The Classic Video Game Players Thread

Oh my God! What were you thinking?!?!

Those aren't arranged alphabetically per system! My eyes! They burn!

Seriously though, all the cases look nice. I just have to wonder....you double-dipped on Reign of Fire; how did that happen?

I find it highly amusing that the first shelf is bookended by Final Fantasy games.

breander wrote:

I have also moved to a new system of only plugging in the systems as I use them. I tried to have everything hooked up at all times but the cabling with switch boxes was just a nightmare. So now i'm going to put each systems cables in plastic bag with a label and just pull them out as needed.

I was also wondering if this would help with longevity of the console/system? Is it better to have them unplugged, rather than having standby power seeping into the guts of the machine's circuitry constantly?

Any thoughts, ideas, theories, or just plain, good old fashioned knowledge?

AUs_TBirD wrote:

Oh my God! What were you thinking?!?!

Those aren't arranged alphabetically per system! My eyes! They burn!

Seriously though, all the cases look nice. I just have to wonder....you double-dipped on Reign of Fire; how did that happen?

Both terrible Christmas presents from family on the same year.

m0nk3yboy wrote:
breander wrote:

I have also moved to a new system of only plugging in the systems as I use them. I tried to have everything hooked up at all times but the cabling with switch boxes was just a nightmare. So now i'm going to put each systems cables in plastic bag with a label and just pull them out as needed.

I was also wondering if this would help with longevity of the console/system? Is it better to have them unplugged, rather than having standby power seeping into the guts of the machine's circuitry constantly?

Any thoughts, ideas, theories, or just plain, good old fashioned knowledge?

I don't know if it would help longevity or not but I had everything plugged into one strip and I just turned it off when I wasn't using it. I did that to keep the heat down as this little room would get quite warm with the door closed.

Puce Moose wrote:

If you're a sucker for 8/16 bit Dragon Quest style turn-based RPGs

Never heard of Dragon Quest ;), but thanks for the heads up.

tanstaafl wrote:

For classic games, I came across this stack in the back of a closet a month or so ago. Most of these are for the Atari 800.

IMAGE(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8037/8060104116_b26178278f_z.jpg)

Yeah Ultima IV! Replaying that right now - one of the best in the series. Also bonus points for Sorcerer - I still fire up Infocom games every so often on my C64 or Frotz.

Megaboz wrote:
tanstaafl wrote:

For classic games, I came across this stack in the back of a closet a month or so ago. Most of these are for the Atari 800.

IMAGE(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8037/8060104116_b26178278f_z.jpg)

Yeah Ultima IV! Replaying that right now - one of the best in the series. Also bonus points for Sorcerer - I still fire up Infocom games every so often on my C64 or Frotz.

Quoting you so the links worky

Welcome to the site, might I suggest taking a look at our Boston locals thread?

Good old Ultima IV! I was first introduced to it on the NES, where my cousin and I would play it for hours trying to figure out what the heck we were doing. I still remember thinking that the Skull of Mondain was rather crazy and sort of alarmed me even as a kid, that it was a usable item. I also remember getting angry that the monsters leveled up along with the hero (a game thing that still annoys me in games that do this to this day), so we would spend hours at the "pre-world-monster-upgrade-level" and avoid leveling up with Lord B to avoid the jump to the next level of monster nastiness. I still can recall the crushing sadness when we had to return it to Blockbuster, as our heart-felt fourth-day-repeat-rental request fell on deaf ears with the parents, and we knew we'd probably lose the save game to another renter.

Puce Moose wrote:

I still can recall the crushing sadness when we had to return it to Blockbuster, as our heart-felt fourth-day-repeat-rental request fell on deaf ears with the parents, and we knew we'd probably lose the save game to another renter.

Oh man I totally know this feel. Final Fantasy II was a game I did this with so much but we didn't have a Blockbuster back then and the local place did 24 hour rentals. If I was lucky I could rent it on a Friday after school and keep it until Sunday evening. Eventually my birthday came along and I got my own copy and life was good

Puce Moose wrote:

Good old Ultima IV! I was first introduced to it on the NES, where my cousin and I would play it for hours trying to figure out what the heck we were doing. I still remember thinking that the Skull of Mondain was rather crazy and sort of alarmed me even as a kid, that it was a usable item. I also remember getting angry that the monsters leveled up along with the hero (a game thing that still annoys me in games that do this to this day), so we would spend hours at the "pre-world-monster-upgrade-level" and avoid leveling up with Lord B to avoid the jump to the next level of monster nastiness. I still can recall the crushing sadness when we had to return it to Blockbuster, as our heart-felt fourth-day-repeat-rental request fell on deaf ears with the parents, and we knew we'd probably lose the save game to another renter.

I might have just been confused because I was young, but I'm pretty sure I got all the way to the end of this game but messed up my humility score somehow and there was no where left to get it up to par. All the other virtues were done. Man that made me mad.

Ditto with renting FF2/4. I actually rented it so often I beat it twice just on rentals, and then my grandparents finally bought it for me (it was $75 back then..holy crap) and I beat it again and then maxed all my characters to level 99 one summer. I miss the single-mindedness of youth.

Warriorpoet897 wrote:

I might have just been confused because I was young, but I'm pretty sure I got all the way to the end of this game but messed up my humility score somehow and there was no where left to get it up to par. All the other virtues were done. Man that made me mad.

Ditto with renting FF2/4. I actually rented it so often I beat it twice just on rentals, and then my grandparents finally bought it for me (it was $75 back then..holy crap) and I beat it again and then maxed all my characters to level 99 one summer. I miss the single-mindedness of youth.

I never did that in FF2/4 but I did get 6 characters to 99 in FF3/6. I had Terra, Sabin, Cyan, Edgar, Celes, and Mog at 99 with Gogo and a few others pretty high as well. I made use of the dinosaur forest area and the Vanish then X-Zone or Death combination (casting vanish on an enemy caused their magic defense to drop to zero). That game could have used a high max damage total though. I think some characters could do 9999 at around level 60. Sabin with the Genji Glove and Offering relics was a god killer with 8 attacks all doing 9999 damage each.

Puce Moose wrote:

Good old Ultima IV! I was first introduced to it on the NES, where my cousin and I would play it for hours trying to figure out what the heck we were doing. I still remember thinking that the Skull of Mondain was rather crazy and sort of alarmed me even as a kid, that it was a usable item. I also remember getting angry that the monsters leveled up along with the hero (a game thing that still annoys me in games that do this to this day), so we would spend hours at the "pre-world-monster-upgrade-level" and avoid leveling up with Lord B to avoid the jump to the next level of monster nastiness. I still can recall the crushing sadness when we had to return it to Blockbuster, as our heart-felt fourth-day-repeat-rental request fell on deaf ears with the parents, and we knew we'd probably lose the save game to another renter.

The monsters leveled with you? I did not know that.

This is the avatar I use on RPG.NET:
IMAGE(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8256/8675715652_07c38dc886_o.gif)

It's based on the Atari800 graphics set.

I remember going to a local video rental three or four weeks in a row in order to try and rent Star Fox. Damn game was constantly out.

Move over Retron5, here comes Project Unity.

15 consoles. 18 formats. 1 video-out/power supply/controller/switch. 3 years, 3500 hours, weighs 20 kg, cost 700 GBP.

AND NO EMULATION.

Holy cow that's some impressive work! Almost a thousand feet of cabling in the thing...

If you remember the NEOGEO, you might be excited about the recently released NEOGEO X GOLD thing. I like the fact that it comes with the docking station, the control stick, and 20 games pre-loaded. (I believe the community has already hacked the OS to allow the system to load any NEOGEO rom as well.)

IMAGE(http://neogeox.com/image/cache/data/1groupshot2-672x360.jpg)

http://neogeox.com/index.php?route=p...

Amazon currently has it in stock for $130 & free shipping.

Hooray for fan translations! If you're a sucker for 8/16 bit Dragon Quest style turn-based RPGs as I am, you may be pleased to discover that fans have finished translating the never-localized JuveiQuest (localized as JubeiQuest). It's a 1991 Famicon RPG which players nearly identically to Dragon Quest/Warrior. It does have some interesting additions; you can discover treasure maps, which show you a screenshot of part of a map. You have to locate the area and search there for the treasure. Also, in battles, the enemies have a damaged sprite that they swap to when they're close to death - a nice touch not often seen in RPGs from this era. Supposedly the story has quite a few twists and turns. I've played about 45 minutes and it's been fun so far.

IMAGE(http://www.pucemoose.com/pics/jquest.jpg)
http://www.retrocollect.com/News/nam...

You do have to patch the game manually, but that link includes instructions. YMMV, but I didn't ave any luck using Beat (mentioned in the patch's readme.txt) to patch the game with the ..bps file. I used the older .ips format with nFlate to expand the PRG-ROM, then hit it with Lunar IPS to inject the patch. Then it worked great!

McIrishJihad wrote:

Move over Retron5, here comes Project Unity.

Brought to you by a man who has ceramic cats floating in a boat made out of a banana...

Nice idea, but I feel it misses the 'experience' of seeing the retro consoles too. I love the curves of my N64, and the crazy SNES inspired limited edition NES I own.

I ran across another gem tonight! DREAMMASTER ! It's a late, late era Famicon RPG (1992!) that features a combination of puzzles, Dragon-Quest esque battles (though not a clone - more on that in a second), and some surprisingly grim moments.

IMAGE(http://www.pucemoose.com/pics/dream1.jpg)

This game has some of the finest looking still-shots I've seen on the NES; there's some pretty impressive craft at work here:

IMAGE(http://www.pucemoose.com/pics/dream2.jpg)

It's a turn-based RPG at heart, and it features an interesting battle system. Though (so far) you only face one foe at a time, you can target different body parts. You have to "search" a foe to determine weak points, and it's not guaranteed that you'll search successfully. You may determine your enemy's HP, Def, Strength, or, most importantly, its weak point. Your enemy may also counter-attack after you search. You can choose to "attack", which seems to fairly reliably hit, but deals modest damage. You can also "charge", which seems to have a lower chance to hit, but deals more damage than a standard attack. I thought it was neat that enemy weak points remain consistent; if you determine a weak point for a certain enemy, you don't have to waste time/potentially be counter-attacked in futures battles against that same enemy type, if you remember (jot down) the weakness. An enemy may have several different attack locations, and none of them are labeled, so it's wise to pay attention to what body part is revealed as a weak point.

You also *squeal* get to name your character, and a certain prominent person in the story. If you have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy, then I advise you to grow up and start thinking about your 401k and mortgage, and name your character something serious and somber, otherwise you'll be looking at screens like this for the whole game. Cautionary tale! It could happen to you!
[size=6]*giggle*, ass, haha *giggle*[/size]

IMAGE(http://www.pucemoose.com/pics/dream3.jpg)

There's two other very cool things about this game. First, it's all happening in a dream, so there's a neat meta/inception kind of thing going one. In relation to that, it also makes an interesting chapter-esque system, which I've always loved. You move dream to dream, and the rules can shift and slide around. Secondly, there's quite a few puzzle elements at work, and you'll have to do some environmental puzzles (grabbing planks to cross holes in the proper order, etc.) and some surprising things (reading wall shapes to reveal a passcode. Revealing walls damages you, though, so it challenges your shape recognition if you want to minimize damage. It will make sense if you get to that area.)

IMAGE(http://www.pucemoose.com/pics/dream4.jpg)

The story also gets a little grim here and there. We have an evil Lamia that sucks out the youth of captured prisoners, and we get to witness the aftermath of some of these atrocities. Conversation with the scant survivors who survived the drain process yields a vague snapshot of the horror these poor children faced. Now many of them are old and near death, but with the minds of the little boys/girls before they fell into the beast's evil clutches. What greater horror, than looking down at your own aged, dessicated, weakened body, yet thinking of yourself still as a healthy, hearty sixteen year old? That's pretty damn gruesome.

I'm only a couple of hours into the game so far, but it's definitely one of the best NES games I've run across in quite a while.
Here's a link to the translation.

*I hope it's okay to link to this kind of thing. I'd love to do a "translation of the week/month/whatever" in this thread, but I don't know if that's veering a little close to the grey area for obvious reasons.

So I finally broke down and ordered a copy of Sunset Riders. I got a $50 Amazon gift for my birthday last month and decided to go ahead and get it for $60 + shipping. If you have never played it it is sort of a western themed version of Contra.

I picked up a few new games over the week at Vintage Stock's buy 2 get 1 free sale. I got Pac-Man 2, Super Battleship, and last but definitely not least Goof Troop.

In other news it looks like Hyperkin will be at E3 this year so hopefully we can get some more information about the RetroN5. I think I will get one and start picking up NES and Genesis games as well.

Rykin wrote:

I never did that in FF2/4 but I did get 6 characters to 99 in FF3/6. I had Terra, Sabin, Cyan, Edgar, Celes, and Mog at 99 with Gogo and a few others pretty high as well. I made use of the dinosaur forest area and the Vanish then X-Zone or Death combination (casting vanish on an enemy caused their magic defense to drop to zero). That game could have used a high max damage total though. I think some characters could do 9999 at around level 60. Sabin with the Genji Glove and Offering relics was a god killer with 8 attacks all doing 9999 damage each.

I just re-finished FF6 with my guys around level 60, and I didn't know that trick. I might have to go back and do some more grinding. Even at level 55-60, my a-team can easily kill Kefka without dying between tiers.

Warriorpoet897 wrote:
Rykin wrote:

I never did that in FF2/4 but I did get 6 characters to 99 in FF3/6. I had Terra, Sabin, Cyan, Edgar, Celes, and Mog at 99 with Gogo and a few others pretty high as well. I made use of the dinosaur forest area and the Vanish then X-Zone or Death combination (casting vanish on an enemy caused their magic defense to drop to zero). That game could have used a high max damage total though. I think some characters could do 9999 at around level 60. Sabin with the Genji Glove and Offering relics was a god killer with 8 attacks all doing 9999 damage each.

I just re-finished FF6 with my guys around level 60, and I didn't know that trick. I might have to go back and do some more grinding. Even at level 55-60, my a-team can easily kill Kefka without dying between tiers.

There is really no point to it in this game. I think you hit most of the stat caps before you get there and even most of the hardest enemies in that game will fall to a level 60 or so party without much difficulty.

Got to Chapter 3 on Final Fantasy Tactics this weekend. That's two further than ever before.

Rykin wrote:

In other news it looks like Hyperkin will be at E3 this year so hopefully we can get some more information about the RetroN5. I think I will get one and start picking up NES and Genesis games as well.

I'm so in love with the thought of something like the RetroN5. Can't wait for more info.

Decided to fire up my Alundra PSOne disc and FFVIII on my PS3 and got lost in a reverie thanks to the score. Man, the music has become so ingrained in my brain and it basically takes me back to my teenage years. It's really quite wonderful.

Here is a great story about how Star Fox came to be.

Born Slippy: The making of Star Fox

So this guy is working on a 2D demake of FF7:

My love for this is immense. Too bad SquareEnix will shut him down now that it is out in the world.

The battle looks fine with the exception of recycling the UI (just seems cheap) and I'm pretty sure a Limit break only sped up your speed gauge right after you first reached it. Technically Cloud should have resumed normal speed after he chose to cast a spell instead.

The overworld looks like a gritty version of Earthbound to me.

I'd say best thing he could do is rebuild the menus instead of recycling them, as using assets from the game makes for a good excuse for Squenix to shut it down.

So after doing a bit of nostalgic writing I found myself yearning to play Godzilla: Monster of Monsters again. This was a game I spent a lot of time on as a kid, pretty sure I ended up playing it more than any other game on the NES. Unlike Ninja Turtles, Mario Bros., Zelda or Final Fantasy, there was no shiny new 16-Bit version I could jump into and think "why'd I play that old stuff?" Sure, I DID go back and replay those NES games, especially Zelda and Final Fantasy as they have a special "something" that you just don't get with the SNES updates.

But Godzilla: Monster of Monsters was a frequent go-to game from grade school to high school, as long as the NES was hooked up.

So feeling nostalgic I got my old copy back from home to play on my roommate's FC3 Plus, only to find it's either broken or incompatible. Distraught, I gave an old copy of Super Godzilla I had purchased a try for the SNES, to finally confirm what I had read long ago in Nintendo Power; it's a piece of sh*t.

Fed up, I went and loaded up Console Classix, a Cloud-Based emulation software that has yet to be given a cease and desist from Nintendo, so, well, there's that.

I'm always afraid an old game is going to prove to be crap and I just didn't know any better as a kid. This happens quite frequently as controls manage to be rather poor, or, as I discovered with Mega Man 6 on the 3DS Virtual Console, the level design and difficulty curve is greatly lacking.

But damn if I didn't have a lot of fun while picking up on quite a few excellent design choices.

The general concept is the solar system is being invaded by aliens, and you have to go from "planet to planet" destroying the alien bases and their monstrous defenders. I say "planet" because you can always see the planet in question in the sky, so it's maybe a moon? Only for some reason Earth's moon, and several others, have crazy vegetarian life that spit out lasers and sh*t. I dunno. Point is, you start with Earth and end on Planet X, which appears after Pluto and Neptune have switched places in orbit. Because Science.

Each planet has a hex-grid board where each hex represents a small side-scrolling level. The player can choose however they wish to move across the field, but there will also be the other monsters, each planet gaining an additional one. So Earth begins with Gezora and Moguera, and by Mars they add Varan, and then Hedorah, increasing the number of monsters that must be defeated on each planet.

One of the things that you pick up on as a kid are the differences between Godzilla and Mothra, the two monsters you get to control. Godzilla, and all other monsters in the game, can only move two hex spaces at a time. Mothra can move over four, however. Godzilla has a punch, kick and tail swipe attack in addition to his fire breath ability while Mothra is limited to a basic "beam" attack (looks like a rock flies from her forehead) and special ability to drop poisonous dust on foes. Godzilla has higher defense and strength, and starts the game with lower health and power while Mothra is weaker in strength and defense, but starts the game with higher strength and power.

The differences go much deeper than these superficial elements, however, as each monster's play style also adjusts. Each level is sort of like a bullet-Hell shooter where there are ships and monsters just spitting patterns of laser beams at the player. Sometimes missiles will fly out at the player. Sometimes you get ships that slowly advance, trying to lock onto the player's location. If they strike, they drag the player towards the back of the screen depleting most of their health.

With Mothra, it's more about precision and dodging. She has greater mobility and can attack foes more precisely, but levels take more time as she deals less damage. Against certain monsters she is capable of more easily striking at stun spots, focusing on whittling down health while being able to dodge most attacks.

Godzilla, on the other hand, capitalizes on strength and defense. Just as in the movies, you won't be dodging much. You'll be smashing stuff up easily as it hits you, plowing over everything in sight only to pick up the health crystals left behind. However, this means there are some hazards that are much, much harder to avoid and certain monsters will be harder. Godzilla can barely get a hit on Gezora, and the space ship that hones in on the player location can easily deal enough damage to wipe Godzilla out altogether.

But the game gradually builds up to this difficulty, even though it does so quickly. The first levels on Mars are more calm than the final levels on Earth, and only start to become more difficult the more monsters on that board are defeated. The game is balanced to naturally get progressively more difficult, but not so much as to be a major problem. After all, while it would be unfortunate for either Godzilla or Mothra to die on a board, the odds are more likely they'll only do so after most of the enemy monsters are defeated. Once you clear the board, the other monster returns on the next planet. So if Godzilla were to die on Mars, then you just need to finish the board with Mothra and Godzilla will be back on Jupiter.

The downside is that the game powers each monster up with an experience system, so if you die, you start the next planet with less experience than you might otherwise have gotten. A single failure can result in the remainder of the game being more difficult.

It's a game with a surprisingly arcadey element even though it doesn't have a very arcade style. It pulls in monsters from all over Toho's film history rather than exclusively using Godzilla monsters. In truth, I'd love a sort of update to this game with some of the more iconic beasts from Godzilla's rogues gallery. Sadly, I don't think any Godzilla game has ever been as fun as this one, even the updated ones on GameCube and onward.

Nice write up on that game! I have to admit I never got around to playing that game on the NES even though I loved the Godzilla movies as a kid. I need to track down a copy of that game sometime and try it out. Sounds like a good mash up of strategy elements and action.