DoctorEncore

I'm on to book 2 of The Sandman collection. Really enjoying the world and the crazy cast of characters. It kind of feels like Dream has a bit too much plot armor, but it's hard to avoid that for your main character.

11 hours ago, Ankos said:

Just picked this up. It's an English copy of Binary Monster 2, and unlicensed game for the Gameboy Color. The seller listed it as broken, however the cart works fine. The thing about unlicensed Gameboy products is a lot of them have custom boot logos, replacing the Nintendo text that normally appears when you boot them. Nintendo caught onto this, making it so that later models of Gameboy Advance would lockout custom boot logos. This worked for some games (like this one), but it does not stop all of them. Some games will automatically mask the boot logo with the Nintendo one if they are going to get locked out, but if you have a cart that does not do that you can insert it into a cheat cart to mask the boot logo. Not all cheat carts can do this though, my Gameshark just displays the boot logo of whatever cart I put in it

Very cool! And thanks for sharing the that bit of interesting info about the boot screens.

Congrats! This set is definitely on my to-do list.

5/10. I've had the original since I was a kid, but never found it particularly enjoyable. The lack of color and absence of a map really makes navigation difficult. Gameplay itself is just okay.

Never played remake.

You don't see many complete JP sets around here, or really anywhere for that matter. Very cool!

Any JP exclusives you recommend?

14 hours ago, doner24 said:

A very weak decade for best picture winners, especially following a very strong decade in the 70’s. Amadeus is far better than the rest IMO:

1. Amadeus
2. Platoon
3. Rain Man
4. Gandhi
5. The Last Emperor
6. Terms of Endearment
7. Ordinary People
8. Out of Africa
9. Driving Miss Daisy
10. Chariots of Fire

Hard agree.

Welcome! Favorite game? Go!

Gay-den when I was a kid and then Guy-den after I took Japanese in college.

7 hours ago, re4mat said:

Apologies if I'm necro-ing the thread, but I'm in the middle of doing some research on Metroid NES variants, and while the original post in this thread mentions that Metroid has a box, it's not on the list of manuals. I've just come across an eBay auction, though, which shows a  manual:

  Reveal hidden contents

I hope it's okay to dig this thread up to report this. Just wanted to help make sure the list was as complete as possible.

No need to apologize. We always love people coming in to show some NES love. I kind of let this project and thread go by the wayside because I just ran out of free time. I think @ThePhleo probably has a pretty thorough list at this point, so he may be tracking.

I started up Planet of Lana on Xbox the other day and I found myself extremely impressed. It is an atmospheric, side-scrolling puzzle game in the vein of Limbo and Inside. My experience with those two games somewhat soured me on this genre as I found them to be quite overrated (see my previous rants), so I was a bit skeptical about this one. However, I am happy to report that it surpasses those experiences and easily claims the crown for this throwback genre.

First and foremost, the art is the star of the show and screenshots really don't do it justice. This game is beautiful; it's like a moving painting. The developers opted to forego traditional dialogue in favor of environmental storytelling which is subtle, but effective. The visuals, characters, music, sound design, and puzzles all coalesce into something wonderful and really pull you into the world. The alien environment feels alive in ways that are hard to express, but easy to feel as you play.

I haven't quite made it to the end, but this may be my favorite game of 2022 so far.

I played it briefly when collecting my set and it seemed pretty terrible. Would have to go back and play more to provide a rating.

1 hour ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

I have a PS3 super slim which I was planning on keeping.it seems like Sony worked out all the kinks by the end of the life cycle. I really like the idea of not having a mechanism for removing discs.

I have the playstation branded components cables too so my PS2 actually looks great. I was wondering tho if the HDMI output was better for PS2/1 games or just more convenient.

I thought maybe if I'd keep the A01 I could consolidate the playstation set up but it's tough seeing the sale prices and not being a huge PS3 fan.

I hate how cheap this system feels, but it's nice not to have a drive mechanism that could fail.

I've never seen a video comparison between original PS2 analog output and PS2 emulation on PS3 with HDMI output, but I'd bet the PS2 component output looks better, particularly on a CRT. Some of those PS2 games looked incredible over component cables. I remember Rygar and God of War 2 looking particularly good. You actually have to hold a button combo on the controller when booting the game to put them in 480p mode, although I don't remember what it was.

On 5/23/2023 at 9:17 AM, Aguy said:

The new Dungeons and Dragons movie is out on Paramount+. I watched it with the family the other night and it was really good, with lots of imaginative action sequences. None of us have ever played DnD (although I've always wanted to) but I think they struck a good balance with the source material between pleasing fans and not being too dense for newcomers. And not a single 70/80's pop song to be heard, which has become a pet peeve of mine at this point.

It was so good! I really like Chris Pine and he was perfect in this role. They kept the story moving and gave appropriate amount of love to all the side characters. Probably my favorite fantasy movie since the LotR trilogy. I'd love to see a sequel.

I started Jury Duty on Amazon Freevee after hearing so many rave reviews and I absolutely love it. It is exactly as ridiculous as it need to be to make the concept work and the unknowing participant is perfect. Highly recommended.

On 5/23/2023 at 12:10 PM, acromite53 said:

NES-FRA region "Les Schtroumpfs"

 

That's funny that they had to use the whole "96" since the were making games for 10 years and they couldn't use the short hand form of "6" anymore (6 indicating 1986 in initial runs).

Walter Hill directed a lot of terrible movies, but this is not one of them. An absolute classic with an awesome aesthetic that mostly carries the movie. You don't watch this for the acting or story, you watch it for the experience; the sum is definitely greater than the parts. Highly recommended.

I suspect I would enjoy it more now for the sheer ridiculousness, but it was like a 5/10 movie when I was a kid.

20 hours ago, Brickman said:

A lot of the PCE library is on CDs so it made sense to continue with the project. But going forward I can see them mainly focusing on the pocket.

I don’t know if it’s possibly with the tech but I’d love them to do a Saturn or PS1 console one day. But I’m guessing they’re a while away from that.

Hopefully the Polymega eventually pans out. They keep giving updates every few months so it seems to exist...

20 hours ago, MrWunderful said:

This is the first analogue system with CD support. 
 

Cant wait for the sega CD, saturn and dreamcast cores (hopefully)

The Duo does not support OpenFPGA, so I'm not sure if cores can be added. I'm not super into the technical side, so hopefully I'm wrong, but I saw some others expressing concern about this.

On 5/26/2023 at 10:58 AM, Webhead123 said:

I was originally signing up to get one (an HD-compatible TurboDuo? Who doesn't want that?) but I just spent a ton of money on a different project and I had to hold my feet to the fire on this one. Perhaps someday...

The saving grace for this project is that the price is extremely reasonable. TG-16 and PCE aren't cheap and it's not exactly easy to get a Turbo CD or Super CD, much less find one in perfect working order. Hopefully the unit will be as good as advertised and they're still available down the line if you decide to get one.

Officially decided to call it quits on Baba is You. I enjoyed it, but was getting pretty bored in the latter half of my time. Without using a guide, I cleared 186 levels. It's clear there is more to do, but I saw an ending screen and I feel like going any further isn't going to provide me any further joy. Perhaps someday I'll come back to whittle away at it, but I have no desire to do that any time soon. The game reminds me a bit of The Witness in the way it takes a simple idea and then bludgeons it to death. This is both criticism and praise. It takes true commitment, passion, and creativity to produce so much from so little, but doing the same thing at hour 80 that you were doing at hour 1 starts to wear you down.

As for what's next, I'll keep working on Deathloop and FFX. Hi Fi Rush and FF16 are on my radar for next games since I'm holding off on Zelda for now.

Finally played a little bit more Deathloop. It's definitely a cool concept, but I can see why a lot of people bounce off it. It presents itself as having this deep puzzle that needs solving, but really you're just following a bunch of markers and completing quests. The special abilities are pretty cool and the levels are extraordinarily dense in terms of design, but the gunplay is a bit underwhelming. I'm surprised it got so many perfect scores from critics and I'm unsurprised that it was less liked by the general audience.

Finished up Death Squared co-op with my son. That is a very cool indie puzzle game with some really unique ideas. It's great because it doesn't require extraordinary dexterity, so I was able to coach my 6-year old through the tougher puzzles without having to take control. Highly recommended.

GTA Vice City is one of my all time favorites, but I never got around to San Andreas. I'm not a huge fan of GTA anymore so I doubt I'll ever go back and play this, but I'm not averse to it either.

Great interview! Lots of thoughtful answers. Seems like we are kindred souls in our love for the SNES/PS1 days of Squaresoft. It felt like every game they released was an event for about a decade and I couldn't get enough.

Snagged one earlier today and it looks like they're still available. I can't wait to play TG-16 in 1080p. That being said, I'll be truly shocked if it ships this year though.

6 hours ago, fox said:

Nobody talking about Deathwish Enforcers.  Where is the thirst for indie games here?

Y’all are going to whine and cry about how awful “AAA” games are but you are going to be first in line Friday to pick up the new $70 elf boy adventure.

 

The problem now is that games are easier than ever to develop so the market is becoming saturated. As @Brickman mentioned, I play a lot of indie games and try to experience the best ones, but there are so many that I can't keep up. I've never even heard of Deathwish Enforcers. I need some curation to help me out and a lot of times that turns out to be Xbox Game Pass.

AAA releases are much less frequent and have fewer direct competitors, so it's much easier to keep track of them. It also used to be the case that AAA games would release with a certain threshold of quality that indie games couldn't reach.  However, lately it seems like big budget games launch as betas for paying customers to do the QA. I actually trust indies to be less buggy and more complete than AAA games at this point.