Retro Gaming Megathread: Disconnect from the present, and Go back to the nineties.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Gaming Megathread: Disconnect from the present, and Go back to the nineties.

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

d0s posted:

replacing the mechanism entirely with something like the Blinking Light Win.

Bought one of these a few months back and it's legit the best retro game-related purchase I've made in the past several years.

At least until I get some good S-Video cables for my SNES and N64 at least.

Instant Sunrise posted:

Link to the Past and the NES Zeldas use a CR2302 battery, right?

CR2032

Mercury Crusader fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Aug 1, 2016

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 18:20

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 4, 2024 18:13

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Improbable Lobster posted:

Please do not learn a language exclusively to play retro video games with. Namaste.

I took two years of Japanese in high school back in the early '00s because I was also taking a bunch of business classes. For some reason, I had the idea that Japanese would be great for business because of my dumb obsession with '80s movies that talked about Japanese businesses overtaking US businesses.

Now I just use it for video games. And Japanese pro wrestling.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 06:38

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Genesis stuff has always been rather affordable compared to SNES stuff, even if you wanted to go the CIB route. I grabbed a CIB copy of Phantasy Star IV for something like $20 even though it felt like it should've been more since it was an RPG and it had a lovely cardboard box instead of the earlier clamshell cases. In fact, most of the late generation cardboard box releases I own (Vectorman 1 and 2, Virtua Fighter 2, Sonic & Knuckles) were under $10 each. If you don't buy CIB, the carts are easy to store and even easier/cheaper to purchase.

I probably would've been fine with non-CIB but when I started buying heavily into Genesis stuff, I realized the ten or so games I had for it were already CIB so I figured why not. I guess the clamshell case Sonic 3 is harder to find than the cardboard box release?

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 00:29

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

flyboi posted:

You probably shouldn't look at the price of Phantasy Star 4 in 2016

Wow, and I bought my copy like two or three years ago thereabout. :/

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 00:55

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

The 3DO section of the OP is a bit light on what it can do, so I figured I'd make a few notes you could probably add, maybe.

The 3DO was somewhat popular in Japan since they seemed to get several exclusive games for the console over there, such as a Sailor Moon 2D fighting game and, oddly, TWO adventure/racing game hybrid games based on the Wacky Races franchise of all thing (I happen to own all those). It's an early CD system so you could get away with burning your own CDs or using Japanese CDs on it as there's no region locking.

There are no memory cards for the system, but does allow save games in its internal storage. The 3DO version of Gex is the only console version of the game released at the time to support save data, whereas the other ports used a password system. Save management is handled through software; you need a game (or some demo discs/sampler discs that were included with the system originally) that has the required software to do any sort of file management. One game, The Horde, is notorious for using up all storage capacity with its saves; rather than warn you that you lack adequate space or prevent you from saving, the game will instead delete any save data on the system to make room for its save. Allegedly there is a "patched" version of the game that you could get by sending in your copy of the game to the publisher, but I have no idea how many copies of those are out there or if they're that valuable.

The primary controller is a three-button layout like the Genesis, with two shoulder buttons and two middle buttons that function like pause/select. There's only one controller port on the 3DO. To play multiplayer games, 3DO controllers have a controller port attached to them so you can daisy-chain controllers into one another, which is kind of a pain in the rear end. The controllers also have a headphone jack. The connector is the same common DE9 connector found on the Sega Genesis, Atari 2600, etc., however the 3DO DE9 will fry your Genesis/2600 controller if you attempt to use it. A common issue with the 3DO controller is that it doesn't register diagonal movements well, most noticeable with fighting games. The problem is that the controller shell is "overtightened" and can be resolved by loosening the screws in the back of the controller just a little bit. There's a rare 6-button variant that was released around the time Super Street Fighter II Turbo was released, good luck finding one at a reasonable price. If you wanna know how Street Fighter plays on the standard 3DO controller, one of the six attack buttons is mapped to the middle button next to "pause".

Other cult games I'd add would be the various odd FPS titles that were released for the system: Killing Time, PO'ed, and Immercenary.

Mercury Crusader fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Aug 6, 2016

# ¿ Aug 6, 2016 19:51

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Do not even ask posted:

There is no region locking but if I remember correctly non-Japanese models lack the chip that handles kanji characters.

Didn't seem to cause an issue with my games in particular. My guess is that the 3DO just doesn't load the characters at all but still plays the game normally. With the Sailor Moon fighting game, text is in romanji anyway. With the Wacky Races games, the menu stuff is in romanji, and I didn't see any kanji whatsoever during cutscenes and dialog. I assumed they didn't put text as the games are fully voice-acted anyway, but it could've been trying to draw the kanji characters but never did so they were absent.

fishmech posted:

You forgot to mention that there is a save memory expansion/backup device for certain units: the Japan-release-only FZ-EM256 unit plugs into models with the expansion bay and in conjunction with the disc that came with it you can use its 256 kilobytes of storage - the 3DO internal storage is 32 kilobytes so you can have 8 different whole save areas backed up at once. This works on most of the American console models as well as most Japan console models.

Pricey as hell these days, of course, and probably was back then too:

I wasn't even thinking about Japanese-exclusive hardware but ouch.

There's also a version of the 3DO that's a PC ISA expansion card made by Creative. Came with it's own CD-ROM drive. I have no idea if anybody nowadays has even attempted to get that setup working.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2016 20:14

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Download this easy-to-download-and-make-copies-and-backups-of video game before Nintendo C&Ds the guy and you can never find the game again in the several thousand different outlets to upload and download these kind of things easily.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2016 03:17

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

A.o.D. posted:

Do you know how much of a pain it was for me to hunt down alien Doom the last time I looked for it?

also, it was an endorsement of the remake. Don't, uh, be so pedantic.

A lot of people make it sound like Nintendo C&D'ing the game will cause it's availability to vanish forever. Sega did the same to that Streets of Rage and I can find it easily is what I'm saying.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2016 03:24

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

A.o.D. posted:

You've got a smash thing growing out of your title. Have you considered seeing a doctor?

My title is augmented.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2016 03:26

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

I can't believe Metroid is fuckin' dead

# ¿ Aug 8, 2016 01:21

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Looks like you can still go to the creator's website and download the video game. But rip Metroid Database

# ¿ Aug 8, 2016 01:41

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

More interesting though, would Sony have attempted to make their own consoles if the add-on failed to catch on?

# ¿ Aug 13, 2016 23:34

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

There were already a few CD-only consoles prior to the PlayStation and Saturn, such as the 3DO and I guess arguably the Philips CD-i. I wonder if the Saturn would've managed better in the US if it was just them and the Nintendo 64 squaring off, with both competitors having (presumably) failed add-ons under their belts.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2016 23:56

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Ineffiable posted:

Welcome to the classic feeling of retro regret.

At some point, most of us has sold off various old games just to be able to buy more games (or for other things) and it's painful seeing that if you could sell it today, it would have been worth ten times more. Or that you just wish you still had it.

I'm the anomaly because I kept most of my stuff in check. Yesterday I was looking at the most expensive retro games at GameStop, checking those prices against eBay prices, and was surprised that several of the more uncommon NES games I bought for next to nothing back from '98 - '02 are worth upwards of 5x to 10x what I initially bought them for. I guess I was also like the only person who probably bought their GameCube component cables from Nintendo's online store back when they actually had them in stock. I'm either super lucky or a financial wizard.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2016 17:32

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

I enjoyed the physical collecting aspect of it, but I was doing it long before there was a real "retro bubble" that shot prices of games I remember getting for $3 up to like $20 to $50. I'm not a fan of flashcarts and emulation, but lately I've been checking out the prices on most of my collection and yeah, if I was starting to get into retro gaming today I'd go the flashcart/emulation route. I have a lot of top titles, cult classics, and rare pieces in physical format but I also didn't spend nearly a quarter of what this stuff would probably cost me now.

Hadn't thought much about repros. A local card game store here started stocking video games and a couple of repros. Most are just romhacks so I doubt I'll buy those, and I feel like just importing games released in Japan but not in the US. Probably just grab whatever weird prototypes or unreleased stuff, like Star Fox 2 I guess even though it's not that good.

Stunt Race FX is cool.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2016 18:42

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Ineffiable posted:

I also think retro gaming in general is really overpriced. Everything feels like it's going for more money than it should. I could easily sell most of my collection and make four times as how much I paid into it.

But I don't like that it's expensive for someone to jump into collecting today. If anyone was starting from scratch, I'd tell them to invest in flashcarts and emulators and just hope you get lucky at garage sales or thrift stores.

At least you can start off very well with a raspberry pi and 8bitdo controllers. And maybe slowly build up your collection. But the Era of having large shelves full of game is a rich boys dream now.

Pretty much, yeah. Ten years ago I was firmly in the camp of Authentic Collections and Large Shelves Full of Games. Nowadays I tell anybody getting into it to just go the flashcart/emulation route. Even thrift stores and garage sales aren't as great as they used to be. Back in the late '90s and most of the '00s I could regularly find popular NES and SNES games in lots, or the occasional near mint US Saturn JRPG for $5. Lately I've been seeing people descend on a stack of random worthless SNES sports titles like vultures, browsing their phones hoping that Madden '93 is actually $40.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 20:26

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Anybody familiar with the model 1 Sega CD hardware? Whenever I boot it up, it makes this horrible grinding noise. Odd thing is that it only does this when it's warming up initially after not being used for a while (by this I mean several hours at least). Afterwards it never makes that grinding noise again. It plays game with no problem otherwise. Tried looking it up online but apparently everybody else's grinding noise issue is associated with the CD assembly failing or whatever, but couldn't find anybody having this particular issue.

Mercury Crusader fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Aug 24, 2016

# ¿ Aug 24, 2016 06:39

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Elliotw2 posted:

If it's just while it's spinning up a disk and not the tray opening it might just need some oiling in a couple of spots. Apparently the tray contact switches can do that too, and they're not terribly hard to get to and clean up.

It doesn't happen while spinning up a disk, or when the tray opens/closes, or when it's reading data. It only makes that grinding noise when it is powered on for the first time in a long while, kind of like it's warming up. Then it no longer makes that noise. Might go ahead and oil up some spots anyway and see if that does anything.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2016 07:28

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Update on my Sega CD issue: it no longer makes that grinding noise. At all. Works fine still, it just all of a sudden doesn't make that grinding noise. Nothing like an issue resolving itself I guess.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2016 22:28

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Random Stranger posted:

And as we all know if a mechanical issue mysteriously stops on its own, then it will never happen again.

I mean I still have a hammer in my toolbox in case of emergency.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 02:15

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

azurite posted:

If it makes a grinding noise (or maybe a quick "quack" noise?) on startup, it's most likely the limit switch for the laser transport not triggering properly. On startup, the model 1 will move the laser towards the spindle until it hits the limit switch. At that point, it'll attempt to focus and read the disc. If the switch doesn't trip in time, or if it's flaky, it'll try to keep moving the laser against the spindle and grind the gears. A good temporary fix that worked for me was spraying the inside of the switch with Deoxit. It might take up to a day to fully dissolve the 20 years of oxidation on there.

I think yours resolved on its own due to all the movement scraping away the oxidation. Unfortunately, I didn't have as much luck. A better fix would be replacing the switches. I haven't tried yet because I don't really know what to look for.

This makes sense to me. When it was making the noise, the Sega CD startup screen took a while before it would prompt me to hit reset to eject the tray or press start to run the CD. Now that the noise is gone, that wait time isn't there anymore. Next time I root around inside the Sega CD I'll check out all the moving parts.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 03:13

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Dreamcast rules, arcade games rule, movie games drool

# ¿ Sep 10, 2016 15:51

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

PaletteSwappedNinja posted:

Street Fighter The Movie The Game is both an arcade game and a movie game and it's fantastic.

Had one of the best juggle systems in any fighting game.

I was thinking more "David Cage game" when referring to movie games, not like "Darkman for NES"

# ¿ Sep 10, 2016 16:08

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

I bought my Virtual Boy back in early '97, around the same time I bought a copy of Wave Race 64. The store had them on clearance for about $25 and games ranging from $3 to $5 each. I'd probably be more down on the thing if I had bought it at launch or if I bought it at whatever ridiculous price it sells for these days. Wario Land rules.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 08:00

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Monitor Burn posted:

There's a lot of terrible cheap "S-Video" cables on Ebay that are just unshielded composite cables with S-video plugs.

I recommend these cables. They are actually properly wired and shielded, and don't cost $$$ like monster cables: http://www.ebay.com/itm/131782319627?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I'll second these. I own three of them and they rule.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2016 13:20

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

Phantasium posted:

It... it still happens guys don't give up on your search.

Are you supposed to pair it with the composite cables?

Welcome to the club. The "I got GCN component cables without taking out a loan" club.

And yeah, as others said, composite for audio. Too bad the GCN didn't support optical out or anything like that.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2016 05:43

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

I managed to get a copy of Donkey Kong Jr. Math, which was the last NOA-published NES game I needed to complete my collection goals for the NES. 20+ years and I'm pretty much done collecting for the NES. Kind of feels weird.

Oh well. Moving on to the SNES and Game Boy. There's a dozen first-party Game Boy games I'm on the lookout for, and three SNES games, one of which is Kirby's Dream Land 3 so that should be fun.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2016 18:19

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

I grabbed the bulk of my SNES collection back before prices ballooned out of control. The only expensive game I'd like to get is Kirby's Dream Land 3, but other than that I already own most of the expensive stuff on that console. If I had to restart from scratch I'd just go with the Everdrive probably.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2016 21:53

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 4, 2024 18:13

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!

d0s posted:

2. nostalgics - they just want to play the games they did as a kid, the same way they did as a kid, usually on a CRT TV with the real console. they may "collect" games but usually only games they like or have good memories of and usually don't really care about the condition as much, they just like having the real thing and the ritual of playing old games the way they did back then.

This is mostly where I'm at. I didn't even really consider what I was doing "collecting," I just kept all the stuff I had from the NES on up, and added significantly more to it around the late '90s when it turned out I could buy entire (small-ish) collections of NES and 16-bit games for next to nothing from peers that wanted to buy whatever the latest Squaresoft RPG was or whatever. At no point did I ever sell off all my game stuff and then jump back into "retro gaming" a few years ago; I'm just a horrible hoarder.

I find the hardware RGB modding stuff fascinating, but not enough that I want to invest heavily into it. Nor do I really dabble with emulators anymore or use flashcarts. I owned so many games across several console by the end of the '00s (and before prices started spiraling out of control) that I never felt the need to go into those methods, though if I had to start from scratch at this point, I'd just get a flashcart.

I do have weird "collection goals" but it's weird stuff like "get all the first-party/Nintendo of America-published games on a console" which in the case of consoles like the N64 or SNES is basically "get all the good games and a few bad ones I guess." I finally did this with the NES last month when I got a copy of Donkey Kong Jr. Math so I can say I'm done with that platform at this point. Still wanna get Kirby's Dream Land 3 on the SNES.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2016 23:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Gaming Megathread: Disconnect from the present, and Go back to the nineties.