koifish

Been a long time since I had it, but I was made aware of the importance of eating it with bread. But in all seriousness, feel free to PM me if you want help getting some parts in, I don't mind lending a hand.

@Tanooki Yeah, they had to put the title in readable form here because you'd have little chance that people would guess the intended reading just by looking at it. The weirdest example of this I have seen was in an issue of Super Mario-kun, where a chapter titled 新しい冒険の始め had furigana, but rather than saying the transliteration in kana of that statement, it instead had the katakana transliteration of the english translation, that being "New Adventure Start!". That was the point where I accepted that you can just invent kanji readings whenever you want. The cart truly is a special one, as you say. Surprising nobody else ever went with a clear cart...though wasn't action 52 also clear? What a class of titles to be around. Speaking of kanji, Konami had Salamander and they had Contra too as far as ateji games. I don't know of many others who did a ton of titles like that. Adding to the list, some answers will probably include Castlevania 3, since the title on the box is 悪魔城伝説. Speaking of 伝説, I hope they do a question for that. "For games with the word "legend" in them, what comes to mind?" I would be fascinated to see if Zelda wins out, or if something like Momotaro Densetsu stages a surprise attack.　Even more fun if just 伝 is allowed since there are a lot of games with that in the name.

They tried but gabe kept eating the devkits....and the devs

On the up side, Wii is so easy to emulate (at least on PC) that eventually they should end up getting ports just like the G-Mode Archives that are porting old JP phone games to switch.

I forgot to mention, the other problem is that some games or parts of games use the less common Left/Center hand positions, by which I mean, they use the D-pad and the joystick. I know a number of Bangai-O nuts who refuse to play it any other way, to say nothing of other games that use this configuration (I know they are a small list, so small that I really only remember Bangai-O and the games that let you choose it as an option, but they are not zero). Though let me be clear that I embrace a "use the pad that works best" style, like I wouldn't recommend original pad for Doom 64 because it uses all 3 shoulders; The hori mini is easier for that since it has L, R, and Z all easily reachable at once. Still, it is playable; You won't find a game that is incapable of being properly played on an OEM 64 pad, because it is what the system was designed for and what devs had to work with and had to target as the default. Because of the inherent differences, you will inevitably find games or parts of games that cannot be properly played on more traditional controllers. My second advice beyond kitsch-bent parts is to get OEM pads but have nice backups. Don't rely on "just one" for 64. But, if Analogue has to use just one, and if they want true 100%, then they will have to cope with this fact. That, or make it a dual-stick controller where both sticks are the same input, just on opposite sides, so you can use any combination of d-pad, stick, and button. But that still rides on my point above about needing the true 64 stick over a modern pot stick. I'll ship to you if you ever need it. We can trade; I'll send you a few dozen K-B sets, and you send me some jars of vegemite. And yeah, I would stay in oz right now too!

I just remembered, the famicom book I perused once said that DQ3 and DQ2 far outsold DQ1, so probably most responders simply remembered playing 2 more than 1. I would guess confusion or forgetting which game they played is why 3 showed up on the list, unless that has passwords somewhere too. Interesting, I only ever knew about DQ1 using passwords. I can imagine how much worse it is when you have a party of characters on top. As for Salamander, I have been looking at the characters, and while I'm far from a kanji expert (and ateji can be weird anyway), I think it's supposed to be the following: 沙羅 - "sara" - the name for the Sal tree, or the Japanese stewartia 曼 - "man" - I don't think I know this character from anywhere. Best I can find is that it is the "man" in "mandala" (the buddhist symbols) but I can't offer more at this time. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can help me out. This page makes it look quite varied in its uses but I am not sure. I haven't yet put forth the full effort to read it thoroughly. https://www.kanjipedia.jp/kanji/0006581200 editing again, from that page I gather that the primary meanings of 曼 are "long", "wide", and "beautiful". So maybe they are just saying 曼蛇 to mean "long beautiful snake". 蛇 - "da" - snake. Also read "hebi" often. Because it's ateji, however, it doesn't really need to make sense; Ateji is where you take kanji and use them purely for their phonetic value, rather than their meanings. I will admit that there is probably a lot I am missing here though, so don't take my answer as definitive. Kanji are complicated!

I admit I'm not super familiar with SNES flashcarts. How does SD2SNES fare vs. other carts? Do you know what version of SD2SNES it is? (The internet tells me there is more than one, but maybe that's wrong).

If they want 100% compatibility then they will have to make 3-prongs. People may not like it, but it's what shipped with it, and it's what it's supposed to use. Sure, the hori mini is a very good controller, but it doesn't have a great D-pad position, and more importantly, the stick won't do for all games. You can't just use a potentiometer stick for a 64. Some games it will work fine with, but if you're trying to play F-Zero X or Goldeneye then you can just forget it. The pot stick doesn't have enough resistance, doesn't have a long enough travel, and it can't easily be held at a set position for a long time, all things that are unique about the OEM stick, and which are necessary for proper play of some games (another example is the fishing minigame in Mario Party 1). For me, I heard years ago about kitsch-bent and their aftermarket N64 joystick parts. I have a few sets and I have swapped out at least one OEM controller using them. Yes, it does go away from being brand-new tight over time, but when it gets too bad then you can just put another set in. They're mass-produced plastic, so it's not like it's a huge ask to buy a number of sets. I'd recommend just buying 64 pads in acceptable condition, cleaning them, and replacing the joystick parts. Maybe someday those steel sticks will be real, but I'm not holding my breath. Things might as well be unicorns.

Oh, and I am guessing that Kanji-only precludes particles as well? so no chance of nobunaga's ambition or anything else with a dreaded の. My entry (after some thought) is ninja gaiden, or in JP, 忍者流喧伝 (lit. "Ninja Dragon Sword Legend" ?)

Really interesting stuff. I had no idea DQ2 used passwords in the famicom cart! (I have only played remakes of it on other platforms). Did DQ3 really have them too? The rest of the games make enough sense, but I am surprised, knowing how late of a release Metal Slader was, that it forced you to use passwords. Pretty brutal to me! Passwords for RPGs are pretty brutal themselves. However, I can say that as I am older, I appreciate that a password can instantly get me to position X so that I don't have to retread the same ground for the billionth time. This matters more and more as cart batteries die, and as you start to sell off or move your collection to new carts/new platforms, or any number of things. You can take a password from a famicom game and put it right into the switch online service equivalent, which is something you can't say about any other pair of consoles 40 years apart.

Everybody knows the best CDs are free at the library.

Frankly I care more about their bluray sales ending than about their game sales ending. Streaming, aside from giving you access to shows that would never in a million years be worth it to produce a DVD printing, is such a pile of crap compared to physical, and I worry about how you're supposed to enjoy certain shows going forward that never get home video releases. It's like we regressed to the pre-VHS days...but this isn't on-topic for video games, so I digress...

Saw the announcement and figured I would share since I didn't see a thread yet. Have been dodging paying for online on switch off and on by playing Mario Kart 8/etc. on Wii U instead; Sucks that they are going out. Not to mention some treasured 3DS games, though again I can't play them like I used to (no time, wrists broken from playing Kid Icarus, etc.) How are you feeling about this? https://gbatemp.net/threads/nintendo-to-shut-down-online-play-for-all-3ds-and-wii-u-games.640718/

You know, I didn't think about it until now, but I have had problems with the switch lite D-pad, particularly in playing the genesis online games. I am terrible at castlevania bloodlines on switch online compared to when I'm using a real six-button. I never had issue with the pro controller though. Different strokes however, I would be far from the average to say what pads are best. If anybody REALLY needs a good switch pad, and having none of the motion/rumble/amiibo stuff is okay, then I recommend either one of the switch controller adapters (with your xbox/ps controller of choice) or one of the hori game pads for switch. Hori is the top of the mountain for 3rd party, so surely their offerings will suffice if the rest do not.

this is a nice visual trick. And yeah on the shells. White consoles are like, soooooo 2006. I am surprised they didn't announce red and blue on bastille day. Washington students too, maybe it will assuage them over their collapsing sports conference. I agree that it's foolish and shortsighted, but maybe that's the target audience of the cheaper model, folks who don't really care about going back someday to play games, and who just want to play current and move on. I might even dare to argue that this group has historically made up a majority of playstation owners, or perhaps most game players in general. Not everybody is funny people like us who obsess over collecting and playing 40 year old electronic toys (even if we know it's obviously their loss ) Oh, and physical copies are a nightmare when you move house. I basically got rid of everything and bought flashcarts/ODEs/HDDs/etc because I was tired of moving box after box of plastic cases around. That is probably a smaller use case though. The place you get screwed later is when the servers shut down and you can't actually play any of the games you "own". Yet I find some people I meet really have no problem with this; It seems to me that only enthusiasts really care about being able to access games years or decades later.

Games I've played, no contest. For one thing, I could play my top 10 over and over forever. For another thing, I have started but not finished countless games before. So long as booting one up and at least spending a few minutes or a half hour or something counts as "having been played" then I end up fine there. And for another thing, I basically haven't followed new releases at all since 2012. New games have largely bored me since at least 2010, with few exceptions, and so I could easily ignore new games for the rest of time, because they repeatedly demonstrate to me their utter lameness.

Is that part of the shell cases they have been promising for a while now? I know there are 3rd party ones, and I recall seeing some galaxy-themed color announcements, but not much else.

I like it. Sort of formulaic, almost zen, in how you more or less play it the same way every time. A perfect game is machine-like, a meditation of sorts, and in some cases it doesn't work for me if a game is that way, but here it does work. I'd say get it if you want to see some slashing, bashing, and plenty of gore.

seems like it could be fun, I just didn't get into it the one time I tried it.

Maybe that's what inspired me to drop 2 and 3. Though maybe i also dodged a bullet; I have heard a lot of terrible things about a case in 2 involving a clown, people say it's halfway through and that it is the worst part of the whole series. Or so I heard 10+ years ago. Maybe things have changed.

I wish I could see a new contra game that didn't have tons of references to the NES game. It was novel in Contra 4 since there hadn't been a "throwback" game yet, but that game is almost 20 years old and they're STILL acting like we've not seen the standard contra levels since 1986. I hope they work to make more new stuff and don't just keep on nostalgia begging.

The first game was fun for me. I will say that the "bonus" case added for the DS re-release was not bad, but felt a bit like padding at times (to those unaware, these games first appeared on the GBA in Japan, and for the DS remakes they added a 5th case to make it worth it for people who already bought them once). I suppose that's the hardest part of this game and perhaps the series; The cases are up and down in quality. Some are very interesting while others will be boring and drag on forever. I only played the first one to completion; I just found that it wasn't enjoyable once the novelty had worn off. I only played it once and i wouldn't say it's worth playing twice, personally. I tried 2 and 3, but couldn't get into them. Kind of a shame as I understand 3 to be the best overall, or at least, when there were only 4 games, that is what people said. I don't think you would appreciate 3 without having played 1 and 2 though, at least not as much, so I don't worry much about it. I'll give it a 7, it's a fun game and if you like it then there are more to enjoy. Just wouldn't recommend them for more than one play myself.

Absolutely, Song of Regeneration is super famous. I wonder what other famous games would come up? With several major password games having been disk system games there, I don't know what you'd name otherwise. Lode Runner maybe?

oh yeah that's true. it's more like The Price Is Right than 20 Questions.

at this rate it might as well be a VR game!