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PaletteSwappedNinja posted:Just got sent a message about this and figured you dudes would probably be interested: I gotta figure out how to get my hands on that, especially for that Koshiro track. He's one of my favorite composers. In fact I was the one behind video broadcasting his first US performance at MAGFest 11 for 8BitX. It was funny because we were getting viewers from Japan saying "I wish we had our own MAGFest".
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Feb 18, 2014 06:54
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DStecks posted:I've been playing Under a Killing Moon lately, with doing an LP in mind. I never played it when it was new, and I'm going in pretty much blind, and surprisingly, it holds up quite a bit better than I had expected it to. The core gameplay is surprisingly solid, even if the Doom-style map navigation is keyboard Twister and seriously woozy-making. The puzzles are intuitive, but not insultingly easy, and the live-action footage is pretty well integrated into the game. Did you play the previous two games in the series? Mean Streets was pretty special when it was released though I think it doesn't hold up so well. Martian Memorandum is a weird one since it was intended as a tech showcase.
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Feb 18, 2014 06:59
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Random Stranger posted:Did you play the previous two games in the series? Mean Streets was pretty special when it was released though I think it doesn't hold up so well. Martian Memorandum is a weird one since it was intended as a tech showcase. Nope, like I said, going in pretty much completely blind. I'd heard of the game from Spoony namedropping it in one of his old FMV Hell videos.
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Feb 18, 2014 07:02
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Figured I'd do another mod before the 3 day weekend was over. Decided to redo my RGB mod on my N64. I originally had the RGB lines wired up the multi out connector and bought a SCART cable that had the RGB amp circuit built into it. This go around I built the circuit myself and had it in the system itself.   Don't really need that cable anymore and should be able to use the same cable I use with my SNES. Maybe it's just me, but it did make the picture a bit more brighter than before. One of the games I tested was Gauntlet Legends which is stupid dark in the world hub area. Looked a lot better there. By the way that loving video amp is tiny as all hell. I almost lost it the second I took it out of it's protective packaging. 
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Feb 18, 2014 11:24
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flyboi posted:Welcome to 2014 Whatup, vertical-second-monitor buddy? 
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Feb 18, 2014 12:05
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Apparently the new Strider game is pretty drat good.
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Feb 18, 2014 12:51
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al-azad posted:Apparently the new Strider game is pretty drat good. I've finished it already. I went in expecting it to be completely terrible, I came out thinking it was merely dull. Played a lot worse this gen.
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Feb 18, 2014 13:06
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DStecks posted:I've been playing Under a Killing Moon lately, with doing an LP in mind. I never played it when it was new, and I'm going in pretty much blind, and surprisingly, it holds up quite a bit better than I had expected it to. The core gameplay is surprisingly solid, even if the Doom-style map navigation is keyboard Twister and seriously woozy-making. The puzzles are intuitive, but not insultingly easy, and the live-action footage is pretty well integrated into the game. Adventure games in general have a reputation for being awfully, awfully written. If you think that's bad, give Police Quest 1 (the original AGI version) a whirl. The relatively well-written games are basically anything made by Lucasarts from Loom onwards (including Telltale's game series) and Gabriel Knight 1, I don't think there's any appreciable exception to this rule.
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Feb 18, 2014 13:19
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Just to check, is there a special process you should take when powering down a Famicom Disk System or Twin Famicom to ensure that the drive alignment doesn't get messed up? I'm wondering if it's like with the PS2 and PCE Duo-R where you are supposed to turn it off in a special way or it's somehow bad for the drive.
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Feb 18, 2014 13:25
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univbee posted:Adventure games in general have a reputation for being awfully, awfully written. If you think that's bad, give Police Quest 1 (the original AGI version) a whirl. There are exceptions from the era. Star Trek 25th Anniversary (produced by Brian Fargo, voiced by the original cast, and written like the unaired season of Star Trek), I Have No Mouth, Blade Runner, and a little known game called The Orion Conspiracy... quite a few unknowns, really. Basically all the best written adventure games that weren't LucasArts were games that didn't try to be funny. Even today too many adventure games try to follow in the classics' footsteps by making witty comments on every single object in the background. Some people complained Broken Age didn't do this but I find it really unnecessary. If it's not important to the scenery or gameplay I don't give a poo poo about the main character's pointless one-liners. "It's grass. Grass is green." "A window. A window to the soul? Nah, just a window." "It's a doorknob. I would pick it up but I can't fit the door into my pants." "Water. *insert something witty about water*"
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Feb 18, 2014 13:34
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8-bit Miniboss posted:Figured I'd do another mod before the 3 day weekend was over. Decided to redo my RGB mod on my N64. I originally had the RGB lines wired up the multi out connector and bought a SCART cable that had the RGB amp circuit built into it. This go around I built the circuit myself and had it in the system itself. What a great cheap mod. I can't wait to get home and see if any of my N64's are compatible. Seriously the parts are like 10bux shipped to do one or 20bux to do 5.
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Feb 18, 2014 13:49
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flyboi posted:We must go deeper We have the same keyboard 
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Feb 18, 2014 14:09
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Heran Bago posted:Just to check, is there a special process you should take when powering down a Famicom Disk System or Twin Famicom to ensure that the drive alignment doesn't get messed up? I'm wondering if it's like with the PS2 and PCE Duo-R where you are supposed to turn it off in a special way or it's somehow bad for the drive. Ok it's probably ignorant:30 for me, but what's the special procedure for powering down the PS2?? al-azad posted:There are exceptions from the era. Star Trek 25th Anniversary (produced by Brian Fargo, voiced by the original cast, and written like the unaired season of Star Trek), I Have No Mouth, Blade Runner, and a little known game called The Orion Conspiracy... quite a few unknowns, really. Not sure if you were being sarcastic or not about Orion Conspiracy, but I loved the poo poo out of that game. I bought it in the mid to late 90s to play on my 486 (fact I got sound working for it rocked so much) and it was super drat cool. I haven't played it since then but I still have the disc and the box just because it was that drat cool. Such a cool atmosphere. --  C'mon that art still looks beautiful.
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Feb 18, 2014 14:55
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Definitely not being sarcastic. It's a diamond in the rough. It's really slow with a pretty terrible interface but very story heavy with few major puzzles. It's like they had the script to do an Aliens game but lost the license so they started filing serial numbers off. Notably it's probably the first video game to deal with homophobia and a gay character as a major plot point. It's not very fun to play but it's the perfect adventure game to watch an LP.
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Feb 18, 2014 15:06
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8-bit Miniboss posted:Figured I'd do another mod before the 3 day weekend was over. Decided to redo my RGB mod on my N64. I originally had the RGB lines wired up the multi out connector and bought a SCART cable that had the RGB amp circuit built into it. This go around I built the circuit myself and had it in the system itself. I've modded 03 revision N64 motherboards a bunch of times without issue, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do it on the 04 I have. Supposedly the 04 is the last revision where it's even possible, but I can't seem to get it to work. What exactly different needs to be done?
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Feb 18, 2014 15:19
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DStecks posted:Nope, like I said, going in pretty much completely blind. I'd heard of the game from Spoony namedropping it in one of his old FMV Hell videos. The sequel, The Pandora Directive, is actually better than Under a Killing Moon (at least in terms of game play, the story will be about the same). And supposedly there's a new Tex Murphy adventure coming out since they got a big kickstarter but I think we all know that you should take anything being funded by kickstarter with a grain of salt. univbee posted:Adventure games in general have a reputation for being awfully, awfully written. If you think that's bad, give Police Quest 1 (the original AGI version) a whirl. Video games in general are awfully, awfully written.  I'm thinking back now to adventure games with tolerable writing. Ignoring mid-era Infocom (A Mind Forever Voyaging stands out and that Douglas Adams guy who wrote two of the games might work out as a novelist) since a company who relied on prose is kind of cheating, I can come up with a few standouts. The Last Express, Sanitarium, Dark Side of the Moon (no, not that DSotM and no, the game does not sync up with Wizard of Oz) and The Longest Journey immediately jump out at me. There was also one that was relatively hard SF where you had to try to repair a crippled space ship that was under attack but I can't remember the title (I thought it was Critical Something but apparently that's not it) and I'm not breaking open my crates of PC games (not a joke) to try to locate it. FWIW, I have played The Orion Conspiracy and I didn't hate it but I don't remember much more beyond that. It just rolled off me into a pile of generic adventure games... Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 15:29
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Tyson Tomko posted:Ok it's probably ignorant:30 for me, but what's the special procedure for powering down the PS2?? Hold the reset button in for a few seconds, it puts the PS2 into ATX-like standby instead of shutting off the power completely. Every time I see someone use the power switch on the back to power down a PS2, I cringe a little.
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Feb 18, 2014 15:43
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Silhouette posted:Every time I see someone use the power switch on the back to power down a PS2, I cringe a little. People DO this?!
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Feb 18, 2014 15:57
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midge posted:People DO this?! To be fair, wasn't the PS2 literally the first console that had a software-level power down? Not to mention the first console to have a constant light if it was receiving power ("that means it's on so we should power it off completely from the back!")
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Feb 18, 2014 15:59
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Random Stranger posted:The sequel, The Pandora Directive, is actually better than Under a Killing Moon (at least in terms of game play, the story will be about the same). And supposedly there's a new Tex Murphy adventure coming out since they got a big kickstarter but I think we all know that you should take anything being funded by kickstarter with a grain of salt. Kickstarter has had an incredible success rate, at least as far as high profile games go. FTL, Valdis Story, Broken Age, Banner Saga, Kentucky Route Zero, Strike Suit Zero... can't really think of a KS game that was outright terrible especially compared to poo poo coming from AAA companies that should know better like Gearbox. Random Stranger posted:I'm thinking back now to adventure games with tolerable writing. Ignoring mid-era Infocom (A Mind Forever Voyaging stands out and that Douglas Adams guy who wrote two of the games might work out as a novelist) since a company who relied on prose is kind of cheating, I can come up with a few standouts. The Last Express, Sanitarium, Dark Side of the Moon (no, not that DSotM and no, the game does not sync up with Wizard of Oz) and The Longest Journey immediately jump out at me. There was also one that was relatively hard SF where you had to try to repair a crippled space ship that was under attack but I can't remember the title (I thought it was Critical Something but apparently that's not it) and I'm not breaking open my crates of PC games (not a joke) to try to locate it. Mission Critical. Back then, the actual writing of the game was secondary. The important thing was gameplay and they made it as intentionally difficult as possible to keep you from winning overnight. Even in the case of Hitchiker's Guide you basically had quotes from the book inbetween obtuse puzzle sections that could kill you long before you realized you were already dead. I think the biggest hurdle with game writing is that developers don't yet know how to integrate writing with gameplay. We're still doing these stop-and-go acts where you walk forward, watch a cutscene, then move on to trigger the next door. This would be like watching a full movie via the DVD menu. At the end of every scene it kicks you back to the menu. Games are finding ways to become more natural with their story telling. Consortium is full of great ideas even though the game itself is pretty janky. Papers, Please can evoke some weighty emotions on the players and at most you'll exchange a few passing remarks to the many strangers that pass you. Video games are still young as poo poo and their strength over every other medium is demanding input from the player. Eventually we'll reach a point where stories can naturally flow without interrupting the gameplay or taking over fully. For a long time American comic books had the issue of the writer and artists butting heads. And you can see in comics from the 40s through 70s that the art and writing seem to be fighting for the reader's attention. As the craft aged, writers learned how to speak "artist" and vice versa so to speak and more artists also happened to be writers so they understood the language of comics. We still don't understand the language of video games but we're getting there. And that's my pointless rant for the day, gently caress.
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Feb 18, 2014 16:08
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Silhouette posted:Hold the reset button in for a few seconds, it puts the PS2 into ATX-like standby instead of shutting off the power completely. Every time I see someone use the power switch on the back to power down a PS2, I cringe a little. What's the correct way to turn off a Duo-R? Have I been doing it wrong? Does my Duo-R hate me? My poor Duo. 
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Feb 18, 2014 16:22
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I have no idea, i'm not a Turbro yet 
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Feb 18, 2014 16:23
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Agrias120 posted:What's the correct way to turn off a Duo-R? Have I been doing it wrong? Does my Duo-R hate me? My poor Duo. If you are playing a disc based game press the run button and the select button at the same time. Doujindance made a great video of it here.
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Feb 18, 2014 16:26
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Ptarmigans posted:If you are playing a disc based game press the run button and the select button at the same time.  This honestly blew my mind.
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Feb 18, 2014 16:28
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al-azad posted:Back then, the actual writing of the game was secondary. Back then? Writing has always been low on the priority list for game developers. al-azad posted:I think the biggest hurdle with game writing is that developers don't yet know how to integrate writing with gameplay. We're still doing these stop-and-go acts where you walk forward, watch a cutscene, then move on to trigger the next door. This would be like watching a full movie via the DVD menu. At the end of every scene it kicks you back to the menu. Games are really terrible as a narrative medium. The player is creating their own narrative on the structure and trying to impose one upon that from above has pretty bad results. It doesn't help that most game creators don't have a story worth telling anyway. The most interesting stuff that's happening are people who realize this and have stopped making games and instead work with interactive narratives (which people who don't understand what a game is call "games"). The other thing is that nerds have really bad taste in writing and tend to call anything where they like the concept "well-written" but it's own rant.
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Feb 18, 2014 16:29
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I cringe every time someone presses the POWER button on their Nintendo Entertainment System. The correct way to shut down the power is by first holding RESET then pressing POWER. Failure results in your warranty being void.Random Stranger posted:Back then? Writing has always been low on the priority list for game developers. When your entire game's advertising campaign is based around the story I wouldn't call that "low priority." Even if it doesn't result in a good story it's still their priority. I can't ever recall a game from pre-1990 where the story was a focus other than a marketing bullet point. And I disagree entirely on games being a terrible narrative medium. Just because few people have made it work doesn't mean it's awful and it's near sightd to condemn an entire medium that has barely gotten its feet wet. Video games haven't evolved past anything people consider mindless entertainment until maybe a decade ago. You can work within the narrative someone else creates and King of Dragon Pass is a good example of a game that encourages role playing within the rules of the game world, almost like playing in someone else's D&D campaign. And the interactive narratives are still a video game, I don't believe in this separation of media and attribute it to how people try to wall off whatever they dislike from being "art". You see it all the time in contemporary art, someone looks at a piece they don't understand and bluntly spit out "That's not art." al-azad fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 16:30
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midge posted:People DO this?! I do when it's already on standby if I'm about to disconnect it, feels like it's probably good practice. al-azad posted:I cringe every time someone presses the POWER button on their Nintendo Entertainment System. The correct way to shut down the power is by first holding RESET then pressing POWER. Failure results in your warranty being void. Yeah that's dumb and I'm not doing that if I'm not playing a battery-backed game. Voltage spikes in the system be damned.
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Feb 18, 2014 16:47
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Silhouette posted:Hold the reset button in for a few seconds, it puts the PS2 into ATX-like standby instead of shutting off the power completely. Every time I see someone use the power switch on the back to power down a PS2, I cringe a little. PHEW you had me freaking out for a second. So just to confirm, is there anything wrong with soft shutting it down with reset button until it's in stand-by, then using power switch in back just like you would on a computer? Random Stranger posted:Games are really terrible as a narrative medium. The player is creating their own narrative on the structure and trying to impose one upon that from above has pretty bad results. It doesn't help that most game creators don't have a story worth telling anyway. The most interesting stuff that's happening are people who realize this and have stopped making games and instead work with interactive narratives (which people who don't understand what a game is call "games"). My favorite video game narrative is the tried and true Shadowrun style of waking up with amnesia and figuring out stuff about your life as you progress through the game. Tyson Tomko fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 16:50
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Tyson Tomko posted:PHEW you had me freaking out for a second. So just to confirm, is there anything wrong with soft shutting it down with reset button until it's in stand-by, then using power switch in back just like you would on a computer? Your PS2 should always be in standby, ready for gaming.
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Feb 18, 2014 16:52
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al-azad posted:I think the biggest hurdle with game writing is that developers don't yet know how to integrate writing with gameplay. We're still doing these stop-and-go acts where you walk forward, watch a cutscene, then move on to trigger the next door. This would be like watching a full movie via the DVD menu. At the end of every scene it kicks you back to the menu. This right here is right on the mark. Though, I'd argue that some people have managed to figure it out every once in a while; X-COM is pretty much the model of ludonarrative integration, and it came out when I was 2. The real problem right now for the medium is that because of the huge kurfuffle over "Games as Art", both devs and gamers are extremely resistant to the notion that video games aren't 100% as good as movies in every way, when the reality is that the average quality of game writing has not improved since the 90's. I would argue that Gone Home has probably the best love story ever told in a video game, and it's pretty middling by the standards of, well, literally any other medium.
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Feb 18, 2014 16:57
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elf help book posted:Your PS2 should always be in standby, ready for gaming. Haha I actually like the soft glow of the standby light but I was curious when/if I'd be moving systems around or going to be gone on an extended trip or something. Also since I'm posting, I wanted to randomly mention my retro themed dream I had last night. My brother and I were driving around and for whatever reason as we passed under an interstate overpass (think where people like to hide from tornadoes) I noticed a bunch of garage sale style junk everywhere and stopped to check it out. My brother was giving me endless amounts of poo poo and wanted to get out of there asap but I couldn't help but notice a few PS1s on the ground. I then saw a GBA SP case, opened it up and it was a GB SP sized NES controller with one big button in the middle and no dpad or A/B buttons. About this point my wife appears out of nowhere and backs me up on looking through stuff telling my brother he's being stupid, then as she starts going through a pile of loose Dreamcast discs I notice a HUGE red snake near her that's obviously lining up an attack. She doesn't hear me warn her, she then sees it and freaks out, and it starts chasing her around, then she and the snake come barreling toward me. At this point I wake up and can't help but laugh about stupid it was. TLDR; Crazy dream involving non-existant NES hardware, PS1 consoles, loose Dreamcast discs, and a big rear end snake.
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Feb 18, 2014 17:07
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Tyson Tomko posted:she starts going through a pile of loose Dreamcast discs That's no dream, that's a nightmare
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Feb 18, 2014 17:23
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Tyson Tomko posted:Haha I actually like the soft glow of the standby light but I was curious when/if I'd be moving systems around or going to be gone on an extended trip or something. 
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Feb 18, 2014 17:24
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univbee posted:To be fair, wasn't the PS2 literally the first console that had a software-level power down? Not to mention the first console to have a constant light if it was receiving power ("that means it's on so we should power it off completely from the back!") Pretty much this exactly. Although to this day, unless it actually has a use for sleep mode, like the 3DS, it'll always be a feature that kind of annoys me. Tyson Tomko posted:TLDR; Crazy dream involving non-existant NES hardware, PS1 consoles, loose Dreamcast discs, and a big rear end snake. The snake represents  and how it will consume your entire life and there's nothing you can do to stop it. 
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Feb 18, 2014 17:30
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I can understand the point that well-written is over used, that it's become an all encompassing term for "game we like" but that's an unfortunate case where a word takes on a different meaning. Books have basically one descriptor, "well written" the writing is good. But movies start taking on multiple descriptors. A poorly written movie can have good direction or cinematography or sound design, whatever. So what would you use to describe a game like, say, Half-Life where the story is generic, the writing basic, but all the elements combine well enough to trigger all the right emotions like fear and anxiety while still being a good game? Well-conceived? There are good concepts that make for terrible games. This is why I hate trying to narrow media into pigeonholes. The moment you try to objectively define your medium you start to exclude things that were always accepted to be a part of it. Tyson Tomko posted:Haha I actually like the soft glow of the standby light but I was curious when/if I'd be moving systems around or going to be gone on an extended trip or something. I have retro dreams all the time. It usually involves me owning every single video game console like a boss, then waking up and just lying in bed from disappointment. My last dream was about owning a Sharp X68000 with every Japanese video game translated. It was so vivid, too. My strangest dream was when Donkey Kong Country 3 was announced. Before playing it or even seeing a screenshot I had a dream where I was fighting the final boss and it was a giant robot piloted by K. Rool. Not quite, but close and I remember getting to Kaos and thinking "holy poo poo, I'm psychic!" If I was psychic I would have told myself to spend all my allowance on Earthbound when it was $20 new.
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Feb 18, 2014 17:34
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Ok this made my day. Thank you so much! Midnight Raider posted:The snake represents Haha this is spot on too. I still think it's awesome that my wife supported me in the dream when it would have been REALLY easy to come up with about 1,000,000 reasons to not go through under overpass junk. I can still HARDCORE vividly remember that drat SP style NES controller, the only thing that's even remotely similar function/button wise is maybe the Arkanoid controller that's only got the button and the slider dealio.
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Feb 18, 2014 17:41
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8-bit Miniboss posted:Figured I'd do another mod before the 3 day weekend was over. Decided to redo my RGB mod on my N64. I originally had the RGB lines wired up the multi out connector and bought a SCART cable that had the RGB amp circuit built into it. This go around I built the circuit myself and had it in the system itself. Nice, that looks like I want to do with mine. I'm in the same situation with a booster in the cable... would be nice to be able to use the same cable for both systems.
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Feb 18, 2014 18:01
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Tyson Tomko posted:I can still HARDCORE vividly remember that drat SP style NES controller, the only thing that's even remotely similar function/button wise is maybe the Arkanoid controller that's only got the button and the slider dealio. The only option is to build it. It looks like I have 2 RGBable n64s. I grabbed everything to mod 5+ because it was just as expensive as 2. It'll be a couple of weeks until Hong Kong gets me all the bits and bobs, but if anyone is interested in everything you need to RGB an n64(minus wires) or a modded one, if I get both working, shoot me a PM.
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Feb 18, 2014 18:05
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I've had dreams where I'd find beta cartridges in thrift stores or the back of closets. Once I realized I was dreaming and tried to figure out a way to get the games out of the dream back into real life.
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Feb 18, 2014 18:21
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Heran Bago posted:I've had dreams where I'd find beta cartridges in thrift stores or the back of closets. Once I realized I was dreaming and tried to figure out a way to get the games out of the dream back into real life. The "stumble upon a K-Mart in downtrodden southern area that still has sealed SNES games" dream crew checking in. Tyson Tomko posted:PHEW you had me freaking out for a second. So just to confirm, is there anything wrong with soft shutting it down with reset button until it's in stand-by, then using power switch in back just like you would on a computer? midge posted:People DO this?! haha I actually was just reminded that my friend had the PS2 Power Switch Relocator by Nyko http://www.ign.com/articles/2002/11/26/nyko-ps2-power-switch-relocator-review I can't find a good picture of it but it made the back switch on the PS2 accessible from the front. Was ugly as hell IIRC.
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Feb 18, 2014 20:28
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