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youxia

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Posts posted by youxia

  1. Posted

    I've asked this elsewhere some time ago and the answers were mostly negative. This was in regard to PSX memory cards but I'd imagine it's a similar scenario with PS2. And I was particularly warned about the big un's, the ones which use bank switching or some such, I suppose the 128MB would fall into this category.

     

    I'm usually skeptical when people recommend branded products only, but did not want to risk my saves and went and bought a few used Sony original ones on ebay.

  3. Posted

     

    I don't see how anyone could argue that America's movies aren't the world's best. While there are many great foreign films, Hollywood just dominates.

     

    Well, they aren't :) There might've been periods when it was true but certainly not in the last decade or two. Unless you talk about highest grossing or most expensive of course, but to me it does not translate as "best". This mantle goes to the US TV output these days.

     

    As for "Nintendo ruining videogames", not sure if anybody can really take it seriously. It's just a variation on the "Sony/MS ruined videogames" trope which occasionally arises depending on posters tribal orientation. If anything ruined videogames it was greed and corporisation of previously enthusiast-driven industry.

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    It took me some time (approx 25 years :) but I finally started playing text adventures again this year. More importantly, I'm totally enjoying them. Yes, it's possible! (without any hint of nostalgia). The key here is applying the appropriate mindset and remembering this is a different form of videogame entertainment. One bit of advice I have is this: do not try to play them in "one sitting" sessions like other games, expecting huge progress everytime. Sure, sometimes it's possible but mostly you will get stumped real quick and if you don't walk away - frustrated.

     

    So now I play in small chunks and whenever I get stuck - quite often almost immediately - I try for a bit and then leave it be. Then return the next, or few days later, play other similar games in the meantime. It's amazing how often after such break a seemingly impossible puzzle gets solved real quick. Perhaps there is something to the claim your brain works on problems subconsciously, or maybe it's just a fresh look that helps. No matter, it works :) If it does not, then I leave it again, come back later...and so on.

     

    Text adventures are puzzle games of a peculiar kind, for those who enjoy syntax-related conundrums and also find fun in using abstract thinking to untangle others' imaginations. Quite often those seemingly illogical puzzles actually make sense if you look at them in a certain way and also have appropriate clues scattered around. Some, yeah, can be only broken by brute force approach or looking up the clues...luckily in 2018 it has never been easier, there are large repositories of solutions. If you're of an impatient sort, you can use them to enjoy the stories and narratives, because these are often really great too.

     

    Overall, I think it's a totally unique and still immensely rewarding and entertaining pastime. Not for everyone, for sure, but also not as dated and impossible to enjoy as the modern received wisdom has it.

    • Like 4

  7. Posted

    Alas! :)

     

    Alley Cat: 014-3922 (or 007-7717)

    Meta Llama: 29450

    Disclaimer: I've redefined the control scheme in AC replacing UP (on my gamepad's stick) with one of the buttons. Not sure if this counts as a "tampering", if yes then disregard my first score and use the one in brackets.

     

    So I was trapped in the Arcade HSC for half of this round, completely addicted to Time Pilot. But also put off a bit by AC's diffculty curve. My word...I can't think of any other game which I would equally love/hate. It's cute, innovative & hilarious but also controller-hurlingly infuriating. I still don't quite understand how jumping works.... The present delivery stages drove me to despair, only managed to complete the three by some sheer luck alignment. I once failed despite having FIVE presents to drop for other cats. Madness :)

    After the 3rd present stage the things go just way too wild for me so I don't think I can improve that score. You guys operate on some different Mhz frequency to manage these scores, especially the 300K :D

     

    Still, glad I finally played the AC properly...great stuff. If the jumping wasn't so wildly unpredictable it'd be even better. Also, what's that minigame where you have to sip milk from bowls all about? Couldn't figure it out.

     

    LLamas are an interesting curio, but somehow I can't wrap my mind around this to compete with the top scores here.

     

     

    IMG_20180822_210037.jpg

     

    IMG_20180824_211437.jpg

    • Like 2

  8. Posted

    I had a feeling that this thread might be yet another of Keatah's EMULATION IS GOD proselytizing exercises and it sure did end up in the now familiar territory.

     

    To be honest, I find it a bit tiresome by now, I've been here only few months but it's like a regular fixture. Now, if emulation works for you and you enjoy it, it's perfectly fine but is there really need to try to convert everybody to this method? Especially while painting the usage of the original hardware as some hellishly painful and cumbersome exercise and people undertaking it as stuck up luddites with mental issues? Never even mind the laborious and questionable pro-emulation arguments such as the one that "it attacks the problem from complex and "weird" angles"....not sure what does that even mean. Or the one about colour adjusting, as if people do not spend endless hours tweaking their emulator/PC settings.

     

    I'm saying this as someone who uses emulation for about 80% of my vintage gaming neeeds and owns literally one retro-machine at the moment (in storage anyway). So yeah, it's my prefered method, but it does not mean I look down on those who use the real stuff. In fact I do love it myself and in other circumstances I'd definitely have a bit more of it up and running. For various reasons, but mostly because I have great respect for that old hardware and like to keep it alive and happy...just because. Sounds silly? Perhaps, but as long as it's my little harmless thing then it's nobody's business really.

     

    It's similar with game collecting, is the fact that there are some obsessive douchebags and narcisstic show-offs out there a reason why I can't enjoy a box-filled shelf or three of my own?

     

    Sure, compulsive hoarding of anything can be a problem but I don't think it's some infectious malady endangering the community. I also know rom hoarders who have so many games that they can never decide on what to play and quit everything after a minute or two.

     

    tl, dr: live & let live

    • Like 2

  10. Posted

    When it comes to drifting I was always pretty much a High Plains kind - participating in some projects and conversations but mostly keeping to myself. Perhaps because a curious thing about the retrogaming scene is how many people seemingly loathe the "retro" bit. Do you love CRTs and want to talk about them? You will be told they suck and you should upgrade to a flat tv already. Original consoles/micros? They suck too, take up too much space, you can't save a game or put a crappy filter on: use emulators, same for games: who needs boxes, go digital. That old game you really like to play? Guess what - the gameplay & fx suck: play the remake or let's just talk about modern games anyway.

     

    Scene, uh, it can be hard work, I tell you :) Some of these elements are present here too of course, but the good thing about AA is that it's rather big and there's room for maneuver - unlike some smaller, clique dominated boards which can be quite suffocating. There's also lots of devs, modders and generaly people who do stuff and keep the hobby alive. Plus, people who actually play games - the HS clubs are really great, especially the 8-bit one, not so much about scoring high but more about just playing games and talking about them (shoutout to therelalbountybob for keeping it so fun)

     

    One bit of advice to folk perhaps bored with it all is: try the microcomputers. The games for them may not be the snazziest fx-wise but there are heaps upon heaps of amazingly fun and inventive ones.

    • Like 4

  11. Posted

    I'm not really a fan of this whole "aged well/unwell" angle regarding gfx (aside from the 2D > 3D mentioned above). It's obvious that the early efforts are not technically up to scratch compared to the modern games but personally I still enjoy them, and not because of some weird nostalgia fetish. Some of the first-gen 3D games were technically astounding at the time and lots of clever art/tech tricks went into designing them. I did not have a Saturn, but PSX titles such as Syphon Filter, Covert Ops: Nuclear Dawn, Klonoa, Driver, Gran Turismo, Ridge Racer, Tekken and others still look amazing to me.

     

    I treat it as a different style rather than an inferior one. A bit like when I'm watching, say, a Harold Lloyd movie.

    • Like 2

  17. Posted · Edited by youxia

    Wow, this one will go down to the wire :D 100K has been truly breached.

    I thought a lot about the spawn paterns and think they're actually quite random. I had stuff appear just about everywhere, regardless of map position and timing. That's why you can sometimes clock 40K plus in the first stage and sometimes barely 20K. There's lots of luck involved in this game when playing for HS so it's sort of "unfair", but it's also so addictive and great that it doesn't matter really. My only real gripe is with the inconsistent lock-on for missiles...it's why I die a lot when trying to pull some super tight maneuvres and it does not catch on.

     

    In the run with the score below I had everybody and their dog appear in Stage 1, so managed to get 42K, then the biplane spawned next to me so I of course had to crash right into it :D

     

    EDIT: Actually, Zoyous could be right, the trench seems to have higher probability to spawn things: I got the jets like 3 times in a row there and the ground thing also appears maybe more often. But only on the first level. That makes me think, perhaps different levels have different probability zones. There's got to be something happening in the desert, right?

     

    Damn, I really wish I had arcade stick for this. My thumb is dying.

     

    113,700

     

    IMG_20180816_205654.jpg

    • Like 1

  18. Posted

    Both Raspberry Pi and modded Wii can do the emu-box job and output composite to a CRT, but that requires a bit of setting up. Wii is probably easier of the two.

    Other option is building a CRT capable PC but that's a Hard Mode.

  19. Posted

     

    In the case of the SNES, the typical 2-chip models produce a notoriously soft image by nature, even when outputting via RGB.

     

    Yep. I remember being shocked on how bad the SNES picture looks in composite, compared to RGB.

     

    So, which one is it guys? :P

     

    My bottom line is: no matter which console or microcomputer, the difference between the source quality is not as great as the received wisdom has it. I'm not sure there's really need to be "shocked" by the "notorious" SNES output since the quality of gfx viewed on a CRT screen in some games is simply mouthwatering, no matter if viewed via composite or RGB.

     

    And the whole obsession with "sharpness" in retro games is purely a modern thing. There's nothing wrong with a bit of softness, it varies from game to game of course but overall it was a part of the artist's toolbox back then - along with dithering and other methods, going past those few oft-mentioned tricks such as the waterfall - not something inherently bad.

     

    I remember very well the feeling of superiority when comparing my Amiga's TV output with my mate's early 286 VGA. Its pixelitis and the lack of natural TV's AA was very jarring, something even he reluctantly admitted. That superiority of course ended when the SVGA and the likes of Wolfenstein et al appeared and won on another level, but I always turned my nose up at those silly pixels anyway. I guess others were of a similar opinion since anti-aliasing has become sort of popular ;)

    • Like 1

  21. Posted

    S'funny alright :) I just looked at the hearts and how well defined they are and that was my take. On a better quality pic the difference should be much more visible...kinda funny it takes people poring over details to tell it here though :)

     

    As for RF, again, there would be that "black noise" visible in darker areas, perhaps other interference too, which is why I try to steer clear of this connection when possible. I'm in Europe now and have 2 Trinitron sets connected via RGB and yep, the IQ on them looks pretty cool...but when I go back to Asia soon I will be down to my no-name Composite TV set (it's hard to source better one there) and can live with that quality too.

     

    I migh try to take some composite vs RGB pics from the Trinitron when I have a moment but it's a bit of pain to do it properly.

  22. Posted

    I'd tag 1) Composite 2) SVid 3) RF but this is a bit of guesswork since CRTs are notoriously difficult to photograph. If you're not using a tripod it's very easy to produce even minuscule blur (since you have to set the f really low) which ruins such comparisons.

     

    The other thing is that RF's main problem is the amount of noise, again hard to photograph. That's why Composite is much better since it is both a bit sharper and stable. But I do agree that overall difference is not THAT great across all formats, including RGB, it's only been puffed up in recent years. I mean, of course RGB is better, but that does not render Composite totally useless. The viewing distance is a great factor too.

  23. Posted

    155K? Jaysis :D I played a bit yesterday but did not go over 25... It's tough as hell and jumping can be quite infuriating (especially when facing the canine threat). But still, it's one of the best games ever. So cute & inventive. Packs more varied gameplay into its puny kilobytes than most of the bloated, one-dimensional modern games.

     

    Llamas...interesting, but need to figure out what's going on here. And why my version (from Gamebase I think?) keeps crashing after the first death.

    • Like 1
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