youxia

Agreed. I see a lots of potential, which can also be easily squandered by: a) unrealistic expectations re sales b) unrealistic expectations re exclusive content - see (d) c) alienating lots of potential buyers with silly statements like "only E10<" d) alienating lots of potential devs with the above and other hoops such as price and min 7/10 rating (WTF) e) how can you not put physical buttons on a controller for 2D games ?!?!!11! While the "couple of dudes in their fifties..." remark was no doubt overtly harsh, you do need some sort of reality check when it comes to these things. Some vague family-oriented and anti-CoD sentiments do not sell high volumes of units. Especially seeing as the retro-device market is already fairly saturated, what with endless amount of official/unofficial Minis and retro-consoles already available and in the pipeline. A new entry with questionable design, narrow target audience, high price point and dev-unfriendly does not really have high hopes of surviving.

That, and you also sort of need to forget about all the conditioning we got from "normal" RPGs over the years, because FromSoftware does things their way, always had - after all Souls are the next-gen King's Field series. These changes are sometimes subtle but crucial, especially given how unforgiving these games are. And of course the whole progression path is different: you die, learn something new, upgrade a bit and rinse' n repeat, instead of just strolling from point A to B like in most other games. It's more akin to a roguelike system. It's a bit sad that it all usually boils down to that "HC vs casual" squabbling - here and elsewhere - instead of trying to explain the different approach, becase it definitely stops lots of people trying it out and giving up in frustration (similar to roguelikes again) and in effect lots of folks missing out on an amazing experience. Myself, I'm not even good at them at all, never got any further than maybe ~1/3rd in any of them (I'm not a fan of boss battles generally in games and here it can be a real pain). But I'm glad they exist and will eventually come back to them, don't have any modern rig atm. One aspect that seldom gets mentioned - it's always about that "difficult!" angle - is the astonishing art & atmosphere prevailing in all the entries. The feeling of doom, gloom and overall alienness is unparalled and some of the visual sets simply mindblowing. It's the ultimate grimdark of videogames, especially seeing as you are no hero, just a hollowed husk, stumbling around gothic-nightmare landscapes.

Another solution is to get a Wii. It will play all the GC games via - as far as I understand - some sort of "hardware emulation" (ie better than Xbox or PS backward compability) and connecting it to a CRT via SCART/Component is cheap and yields great results. Probably HDMI too.

I think you can pause by putting Switch into Sleep mode. The lack of pause is not that big a deal anyway, at least not at home. From what I remember, there are places where you can idle with no penalty (after clearing nearby monsters of course) and for me personally it's a kind of game I like to play at a time when a possibility of sudden distractions is minimal. Portable version could use one I guess though.

It's an archive with these files in it, description says there are PCW 8256 / 8512 boot disks plus games and some other soft. It's only ~0.5 MB, you can PM me your email and I will send it over. Though, if the PCW uses CP/M as OS, wouldn't it be available on sites like these? http://www.classiccmp.org/cpmarchives/

What a bizarre thing overall. It starts really great with the "2D only" premise, but the subsequent hoops for the devs to jump through - 7/10, E10+<, 2.99-7.99 are ridiculous. I mean, he says all content will be exclusive, so he wants people to develop for him on those strict, rather suffocating conditions (if I'm reading this right, which may or may not be the case since it's all a bit of a info mish mash).

I'm probably past the the deadline, but seeing as it's still 19:43 here (Beijing time) perhaps I can sneak it in... Game B: 10,680 Game 5: 594

Phew, PCW 10 seems to be a rare bird. Lucky you. But yeah, the software seems to be scarce, the OS, at least. I can source boot disk set for PCW 8256 / 8512 but not sure if it would work on the 10 too.

Right, right on. Now we know that the only reason arcades were so popular back in the day was frustration, not fun. Interesting theory While it's true that some arcade games were tweaked so that you'd lose them lives quick in an unfair fashion, most were simply set in the hard-but-fair mode zone (the opposite of often infuriatingly unfair Nintendo-hard console games). That made them not only fun but pushed you to actually make an effort, git gud instead of sleepwalk and devise interesting strategies. The only frustrating thing was not enough money to play (hence hours spent watching others) but this is not a problem in the MAME age. Regarding the OP, as somebody who grew up with ZX Spectrum I was exposed to countless ports from superior machines. There were many awful ones, but plenty managed to be a lot of fun despite the obvious hardware limitations. Bionic Commando, Super Hang On, Bubble Bobble, Chase HQ or Bomb Jack for example. And Renegade is still my favourite version, that port was just amazing.

Ha, don't underestimate the power of PC/CRPG geeks They may be not as flashy/shouty as the "[email protected]@K! RARE!!1!" Ninty & Co crowd but I'm sure they take their classics very seriously and happen to have deep pockets. Akalabeth is both rare and a seminal CRPG, so I can undertsand the drive. Ditto sealed Maniac Mansion and other similar stuff. I'm not a collector, but always wanted to have at least one original SSI game, preferably from the GoldBox series. But my bid limit is somewhere near ~50 bucks, definitely not my league here

Me too. This is really awesome, way above the standard fan-art fare. Reminds me of old 200 AD comic books (Dan Dare etc).

Only problem is, you don't take away the retailers. Majority of digital games, be it PC, console or mobile are sold through some sort of shop front, all of which take substantial cut from sales - the "industry standard" is 30%. Back in the day you'd need a publisher who'd take another big chunk - sure, now it's possible to bypass them, but then you have no ad support, apart from the word of mouth, and since the market is literally flooded with indie/mobile games only the lucky few actually make some real money, say Stardew Valley or PUBG people. The rest just gets by and/or folds. And in AAA gaming devs don't get any more than they used to, it's all business as usuall with publishers controlling the stake. "Secondary market" allowed people with low incomes like me to buy and enjoy games (occasionally buy new too because of savings) and in turn allowed people who always buy new to trade theirs and buy more new games. It worked just fine for decades. And the games' quality itself didn't get any "better" or "worse" recently because of digital market. Anyway, as per usual, I do not mind the digital stores themselves, but I do mind the godawful new status quo where you do not own anything. And there's no reason - apart from corporate greed - why we couldn't trade digital games too: the only "negative" effect would be a smaller (but not small) pile of goldz for Gaben and all the other CEOs to sit on.

Arcade Scramble is the first videogame I remember seeing/playing. Getting misty eyed... This port is truly excellent. But "normal" is a bit too easy I think. Perhaps we should crank it up a bit?

No, it's not "moving goalposts", instead it's just showing your fallacious logic for what it is. "The 2600 has not aged as well as NES" is your subjective - not objective - opinion. And anybody else is equally entitled to saying that NES (or X system of their choice) has not aged well and playing it is a waste of time, because later system Y is where it's at. Funnily enough, I've just read precisely that earlier on today Switch Online proves, once again, that NES games aren’t that good And some comments below on n4g: Sounds familiar? But okay, I'm sure these people are just some irrelevant guys from the internet, and it's your opinion that really matters With that, I'll say my good-bys, I see where this thread is going and it's about as much fun as playing a pre-chess game (whatever that was).

There are still some fun experiences to be had pre 2600, but those games just cannot compete with the best 2600 has to offer. The 2600 offered a level of immersion in games that wasn't seen before. Then you add the much improved controller pad that was a night and day improvement over anything else that came before. Its easy to understand why its hard for a lot of people to enjoy most pre 2600 games when you consider how much ahead the 2600 was in comparison. ............... There are still some fun experiences to be had pre PSX/PC/PS 4/etc, but those games just cannot compete with the best PSX/PC/PS 4/etc has to offer. The PSX/PC/PS 4/etc offered a level of immersion in games that wasn't seen before. Then you add the much improved controller pad/kbm that was a night and day improvement over anything else that came before. Its easy to understand why its hard for a lot of people to enjoy most pre PSX/PC/PS 4/etc games when you consider how much ahead the PSX/PC/PS 4/etc was in comparison. ............... Gotta love those topics, eh :/ For me, a good game(play) stands the test of time no matter what hardware or era it was released on. I had more/as much fun playing some of these "primitive" Atari games in HSCs this year than with many more recent ones.

I really love Time Tunnel, it's one of these early charming arcade games, plus something differet from the usual styles too. And that's as well, coz I'm really not into the pac-style munching gameplay....

Gravitar: 22,450 / 29,050 Xybots: 96,700after There are two scores in Gravitar because that devious game glitched out when I was entering my initials for 29,050 and all of a sudden I was entering initials for my previous HS (the 22,450) It was beyond bizarre, neve mind infuriating - especially seeing as taking these 2 planets out (NE then NW) was nerve wracking. So it's up to you, either take my word for it, or go with the screenshot Despite this snafu I totally love Gravitar, it's totally amazing and I wish I had one more week and a real arcade cab - playing on a pad and fighting overscan on my CRT was a bit of a pain in the ass, seeing as this game demands absolute control. Xybots is fun too, though the cruel energy drain makes the runs quite desperate, plus HS a matter of luck too - if you get "easy" levels first it's not so bad, otherwise...well.

Boy, is this hard or what? I don't have the mental stamina to go over 10K...never even mind +100K, there are some true cyborgs here I won't lie, the promise of double points for a noob was a major factor for me even trying... Hopefully do better in the next round. Dragonfire: 8270

Hold the press! Just before the deadline... Well, nothing to see here actually .Just clamouring for a few token points Starquake: 2% Bertyx: 1200 Pong: 500 Pong knows I hate it and it hates me back: I tried to have a go today, collected 2 boxes and got 0 points for it. That kind of put a damper on my goodwill towards it and it was all about Reset. I don't have a scr$ for my previous attempt so you'll have to take my word for it. I kind of like the gfx in Bertyx, but mine comes out B&W, no artifacting, despite also displaying on a CRT. Though the feed comes from Raspberry. I wonder what's the reason? Is it because of RGB perhaps, or something about emulation? I tried to look up solution on Polish sites, but couldn't find any.

QFT

Hatin' on pre-NES is silly, but then you get the NES-hatin' and topics like "Nintendo destroyed videogaming" popping up, so I guess it evens out. The circle is complete

The 0.73 MAME set recommended for the latest RPi runs perfectly fine in most cases. Been using it for a long time and tested heaps of games in-depth, playing in various HSCs, etc. Since the board is so popular, people still work on improving the emulation, eg lastest AdvanceMAME plays loads of games better than the original MAME or FBA did at the beginning. For that reason alone it's also > Xbox (which does not have HDMI either). I'm just saying this for the record, of course if I was building an arcade cab I'd also go with a mini/custom PC. Though it's worth remembering that MAME mostly utilises one core, so what you'd ideally look at is some easily overclockable CPU, even older one, instead of splashing on the latest octa-core monster.

I think anything pre Tennis for Two sucked.

While there is a lot of terrible ones, undeniably it's possible to find some gems too. I think N, and a few other classics have started out this way. What are your favourites? 7DRL compo (rogulikes made in a week) usually yields some great examples: here's DuckSoup Dungeon, a cute retro platformer. And an old meta-gaming classic: Achievement Unlocked Now, where was that Boss Key again?