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There was one of those for Gameboy games wasn't there? I just remember it had a "walkthrough" of Heiankyo Alien that was written in the style of a journal written from the view of the protagonist. I remember it being a pretty good story too.
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Aug 24, 2023 22:31
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JethroMcB posted:I had Volume 3 and I'm pretty sure I never owned any of the games covered in it. But having a book about video games was almost as good as the games themselves when I was 7. Years later I gave them a spin on an emulator and discovered that I had imagined much better versions of games like Amagon and Monster Party. Lol yeah I think I checked out that from the library and remember how the author made an effort to make the game guides have some readability, like for Maniac Mansion he tried to make having a character stay in the basement the entire time pushing the loose brick not seem tedious, like writing “Jeff’s button pushing finger is getting muscular!” The black and white game photos felt limited but did seem to get mileage out of hand drawn maps.
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Sep 11, 2023 02:14
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Seeing the name Jeff Rovin in print is one hell of a nostalgia unlock
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Sep 13, 2023 08:20
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Interesting thing about Jeff Rovin: he’s a lunatic who was an editor of Weekly World News (the tabloid featuring Batboy) and a surrogate for the Trump campaign who went on Fox News claiming he had been a fixer for the Clintons covering up a sex cult Hillary Clinton was part of or something. Almost as crazy as when he gushed about how awesome a game NES Dragon’s Lair was in his books.
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Sep 14, 2023 00:56
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Back in the days of rentals, I'd pick up things that looked cool in the magazines. Azure Dreams was one of those games, something I'd gotten early on after I learned what RPGs even were about and that I liked them (as earlier on I disliked the genre for taking up so many pages in Nintendo Power) Except I didn't know what a rougelike/roguelite/dungeon crawler game was, so didn't know how to actually work the monster system or how to combine equipment to actually progress through the dungeon, as your human character's level resets to 1 every time you leave. Lots of trips up that tower for just a few floors before dying, and then I'd just explore the town and try to figure out why I couldn't do anything. Can't remember if I played this before or after Chocobo's Dungeon 2, which is another dungeon crawler that I didn't fully understand - I do know it took until the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series years later before the genre clicked with me. I finally picked up my own copy of Azure Dreams last year to take my revenge someday.
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Sep 15, 2023 01:16
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At the risk of stretching the definition of retro, I had Jet Force Gemini as a kid. No clue what was going on there. vv: yeah, I know. Didn't want someone to post mgs4_snake_smoking_old.gif at me. Your Uncle Dracula fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Sep 15, 2023 |
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Sep 15, 2023 22:23
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Your Uncle Dracula posted:At the risk of stretching the definition of retro, I had Jet Force Gemini as a kid. No clue what was going on there. That game is 24
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Sep 15, 2023 22:26
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It may have just been the N64 Stockholm Syndrome/"There hasn't been a noteworthy release in like 6 months" aspect of it, but I was insanely hyped for Jet Force Gemini and loved every second of it. Maybe the most common complaint about the game was "Wait I have to collect ALL the Tribals?" mechanic that "padded out" the back half, but I didn't mind it at all. Yeah, you did have to replay every level multiple times, but you were doing it with the two characters you didn't use the first time so you could use their abilities to explore branching paths and new areas that were previously inaccessible. In that way, it felt like the closest thing to a Metroid title on the N64. (I was also kind of desensitized to it because my younger brother deleted my save file after the first Mizar fight, so I'd already had to replay the entire front half of the game before I got back to the "Okay, now do it all again" turn.) That said, I tried playing it on the XBox One Rare Replay collection and I found myself truly confused by a lot of it. (To say nothing of the control scheme, which somehow kinda worked on the 64 pad but not on the XBox one...and none of their attempts to "modernize" the controls felt particularly intuitive either.)
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Sep 15, 2023 22:54
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played through jet force gemini again a couple of months ago and it still holds up imo. there are confusing parts but it's well worth playing
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Sep 15, 2023 22:58
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JethroMcB posted:It may have just been the N64 Stockholm Syndrome/"There hasn't been a noteworthy release in like 6 months" aspect of it, but I was insanely hyped for Jet Force Gemini and loved every second of it. Maybe the most common complaint about the game was "Wait I have to collect ALL the Tribals?" mechanic that "padded out" the back half, but I didn't mind it at all. Yeah, you did have to replay every level multiple times, but you were doing it with the two characters you didn't use the first time so you could use their abilities to explore branching paths and new areas that were previously inaccessible. In that way, it felt like the closest thing to a Metroid title on the N64. (I was also kind of desensitized to it because my younger brother deleted my save file after the first Mizar fight, so I'd already had to replay the entire front half of the game before I got back to the "Okay, now do it all again" turn.) N64 games were really, really designed for the controller. Trying to play them on a more traditional layout just never feels right. I guess xbla PD was fine, but the N64 controller isn't really up to the task for FPSs.
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Sep 16, 2023 03:50
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The first time I played Goldeneye at a Target kiosk, whoever had been there before me had set the control scheme to 1.4 (C-button movement, stick look; Z to aim and A to fire.) When I finally got my own copy I was shocked to find that wasn't the default, and even more confused when I found out that most of my friends played it using 1.1.
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Sep 16, 2023 03:58
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JethroMcB posted:It may have just been the N64 Stockholm Syndrome/"There hasn't been a noteworthy release in like 6 months" aspect of it, but I was insanely hyped for Jet Force Gemini and loved every second of it. Maybe the most common complaint about the game was "Wait I have to collect ALL the Tribals?" mechanic that "padded out" the back half, but I didn't mind it at all. Yeah, you did have to replay every level multiple times, but you were doing it with the two characters you didn't use the first time so you could use their abilities to explore branching paths and new areas that were previously inaccessible. Oh yeah I rented that from Blockbuster & liked it and felt accomplished when I thought I had finished but must have been something like a prompt to replay every level that made me set it aside to return. It was fun but c’mon.
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Sep 17, 2023 05:14
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Jet Force Gemini had some fantastic music
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Sep 17, 2023 09:54
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This has probably been brought up before but speaking of Rare N64 games drat did the bonus unused stuff in banjo Kazooie gently caress with me.
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Sep 17, 2023 23:30
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BRJurgis posted:This has probably been brought up before but speaking of Rare N64 games drat did the bonus unused stuff in banjo Kazooie gently caress with me. Didnt you have to tilt the cartridge or some poo poo
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Sep 18, 2023 04:09
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X JAKK posted:Didnt you have to tilt the cartridge or some poo poo The original version of the N64 hardware had a quirk where it would keep some code stored in RAM for about 10 seconds after you powered it off. Rare took a big swing and put stuff in BK1 with the intention of having BK2 players be able to turn off the game (leaving an unlock code in system RAM in the process) then swap cartridges and boot up BK1 to access a little bit of new content, with unlocks that would then be carried back to BK2. What Rare neglected to do was loop Nintendo in on these plans, and when the corporate R&D team found out, they were not happy with the idea. They knew that some players would inevitably try to make the switch while the system was still powered on and risk damaging game and system, and they were also worried about a potential overheating hazard if players power-cycled too quickly, too often. Most importantly, they let Rare know that the N64 hardware had undergone quiet revisions through the years and newer consoles purged the RAM almost instantly after losing power, meaning that a good portion of the install base couldn't access this even if they went through with it. So their grand plan was abandoned (Apparently it was going to extend beyond BK1/2 and be utilized in all their subsequent N64 titles,) while there were a bunch of goodies in BK1 that remained visible and semi-accessible.
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Sep 18, 2023 05:49
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The Ice Key… Later Rare rereleases of BK games would include Stop n Swop stuff in some capacity, though. Mostly little bonuses and upgrades, nothing huge.
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Sep 18, 2023 13:10
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Shadowrun on Genesis is described as this ‘Ahead of its time open world game’. But it starts you out with “Go to the tavern to find a quest.” And the first few quests are “Pick up this guy at this building, escort him through hostile territory to this other place.” Except, no mini map - and this is the 16 bit era, lots of buildings look the same. So trial and error, right? No one looks at the manual, I know how to push buttons and my roms are out of warranty anyway. No, actually the manual comes with maps of many of the areas you’d be https://archive.org/details/Shadowrun_1994_Sega_US/page/n21/mode/2up
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Sep 18, 2023 14:29
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BRJurgis posted:This has probably been brought up before but speaking of Rare N64 games drat did the bonus unused stuff in banjo Kazooie gently caress with me. I googled this and... wow. Man, the stuff they used to try and pull in games -- and the lengths to which they'd go to try and do it.
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Sep 18, 2023 20:43
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Reminds me of when the makers of the X-Men game for the Sega Genesis had one of the late game areas tell the player to "reset the computer!" to advance. So many people kept dying from the timer expiring before they could find the computer. Turns out that the "clever" solution was to press the reset button on the Genesis itself. The X-Men game creators used a quirk of the hardware that allowed additional code to be loaded (or something similar) when the reset button was pressed. Of course, this caused a gigantic problem when future Genesis revisions no longer had a reset button. Anyone playing the X-Men game on a newer Genesis was 100% hosed because there was no way to proceed past that point.
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Sep 18, 2023 22:57
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...! posted:Reminds me of when the makers of the X-Men game for the Sega Genesis had one of the late game areas tell the player to "reset the computer!" to advance. So many people kept dying from the timer expiring before they could find the computer. It worked on all home console revisions of the MD/Gen hardware (i.e. Models 1 - 3 all had a soft reset button). Having the portable Nomad on the other hand meant you were just poo poo out of luck. Even without taking the Nomad into account it was still a loving garbage piece of game design.
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Sep 19, 2023 00:16
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By the time my friend and I finally made it to the "Reset the computer" bit, we knew you needed to reset the console itself...and it didn't work for us. That was a definite "I think we're done with this one, forever" moment.
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Sep 19, 2023 00:41
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Coffee Jones posted:Shadowrun on Genesis is described as this ‘Ahead of its time open world game’. But it starts you out with “Go to the tavern to find a quest.” And the first few quests are “Pick up this guy at this building, escort him through hostile territory to this other place.” I was a Sega kid & while it wasn’t without charm bummed I never heard the Genesis version of Shadowrun existed until much later, it looked cool as hell. Also enjoyed the Seattle area setting when Redmond & Pike Place Market are considered adjacent in some games when that’s a six hour walk, not taking into account street samurai. JethroMcB posted:By the time my friend and I finally made it to the "Reset the computer" bit, we knew you needed to reset the console itself...and it didn't work for us. That was a definite "I think we're done with this one, forever" moment. Wonder how many kids legit made it past that “puzzle,” I can’t recall ever using the reset button much anyway.
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Sep 19, 2023 01:28
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...! posted:Reminds me of when the makers of the X-Men game for the Sega Genesis had one of the late game areas tell the player to "reset the computer!" to advance. So many people kept dying from the timer expiring before they could find the computer. It wasn't a "quirk". Most microprocessors going back to the 70s signaled whether they were doing a hard or soft boot. There's actually a lot of games that take advantage of this, usually to skip logos and go right to the title screen. Though there is a Shin Megami Tensei game that can randomly and rarely give you a creepy message after pressing reset. The real problem with that is reset as a game input ran counter to everything players had ever been taught about video games going back to 1972. If you press reset, you are starting over; therefore, never press reset. Hyrax Attack! posted:Wonder how many kids legit made it past that “puzzle,” I can’t recall ever using the reset button much anyway. I did after being stuck there for weeks. Finally one day in frustration I went, "Oh, I'll reset the computer, all right!" and slammed the button. That one was a shock. Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Sep 19, 2023 |
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Sep 19, 2023 15:31
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A new game could have a go at it. In order to win the hooloo-contest in village of streams, you must log into your Hulu account. To beat the input lagabyrinth you must use a roku controller on an adjacent TV and put a large sequence of characters into the search bar. You won't believe what the secret boss in metal gear 2025 does!logged out of all your accounts somehow
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Sep 20, 2023 01:48
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Does X-men still work in an emulator if you use soft reset?
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Sep 20, 2023 07:34
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Coffee Jones posted:Does X-men still work in an emulator if you use soft reset? That does seem to be the case.
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Sep 20, 2023 13:28
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...! posted:Reminds me of when the makers of the X-Men game for the Sega Genesis had one of the late game areas tell the player to "reset the computer!" to advance. So many people kept dying from the timer expiring before they could find the computer. We'll call this the Startropics effect. Or, the Roger Rabbit effect.
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Sep 20, 2023 14:41
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Coffee Jones posted:Does X-men still work in an emulator if you use soft reset? Yeah, most emulators have separate hard and soft reset options because there can be some odd quicks to games depending on what you do.
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Sep 20, 2023 15:05
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EconDad posted:We'll call this the Startropics effect. Or, the Roger Rabbit effect. Startropics at least was just a 3-digit code that was also (one of?) the most used airplane in the world. No I don't know why 747 has stuck in my head for literally decades now.
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Sep 20, 2023 15:19
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Does anyone remember an N64 game where you played as like a walking computer chip that possessed various animals? I played it on a kiosk and thought it was really cool. I doubt I figured out how to complete any objectives.
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Sep 23, 2023 02:15
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Beartaco posted:Does anyone remember an N64 game where you played as like a walking computer chip that possessed various animals? space station silicon valley it's awesome DEEP STATE PLOT fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 02:18
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SSSV rules. It's got some of that early-3D-game jank but it's a really unique and fun little underrated gem imo.
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Sep 23, 2023 02:56
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Sadly you can’t get the secret ending legitimately, because one of the items needed to 100 percent the game is accidentally unpick-upable. You just drive right through it.
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Sep 24, 2023 00:51
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Random Stranger posted:It wasn't a "quirk". Most microprocessors going back to the 70s signaled whether they were doing a hard or soft boot. There's actually a lot of games that take advantage of this, usually to skip logos and go right to the title screen. Though there is a Shin Megami Tensei game that can randomly and rarely give you a creepy message after pressing reset. Sadly the TURN IT OFF thing is fake
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Sep 25, 2023 03:28
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One of my late night ponderings is tied to this thread: I cannot make any sense out of the plot of Final Fantasy 1 and its time loop, then AND now. Okay, so... 1) 2000 years in the past, four Fiends exist. They apparently don't like where they are or its options, so they start looking for new options. This includes seeing into the future, it seems, to find a place they'd like to wreck more. 2) "Today": A knight called Garland goes renegade and kidnaps Princess Sarah. Four warriors track him down and defeat him, fatally wounding him and rescuing Sarah. 3) The Fiends decide this guy is what they need and revive him and bring him back to their time. Somehow he gets power from them/somewhere else and becomes a being called Chaos. Chaos and the Fiends are linked: each one can revive the other (and I might be wholly misremembering that). Chaos sends the Fiends 1600 years into the future, where they start making a mess. (the manual or story or whatnot notes that the fiends have been making trouble for 400 years) 4) "Today, Take 2": A knight called Garland goes renegade and kidnaps Princess Sarah. Four warriors, who assembled to try and bring light back to 'the orbs', because they've been inert for centuries because of the Fiends, have their first mission where they kill Garland and... Wait. Why did they assemble the first time if the Fiends technically hadn't been inserted into the timeline? How did the first group reach Chaos and get defeated by him if there were no Fiends or orb problems the first time around because Garland/Chaos hadn't/couldn't send the Fiends back until he was killed the first time? Did the first timeline just get erased entirely the second the Fiends pulled Garland back? 5) "Today, Take 2, But Also 1?" The Warriors of Light defeat Garland and then successfully kill the Fiends who have been making a mess for 400 years. They then travel back in time, but fall to Chaos. Their souls remain as bats in Garland's Lair. Chaos then revives the Fiends...in the past...so they can again pull his own self...from the future...and then just...disappears? Can he only exist in a time locked point in the past, and hence when time passes outside he sort of schrodinger's cat ceases to exist? Do the Fiends know the details, or are they revived at the 'Hey looking for and finding this guy seems like a great idea' point in their lives? Basically, where does Chaos go after 2000 years ago? 6) "Today Over And Over" We have the loop. The Fiends show up 400 years ago because Chaos sent them there. The Warriors of Light start their quest by killing Garland. The 2000 year ago Fiends pull Garland to their time. Garland/Chaos puts them 1600 years into the future. The Warriors kill the present day Fiends and go back in time. They die to Chaos. And then apparently, Chaos vanishes into the ether or things revert back to before the Fiends made their choice How does this cause a loop? If Chaos can revive the Fiends, and previous attempts were 'kill the Fiends before they end up 1600 years in the future AND Chaos' that failed, then now we have a timeline where we had Garland gets pulled back/alters-erases the first time, Fiends get sent 1600 years forward and make trouble for 400 years, Light Warriors kill Garland (putting him in the pulled back situation) and then the Fiends, and then vanish into the past, forever lost, leaving a timeline where there are no longer any Fiends or Light Warriors. Even if they try and do the 'kill the Fiends before they get sent 1600 years ahead', by failing and Chaos reviving them, he...what, puts them back where they were 2000 years ago? Because at this point they'd still be at the 1600 point, because the Light Warriors failed and Chaos revived them and sent them where they had originally been and... See, this is why you should never try and use time travel in a story unless you have COMPLETELY nailed down every set rule and the rules have to include stuff like "Anyone who leaves time's normal flow is immune to changes made to the timeline, ergo they cannot negate their own actions by changing the circumstances that led to them', ie if you go kill your evil father before he conceives you, the timeline changes to a world where you never existed, but the you that did this still exists because you yourself cannot be affected by changes. It inevitably collapses into a big mess of 'Who composed Beethoven's 5th?" ie more and more, somethings start coming from literal nothing. I'm pretty sure the time loop in 7th Saga made more sense than that. Honestly, Dragon Quest had it right. Just go kill the evils. Trying to be clever just does not work. ZogrimAteMyHamster posted:What the gently caress was Crash Man's design all about in-universe anyway? Fucker just leapt about flinging magnetic mines. According to the wiki, he was designed to basically be a fusion of Guts Man and Bomb Man. Name Change posted:Ultimately my dad liked the game more. Same, though I do have a funny story. I remember TRYING to play it, but I was too far away to fire torpedos at a boat. I managed to figure out how to up the submarine's speed to maximum, and watched on the map/radar as I rapidly inched towards my target. Then I went back to the periscope view to see the ship rapidly filling it before I crashed into it. A wolf of the sea, I was not. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Jan 26, 2024 |
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Jan 26, 2024 01:21
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Would you say that the game's plot is... chaos? 
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Jan 26, 2024 04:01
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...! posted:Would you say that the game's plot is... chaos? Bullshit. *puts on Limp Bizkit on the phone, turns the volume up, then walks away*
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Jan 26, 2024 04:21
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Cornwind Evil posted:6) "Today Over And Over" We have the loop. The Fiends show up 400 years ago because Chaos sent them there. The Warriors of Light start their quest by killing Garland. The 2000 year ago Fiends pull Garland to their time. Garland/Chaos puts them 1600 years into the future. The Warriors kill the present day Fiends and go back in time. They die to Chaos. And then apparently, Chaos vanishes into the ether or things revert back to before the Fiends made their choice I'm not sure if this changes anything, but checking the original game's text dump, the line from Garland about the loop is: quote:Remember me, Garland? Your puny lot thought it had defeated me. But, the Four I THINK the idea is that Chaos' plan is that originally, the four Fiends existed regardless of the loop itself, and sent Garland back into the past, where their past versions make him into Chaos, at which point he sends them forward in time (presumably they were weaker in the original timeline?) So they can drain the orbs and send Garland back and making the time loop proper, while Chaos waits 2001+ years until after the Light Warriors go into the past and emerges to rule a now-drained world. Except that after enough cycles (we'll say "quantum mechanics and keeping Sky Warriors as bats instead of killing them changed something".
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Jan 26, 2024 05:25
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I could have sworn that Crash man was called Clash man when I was a kid. I'm sure he wasn't -- but that's my story for today. And it's a fuckin' good one.
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Jan 26, 2024 06:00
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