TDIRunner

29 minutes ago, Hammerfestus said:

But I’m also not going to chase him away.

In my example, no one chased him away.  He came and went on his own accord in less time that it takes to complete a baseball season.  

1 minute ago, Hammerfestus said:

That’s not how I collect (or can afford to collect) but why the hate?  Is it the old anti-speed collector thing?  I mean I can certainly think of a time where I was buying every game that my bank account allowed.  I’m genuinely not getting why there’s be that much backlash.

It not the speed collection alone.  It's the in and out in such a short time frame never to be heard from again.  Such a person contributes nothing to the community except for increasing prices.  As I've mentioned before, I try to allow everyone to collect in their own way and I try to be as open minded as possible.  But I still have my limits.  

3 minutes ago, RH said:

Who goes into a set like the TG-16 and not know about Magical Chase?!  

Who knows?  But the thing that really turned me off from that "collector," was the mentality of "if I can't own every game in the set, I don't want to own any of it."  It's such a toxic mindset and it's the type of new collector that makes you want to hate on all new collectors even if 99% don't deserve the hate.  

New LRG shipment. 

Not familiar with this one at all.  

I never deliberately try to dunk on new collectors, but at the same time, I can understand why some people can get annoyed by it.  If you've been collecting long enough, it can become tiresome to see the same first time collector questions over and over again.  They obviously don't mean any harm by it, but you can only answer those same questions so many times before you start to lose interest.  But in those cases, it's better to just ignore the questions rather than act hostile.  

One possible exception is new collectors who are actively causing harm to the community.  I specifically remember a thread at the old PC Engine forums (before it imploded) about a new collector who had a long introduction explaining how he had started at zero and purchased about 95% of the US TG16 set over the course of about 6 months.  He then explained that once he realized that he would never be able to own every game in the set, he immediately decided to sell his collection and wanted to unload it on the forum for top dollar.  That forum was already well known for being fairly hostile towards new collectors, but they really went off on this guy.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little entertained by the backlash.  

While playing the remastered version of Tomb Raider I, I managed to hit my 1,000th trophy.  I'm not a big trophy collector.  I've only acquired 4 platinum trophies and I've only collected 100% trophies for about 6 or 7 games.  So most of these are just collecting random trophies across multiple games over many years.  However, depending on the game, I sometimes really get into the trophy hunting.  Horizon Zero Dawn and MudRunner were the only two games I can think of that I went out of my way to collect the obscure and difficult to achieve trophies.  The Tomb Raider remastered games have some absolutely insane trophies, so I know I won't get the platinum trophy for any of those games.  

Welcome.  I'm technically a 5th & 6th gen collector as well, although I mainly focus on PS1.  

@RH

This is an excellent channel with a lot of great content and he explains the copy protection much better than I can.  

On a side note, if you have any interest in lacerdisc, he has several videos about the subject which are absolutely worth watching.  

8 minutes ago, RH said:

I thought the wobble was a Saturn thing, and not a PS1 thing?

I believe they use similar methods, although I'm not as familiar with the Saturn's copy protection.  

Well, I bit the bullet and purchased the remastered collection of Tomb Raider I, II & III.  As I mentioned with the Dark Forces Remaster, I rarely buy digital only games if they cost more than $5 or $6, but these games were too big a part of my childhood, and playing the exact game again in high resolution graphics has been really nice.  If either of these games get a physical release, I will certainly pick it up.

I started with the original Tomb Raider, and it's been very enjoyable.  Some minor changes were made to add a few TRII features to the original which are nice additions.  They offer both tank controls for those who played them originally, and "modern controls" for people new to the series that don't have the muscle memory.  Unfortunately, despite retaining the tank controls, they are still slightly different from the original, which is throwing me off just a little bit.  Also, the game has small, split second freezes to load when new music starts, or big enemies appear.  This never occurred in the original and is really annoying on such a small game on a modern system.  Still, it's probably worth it for the upgraded visuals and added features.  I'm thinking about trophy hunting for this game.  The developers went crazy with the amount of trophies included.  

On 3/7/2024 at 11:23 AM, Kguillemette said:

Super Metroid for the first time! Just defeated Kraid and picked up the Varia suit. It was nice of him to open his mouth frequently so I could land a few super missles right in the sweet spot and take him down on my first try! Now I'm on to explore Norfair since it was too volcanic to explore last time.

 

 

Funny to think that if Kraid had just kept his mouth shut, Samus could have have never defeated the Space Pirates.  

It reminds me of Wart from SMB2.  The only thing that can kill him are vegetables, and he keeps a machine in his lair that generates and infinite amount of them.  I feel like if I were Wart, I would get rid of that machine.  I guess people do strange things in dreams.  

The "copy protection" is the wobble itself.  Even professionally made CDs are not perfect, and the laser reading the CD is designed to move around or "wobble" (left, right, up & down) while it reads the data on the disc.  Official PS1 discs had their data pressed in a way to specifically make the laser wobble in a pattern that the PS1 would recognize.  In nearly all cases, this only occurred during the startup.  Once you are into the game, this check usually no longer occurs, which is why the "disc swap method" works with most burned games.  

When people burn their own games, their CD burner attempts to make the CD as perfect as possible, and therefore attempts to burn the disc with as little wobble as possible.  Of course, since the CD burner isn't perfect, there will still be wobble, but it won't be the same wobble that the PS1 is looking for, and the PS1 will know it's a fake.  

As mentioned, the black disc had nothing to do with the copy protection, other than the fact that most people didn't have access to that type of disc.  However, there were officially licensed games released without the black disc, meaning you can't always use the black color as a way to identify real games.  

I'm tempted to buy one of the repros, just to hold it in my hands and see just how good or bad they are.

The latest visual compendium from Bitmap Books is out.  This is part 8.

8 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

it might get kind of clunky 

Honestly, that's why I like it.  

23 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

WANT!

I like it, but I would prefer each number having a different equation all around the clock (like using 3² for the 9 o'clock spot).  

All four were easy picks for me, but all choices are enjoyable songs.  

Playing an original Neo Geo Pocket Color game on my HD TV for the first time ever.  

Some good news and some bad news.

All of the Analogue Pocket adapters work well with their respective games.  Playing original Neo Geo Pocket Color carts on my HD TV has been a dream for a long time, and they look absolutely fantastic with the Analogue Pocket.  Lynx also works well, although I'm not as into those games compared to NGPC.  Everything seems to work well with ORIGINAL game carts.  Please note, that you will need updated firmware for the Pocket to recognize the new adapters.  Each adapter has different settings for audio, video, controls and everything else.  The quality of the adapters themselves seem on par with previous releases.  

Unfortunately, the bad news is that I've having mixed results with my flash carts.

• NGPC - My flash cart was working great.  No issues so far.
• Game Gear - My flash cart was working great.  No issues so far.
• TG-16 - My flash cart would only play the game that was currently flashed to the flash cart.  The game plays perfectly, but I cannot find a way to get back to the Everdrive menu.  Hitting the reset button just goes to a blank screen.  If I close out the cartridge from the Pocket menu and reopen the game, it goes straight into the game that was previously flashed.   I could always put my ED into my Duo R and flash a different game, and then put it back into the Pocket, but obviously that is not ideal.
• Lynx - My flash cart will not work at all.  I'm only getting a screen that says error.  To clarify, it's playing original Lynx cards just fine.  It's only the flash cart that isn't working.  I also put the flash cart into my model 2 Lynx to confirm it's working, and it plays just fine on the original hardware.

So two flash cart work perfectly.  One sort of works, but not in the intended way, and another doesn't work at all.  I've confirmed that I have the latest firmware, but outside of that I haven't done much troubleshooting yet.  I have a feeling that the issues with my Turbo Everdrive are related to the fact that it's a very old version (possibly the original) and that ED doesn't work on my Analogue Duo either.  I have no idea why the Lynx GameDrive doesn't work, and I haven't had any time to check into the forums to see if anyone else if having the same issue.  If I learn anything else, I will update here.  

Anyone else tested these yet?

Analogue Pocket adapters arrived today.  I have a nice little collection of Analogue adapters now.  

3 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Lack of votes in these debates

Don't people know that voting counts towards your user rank?  We got to pump those numbers up.  

53 minutes ago, wongojack said:

Thanks - I was scratching my head a bit because I just haven't been active into Genesis . . . stuff.  For the links I shared, the two tables don't have the same values in the individual rows for the various carts listed, so it was hard to do a comparison. Here's the details I discovered that matter to me: x7 has save states and can play roms from other regions (with the hardware Megakey).

Most of the Krikzz brand flash carts have x3/x5/x7 versions to represent the different levels and features.  It's not unique to the Genesis flash carts.  Stone Age Gamer sells many of the models, and they offers ways to compare the different models.  I haven't been to Krikzz's website or forum in a long time, but I'm assuming he would have something that compares the differences.  

21 hours ago, wongojack said:

Bumping an old thread as I think my question fits here:

I find myself with 2 Mega Drives.  I have a (now discontinued) Mega Everdrive x7 and a Mega EverDrive x3.  The X3 seems to be much newer than the x7 but I got them both second hand.  Here are the comparison pages for both:

Mega EverDrive X3 (krikzz.com)

Mega EverDrive X7 (krikzz.com)

Now, I'm not really a Mega/Genesis expert, and I haven't used these things very much so understanding all the ins and outs is tough.  I am going to get rid of one of these and am having trouble deciding which one to sell.  What would be the recommendation of this community?

----------

• More info from the carts themselves
• Mega EverDrive x3
• Generation: Model 16
• OS Ver 3.13
• MegaKey Mode - Software
• Assembly Date 19.5.2020

---

• Mega EverDrive x7
• Generation: Model 15
• OS Ver 3.06
• MegaKey Mode - Hardware
• Assembly Date 8.1.2018

This is the manual:  Mega Everdrive-v2 user manual EN.pdf (krikzz.com)

One thing that is different that I notice from browsing the menus is that "Game RAM to SD" and "SD to Game RAM" seems to be greyed out in the options of the x3.  I don't fully understand what those options are, but it seems to only be available on the x7.

I can't tell you much, because I purchased all of my flash carts before there were different "versions" to pick from.  The only exception for me was the SD2SNES which was an option over the Super Everdrive at the time.  All of the different versions came about later.

However, I can tell you this.  When Krizz starting selling different versions, he compared it to the automobile market with each version being a step up from the previous with the x3 being the entry level and the x7 being top of the line.  So I would guess that the x7 would be the superior model.  But again, that's just a guess on my part without looking anything up.  Since your x3 appears to be a little newer, it could possibly have additional features that were added after that x7 was sold.  

Hopefully someone who knows more can give you a better answer.  

19 minutes ago, cartman said:

Will ROM files ever get corrupted as the SD card ages?

It has never happened to me, but I suppose anything is possible.  I keep all of my files on a hard drive (along with a backup).  But within those folders, I always have a copy of the exact layout of my SD card for each of my flash carts.  That way, if something happens to my SD card, I can recreate it in a matter of minutes.  I spend a lot of time setting up my SD cards because I just want to include the files I want to play.  I usually include a folder for "cheats" with separate copies of the ROMs with the cheat codes built it.  I also sometimes include separate folders for imports or hacks.  I definitely don't want to rebuild any of those, so having a copy or backup is a good idea.  

12 hours ago, TrekMD said:

So, what's your score?  I got all of them...

This meme probably could have been its own thread.