VideoGame_Discussion

Ikaruga 5
Doom 5

Doom - 5
Sonic Adventure - 5

Looks like it might be another close month.

Sonic Adv - 5

Should we nominate a theme for the year as a whole?

SupremeSarna wrote:

Let's hear some ideas, and then we can decide if we want to stick with a theme or keep doing a free-for-all.

I meant the annual franchise challenge, pardon me. My suggestions are Fire Emblem and Shantae—the former has a lot of games to pick from but is fairly difficult and lengthy, while the latter is smaller and easier. FE is only available on Nintendo systems and mobile, while Shantae has been ported to a bunch of current and last-gen systems.

No matter what, I’m playing them both.

SupremeSarna wrote:

Oh...

I'm happy to hold another nomination/vote for them, but since I was the only person who finished a Shining game this year, I figured people weren't that into it. What does everyone think?

Happy New Year, retroheads!

Let's give everyone one more day of votes for January because of all the holiday distractions. If you want to do an Annual Challenge next year, start thinking of a franchise or two you want to highlight.

Cheers!

I'll also nominate the Paper Mario series, though I'm kinda Paper'd out after my grueling Dbl Pain run through the Pit of 100 Trials in TTYD.

Renaissance2K wrote:

I really wanted to finish Shining Force 2 but December was not my best month of maybe the
worst year ever. I played it again on Friday and Saturday but was feeling kinda awful yesterday.
I did pass the Kraken battle and I still had lots of fun when I felt well enough
to play it though. And I don’t believe people arent into the idea of playing one game series
Throughout the year its prolly just the Shining series.

Its a very drawn out battle scenario every battle which I guess puts people off of it.
For me thats not the issue, I havent been playing games as much this last year
and I mostly just played four different games outside of this group.
Well I guess five if you count Mortal Kombat 1 and Mortal Kombat 11 as different games.
And even though I play these games alot, I went almost two months without
playing much of anything.

So I’m all for an annual franchise thats easier to jump in and out of.
I was thinking of nominating Disney Movie and Show games.
Stuff like Fantasia on Genesis and DuckTales on Nes.
Plus I’ve nominated Belles Quest on Genesis before knowing it never
had any chance at winning. I figure since theres tons of games
like that some people adore (Everyone knows I love Princess sh1#)
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has a favorite like that where it
Couldnt win on its own. But as a group of random Disney games? Maybe.
Theres just too many underappreciated classics.
I also know people in this group have kids that they love gaming with.
I dont but I did used to love playing Toy Story and Lego games with
My nephews so I totally get it.

I liked the 'option' of an annual focus and I did consider playing a Shining Force title a few different times during the year. I ultimately never got started on one, but having that out there did at least garner my interest.

Zelda II has walked through a magical door that it manifested from a spell with no name. Here are the folks that jumped and slashed their way to victory in December:

SupremeSarna image image Renaissance2K image

Many thanks to everyone who picked up Zelda II, as well as everyone that played along this year through all the festivities. We played through a record 26 games/franchises - 27 if you count the Shining franchise that we picked as our annual challenge - largely thanks to the mayhem of the Arcade August and October Birthday Extravaganza months, which features nine games and six franchises, respectively.

In addition to those special event months, we also picked FPS games in February, nominated some of our favorite game soundtracks in June, and continued our tradition of redeeming a second place game in December. For some months, we also played for high scores, awarding special badges to those who finished the month on top.

For probably the first time since this thread was created, 2023 was a banger year for JRPGs with us playing through Final Fantasy VI, Golden Sun, and games in the Shining franchise. An epic tale of turn-based combat is good for the soul.

And, of course, we earned a buttload of badges.

BleedingViolet - 13
BloodPuppetX - 11
Kommie - 3
Lunar - 5
image Renaissance2K - 66
sailorneorune - 1
Slickriven - 16
SupremeSarna - 6
Yoshi - 3

For those of you keeping score at home, that's 124 badges for finishing games, placing in high score challenges, and completing birthday objectives.

Thanks again to everyone who stopped by, who played along, and who shared interesting retro news with the crew. I'm looking forward to another fun, pixel-filled year of gaming.

Here's the final tally for January's Game of the Month:

1. Sonic Adventure - 20 points
2. Fire Emblem / The Blazing Blade - 11 points
3. Ikaruga - 10 points
3. Doom - 10 points
5. Super Smash Bros. series- 8 points
5. Mega Man X - 8 points

After a whole console generation without a mainline Sonic game, Sonic Adventure arrived on the Dreamcast, ready to satiate a ravenous fanbase. The game, which launched in North America on 9/9/99 alongside the Dreamcast, catapulted the Blue Blur into the third dimension with a large, story-driven narrative that spanned many locales, challenges, and playable characters. After the release of a sequel and the failure of Sega's final console, the game was ported to Windows and GameCube as Sonic Adventure DX with adjustments to suit the new platforms, and to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as a rushed HD remaster. While Sonic Adventure's legacy is somewhat mixed, it is fondly remembered among Sonic superfans as the first time Sonic dropped on hardware that could match his attitude.

Play Sonic Adventure on
Dreamcast
Xbox 360
PlayStation 3

Play Sonic Adventure DX on
GameCube
Windows
Xbox 360
PlayStation 3

Finish any release of Sonic Adventure to earn the "This is happenin'" badge: image

While you won't be beating Sonic in any footraces, feel free to post a #BeatIt screenshot here.

Behind all the monthly shenanigans, another Annual Franchise Challenge will be active for 2024. Until January 10, post series or franchises that you want featured in this year's Annual Franchise Challenge. While the franchise was borne to highlight games that are longer or more involved than the usual monthly fare, feel free to nominate anything with a storied history that you want to explore. We'll vote on your choices until January 10.

As stated, I nominate Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, and Shantae for annual challenge.

I want to nominate Wipeout for the annual challenge. Or really, any Psygnosis game.

benstylus wrote:

I would be all over this. I feel like half of my backlog is Psygnosis games.

Saturn gamers finally have a "no compromises" patch for Symphony of the Night.

https://twitter.com/Manic_Socratic/status/17420326...

I like that Wipeout or even Psygnosis suggestion/nomination.

Renaissance2K wrote:

What was this? The original post isn’t available…

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024/01/saturn-...

"Using the PSP version as its template, this patch for Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight (the game's Japanese title) reduces load times, fixes bugs and even allows you to use the Saturn's 4MB RAM cartridge. Transparency effects which were missing from the original port are restored as much as possible, while certain sprites have been resized so they more accurately match those in the PlayStation version."

Here's a full list of the changes:

Full translation into English
Restoring the translucency of many objects
Direct access to the global map
Finalization of the global map
Restoring the original proportions of some sprites
Removing horizontal blacks
Skip videos and dialogues
Access to Richter's alternate costume
Reduced loading time
Supports 4MB expansion card
Bug fixes
Hard mode

There's been a lot of buzz in the past few months about creating a version of the unreleased Sega Neptune, which would combine a Genesis and 32X in a single shell.

A designer recreated the shell that was originally teased in Sega's marketing, and a few modders figured out a way to squeeze a real Genesis 2 motherboard and 32X inside of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz_8-sqxLjs

It looks like someone else is taking things a step further and creating a mainboard. You solder in the chips from a real Genesis and a real 32X, and it works like the real things.

https://twitter.com/cosam_the_great/status/1743060...

The 32X is obviously a very niche console, but I think it's neat that people are still playing around with it so many years later. This is a much more svelte way of adding one to your setup without having to stare at a mushroom.

Macho Nacho's Tito does some truly awesome videos/builds, I've watched far too many and not done any of those builds - he makes things look too dang easy and I fear my effectively non-existent soldier skills would ruin things.

That does seem very cool. One thing I have really come to appreciate lately is no load
times. I have a series S as my main console and really like my mini Nes Snes and
Genesis mini 2 systems as well. Seeing a 32X genesis combo all in one is really cool.
I did NOT watch that whole veedjo though,

I’ve always wondered if they could or would
do something similar for two of my favorite systems with decent homebrew libraries
too. Namely the Dreamcast and the Jaguar/CD.
Now I know some of y’all hate pirating and whatever but just having
all these games in one place would be awesome. If Sega ever made a Series S
style Console where you could legit buy digital copies of their
entire backlog and pay reasonable prices for them I would be
ALL OVER THAT.

Speaking of which I did just download and start playing
Sonic Adventure on Xbox the other day. It still looks
great but I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing ….
just like when I first had it on the DC what seems like a million years ago.
Its fun though which is really all that matters 😃

Does it have Sega CD compatibility? Doubtful. But still, very cool

It should. It still has the expansion connector. I think that's the only way to play CD games, though, since the 32x blocks CD functionality on flash carts.

You either have to use a real Sega CD or the MSDEXP adapter.

I'm working on Sonic Adventure. I've started the OG Dreamcast version of the game probably a dozen times, but I never made it past the Windy Valley stage because I couldn't figure out how to unlock Casinopolis and was too lazy/apathetic to look up how.

Is it just me, or is it really hard to figure out what to do next? I know there are sprites floating around that give you hints, but they'll usually just tell you which adventure zone to go to, and then you're running around hunting for an action pixel that may or may not exist. The camera makes it really difficult to find your bearings, too.

Even the official strategy guides are missing a clear step-by-step walkthrough. They have maps of every zone, details on how to unlock special moves, and which keys go where, but nothing about when you'd actually need to use those items or what order they should be completed in.

Am I just an idiot?

We're coming up on the 10th. Does anyone else have any other franchises (or developers, I guess, in the case of Psygnosis) that they want to nominate for the Annual Franchise Challenge?

I nominate Psikyo

Okay, folks. Here are the nominees for the Annual Challenge, along with links to their Wikipedia pages so you can check out a list of applicable games:

Nominees
Fire Emblem
Shantae
Paper Mario
Psygnosis
Psikyo

Either publicly in this thread or privately in a PM to me, give each nominee 0-5 points. Omitting a nominee is equivalent to giving it a vote of 0. The game with the highest score by January 20 will be the 2024 Annual Challenge.

Here are my votes:

Fire Emblem - 2 Shantae - 2 Paper Mario - 3 Psygnosis - 5 Psikyo - 2

Time to vote!

Fire Emblem - 0
Based solely on its current aesthetic and the fact that nearly 83% of the characters in smash are from fire emblem, I just have zero desire to play any of them

Shantae - 2
I have all of them, so this one is certainly doable, but I'm just not feeling it.

Paper Mario - 3
Once again I have all of these, and have save files probably halfway through any given game, but they just haven't kept me hooked until the end.

Psygnosis - 5
Wipeout. Rollcage. Assault Rigs. Shipwreckers. Blast Radius. Colony Wars. Lemmings. Discworld. Shadow of the Beast. The list of all time classics they made or had a hand in runs deep. And then they also published Spice World.

Psikyo - 1
This one would be pretty easy at least with how short most shooters are.

Paper Mario - 2
Psygnosis - 5
Psikyo - 3

I’ll vote like this

Psygnosis - 5
Shantae - 4
Psikyo - 3
Paper Mario - 2
Fire Emblem - 1

This is pretty wild. You can now connect MAME, RetroArch, and a handful of other emulators to a MiSTer over the network and use it as video output to a CRT.

image

Getting a downscaled output from MAME has been a nightmare of connections, devices, and configurations, to the point that I don't really bother any more. This worked on the first try after downloading two files.

Man, I wish this was a thing during Arcade August.

MIND BLOWN!

Link me to the source when you get a chance

https://github.com/psakhis/Groovy_MiSTer

Instructions are kind of sparse, but this is what I needed to do to make it work with MAME.

1. Download and install GroovyMAME on your PC. Configure it as you would your standard MAME installation (point it to your ROMs directory, etc.).
2. Download the Groovy MiSTer core, and copy it to the "Utility" directory on your MiSTer's SD card.
3. Download the patched MiSTer binary to the root of your MiSTer's SD card.
4. Start your MiSTer. Wait for the network to initialize, and then start the Groovy core from the "Utilities" directory. If everything is set up properly on the MiSTer side, you'll see a GroovyMAME screensaver.
5. Start GroovyMAME with this command line argument. It will take a minute, but you'll eventually see a tiny MAME window on your screen.
6. Select a game from the MAME window, and get cracking.

First #BeatIt of 2024 is Sonic!

https://twitter.com/Renaissance2K/status/174598663...

Man, not to sound scrubby or whiney or whatever, but I demand a refund on at least 80% of my deaths in that game. Lots of "the camera is facing the wrong way but I have to jump" moments, falling through the floor bugs, "oh that wall is actualy deadly" surprises, etc. Gotta love those early 3D platformers.

When Sonic is actually allowed to be Sonic - go fast, kill things, go fast again, etc. - it's pretty fun. Wandering around the overworld, fighting the camera, and falling to an unearned death... less so. Oh well.

Renaissance2K wrote:

Still 100x better than the sequel.

I would play a "Big the Cat only" version of Sonic Adventure before attempting to play through SA2 ever again.

And just like that, I beat the Steam version as Tails.

https://twitter.com/Renaissance2K/status/174636114...

I didn't realize going into this that each character was going to have their own arc. Maybe I should create a badge for each one...

When I read that Tails' action stages are all him trying to beat Sonic in a race, I wasn't sure how that was going to work, seeing as Sonic is supposed to be, you know, fast. But then you use Tails' flying ability to skip half the level, and yeah, makes more sense now. Pretty breezy playthrough, too.

FYI: This game is marked as "Non Playable" on the Steam Deck, but I didn't have any problems whatsoever, other than needing to use the analog sticks to navigate the menu.

I'm just going to leave this here.

https://youtu.be/859zCaxJrrI?si=TRxLN_ZTlzMDJ_Si

It's the 19th on the East Coast. Get your votes in for the Annual Challenge, and I'll announce the winner on Saturday.

Fire Emblem: 5
Shantae: 4
Paper Mario: 5