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WHAT HAVE I DONE 
d0s fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 01:14
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d0s posted:WHAT HAVE I DONE  Goddamn it man, how much did that cost you? And where did you get it? Do you know how much I would kill for an X68000 like that? I know you said you're more of an action guy but you need to dip your toes into the RPG/strategy titles that are available for that thing now that you have it. If you don't have to deal with a language barrier I can give you a ton of recommendations.
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Feb 4, 2014 01:39
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My god that machine...you are living a now far less money-bearing dream! Also, the only thing better than Roland Magic(Some kind Goons schooled me in the Synth thread not long ago) is Roland Magic leveraged in part with a X68000! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTraSI6LMaI
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Feb 4, 2014 01:45
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Genpei Turtle posted:
It's the one from this auction http://www.ebay.com/itm/331115517792 The guy was apparently originally selling it for $900 on the shmups.com forum but by the time I learned about it it was up on eBay with bids. I didn't even want it originally, I thought I would hold out for a full sized machine and actually buy games but then I realized that would be way too . This was a high initial price but it's kinda worth it to have every single game at your fingertips on real hardware. Also the lack of 5 1/4 drives prevent me from deciding I want a legit game library and selling my car for games or something. Also some of the crap included in this auction is a nightmare to track down on it's own, like the RAM expansion, Sacom MIDI board, CM-500, XE-1, etc. This guy built a very nice setup.Sadly I know next to no Japanese, wish I did. If you know of some good fan translations I'll totally check them out! EDIT: I am kinda bummed that it didn't include a legit keyboard/mouse for that price. The mouse I can live without but I really want a real keyboard, just so I can experience Cotton's "dancing keyboard" d0s fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 01:46
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Genpei Turtle posted:I think you mean Ogre, and if so, I had it! It was a very interesting game, though frankly the SSI war games were better. It was interesting because of the way it was set up--one side had this one enormous juggernaut while the other had an array of defenders. It felt like a "defend against Godzilla" type of game only Godzilla is a tank. It was more of a board game though. Worth trying if you can find it! Omega was set in the same universe, only instead of being a port of a miniatures/board game it was a cybertank programming and construction simulator. Really neat stuff, came with a programming reference about the width and twice the height of one of those old paperback Gideon bibles, printed on the same kind of onion-skin paper. We never could get the repair subroutine to work, but a friend of mine had a ridiculous setup where he had three tanks that would beeline for each other and find their way to the nearest wall so that the enemy couldn't sneak up on them.
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Feb 4, 2014 02:14
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d0s posted:It's the one from this auction http://www.ebay.com/itm/331115517792 That's some amazing dedication to retrogames to go to those lengths to get an X68000, I'd chicken out for sure given a price tag like that. I'm sure you're going to get a lot of great gaming time out of it though! Sorry about the language barrier.  To be honest I don't know of any fan translations at all---I never really bothered with that scene since I don't have to deal with the language issue. My old housemate used to do some fan translating though, and from what he told me the Japanese computer hacking scene is pretty slim, because the types of games on Japanese PCs aren't the types of games that hackers like to work on. I remember him telling me he once found some guys willing to do PC-98 hacking, and when he gave them a list of games he'd be willing to translate they shot them all down because they were only interested in doing JRPGs and anime games. So if that's the trend I imagine there's not going to be much to choose from, as JRPGs and the like were never that big on Japanese PCs.Bieeardo posted:Omega was set in the same universe, only instead of being a port of a miniatures/board game it was a cybertank programming and construction simulator. Really neat stuff, came with a programming reference about the width and twice the height of one of those old paperback Gideon bibles, printed on the same kind of onion-skin paper. Ah, OK, that sounds really cool! Never heard of it though, hence the confusion.  Some of those mini-programming games they used to have were pretty cool. I remember spending hours in Garry Kitchen's Gamemaker trying to learn its code.
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Feb 4, 2014 02:47
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Genpei Turtle posted:Ah, OK, that sounds really cool! Never heard of it though, hence the confusion. Oh man, I remember renting that one weekend and getting nowhere.  There was a series of edutainment titles that I always loved. Gertrude's Puzzles (and Secrets), starring you as a square, a grey goose and a lot of weird shapes you had to arrange in particular sequences and diagrams. Rocky's Boots was cool too, building simple machines with logic gates to perform other puzzle-related tasks. Robot Odyssey, which built on that and had this story-like progression of regions and puzzles that you had to navigate to escape an underground city was my favourite... though I could never figure the last level out. Found a walkthrough written by a computer engineer years later, and his reaction to some of the later puzzles was 'Jesus christ, this is tough'.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:29
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Nothing quite like playing a shootemup on the X68k through an XRGB3. No MIDI card though, but the FM chip is nice to listen to!
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Feb 4, 2014 03:39
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Genpei Turtle posted:That's some amazing dedication to retrogames to go to those lengths to get an X68000 That's a really great way to sugarcoat financial irresponsibility, I gotta remember that  In reality, I've wanted one of these machines since I first learned about them so many years ago. Next to the PCE it's probably the best system for the particular type of games I'm into and it's something I'm going to enjoy to the fullest. I'm not a rich guy and it really is a big sacrifice, but my hobby makes me happy and keeps me sane and it's worth it to me. Until a week ago I was a pack and a half a day smoker and have been for almost 15 years. I just quit and this is my gift to myself, I promised myself if I pick up the cigs again I'm gonna part this thing out and sell it. RadicalR posted:Nothing quite like playing a shootemup on the X68k through an XRGB3. No MIDI card though, but the FM chip is nice to listen to! The FM sound is loving great on it's own and on a lot of games sounds even better than the MIDI. I want an XPC-4 so I can do 15khz, I tried using a VGA->BNC cable with my PVM but there's some weird sync issues and I can't get a stable picture
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Feb 4, 2014 03:50
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Dang d0s. Do you not like talking to me? I sent you two PM.  I just want to :retrobucks: with a fellow X68k...
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Feb 4, 2014 04:11
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Genpei Turtle posted:I think you mean Ogre, and if so, I had it! It was a very interesting game, though frankly the SSI war games were better. It was interesting because of the way it was set up--one side had this one enormous juggernaut while the other had an array of defenders. It felt like a "defend against Godzilla" type of game only Godzilla is a tank. It was more of a board game though. Worth trying if you can find it! I didn't know there was an Ogre computer game. What systems was it released for?
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Feb 4, 2014 04:32
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RadicalR posted:Dang d0s. Do you not like talking to me? I sent you two PM. Holy poo poo dude I had no idea, I thought I had it set to give me a popup notification. Real sorry, checking em now!
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Feb 4, 2014 04:36
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Captain Rufus posted:But instead of fighting with Genpei (and me being too lazy to make a GBS thread where we can system warrior for shits and giggles) I want to know if you have played Origin's Omega which is like a tank AI game. I always wanted to play it but never did. I not only played Omega on my Apple IIGS, I actually managed to achieve the Omega level clearance which unlocked all of the tank modules and gave me an unlimited budget. As I recall it was a rather difficult game to beat using only the programming AI (you could cheat by making the tanks manually controlled, but I never went that route). On the Apple II/C64 discussion one of the nice things about the Apple II (and specifically the Apple IIGS) is up until very recently companies were still making hardware for them. Not 2 years ago I picked up 2 new 8meg RAM Expansion cards and a pair of 128Meg Compact Flash Hard Drives for my Rom 1 and Rom 3 Apple IIGS. Being able to get functioning CF hard drives in and of itself was a godsend for moving files between the systems and playing IIGS games. I got the new hardware from http://www.reactivemicro.com too bad it appears they finally stopped producing new stuff. By the way, if any of you in this thread consider yourselves a dedicated vintage software collector, there is a googlegroup called swcollect that has some of the most knowledgeable collectors I have run in to (including John Romero, Bill Loguidice, and the guy running http://www.mocagh.org/). They have been real useful in determining whether some of the more desirable vintage items are real or copies and they also keep track of the known vintage scammmers on Ebay.
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Feb 4, 2014 16:53
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Anyone else curious about MT-32 emulation might be interested in this little bit about emulating the MT-32: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NUQpAZeAdo&t=10815s The emulation sounds good, but definitely doesn't have exactly the same character as the real thing. Stick around after it for his summary of what actual hardware to buy too. The rest of the video is a massive 3 hour treatise on all the different versions and quirks of Roland sound devices.
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Feb 4, 2014 23:31
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I just wanna say that RadicalR's Die Bahnwelt translation kicks rear end, you guys really need to try this game out it's absolutely fantastic!
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Feb 5, 2014 06:50
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iastudent posted:So for reasons I can't quite understand, I've spent the last couple days combing Ebay listings for 800XL's. I've never laid hands on one much less seen it in person, but there's just something about it I can't get out of my head. I also agree with Mail Order Monsters wholeheartedly. Racing Destruction Set was a favorite but my copy stopped working in like 1992 so I do not remember if it would be fun at all in the modern era. As for system-warriorhood, I only ever had an Atari (800XL then XE) growing up, but I can totally understand why you would want a C64 or an Apple II. I just cannot understand why you would not want ALL THREE. I grant that Atari's versions of games were only the best on rare occasion, but man, Ballblazer. Ballblazer, man. Also what are people's thoughts about the Gravis Ultrasound versus the Roland MT-32? I am SO getting into swcollect.
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Feb 5, 2014 08:58
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Not trying to revive the C64/Apple II platform warrior duel, but the idea that the C64 isn't expandable isn't quite fair. The Epyx FastLoad cartridge was a pretty major upgrade in terms of addressing the C64's biggest weakness (disk read times.)
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Feb 5, 2014 09:41
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Genpei Turtle posted:I think you mean Ogre, and if so, I had it! It was a very interesting game, though frankly the SSI war games were better. It was interesting because of the way it was set up--one side had this one enormous juggernaut while the other had an array of defenders. It felt like a "defend against Godzilla" type of game only Godzilla is a tank. It was more of a board game though. Worth trying if you can find it! If you're not averse to trying the board game, it is quite good and the old versions are cheap. Or there's last year's Designer's Edition, which comes in a box large enough to house a family of three and has given people more hours of fun just unpacking it than they've had from actually playing other games.
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Feb 5, 2014 11:12
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So Rufus asked me to do a writeup on the X68K for this thread. I hope you like it! The Sharp X68000 was a computer released in 1987 and sold only in Japan. Back in the day it was "seriously" used as a graphics/video/music workstation and a game development system, sort of like a Japanese Amiga. Like the Amiga in Europe, the X68K became a favorite of hardcore game fans. It's architecture and specs were close to actual arcade hardware of the time and the machine was host to many amazing arcade ports, but it also saw many original games and my focus in the games post will mostly be on those. Hardware  The original X68000 was a 10mhz machine with 1mb of RAM. Most X68000 games don't need specs beyond these to run well. Later machines bumped the clock speed up to 16mhz, but allowed you to limit the processor's speed to 10mhz, as some games react badly to the faster processor. While 10mhz/1mb is the bare minimum to run most games, a good all-round setup would be a 16mhz machine (XVI) with 4mb of RAM. Avoid the X68030, there are reports of incompatibilities with the '030 processor. The X68K has seven LEDs on it's keyboard, which some games take advantage of. If you don't have a keyboard, you can get PS2/USB adapters here. You can get mouse adapters here too, but there's next to nothing on the system games-wise that actually requires one. Most X68Ks have dual 5.25 floppy drives and this is the medium 99% of retail games came in. The XVI Compact has 3.5 inch drives, to run original games from disk you can try to find the Sharp CZ-6FD5 external 5.25 floppy drive (impossible!), or write the disk images to 3.5 floppies. You can also use a SCSI hard drive or use a CF card. My XVI Compact has an external Sun SCSI enclosure containing a CF AztecMonster adapter with a 2gb CF card loaded with eidis v3. Running Games  Eidis is a nice way to have a great majority of the good X68K games at your fingertips, but some games require being run from floppies. If you don't have a way to write floppies, you can do it on the X68K itself if you can get the disk images onto the machine, I use a SCSI CD-ROM (Panasonic KXL-D740) but you can also use a null modem cable. Here's an example of how to write a disk image using a SCSI CD-ROM on a machine with the eidis image booting from a HDD or CF card (because this information is nowhere to be found in English online): Write any X68K XDF disk image to a CD-ROM on your PC. I just use Nero with standard settings and it works fine. our example will be anime_porn.xdf. Put the CD in your X68K's CD-ROM and boot the machine. Once in LHES, press "K" to create a directory called "XDF" (or whatever) on the root of your HDD. Navigate to that directory and press "X" to enter a command. Type code: This screenshot is from an emulator, normally there would be a directory tree here instead of this error message. Insert a blank floppy disk into either drive, then press "X" in LHES and type code: On your PC, download 2HDSIM. Extract it and burn the contents to a CD. Use the steps above to make a directory on your X68K called "2HDSIM" and copy the entire contents of the archive to it. Quit the CD navigator again and put the formatted floppy disk in a drive, then use LHES to select MKIMG.X in the 2HDSIM folder. Press Enter to bring up the command line, and edit it so it has the following arguments: code:MIDI   First off: The X68K'S internal Yamaha FM sound chip is awesome. Your games aren't going to sound bad if you don't buy a bunch of expensive sound hardware, but sometimes people prefer LA or GS over FM, so this is for them. This is also gonna be really, really simplified so if you're a huge MIDI nerd please don't kill me! Your X68K will need a MIDI interface board to use an external MIDI controller. I have no idea where to get one of these, mine came with one already installed. I have a feeling a lot of X68Ks out there already have one. Once you have this board installed you need a MIDI module. 90% of MIDI compatible X68K games will expect either a Roland MT-32 or a Roland SC-55. There are other modules that are functionally similar/the same but in the interest of simplicity I'm gonna stick with these two. The MT-32 is an LA synthesis module, which means it can sound like anything the programmer wants it to . The SC-55 is a GS module, so it's sounds are limited to the built in instruments. This doesn't make the SC-55 bad, just different. In many ways it is a more advanced unit than the MT-32 and can sound even better. Typically, older games want the MT-32 and newer games want the SC-55. Lots of people get both. Another option is to find a Roland CM-500 which is like having an MT-32 and SC-55 in the same (ugly) box with no cool display or anything but two LEDs and a volume knob. Use the rear selector to choose "B" mode for LA and "C" mode for GS. Remember to reset the unit so the change takes effect. Here's a list of some games and MIDI information. Display  Chances are, you don't have an original X68000 monitor. The system can be attached to a VGA monitor with an adapter. The problem is, most modern VGA monitors want a 31khz signal and won't display a 15khz signal at all. Most of what you'll be doing on the X68K will be 31khz by default. The OS, most of the games and software, etc. There are just enough games that boot in 15khz to be annoying. Sometimes you can blindly navigate the menus to find the option to switch to 31khz (use an emulator to find out what to do). A tiny minority of games don't run in 31khz at all. The best way to get an X68000 to display everything on a modern monitor is to use a Micomsoft XPC-4. This ridiculously expensive box is explicitly designed to make old computers work with new displays, and according to it's users it does the job wonderfully. You can also just find an older VGA multisync monitor, many support 15khz mode. Here's an incomplete list. Controller  The X68K has two DB9 Atari type controller ports. Any Atari/Amiga/MSX/FM-Towns/etc controllers will work. Sega controllers will not work without an adapter. Capcom made an adapter to use it's CPS Fighter with the X68K. Micomsoft made several excellent sticks that work with the X68K. The XE-1 Pro is the best of the bunch, with fully adjustable turbo fire and trigger hold, and an awesome Knight Rider-esque row of LEDs to display the trigger speed. The XE-1 ST and ST2 will also work, but if you want turbo you have to hunt down a XO-1 or similar device. ASCII's excellent Stick II Turbo is another great choice. I'm pretty tired of writing all these words, my next post will be all about the X68K's games! d0s fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Feb 8, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 11:49
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Jedit posted:If you're not averse to trying the board game, it is quite good and the old versions are cheap. Or there's last year's Designer's Edition, which comes in a box large enough to house a family of three and has given people more hours of fun just unpacking it than they've had from actually playing other games. I have that Designer's Edition. The box is 20"x24"x7" and weighs in at over 20 pounds which is crazy for what amounts to a board game.
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Feb 5, 2014 19:10
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d0s posted:I'm pretty tired of writing all these words, my next post will be all about the X68K's games! If you don't mind, once you're finished that I can chip in with some suggestions of my own about X68K games. Some of them are really, really, good, but easily overlooked because of the language barrier.
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Feb 5, 2014 19:51
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Captain Rufus, did you not say you wanted a boxed copy of Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan? 25 Euro, buy it now! http://www.ebay.ie/itm/Tunnels-Trolls-Crusaders-of-Khazan-/161217494890?pt=UK_PC_Video_Games_Video_Games_JS&hash=item25894fbf6a
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Feb 5, 2014 20:04
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Quarex posted:Captain Rufus, did you not say you wanted a boxed copy of Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan? 25 Euro, buy it now! What version is that? That was one of my all-time favorite game on my C64. ed: No it's not, never mind. I'm thinking of Trolls and Tribulations.
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Feb 5, 2014 20:19
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Randalor posted:I didn't know there was an Ogre computer game. What systems was it released for? I know it was out for Apple and C-64. Mobygames says it was on Amiga, Atari (8-bit and ST), DOS, Mac, MSX and PC-x8. Which is a lot more than I thought! It's a decent adaptation. Plays like the core board game, there's an option to play against the AI, and you can customize the playing fields. ShankyMcStabber posted:As I recall it was a rather difficult game to beat using only the programming AI (you could cheat by making the tanks manually controlled, but I never went that route). I think the manual controls were meant as panic buttons or for mode switching. When I went to make an entirely user-controlled tank, it pretty much sat there because you needed to hold the desired key down and wait for it to iterate through to the line where it looks for that keypress. It was way too slow to be effective, unfortunately.
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Feb 5, 2014 20:22
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d0s posted:So Rufus asked me to do a writeup on the X68K for this thread. I hope you like it! I don't have much to say except "Thanks!" I could read about X68K stuff all day. d0s posted:WHAT HAVE I DONE Ahaha! I should spend more time in this thread. So you're the one who drove that thing out of my price range! It was for the best really so thank you. 
wash bucket fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 21:53
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Genpei Turtle posted:If you don't mind, once you're finished that I can chip in with some suggestions of my own about X68K games. Some of them are really, really, good, but easily overlooked because of the language barrier. That would be awesome! My post is gonna be entirely about action games that require no Japanese and a few good fan translations. It would be really interesting to hear about all the stuff I'm missing out on.
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Feb 5, 2014 21:58
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Not to mention I might be interested in working on another X68k game. It only took me, what 8 years to finish the last one? 
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Feb 5, 2014 22:38
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McCracAttack posted:So you're the one who drove that thing out of my price range! It was for the best really so thank you. Man I wasn't even planning on buying the thing until I convinced myself that I don't really need a full sized machine because that would have been even more expensive in the long run, what with games costing what they do. Sure, I'm gonna miss out on having a shelf full of very pretty boxes but honestly I'd rather have a CF card full of games to play, at least for this system. The keyboard the guy included is the biggest piece of poo poo on earth though, which is weird because it's made by SGI and in my experience they made some pretty good poo poo, at least back when they were actually called "Silicon Graphics". But this keyboard... man some of the keys don't even respond if you type fast. You have to type everything v e r y d e l i b e r a t e l y. If anyone knows someone with a super secret stash of legit X68K keyboards get in touch with me please
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Feb 5, 2014 23:10
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That was an awesome writeup---those interested in seeing some of it live on the X68000 front: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBv1uL6R3T8 Really, this guy's entire channel is mostly a monument to this sort of thing...tons of repairs, an FM Towns II, old game collecting, all sorts of odd pickups---it is like a time machine brought to life for things I only saw in crumpled old magazines back in the day and wondered what might've been.
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Feb 5, 2014 23:50
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I try to avoid watching lukemorse videos because the guy needs to stop collecting. You think pat the nes punk is absurd with rooms full of crap he never knew he had or stored in a closet to never be used? This guys' wife divorced him due to the absurd amount of money he's wasted buying retro stuff. He claimed he was done for good after that ordeal and that didn't even last a month before he was back to the same hoarding/taping as before.
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Feb 6, 2014 00:02
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Wow, I had no idea there was that kind of backstory afoot---that's all kinds of crazy. I had assumed he just had a master plan of some sort to get ahold of working hardware for most things that existed alongside games to match while repairing whatever he could just to keep things alive outright.
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Feb 6, 2014 00:06
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This guy is another source of endless X68000/other Japanese computer entertainment: http://www.youtube.com/user/superdeadite
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Feb 6, 2014 00:45
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Genpei Turtle posted:What version is that? That was one of my all-time favorite game on my C64. Also I finished reading that writeup of the X68000 and wow, while I would never actually have time to do so, my interest in learning Japanese has gone from my lifelong 2% to about 10% just thinking about how much awesome oldschool-computer-gaming-with-great-music happiness seems to lay in store there. This Luke Morse stuff is really interesting to me. Specifically I am watching his video where he talks about Japan and mentions (fairly defensively) how nice it is that in Japan you are not judged for your gaming/collection hobbies. I suppose all of us in this thread have some sense of mild persecution for our nerdy hobbies, but it really seems like a generational problem that will solve itself, given gaming's continuing cultural dominance. I mean, at some point I think collecting old computer systems/games will sound not much weirder than collecting stamps or old cars or something. Unless your house looks like it should be condemned, granted.
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Feb 6, 2014 01:08
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d0s posted:The keyboard the guy included is the biggest piece of poo poo on earth though, which is weird because it's made by SGI and in my experience they made some pretty good poo poo, at least back when they were actually called "Silicon Graphics". But this keyboard... man some of the keys don't even respond if you type fast. You have to type everything v e r y d e l i b e r a t e l y. Well, you did get an XE-1 stick with that bundle so don't expect much sympathy from me.
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Feb 6, 2014 02:03
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McCracAttack posted:Well, you did get an XE-1 stick with that bundle so don't expect much sympathy from me. I'd seriously trade it straight up for a real X68K keyboard, that's how janky this keyboard is. If it was a pro model I wouldn't though, I need turbo.
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Feb 6, 2014 02:10
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Does anyone where to buy bulk 3.5 floppy disks for cheap? Those things got expensive since I last had to buy a bunch (When I got a Super Wildcard DX in 1997)
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Feb 7, 2014 06:32
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Games Part 1: Sting, Zoom, Exact, Fill-in Cafe This post is all about the X68000's games. The few "best of" lists online focus mostly on the many fantastic arcade ports on this system, and of course, Castlevania. I'm going to take a different approach and talk about the games developed specifically for the X68K. Many of these games also got ported to the consoles of the time and, I'll note that where possible. Sadly this isn't the most common system out there and a lot of the ports are more than acceptable. This is gonna be sorted by developer and I'll try to include a bit of info about the developer's history when I can. Finally, I'm going to focus entirely on action games, since I can't read Japanese and very few text-heavy games have been translated. If you have some reccomendations for great X68K RPGs/etc please post them!  We know Sting primarily as a developer of RPGs, they're responsible for the Evolution games on the Dreamcast, and the excellent GBA titles Riveria and Yggdra Union. They got their start developing shooters though, their first game was Psycho Chaser on the PC Engine. Last Battalion 1991   This is a fun vertical shooter with kinda caravan style gameplay. You have a lot of cool weapon powerups and a speed selector, not shooting for a few seconds charges a powerful shot. This is a pretty basic game that's not going to blow minds but it's fast and polished and a great way to kill some time, I find myself playing this a lot whenever I have a few minutes to spare and don't want to get into something deeper. There was a slightly different version of this game released for the PC Engine called Override.  Zoom was responsible for stuff like Lagoon on SNES and Zero Divide on PSX, but before that they created a few really great X68000 games. Genocide 1989  This was an early game and it kinda shows, the game is kinda stiff but it's not awful or anything. You're a giant robot with a light saber and your goal is to open the door at the end of each stage by killing all the enemies in it. This got a really lackluster PCE-CD port. Phalanx 1991   This is one of, if not the best horizontal shooters on the system. Beautiful design and pixel art, very interesting stages and enemies, great weapons and just a total blast to play. The music is excellent too! This got a pretty good SNES port everyone knows about because of it's stupid box. Genocide 2 1991   Daaaayum. This makes the prequel look like a turd. Same mechanics and ideas but everything has been improved tenfold, the gameplay is much more fluid and the stages are much more interesting. It got a SFC port I haven't played.  Exact made exactly six games before being folded into Sony and having their soul sucked out after creating the best PSX game (  ) Jumping Flash. A supremely creative team, they never made the same game twice but their style is all over everything they made. They are absolutely the superstars of commercial X68000 development. The MSX and PCE had Compile, the Famicom had KID, the Genesis had Treasure, the SNES had Square, the X68K had Exact. Respect.Naious 1990   This seems like a standard horizontal shooter until exactly one minute in when you actually fly into the giant ship hovering over you and begin navigating it's interior. It's still very much a "first game" but Exact's unique sense of style is evident even here. Aquales 1991   Hey, do you like the grappling/swinging mechanic of Bionic Commando, Umihara Kawase and Fausseté Amour? Would you like to do that with a giant robot with a laser sword and machine gun? I don't think there's anything bad about this game. Étoile Princesse 1993   This is kinda like Kiki Kai Kai meets Popful Mail. It's a top-down action RPG(ish) game where you're an anime. You don't really have to know Japanese to make it though, since the gameplay is good enough to carry the whole thing. Geograph Seal 1994   This is Jumping Flash's dad. It has the exact same gameplay mechanic but swaps the hallucinatory whimsy of that game with a futuristic robot war setting. It's one of the best reasons to own a SC-55 as the music is excellent. In fact, everything about this game is excellent. A programming marvel on a system with no dedicated 3D hardware.  Asuka 120% Burning Fest 1994   Asuka 120% got remade several times but this is the original. A really great 2D fighting game with extremely fluid animation in a Japanese school setting, this is one of the best fighters on the system. This was ported to the PCE CD and several other consoles, but I think the original is the best. Mad Stalker: Full Metal Force 1994   Yet another excellent giant robot game. This one's gimmick is the use of simple fighting commands to perform attacks, for instance QCF+A fires your gun. It sound clunky but I promise you it's ludicrous fun, there's something really satisfying about dashing with your sword and knocking stuff across the screen. SUPERB graphics, the pixel work here is eye-popping. You must play this game. Mad Stalker got a pretty good port to the PCE CD (Arcade Card) and a kinda lame one to the PSX. That's all for now, I wanted to cover the developers I liked best/was most familiar with first, in the next post I'll be going over single games without a focus on the devs. d0s fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Feb 7, 2014 11:27
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Last Battalion has a great "bug" where letting the bonus score timer that comes up during boss fights hit zero suddenly makes it tick down from 9 million points so when you beat the first boss you get a ton of 1-Ups. You can max out the score by the end of stage 2 this way. Also drat, Genocide 2 looks cool and I never thought to check out Zoom's other titles.
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Feb 7, 2014 14:52
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d0s posted:Does anyone where to buy bulk 3.5 floppy disks for cheap? Those things got expensive since I last had to buy a bunch (When I got a Super Wildcard DX in 1997) The cheapest price I'm seeing is about $0.50 per disk. I think they've climbed out of the "rock-bottom" price stage at this point, and are back on an upward trajectory, since they're a niche format and the supply has shrunk to meet demand.
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Feb 7, 2014 22:14
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Kthulhu5000 posted:The cheapest price I'm seeing is about $0.50 per disk. I think they've climbed out of the "rock-bottom" price stage at this point, and are back on an upward trajectory, since they're a niche format and the supply has shrunk to meet demand. A lot of the ones made in the last few years of production are total garbage and don't last very long.
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Feb 7, 2014 22:26
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