauntlet is also very good, but again I think it benefits from the fact that, by the time it was released, they could give it a 1MB ROM. If it had been released earlier, it would have probably been 512KB and been an inferior version.
SNK attempted to put out the NEO GEO in the mid to late 90's. This machine was made from the exact same technology that they used in their arcade machines. The ports were exactly the same games as in the arcade. The machine cost 600 dollars and the games cost 200 a piece.
I remember my friends and I drooling over that machine, but we knew we couldn't afford $200 per game. But it actually came out in the early 90's, like 1991 or so. My mom saw these for sale at Babbage's for $600 (might have been $649) one time and was shocked. She ended up in a conversation with the salesman who argued that this would be the ultimate, last game system anyone would ever need.
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Sure. In fact, the display list architecture should favor vertical scrolling. You could just leave the display lists largely intact and edit the DLL, and everything would magically move down the screen. (The DLL controls which scanlines should use each display list.)
Which would be fine for the vertically scrolling areas, but if you recall there are sub areas ("LUCKY!" and "DANGER!"), as well as the labrynth palace areas for each stage which are all side-scrolling. I'm no programmer but from what I'm to understand it would take a little more programming wizardry to get those horizontal side-scrolling areas to work properly, would it not?
Yeah, side scrolling would be slower. You'd have to update the horizontal position of each object in the display list, which takes longer simply because there's more things to change.
The only time I ever played deep into this game was at a friend's house about 15 years ago. I've only played the cartridge I bought recently once, and right now my NES isn't hooked up. Suffice to say I never knew the game very well and remember even less.
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The key word is emulation. I didn't find the NES version to be choppy at all. Also, the ship explosion looks like it does in the arcade.
I meant to refer to the sound of the ship explosion, not the graphics. I wouldn't be surprised though if the sound isn't emulated accurately, as that is a pretty common issue.
But if the real NES version isn't choppy, then fine, that's my biggest complaint whenever I've tried it in Nester or FCE Ultra. The ships that are attacking you mostly look fine, but the rest of the ships are choppy.
I just tried it again, and was reminded of another problem I have with it. They play the music while you sit there and wait, rather than playing it while the game is starting. So instead of the music feeling like part of the game, it instead just feels like a forced pause. That's a relatively minor thing, but the startup of a game shouldn't be annoying.
I hope I don't sound too picky. My first impression of the NES version was that it played badly despite the good graphics, and my impressions never much improved. So I've been surprised how much love this game seems to consistently get, and feel obliged to put out my criticisms.
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The M-Network baseball is hands down the best on the 2600, save one MAJOR glaring flaw... No 1 player mode.
I seriously used to play that game against myself, quite routinely. I don't remember if anyone ever played it against me.
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I've never seen a NES Galaga cart, so my experience with the game comes from the few times I've tried it in emulation. But it really seems overrated to me, I'm surprised how consistently it gets rave reviews.
The animation is horrible, it appears that they had to render the enemies as background tiles or something. I find the choppiness of the NES version to be very distracting and irritating to look at.
The music is good, but why is the ship explosion so wimpy? I'm guessing that might be an emulator issue.
The graphics are better than the 7800, but it's too crowded for me to enjoy the game. Maybe this is arcade accurate, but I don't think I ever found the arcade version so difficult to maneuver in.
To me the NES version is as much a mixed bag as the 7800 version, and I find the 7800 version more fun to play. But yeah, it could be improved graphically.
Nevermind about getting a better Galaga, I think a better karateka should be the priority first.
The 7800 port of Karateka is just plain lazy. They didn't even bother to use hi-res in the status display or the title screen. It's inexcusable that the A8 version has better graphics.
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Sony has taken the success of PS3 for granted, and intends to use it as a trojan horse for Blu-ray. If Blu-ray ends up as the HD movie standard, then Sony stands to make a lot of money on royalties.
I'm guessing here, but I suspect Sony could be in trouble with this PS3/Blu-ray gamble:
My guess is that the Blu-ray isn't coming down in cost as quickly as Sony expected. They've been forced to delay PS3 because they need to control how much money they lose on the console. Meanwhile, Microsoft decided to launch their console rather early, using a conventional DVD drive. XBox360 is getting established, so Sony can't afford to wait any longer. Now they have to put a higher price on PS3 than people were expecting/hoping for, and even then Sony is probably losing a lot on the machine. They may have put themselves in a tight spot by getting out too far ahead of the curve.
Of course, Sony has lots of money and other businesses. A PS3 failure can't ever hurt them as much as the console crash hurt Atari.
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I used to have problems like that on my Genesis. In my case I found that pushing down on the console would fix it. If I sat there and pushed my thumb into the machine just right, then the controllers would start working correctly (until I let go). The weird thing is this problem has been gone for years now, ever since the machine spent years in storage.
If you get convinced that it's a console problem and not the controllers, then maybe you could try poking around in the machine while it's running. Maybe there's a bad solder joint.
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Sure. In fact, the display list architecture should favor vertical scrolling. You could just leave the display lists largely intact and edit the DLL, and everything would magically move down the screen. (The DLL controls which scanlines should use each display list.)
I never played the arcade, but I fairly recently got the NES version. I never much cared for it though.
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Interested in NES High Score Club?
in Classic Console Discussion
Posted
I'd participate, at least with games I own.
Since many NES games aren't really scoring oriented, they may require more creative ways of winning the contest. Perhaps contests like "How far can you get in X amount of time" would be most appropriate for many games. We could also have a "lowest score to beat the game" contest on SMB. Maybe even some pure speedrun contests. A lot of NES games are long, so the rules may need to be tailored so time isn't as much of a problem. There may need to be some discussion in the preceding week about what rules should be used for a given game.
I'd like to see season standings somewhere. Unless I missed it, I think some past HSC's have been devoid of rankings, and that just doesn't make it feel like a competition. Competition is fun.