Sumez

Yes! This happens very often, at least for games with a very tight margin of competition. Super Mario Bros. is a popular example where timing is usually down to frames (or more precisely, the game's built in "frame rule"). The splits shown live during a stream is mostly just for the streamer's (and their audience's) own convenience, letting them stay aware of the current pace. It's not uncommon that someone forgets to record a split, and gets it much later than it should have been.

Those timers are almost always handled by a piece of software called LiveSplit, and it has a lot of different ways to indicate that the runner reached a split (which is where the timer gets recorded as it moves on to the next split, or records the time of the completed run). For runners playing on console, they are almost always handling the split timing manually. Usually with some sort of input to their computer which is reachable without letting go of their controller. Often the "official" timing for one such split will often be based on a point where controller inputs aren't required, giving them time to handle it without letting go of control. For emulators or PC games, a common approach is looking at specific RAM values that indicate progress and automatically record a split. LiveSplit has a lot of plugins that do stuff like this, often configurable to individual games using resources shared by each game's communities. There's been a lot of talk about hardware solutions for console runners, either using game genie like tools, or automatic video analysis. For the latter I've personally worked with some of the plugins made by some people, and I can say it's still in a very primitive state - that kind of software is usually a lot more complex than you'd imagine due to unreliable artifacts introduced by analog video, etc.

I'm not gonna bite

I've very rarely sold anything that wasn't a double, and I still have all the games that I owned during my childhood outside of a few GB games that were lost. Occasionally I'd sell, if possible, shitty games that came with larger lots, but even with those I tend to keep a lot of them just because it hurts to see any game go. But a couple of years ago I decided to clean out some of my arcade stuff, because original PCBs take up a ton of storage space, so I figured it would be best to just keep the games I felt certain I'd get some genuine playtime out of. So I sold Gals Panic (because it's just a dumb, lewd Qix clone) and Tiger Road (because I gave it a few attempts and hated how making any progress relied on basically abusing game mechanics), and never made it any further than that. I still regret selling Tiger Road - It's a Capcom classic after all, and its price has gone up to like 8x the amount of what I sold it for since then due to the recent price hike in nearly every arcade game. At least the guy I sold it to has given me some nice deals on a few other arcade games, and I know it's in a good home. Another thing I sold back in the days was a Neo Geo AES. I sold it only weeks after getting it because I really just wanted the arcade sticks, and I figured that buying AES games would ruin me immediately. While I don't really miss owning it, I know I'll never get another chance at owning one due to the absurd prices they sell for now. I sold it with just a gamepad (kept both sticks) and one of the World Heroes games for $75, which is the same as I paid for the entire thing imported from Japan, so at least I didn't lose any money in the deal.

I think it's not so much that there isn't one track that "stands out" - DKC2 has a lot more going for it than Stickerbrush Symphony, the entire soundtrack is godlike, and to be honest there are probably a bunch of other tracks I like even better. But with Eveline Fischer doing the majority of the soundtrack, DKC3 lacks the same catchy oomph that David Wise added to the first two games, DKC3 simply doesn't sound too impressive in comparison due to its more repetitive nature. But Fischer is still very talented, and judging by the overall sound of the game she worked on the same sound engine as the first two games (which I'm assuming was created by David Wise) which by itself ensures an audio quality that you'll only find in very few other SNES games. DKC3's soundtrack in general focuses less on full on melodies, and is a lot more subtle and subdued. And even compared to the surprisingly somber mood of the earlier two soundtracks, this one is just so incredibly gloomy that it might even fit a horror game, or something like Metroid. There's really few other things like it. I was just skimming through the entire soundtrack trying to identify really memorable tracks that stand out to me - and although most of the tracks are still familiar to me even years after last playing the game (definitely a testament to its quality), it's hard to pick out just one. The map theme, Northern Kremisphere has already been mentioned. It's a great track, and probably the one you'll remember the best due to how much it's heard. Others that stand out to me would be Mill Fever, Water World, Nuts n Bolts, and Treetop Tumble. But really, the entire soundtrack occupies a lot of the same qualities.

Yeah, if you can mod your US console to play Japanese games, you're golden. But definitely don't miss out on the vastly superior import library. Playing only US/EU TG16 titles would be like buying a Saturn and... only playing US/EU titles.

I wouldn't hesitate to say that Tropical Freeze is likely the best video game soundtrack I've ever heard, leaving even stuff like SOTN, Nier or Chrono Cross in the dust. It's insanely good, and I love how every single stage feels designed around its individual music track, rather than just the other way around. I heard most of the OST before playing the game, but experiencing the music in-game puts it in a whole new light.

If you have a somewhat open mind and don't mind the jank, there's an incredible selection of this stuff on the NES(/Famicom). With a somehow limited library of ~1400 games you'd think it should be possible for one person to have a full overview of everything available on this platform, and with the time I've spent delving into it I always assume that I know everything worth knowing. Yet even to this day I still keep discovering stuff I'd somehow missed. A lot of the games I'd consider "hidden gems" here aren't very good admittedly, but there's really a lot of interesting stuff. Aside from that, the Nintendo DS is a veritable treasure trove. There's so much amazing stuff hidden here, occasionally in plain sight.

It's pretty disturbing that "being a believer" or not is even a topic when it comes to climate change. What the hell. This is anti-vaccination or flat earth over again. What is this, the middle ages?

I'm not sure what it matters. You know what they mean. It's just a trivia tidbit anyway, right? It's "cool" that Mario's first appearance was in Donkey Kong considering he would later on be famous for his own series. As another side note, Donkey Kong Jr. was the first game where Mario was specifically named Mario - but I believe his name was employed about the character from the first game retroactively (in promotional material or merchandise, etc), before the sequel came out.

Yeah, both aspects of the game was sped up. So if you've been playing on an NTSC/US console, both the game and music has been running faster than "intended"! To be fair, it's actually a well handled optimization, and for the sake of a European release at the time, it was the best way to handle it, making it one of the few cases where the European audience weren't swindled. In retrospect, for collector purposes, it's annoying that I need to pull up a PAL console to play the game "properly", rather than popping it into my RGB modded US Top Loader

Isn't it possible to send games as a "letter"? Not sure about your local postal service's technical definition, but that's what they classify the smallest class of untracked shipments as around here. They don't specifically need to be in an envelope, despite the name. Probably not relevant for a cd-rom drive, but most games should fit in a parcel small enough to fit the criteria.

Hmm, I think we may have been talking about two different things then Thanks though.

I have no idea what thread I'm looking for, I couldn't find anything. I think it would be relevant to mention in this thread which is pretty much on the subject.

CA65 is the only 6502/NES assembler I have experience with. I've kept using it because so far it's been able to do everything I ever need, and a whole lot more. It also builds for 65816 CPUs, which is a big bonus - no reason to learn new stuf for SNES programming. I don't know anything about ASM6, and the only impressions I have of NESASM are the occasional stories that I keep hearing (almost constantly tbh) about various issues with it. Having to manually specify Zero Page access in order to get any advantage from it every single time sounds like a bother. That said, my absolute #1 reason for sticking with CA65, however, is the very thorough output of debug symbols it produces when building its output. I'm sure the other assemblers have something similar, but with these one I know for certain that I can use them to make my own custom 6502 programming IDE extremely user friendly, in terms of how breakpoints, and watch values, etc. are assigned.

Ah, SMB3 has a lot more going for it sure, but SMB is ingenious enough that none of its sequels have been able to "invalidate it" so far. Truly a timeless game.

The game is PAL "optimized" and not really playable in 60hz, so it's definitely a game you want in NTSC. Given the price difference however, I'm fine with settling for my PAL copies...

Yeah I love the idea of the rank option, but I agree with what you're saying, there is really surprisingly small difference between rank 1 and 3. DeathSmiles is a great game for beginners, but I'd still advise said beginner to pick rank 3 on any stage from the get go, and then figure out which ones are tough enough that they need to tone it down to 2 The volcano and forest stages are probably the toughest on rank 3. The latter probably moreso if you go for scoring. Meanwhile, the volcano is just such a huge score cash-in that I'd recommend going into it with a full 1000 counter, and unleash fever mode through as much of the stage as you can. XD

This is the primary reason I almost never buy anything from the US anymore. It was fun while it lasted

Ok, but there's barely any difference between the two versions outside of a cut intro sequence

Yamatoku occasionally puts up Gun-Nac carts at a stupidly cheap price level, misspelled in some way that makes them not show up on searches. It often pays off to go through their stock. Nevermind the fact that those two consoles have some of the best shooter libraries out there? Assuming that games like Blast Wind, Battle Garegga, or Hyper Duel are expensive "because their english speaking ass can play them" is a pretty gross misappropriation of what those games really are. However whenever any genuinely great game is an import exclusive, they almost always get super expensive. We see the same tendency for games like Gimmick, Majyuuou, Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, or Ninja Gaiden 3, etc. The list of examples is endless.

Even though shmups was a very major genre at least up until the mid 90s, most of the best shooters remained kinda overlooked. And today the genre falls pretty heavily into the niche pigeonhole of catering to some of the most devoted gamers out there, and the same people who care a lot about video game collecting. Add the fact that a lot of the most coveted shooters even to this day are still arcade-only.

wait what Not true, that's what happens if you pick the *highest* difficulty on every stage. Or I think even just 5 out of the first 6? And yeah you definitely don't want that if you're still a beginner. DeathSmiles is definitely an "easy" 1 credit clear for a Cave game. Even Espgaluda, which is often considered one of the easier Cave games is way harder. It's still a great game!

Ibara Blazing Star Mushihimesama Futari Omega Fighter Gokujou Parodius I have all of these games as original arcade PCBs, and they are definitely among my most prized possessions!