wongojack

It is unfortunately true that the old PSUs are too dangerous to just randomly test. Ray Carlsen (mentioned above) sells a test thingy, but you'd be better off buying a new power supply. If you plan to try and repair then you'll probably end up buying another breadbin so a verified PSU is good in that case. Even if you just dump this stuff on someone else, it'll come in handy for them and they will want it.

Did they ever make it easier to use other controllers with the mini? I know in this thread that @pimpmaul69 had talked about updating the controller files. Did they ever incorporate your work into an official update?

You tipped me off to this game once upon a time. I think it was a PAL exclusive, but it worked fine on my NTSC NES with the PowerPak. I thoroughly enjoyed it and agree with your assessment 100%. Metroid fans owe it to themselves to play this. Even the password system on this game is refreshingly nice. I actually also have my own contribution to the thread and that is the ZX Spectrum classic Knight Lore. I played this through the Rare Replay on Xbox One and really enjoyed it. Although, the rewind feature built into the emulator used in RR really helped as some of the jumps seemed very unfair. Anyway, if you can find a trained version of this game, I'd recommend it as something that kinda fits between Atari's Adventure and Nintendo's Zelda both chronologically and gameplay wise.

Probably going to pull the trigger and order one of these this month. Should I get a little older clone like v5.15 or pay a little more and get a newer one v5.5?

This thread is interesting to me because I am familiar with like . . . all of the games the OP thinks are relaxing, and I would NEVER think to suggest them. Rush N Attack? That game is about memorizing enemy patterns which is very tedious in my opinion, and I get quickly bored with it. I guess I really have no idea what relieves anxiety. However, hearing that you are using save states gets me more in line with your thinking. Fire N Ice/Solomon's key is another one with lots of memorization and trial and error. I don't really want to play that game without save states. Which leads me to making a suggestion . . . I noticed you haven't mentioned any games on the C64, so it might not be your thing, but if you like Fire N Ice you could try out the Ultimate Wizard. It is a screen by screen game where you have to clear the screen while avoiding enemies and traps etc. Kinda similar to Fire N Ice. Picking up on some of your comments - "getting lost in the world of Super Mario 64" etc. I really like the Bethesda games (Fallout, Elder Scrolls) for getting into a mode where I can just explore and do whatever, but those might be a little too big based on your original comments. In the "getting into the zone" category that some have mentioned, I'll throw in Kaboom! You need paddles and a CRT to really "get there" so it is kind of inaccessible, but man - find the zone and there is some real bliss there.

Cool topic. I don't have any info for you, but I'm interested in the responses.

My wife actually just completed the main story in Witcher 3 yesterday, so I've seen A LOT of it. There certainly is a lot of "hurry up and watch this video" going on there. Very light on actual gameplay. It doesn't help that she plays on easy difficulty so every fight is over in like 2 strokes of a sword . . . but she got to one point near the end where she had to turn mirrors. You know, the old shine the beam thing. I was like "ooooo a puzzle." I think my biggest criticism as someone who has watched most of the game (and the show) is that Geralt isn't a very good main character. When the game starts, he's already the grizzled veteran who seems to know everything and is already tired of talking to (or fnck!ng) every living person in the game. That means that you as the player are meant to play as him in order to discover what he already knows with the eventual payout of achieving his same state of relative apathy. Why is that important in a game? Because if you are learning and changing with your character, it transfers a sense of meaning. That monster we just killed was Geralt's 999, but it was my first. That's less powerful than if I am experiencing something new WITH the character. I'm more likely to be satisfied killing random monsters for people if it is meaningful. At least the story in W3 turned him in to a father figure which provides some built-in connection to another character, but the game clearly wants you to know that Geralt's life will go on just fine if Cirri is killed or something.

NM

I finished the main story in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I really enjoyed the game and think that the supporting characters and story around Lara is the best of any Tomb Raider game ever. In some ways the plot would be great for an Indiana Jones movie (I'm looking at you Crystal Skull). However, this game got some negative reviews from critics, and I see their point. There's a lot that kinda feels tacked on or unfinished, and Lara has no new abilities from the previous game. Still, I think it really got it right on some key areas that made it my favorite of the most recent Croft trilogy. Also this is the first game I've ever seen where they give you the option to let the characters speak what would be their primary language (and you read subtitles if that isn't yours). I think that is a pretty neat and inclusive option. A

Wow, $25 for shipping?

3 Favorites Beauty and the Beast Tarmin Dreadnaught Factor 3 Hidden Gems Pinball Thin Ice Space Spartans I also like Truckin as a hidden gem, but it definitely is not for everyone.

PC Re-Volt GL 685 PS4 Moss 189 Resident Evil VII 59 WiiU Zelda Breath of the Wild 346 X360 Jetpack Refueled 16 XOne Oxenfree 47 Rocket League 406 Shadow of the Tomb Raider 407 I spent a lot of time this week driving little cars in video games. I spent time early in the week playing Re-Volt GL and then decided it was finally time to try Rocket League. I don't really enjoy games that are focused mostly on multiplayer, so I doubt I'll put much more time into Rocket League, but I've got some tasks left to complete and some races still to win in Re-Volt. Besides driving little cars around, I actually had quite a bit of other variety: Moss was excellent but short RE VII started out fun BotW is as impressive as everyone says I finished Oxenfree and Shadow of the TR. I wrote a little blurb about Oxenfree in the Modern Games Beaten thread. Not a great experience for me, but there were some positives in there. Shadow of the TR on the other hand was very satisfying. I think I understand some of the criticism that game gets, but it had the best story of any of the three recent TR editions, and they really upped the effort on the challenge tombs and crypts which was very welcome.

ZX Spectrum Knight Lore 281 I managed to get all of the ingredients into the cauldron and broke Sabreman's curse in Knight Lore (aka finished the game). I used the built in trainers that are part of the emulator within RARE replay, making heavy use of the rewind feature. I also had to enable the "unlimited time" option. I doubt I will ever play this game without a trainer of some sort. The isometric angles combined with the precision required for some of the jumps was waay too hard to really be fun. Save states/rewind with other cheats is definitely the way to experience this (at least for the first time).

I went back and collected all the missing robots and completed all the challenges in Astrobot Rescue Mission. It is the first Playstation game where I've ever gotten a platinum trophy. A+ I finished the story in the PSVR game "Moss." It was cute and fun and a great use of VR. I agree with most reviewers in that I wish it was longer. A I also finished "Oxenfree" which is what I would refer to as a story-driven indie game. This was kind of a tough one because there was a time when I would have absolutely loved the witty dialog and excellent voice acting, but I think this game actually sort of ended an era for me. I was wondering when I would get tired of the indie game trend of relying heavily on story over gameplay and I think it just happened. I'm not even really sure why I kept playing this game. It felt like they took what was great about the point and click adventure genre and removed all of the actual gameplay, replacing it with a some controller manipulation that simulated tuning a radio dial and cranking an old-style reel to reel tape player. And while I think the voice acting was excellent and the dialog diverse and expansive, the game had this annoying habit of forcing you to select a dialog choice before the characters were finished talking. This seemingly gave a sort of pace to the conversations, but it failed for me because . . . well . . . this is a video game, and I want to actually listen to the characters to hear what they are talking about. Its not like real life where one can sort of assume what someone is going to say before they finish. Plus the details actually mattered in terms of achieving the game's various endings. D+

Who cares about Wikipedia? I'd trust the AtariAge community on this topic before whoever contributed to Wikipedia. And I'm sure someone on this board has already had this conversation with you (it comes up kind of a lot), so I don't believe that EVERYTHING you've read prior to this has said they are the same gen. If you lived through it then you remember the Coleco as a distinctly different thing just like the Sega Genesis was different than the NES. CV came out 6 years later and offered a different experience. If we continue that example, you could still buy a NES (or SMS) when the Genesis was offered, but you knew you were getting something more advanced with Genesis just like you knew you were getting something more advanced with the Colecovision. On top of that, if someone is wanting to experience the NEXT system after the Atari 2600, regardless of generational labels, I would still say you should experience the Odyssey2/Videopac or the Intellivision before anything that comes after. You are skipping too much gaming history (and good games) otherwise.

Zing! Nobody tell him about Fortune Builder, Campaign '84, Alcazar, Wargames, Jumpman Jr, or 2010. That's just off the top of my head. But seriously, I love the thing, but I didn't consider the Colecovision a valid answer to the question.

There is something enjoyable there, but it's a bottom 10 game for me as is. 3 lives and a chance to get extra lives with a cycle that increases with difficulty with a success (instead of the game freezing and requiring you to reset) would all be improvements.

When I answered the question, I didn't consider the Colecovision as part of the same generation . . . because it is not.

I have no idea what I thought was weird about that TV. Looks totally normal to me now.

Except of course that there is almost nothing useful to buy in that game.

PC Highway Pursuit 29 Re-Volt GL 492 PS4 Moss 118 Super Hot VR 20 WiiU Zelda Breath of the Wild 203 XOne Oxenfree 117 Shadow of the Tomb Raider 826 Well, I mentioned in the classic tracker that I went looking for a way to play the '99 RC racer Re-Volt. After a couple attempts, I discovered a community supported and updated version of the game called Re-Volt GL (that uses OpenGL). It is a really fun little racing game that I sunk way more time into than I expected. In other news, I started playing BotW and put in time with some other PSVR games. and I decided to move my Shadow of the Tomb Raider time from PC to XOne. It has just become very obvious that I am simply streaming the XOne version of the game to my PC as part of this XCloud BETA thing I am a part of. The time really belongs in XOne (at least I think so). The thing that made me change my mind is that I can play the same version of the game on my Android phone, and it will pull in my save games and achievements and everything. The version I am playing is definitely NOT a phone game and would never be confused for one, so I think the time needs to go under XOne. That means @carlsson that all my past time should probably be flipped from PC to XOne. Or not - probably not that big a deal in the end. I've got time off next week so my times should be even higher a week from now.

DC Chuchu Rocket 3 Space Channel 5 12 NES (Via Rare Replay) RC Pro-Am II 43 Win 95/98 Re-Volt 10 ZX Spectrum (Via Rare Replay) Knight Lore 30 Lunar Jetman 30 Well, I wanted to play Re-Volt, so I burned a copy for my Dreamcast which didn't work, and then the laser eye stopped reading even retail games. I guess it is time to GDEMU that thing. I did find an old copy of Re-Volt but then became quickly distracted by a fan-made update called Re-Volt GL (which I logged plenty of time for in the modern tracker). Otherwise, I dinked around with some games in the Rare Replay.

The files on the CD can be updated to RVGL, but you can also just download the community build from that site. It is pretty fun if you like that sorta thing.

I tried to burn a disc for my DC, but that failed, so I found this neato little online community. https://re-volt.io/ They've got an update for the game called RVGL that works with OpenGL and it supports online play. I'd never played this game before, but I'm a big fan of RC ProAm, so I wanted to finally check it out. Anyone who has fond memories of this game at LAN parties bitd should check it out.

Buy it here: http://store.go4retro.com/ There is a downloadable option as well as physical. I think I got "free" versions from somewhere years ago too, but finally paid go4retro for it to be more legit. I have one C64 that is modded, so I use JDOS on my 1541 Ultimate AND whenever I use VICE. It used to be an almost absolute requirement, but now that there is so much EasyFlash software out there it has fallen back a bit to something like . . . highly recommended.