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deepthaw

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Posts posted by deepthaw

  1. Posted · Edited by deepthaw

     

    There's still the issues of the controllers, which are the digital-only originals. Lots of things to overcome to make this thing more versatile for the platform.

     

    It's not a *huge* issue IMHO. Save for very few exceptions like Ape Escape, DualShocks were optional for games even going into the end of the PS1's lifespan. All of the extra games Pixelboy listed were perfectly playable with the stock controller, IIRC.

    • Like 2

  2. Posted

     

    Not if the emulator can't keep up, which was my point. Rendering 50Hz is less work than rendering 60Hz.

    Ive always wondered how much (in theory) the increased resolution of PAL compensates for the lower refresh rate in equaling out the workload to generate one frame.

     

    You have a little more cpu time than in ntsc, but you have to render a little more data. (Most lazy PAL ports just switched to 50hz and ignored the extra resolution by letterboxing the game.)

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

     

    Yes, I know ... my point is that the NTSC version would probably run poorly too, with a different set of issues.

     

    I can't remember if the console original ran perfectly all the time. I should take it out and play it, take a bath in the blockiness.

     

    I seem to recall Tekken 3 having some issues keeping a steady 60FPS on original hardware. In other parts of their review DF mentions that Ridge Racer Type 4 has issues keeping at its original 30fps even in the NTSC version - so you're probably right in that the NTSC version of Tekken 3 would still run badly.

     

    I tried to remain positive, but this is not boding well for Sony.

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    Maybe. We don't know how well the NTSC version runs in this emulator. Tekken 3 is one of the more technically demanding games on the platform. It's possible it shouldn't even have been included because it's not very compatible.

     

    The plus side is that PlayStation was super popular so this is almost certain to get hacked wide open. I'd have more fun with a lineup of first year games, from before the dual shock controllers changed everything.

     

    Digital Foundry did some quick tests - Tekken 3 runs terrible. Not only is it running at 83% the speed it was intended to, it's simply duplicating frames periodically to get the 50hz to display at 60hz. So it's both slow and juddery.

  7. Posted

    Digital Foundry confirms the awfulness of the PAL stuff.

     

    https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-playstation-classic-emulation-first-look

     

    Tekken 3 does indeed run at 83.3 per cent of its intended speed, but more than that is the fact that a 50Hz gameplay is dropped into the Classic's 60Hz output, giving obvious judder. Looking at raw video captures, every sixth frame is a duplicate - there isn't even the rudimentary frame-blending used in PAL PS2 Classics running on PlayStation 4. In fact, Tekken 3 also includes regular 50ms frame-time spikes - two dropped frames in succession, something that shouldn't happen.

  9. Posted

    I'm still gathering all the bits to get classic gaming systems up in working order, and decided I'll probably go for an OSSC or Retrotink2 on my HDTV as opposed to using the Trinitron in my basement.

     

    I recall reading that HDMI 1080P sets can handle 50hz inputs - is this true? What would be the logistics of getting both NTSC and PAL games working?

     

    I'm really only interested in PAL for a handful of Mega Drive games that originated as Amiga ports (Chaos Engine, etc.)

  11. Posted · Edited by deepthaw

    Man this is driving me nuts now...I was going to say how much I enjoyed Tecmo World Wrestling on the NES. Great graphics and control, and I SWEAR I remember there being like cutscenes when you did certain moves (say an airplane spin), it would cut to a non-playable animated clip of said move. A clip I remember blowing my young mind graphics wise.

     

    But when I look at videos of the game online...I don't see these scenes at all. Am I confusing it with something else?

     

    Those were definitely in the game - they were just rare. Don't recall what it took to trigger them, which made it all the more sweet when they happened.

     

    https://youtu.be/4ow9cadI_DM?t=345

    • Like 1

  14. Posted · Edited by deepthaw

    The Ninja Gaiden trilogy reminds me of the Streets of Rage trilogy in a way.

     

    The first one was great.

    The second one was a masterpiece and superseded the original in pretty much every way.

    The third one was weird and forgotten.

     

    To stay on topic, I never even bothered trying to finish NG3. Something about it felt off from the start, and as soon as I saw the limited continues I said "nope, I got better things to do."

  19. Posted

    I imagine the lack of 32X support is due to a few factors:

    • 32X may have had a BIOS. That could be a copyright issue for built-in support.
    • The FPGA they're using may not be powerful enough to support 32X.
    • Writing a 32X core for their FPGA may not be worth it.

    Meanwhile as far as using a real 32X:

    • The 32X had a patch cable that ran video in from the Genesis. They'd have to add the electronics to generate that signal so a real 32X could use it
    • Even then, you'd lose HDMI because all 32X video comes from the 32X itself, and that would still be the old hardware.
    • Like 3

  23. Posted

    I think the concept of actually hating pre-NES is a joke, but what it is, is that you had this threshhold that kind of broke through after so long starting with the Colecovision that ate it, and really with the NES/Famicom. Before that time your idea of a fun game if it was at home was a few colors and some fairly decent sized squares slapped together to kind of look like what you were hoping to show off. Before that you're into the Pong and crap load of obvious Pong ripoff devices by anyone who could contract someone out there to rebrand it with your name on it. The stuff has little going for it other than some very rudimentary basic game audio and really the visuals, let alone styles too. At that point it just was basically pretty bad, didn't have the detailing to approach even what the arcade did back in 1980 and continued to improve on too for all of just twenty five cents. The NES, even the black box games did more than what was on the market at that time in 1985 and 1986 too at home. It finally started to look and feel like the earlier arcade games and you had quite a few of those early conversions, not that we got all of them from Japan, and they were pretty solid. I think that's where the non-hate thing is, it's a pain threshold which would be considered palatable, approachable, and just nice enough looking, sounding, and play wise to bother without feeling too crusty. The older systems real. I know this is an atari centric site, but beyond some big nostalgia for what you have there, the 2600 and 5200 are just too old for most people to put up with because of that. The NES at least, you have a breakthrough into the next level, and it also allowed in hardware to do more stuff like scrolling of the screen, better audio, more gameplay options, more genres. There was this new level of versatility beyond just trying to copy the basic arcade style of games of the early 80s and late 70s.

     

    I don't know if I can agree with the (majority of) black box games. I don't think they did anything you couldn't do on previous consoles, except they had better graphics. It wasn't until SMB that I realized the NES could do more than the same games with prettier graphics.

  24. Posted · Edited by deepthaw

     

    For real. Normally I enjoy playing games on their original systems, but I make an exception here. I'd MUCH rather play the Super Mario All-Stars version. SMB2 is another. Both games are WAY too long to play in one sitting without warping. I have done it on the NES but it took me like 4 hours to 100% clear (no stage unplayed) on original hardware on a rainy summer day. I got like 50 or 60 extra lives early in world 1-2 where the never-ending Goombas come out of the pipe, and then it was relatively easy. But it's way more time than I'll dedicate in one sitting today.

     

    The NES had a disturbing number of games that were too long for a single play session but had no way to save your data between sessions. I suspect that's why warp zones were in so many games.

  25. Posted · Edited by deepthaw

    Do I actively "hate" pre-NES consoles? Absolutely not.

     

    Is the NES my personal threshold for old games that are still legitimately fun to play? Yes.

     

    The earlier generation of consoles simply didn't have the hardware capabilities to have the complexity that NES/SMS games could offer. I still appreciate pre-NES systems, but I don't play them because the games have generally aged out of playability to me.

     

    Some examples of the complexity and why it matters:

    • Player abilities and the game world change in reaction to the player's actions. Mega Man slowly grows in abilities, in an order of your choosing.
    • Stages are both complex and unique enough to be identifiable. Super Mario Bros. epitomized this vs say, Pitfall or even Pitfall 2.
    • Storage space was enough that games intended to be completed over multiple sessions (Zelda and RPGs) were feasible.
    • Sound hardware was robust enough to provide sound tracks. And some of them were actually good.

    It was a paradigm shift in how games could be designed. And for me, games before that shift just aren't worth revisiting. But it's fine if other people want to.

     

    And I'm not saying that no pre-NES games pushed the limits of complexity. A lot of them did, but at a certain point you hit the limits of processing and memory, no matter how clever your programmers are.

    • Like 2
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