deepthaw

I seem to recall Dig Dug on 2600 being so easy as to be boring. Maybe I had it on an incorrect difficult setting?

The games are still playable. It just happens that the games I'd personally be interested in have performance problems that would kill my interest. It's unacceptable to me that they'd sell us slowed down versions of games, but also probably true that most people won't actually notice.

I'd buy it for $20 for the USB PS1 controllers.

No - the crux of my argument is that it's running PAL versions when nobody in this country played them which is selling an inaccurate product. I played the hell out of the Tekken series, and I can tell immediately if the game is at 83% speed or whatever. And millions of people did play PAL games, and a *lot* of them knew there was something wrong with them. If you spent your childhood growing up on Sonic in the US, would you be happy if a Genesis classic suddenly had this:

Well, it's not known if it's a bug or a design decision. The assumption that it's a bug due to other versions not being so prone to stats decreasing at level up.

At the risk of being politically incorrect, there's probably a reason the series is still going strong in Japan but died everywhere else.

To expand on it: Wizardry I - III are collectively referred to as the "Llylgamyn Saga" and are honestly nothing more than expansion packs to Wizardry I. They're identical gameplay wise, and even required you to import characters from the previous game to play on Apple II. The best way to play them is probably the Super Famicom port. Avoid the DOS version because it has a bug where your characters tend to lose attributes way more than they should when they level up, which makes the games even more difficult than intended. Wizardry IV is stupidly brutally hard and obtuse and apparently nobody likes it. You play as the villain from the first game and collect monsters to fight for you - the enemies are based on characters that plays of I-III mailed to the developers. A tip as to how impenetrably difficult the game is: you can't even leave the starting area unless you get some priests to join you, and one of them casts the spell to reveal secret doors during combat, so you can find the door you need to leave. Wizardry V is the last of the "classic" games and was apparently pretty badly dated at release. Best version depends on whether or not you want to experience the original keyword dialogue system. Super Famicom again is the best console port, but removes the need to type in keywords for interaction with NPCs. Wizardry VI through VIII are what I consider the "next generation" of Wizardry and are honestly Wizardry games in name alone. D.W. Bradley took over at this point and the games got even weirder. Gameplay systems were overhauled and the graphics finally moved out of the late 70s/early 80s. PC version is the best for these probably. They have no story connection to the previous games and feature spaceships, aliens, computers and all kinds of other gonzo shit. You can transfer your party from game to game in this trilogy to tell a convoluted but technically cohesive story.

I got into RPGs via Ultima and Dragon Warrior on the NES. I played the hell out of Wizardry on NES as well, but never really groked how I was supposed to play it (drawing a map seemed so tedious to young short attention span me.)

From my reading, the best way to experience the original Wizardry trilogy is how I'm doing it - the Llylgamyn Saga version for Super Famicom. It already has options for English text, but there's a translation patch that changes what little Japanese remains into English. It's quite authentic to the original experience on Apple II, but with quality of life improvements and much upgraded and tasteful graphics and sound. What's neat is it has options to revert some of the stuff to how it originally was (wireframe dungeons, coordinates instead of automap for the Dumapic spell, etc.) Difficulty is still there though, which is important.

I'm replaying the original Wizardry games - this time via the Llylgamyn saga version released for the Super Famicom. Having a surprising amount of fun, I never really had the patience as a kid to play the games "properly." It has the nice graphics and music of the NES versions (upgraded to kind of 16-bit) and the Dumapic spell works as an automap rather than just giving coordinates (once I refill my mechanical pencil, I hope to not rely on it as much.) It includes the original trilogy of games although I'm not sure how transferring characters works (the NES version of Wizardry Knight of Diamonds was rebalanced towards starting at level 1 rather than requiring an imported party from Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord - don't know if that still is true here, but it has some kind of data transfer functionality in it.) When people say it's the best way to replay the original trilogy (if you don't demand the authenticity of the Apple II version, that is) they're not kidding. For those who remember tips for the game, one of my fighters just reached the attributes necessary to switch to samurai. Is this something I want to do immediately or let them grind out fighter levels for a while still? I know my spellcasters I want to let build up a healthy reservoir of spells known before switching, but my melee types?

I wonder how many of the people this is targeted at won't even realize the system isn't very good? The same people who know this thing sucks are the same people who already have myriad ways to play PS1 titles. Their target audience may be impulse buys from people who won't know better or put enough time in it to care.

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.

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.)

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.

The most common guess I've seen is that it's because the PAL versions already include all the European translations so it's the most "complete" version in that respect.

I held off on the bashing bandwagon, and felt it was overblown and premature (the NES and SNES Classics set some high bars, quality-wise.) But this PAL version nonsense moves it squarely into the trash category for me. No excuse for it.

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.

Digital Foundry confirms the awfulness of the PAL stuff. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-playstation-classic-emulation-first-look

Crapacitors.

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.)