"There's a protected class of users that post a lot and will drown out all dissent. Any form of arguing with them always leads to a ban. --Skyrim, Verified GameDev"
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
A classmate lent me T&C back when it was new and I was shocked by how completely lacking in substance it was. I was hoping that revisiting it with 30+ years of gaming experience would help me discover a heretofore unseen facet of the game, but... nope.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
I'm not surprised, as I remember those reissues from when they happened. I just think it's very random that SunSoft of all pubs ended up with them. To my knowledge, those two companies have never had any sort of relationship otherwise.
ThreadEPIC Games acquires Cary Towne Center, a 980.000ft²/~91.000m² shopping mall in Cary, NC, to be company's New HQ ; Full conversion to end by 2024.
Yeah, they’ve been trying to repurpose this corpse of a mall for years. IKEA was supposed to be moving in to convert the entire thing into a new retail center, but they bailed. Whatever Epic does will be a much better use of the space than the hellhole it’s been for the past few years.
Knowing Nintendo, they’ve had a fully localized English ROM of the game that no one knew about sitting in an EPROM somewhere for 30 years, like with EarthBound Beginnings.
I doubt it exists as more than a URL at this point. UGO under Hearst bought 1UP from Ziff-Davis. Then Hearst sold UGO to IGN under Fox/News Corp, but IGN really just wanted 1UP and dismantled UGO pretty quickly. Then News Corp sold IGN to Ziff-Davis, and Ziff-Davis promptly said, "Wait, 1UP? I thought we already got rid of this" and shut down the site within a month or so of the buyout.
I handled localization editing (rewriting the basic translation, giving characters their voices) for several chapters of story dialogue, a ton of incidental trade items, and what felt like several thousand smithy menus. 8-4 gives multiple editing passes to every bit of text... not really how much I can actually say about their process, but I learned a lot about how involved it is and how much they try to go above and beyond even the original text when possible. It was an honor to work with them!
We have episodes on Die Hard and Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the can, and are recording one on Akira soon! We also need to finish up the Indiana Jones series with a Last Crusade episode, since it inspired the best movie adaptation of the entire franchise.
There was some debate about keeping that remark in the show, but I think it's a valuable reminder that before a certain cultural schism centered around gaming happened in 2014, there was no real distinction between "lowlife channer hate speech" and "normal gaming discourse".
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Oh, I see. I think it's more fun to let people try to trainspot it in the comments. But the clips will always feature something in the charts during the time frame in which the game(s) being discussed were released. It's just a faster, more eye-catching way to do the "it's Nov. 1986 and Top Gun is big in theaters while Genesis' 'Land of Confusion' is rocketing toward the top of the MTV most-requested list" thing.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
The 7800 series isn't done! The next entry will be in a few months, right after City Connection for NES (May 1988).
I notice Nerdkiller didn't update with the latest video, presumably because he's stumped about the "contemporary media" snippet. It's:
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
There are no hard feelings. That was an "oh well" for your sake, not mine, as I'm satisfied with the revisions I've been making and don't intend to walk them back.
ThreadBizarre and cursed offical art of popular video games
I’m pretty sure archer bro there is meant to be Futch. You can see a smaller version of him riding on the inset dragon. And I suspect the woman on the right side is meant to be Leknaat, since she’s wearing purple. Basically, it’s a grab bag of characters you meet in the first 20 minutes of the game.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Right, but what I'm saying is that those levels were designed with scrolling in mind—it wasn't some sort of limitation imposed on them afterwards to their detriment. Game Boy resolution wasn't a deal-breaker, it just required considerate design.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Even if you don't count the semi-official Telegames releases, Lynx lasted until 1995, and I'm going to be running episodes in parallel to GBWorks progression, so... completion is a long way away.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
There was also this outro:
I have no more or less hair than I did then, I just used a really crappy webcam for the live bits of the new episode, and it suffers from a lot of unflattering distortion. I've upgraded to a proper DSLR for the most of episodes I've produced since Bubble Bobble.
ThreadWhat is the lamest way you have killed a boss?
This has probably been mentioned, but I will never forget the time I used the “Revive” menu command in Final Fantasy VIII on the boss in the desert area. I expected it to do a fair bit of damage, maybe, but instead it one-shotted the boss on the first turn of combat for zero magic/item/resource cost. Ridiculous.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
My wife's photo business has been completely shut down for three months now due to the pandemic, so if anyone wants to create a good video game and hire me for an honest assessment of it, I'm OK with that.
Yeah, pressing down and mashing A only works for the standard 500m stage—and even then, you need to keep in mind the game's arcade roots. If you want to just play to clear stages in the standard mode, OK, fine, you can, but it's meant to be a score challenge. You want to clear stages as quickly as possible, without dying, while collecting all the air capsules and finding as many hidden items (e.g. Undergrounders) as possible. Also, the higher your score, the more mileage rewards you're given, which in turn can be traded for collectibles and play upgrades at the shops.
ThreadHype check: Mr Driller DrillLand (15 days left) Who’s excited?
The Driller series started in arcades and the basic mode is merciless. The genius of DrillLand is that it explores variants that are about calculated turn-based actions in addition to the twitchy base game.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
There's a reason for that: It's Battle Bull and Navy Blue ’90. I should really get to that episode, but those games seem so uninteresting I just can't find the motivation.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Re: Power Quest—Game Boy Works Color is on hold until I can round up the last two CIB 1998 games I need (JP version of Karamuhou wa Oosawagi and U.S. version of Bomberman Quest). Neither have shown up for auction in the past year. Alas!
Oh, and Mahjong Quest [JP] and Checkmate [U.S.]. I really hate tracking down these dinky who-give-a-crap titles.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
I think it'll be just six more episodes, I believe? I'm sorry to say I'm not feeling especially motivated to deal with the likes of Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct at the moment, though. The "wrap up N64 1996" plan was my intention back in February when I recorded that VO (the Mega Man episode was uploaded about a month and a half ago), but the world has changed a LOT since then. May be a while before I tackle that topic.
I replayed the entire Midgar prologue last week on a PS1 connected to a great CRT with RGB cables and was amazed by how great it looks. At 240p on an analog screen, there's much less of an obvious difference between pre-baked and real-time assets than you see even on something like a PSP or Vita screen. The polygonal models have aged poorly, but the pre-rendered and hand-drawn environments were gorgeous—so much unique detail crammed into every screen, and there's great use of PS1 lighting effects to create actual "live" light sources that match the light cast within each scene while interacting with the real-time 3D objects.
Nah, ARB isn't a chrono series. We're jumping around all over the place—the next episode I'm putting together will be a "best of the decade" show (which would have worked better if I'd had time to start producing these several months ago).
I don’t know of any hard connections between city pop and game music, but there’s a lot of game music (especially SEGA mid-80s arcade jams like Out Run) with a strong city pop vibe, so it HAS to have been an influence on some level.
In my experience, the answer to "is it just me or is something missing from the Patreon feed?" is always "it's just you." Patreon's subscriber feeds appear to be pretty failure-prone, but it's nearly always on an individual basis.
I'll have to look into the NES audio claims, but it's possible that the new normalization utility I'm using is causing issues. I have used Levelator for YEARS, but I finally had to upgrade to the current Mac OS X and it dropped support for 32-bit apps (including Levelator). Unfortunately there's nothing on the market as good as Levelator for normalizing podcasts.
ThreadMcDonald's And Video Games: An Ongoing Retrospective
Don't forget that Nintendo rolled out its first online service (DS for Mario Kart) via McDonald's. I remember sitting in front of the McD's at 2nd and Market in downtown San Francisco in the bitter, foggy cold trying to get a connection to their wifi for a 1UP article.
ThreadAnalogue Pocket Announced - $199 (GB, GBC, GBA, GG, NGPC, Lynx, more), TV Out Dock, Secondary Dev FPGA
The DAC connects with the same multi-format DIN-15 cable that the Nt Mini uses. Analogue let me try one the beta units, and I initially hooked it up by using my Nt Mini cable, which sends RGB via JP21 SCART to a gscartsw. So, in theory, the Pocket + Dock + DAC should be able to output a nice RGB signal for all systems supported by the Pocket. I have to say that a Super Nt or Mega Sg signal via DAC is way cleaner and crisper than running an RGB signal from the actual equivalent consoles. It looks great.
ThreadJeremy Parish joins Limited Run Games to write about the games LRG works with
This is the reality of physical goods. They cost money to produce up front and more money to warehouse. Any small company dealing in tangible product for a niche market has to be very cautious to produce only what they can sell, or they’ll go bankrupt while sitting on a pile of unsold product. That’s why the industry shifted to digital distribution for less popular games in the first place.
I won’t pretend every game Limited Run releases excites me, but their hit/miss ratio is waaaay better than being implied here. And in any case, one of the stated goals that drew me to the company is the desire to get as many games (good and bad) as possible preserved in physical editions, even if reality means they need to be in restricted quantities. I’m obviously more excited about working on the stuff I like, but seriously, have you seen my video projects? Nothing Limited Run has published compares to the awfulness of MUSCLE for NES or Monster Truck for Game Boy.
Honestly, I don't recall ever getting pushback on that. The show originally launched around a brand-new remake of Final Fantasy III, so the old/new connection has been a part of the show's DNA from the beginning. Glad you've been enjoying it!
Thanks! I seem to be on the mend now, and hopefully a little vacation time in Japan (assuming immigration will let me into the country while in such a sorry-looking state) will fix what ails me.
ThreadNintendo eShop - December 2019 | Switchmas Edition
I think the in-game character designs were created at least in part by Kazuko Shibuya, who drew all the SD box/manual art and in-game party member sprite designs for the 16-bit Final Fantasy games.
Haha, I would have been if anyone had actually selected that option. If we had run that campaign post-Shkreli/Wu Tang, we wouldn't even have made the joke in the first place.
Thanks for the links! We did a fourth episode on the topic recently, but it was less about specific titles and more about how shifts in game design paradigms following the PS1's launch put the metroidvania format/structure on ice for the better part of a decade:
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Thanks, — your spreadsheets are actually one of about four different sources I cross-reference. Even so, there's often conflict about release dates. This is a messy biz.
Glad people are enjoying this unusually technical episode!
I think Plato’s underlying tech would be realistic to emulate, but the strength of the platform was its collaborative networked nature, which would be a lot more challenging to recreate.
ThreadAnalogue's Mega Sg |OT| The Hardcore Uprising - Maybe You Should Play Checkers Instead?
Yep, you basically have it. It goes like:
32X seated in Mega Sg
Mega Sg outputs Genesis signal via HDMI to DAC
DAC converts Genesis signal to analog
DAC outputs analog Genesis video/audio signal into 32X
32X combines Genesis signal with 32X signal
32X outputs combined signal to TV/capture kit
Or: 32X > Mega Sg > DAC > 32X > TV
I plan to put together a blog post once I do a CD 32X test that will include a diagram. It's a relatively complicated process... I was only able to get it up and running myself with the help of others.
ThreadAnalogue's Mega Sg |OT| The Hardcore Uprising - Maybe You Should Play Checkers Instead?
Apologies if this comes off as self-promotion somehow, but I figured the regulars here might be interested to see 32X footage captured from a Mega Sg in action:
This was recorded from a Mega Sg running through an early DAC build and a custom Retro Access cable. It looks fantastic and sounds… about as good as a 32X cart's hyper-compressed sampled audio can sound. Lack of 32X support was a big drawback at the Mega Sg's launch, so it's great to see the system continuing to evolve with wider peripheral support well after launch.
I've tested both the latest official and jailbreak firmware with this, and they both work without a hitch. I was able to boot 32X ROMs from both a Mega Everdrive and a Mega SD cart, though direct loading from the jailbreak's core file browser does NOT work. This also doesn't resolve the fact that a Mega SD plugged into a 32X can't boot Sega CD games, so until someone comes up with an expansion port connector solution for the Mega SD, you'll have to swap setups if you want to alternate between 32X and Sega CD via Mega SD.
Finally, I have a CD 32X game on the way to see if the Mega Sg/32X/Sega CD combo works properly (I don't see why it wouldn't).
I’ve been wanting to tackle MiSTer all year, but I wanted to get SmokeMonster on the show for the occasion. Not sure how people will receive this episode, but as far as I’m concerned, it was worth the trip.
ThreadThe Neo Geo Pocket thread of clicky stick appreciation
I've recently hunted down the JP versions of all but one of the B&W games, as well as about a third of the U.S. releases, and the Limited Run Games guys have offered to lend me their collections....
Benj posted a pretty lengthy comment on Patreon to clarify that his comment about politics vis-a-vis gaming was less about the content of games and more about how difficult it is to have a discussion about games that doesn't get sidetracked by politics (this episode being a case-in-point, ironically, due to his digression).
And yes, we definitely talked about Pope Murder Simulator 2009. Totally forgot about No Russian, though. Was that really 10 years ago!? Man.
A few people were writing/talking about how poorly games handled sex/violence/race/gender in the ‘00s... but as one of those people, I recall those conversations were not so much shut down as dismissed as needless hand-wringing. Games media was mostly straight white dudes a decade ago, and we have the luxury of not having to engage with that kind of material if we don’t want. Games journalism has benefited immensely from the past decade’s influx of women/non-white/queer voices. It’s a shame written media is being strangled to death, because the press as a whole is much smarter and more vibrant than it was 10 years ago.
Yeah, the return to Shadow Moses in MGS4 really showcased the modest scale of the first game. It felt way bigger at the time, though. 3D spaces were more difficult and more intimidating to traverse!
ThreadAnalogue Pocket Announced - $199 (GB, GBC, GBA, GG, NGPC, Lynx, more), TV Out Dock, Secondary Dev FPGA
I imagine the Mini's analog-out feature is probably a big part of this, too. They offloaded analog video to the DAC for their 16-bit systems and the Pocket, and my guess is that the Nt Mini would be more sustainable as a reissue with (1) a plastic shell and (2) HDMI-out only. Hopefully we'll see one at some point.
ThreadAnalogue Pocket Announced - $199 (GB, GBC, GBA, GG, NGPC, Lynx, more), TV Out Dock, Secondary Dev FPGA
I asked Analogue's Christopher Taber that exact question and got this response: "The battery life is going to make everyone happy - we'll be announcing this at a later date." So who knows, but presumably longer than a Lynx's six AAs.
OK, a fuller answer is that we do indeed record episodes in sets of three across an afternoon (noon to 6 p.m. on a Saturday and Sunday, for a total of six episodes in a recording weekend), and these need to be coordinated with multiple guests. It doesn't make financial sense for me to fly across the country for a weekend to record fewer than six episodes, but recording nonstop for six hours two days in a row is already pretty exhausting. Anything more than that would result in some absolutely godawful conversations by the end of the weekend.
90 minutes is my ideal length for a podcast. I don't have any desire to stretch them longer. We can always revisit a topic from an alternate/expanded angle if we don't cover it in its entirety in one go.
Someone on the episode said he basically did nothing but play Melee for 6 months. That is definitely a sign of no interest in the series.
I am kind of regretting having spitballed those PAX topics, because now I have to figure out what they actually are going to be.
ThreadVertical grip accessory for the Switch is being funded on Kickstarter
It seems OK. The auto-rotation feature on the 8 vertical arcade games is neat, but I hate the auto-controller orientation. If you're playing with Joy Cons detached (say, with Flip Grip) it assumes you're holding them sideways for two-player action and you have to go in and rearrange the orientation on a game-by-game basis you return to the menu. Suuuuucks. But the breadth of the catalog is impressive and I haven't been horribly offended by the emulation quality so far.
ThreadVertical grip accessory for the Switch is being funded on Kickstarter
Yeah. Having witnessed firsthand the evolution of this thing from 3D-printed rough draft to mass-manufactured product, I've really come to appreciate just how superior the quality of the latter is to the former. A cheap 3D print costs about $10 worth of materials, and one of mine shattered during transport; the more durable 3D prints we demoed toward the end, which approached the quality of the manufactured grips, required high-end materials that cost hundreds of dollars.
I can understand the skepticism, though. I never realized how much time and expense go into the process of manufacturing even a simple chunk of plastic until now. Mike did something like two dozen different iterations and fine-tuning passes on the grip's design over the space of nine months, spent a week at the factory in China to fine-tune the materials in person, and took several trips to Arizona (all of which he had to burn vacation time at his day job to do) to coordinate things with Fangamer.
Cutting injection molds is crazy expensive, it turns out—five figures to create the mold alone, and that that's before you even get to manufacturing time and materials, international freight, customs, packaging, and shipping. The baseline campaign goal was pretty much a break-even proposition, with a little padding built in to account for "spoilage" or defects—the idea being that any profit on this venture would come from post-campaign sales. Since the campaign more than tripled our goal, all parties involved will get to take home a modest sum for their time and trouble once all campaign obligations are settled, but even then no one is getting rich from this project.
ThreadDid Konami really create Ultra Games to bypass Nintendo's 5 game limit during the NES era? Did the limit really exist? Is it an urban legend?
Yeah, but I was still just working from David Sheff's findings. I don't claim any first-hand research here.
I think there's a bit of a hang-up about the number five here. I have no reason not to think claims of an annual limit were wrong, since the claim has never been refuted by anyone who worked with NOA during the NES era. But it's possible the claim that it was specifically 5 games per year may have been mistaken. Also possible: There could have been a tier system based on Nintendo's relationship with different publishers, and key partners were given some clearance to publish a few additional games each year mroe than lower-tier pubs were.
In any case, it looks like Konami was using Ultra for "extra" releases of JP releases like Metal Gear, Quarth, and Nemesis through 1990, at which point it began to shift to using the label for games specifically targeted to the U.S. market. Beginning in ’90, it was lots of JP-developed games that never saw release in Japan (Snake's Revenge, Skate of Die Bad ’N Rad) and ports of western-developed arcade/PC titles (Q*Bert, Defender of the Crown, Pirates!)
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
If someone hooked me up with an RGB-modded WonderSwan or NGPC I'd tackle them in a heartbeat. Heck, I'd even cover SuperVision if someone could source the boxed library.
Speaking for myself, I try really hard to keep Retronauts topics as diverse as possible while also doing my best to bring in people who know the material when it goes beyond my own admittedly limited first-hand knowledge. It doesn't always work out—there have been a few episodes over the past few years where we brought in someone who specifically requested a chance to take part in a certain topic and then contributed almost nothing once the mics were on. Flops like that me, but fortunately, they're few and far between. I think the two recent roguelikes episodes have been great examples of finding the proper guests for a topic I have an outsider's familiarity with—I could speak from experience to only a handful of the games in question in those episodes, but between the research I did and the call-in guests' exhaustive knowledge, we ended up with a pair of fantastic conversations about a deeply niche subject. That's the ideal.
Absolutely. The Socratic dialogue has been around a fair while longer than podcasts have.
Also, I vote that it's time to leave the idea that people to play every "essential" game cold and dead in the ground where it belongs. Life's too short.
I put together that episode because both I and one of our guests have played through pretty much the complete VB library and had lots to say about the platform, but you do you.
Christian became something of media recluse after GG hit five years ago and he got a job outside the press. He has disassociated himself from most people in games journalism. He's highly uninterested in being associated with Retronauts now, and I respect that desire for distance.
I know that was meant as a harmless joke, but “a games media figure slid into my DMs” has a LOT of baggage at this point and is realllly not a look I want to be associated with, even in jest.
I am glad you like the tangential episodes, though! I think it’s important for us to explore the influences that shape games.
If we're going for REAL authenticity, the episode would be hosted by people you've never heard of, and Bob and I would show up as ghosts to explain how we died in the final 5 minutes.
The call-ins were usually fine, but for the Sonic episode Sega promoted the number on their Facebook page and we were Extremely Not Prepared for the results.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
I regret missing the lock feature my first time through, but I went back and found it doesn’t fix 3-D Tetris' other issues: Unpleasant wire frame visuals at awful, headachy frame rates; weird difficulty curve that is either tediously dull or frustratingly fast; overly complex piece shapes that read poorly due to the visual design; etc. It just makes an iffy game a bit less annoying.
I have found both praiseworthy and negative elements in every game in the library so far. (Except for that baseball game, that thing is hyper-ass.) my approach is not scornful bias. It is basic, critical, fair-minded evaluation.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
The claim that I “clearly dislike” the VB and most of its games is super bizarre considering that the overarching theme of the entire VBW series outside of two or three genuinely bad games has been “this game and the system aren’t nearly as bad as they’re made out to be.” I mean, jesus, I found nice things to say about Waterworld. Of all the VB retrospectives to accuse of some kind of nefarious takedown agenda, pointing a finger at this one is pretty wild. Reminds me of the time Chrono fans went after me for “hating” Chrono Cross after I recorded a podcast talking about how great it was and how it literally changed my life.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
It kills me inside that this music is tied to such a poorly designed game. It's like seeing a beloved friend trapped in a toxic marriage and you can't do anything about it.
Yesterday, a commenter on one of my YouTube videos pointed out that the shooter minigame event in WarioWare is a reskinned version of Solar Striker for Game Boy. I had no idea.
Here's WarioWare footage (not mine) with a time-skip to the relevant sequence:
I had a few systems modded with colored biverted screens via Stang Boy Customs, and now I'm filling my Game Boy Works chronology books with macro photography of games running on the screens as a background element. It looks *fingerkiss*
They're pretty awesome to play on, too.
ThreadThe 30 Greatest Game Boy Games [Polygon/Jeremy Parish]
Great Greed was originally on the list—I even wrote it up. It ended up being bumped (along with one or two others) after I completed the first draft and realized I had overlooked some essentials.
ThreadThe 30 Greatest Game Boy Games [Polygon/Jeremy Parish]
I have zero compunctions about grouping certain series into a single entry and giving lesser-known greats some breathing room. A list glutted with breakouts for individual Mario, Wario, Final Fantasy Legend (etc.) titles would have pushed things like Chalvo 55 out of the article, and the whole point of this exercise was ultimately to let people know, "Hey, these are things you should track down and play"—which is exactly how a lot of readers are using it. Losing all the worthwhile entries at the lower ranks of the list in favor of explaining why both Mario Land AND Mario Land 2 are really good would have accomplished nothing of any actual value.
ThreadThe 30 Greatest Game Boy Games [Polygon/Jeremy Parish]
Note that this list also didn't include hybrid GB/GBC black carts (unless I accidentally included something, but I tried to double check all my selections to be sure I stuck to grey-only... well, and red/blue). There's of great stuff in the black-and-clear cart zone.
ThreadAnalogue announces the Mega Sg (shipping early, March 25th)
Yeah, that would have been my approach had I encountered those issues. Analogue has enough of a proven track record at this point that I think it's fair to assure readers they can expect problems like that to be resolved quickly.
ThreadAnalogue announces the Mega Sg (shipping early, March 25th)
I only had a handful of Sega CD games on hand to try for my review, and I didn't experience any problems with them. Honestly, I wouldn't have dinged the system if I had come across one of those isolated incompatibility. Devices like this never work 100% flawlessly directly out of the box, and Analogue has proven to be extremely responsive when it comes to corrective updates for incompatibilities on its previous devices.
ThreadKONAMI Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection |OT| ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA Can't Help You Now!
Was that you? We did get in touch, and I was supposed to meet with him last year after BitSummit, but I got REALLY sick and didn't have the energy to trek all the way out to some arcade in Kamakura or wherever he was demoing the arcade version. Still really bummed about that.
Also, last weekend at Midwest Gaming Classic, I delivered a 20-minute extemporaneous presentation on Heiankyo Alien. Between that and the Polygon best-of-GB list that just went up, I think it's out of my system.
Current status of the DVDs is: I need to figure out how to import .csv files into Stamps.com to generate mailing labels. It’s a bigger pain in the butt than expected.
ThreadAnalogue Super NT - orders and shipping(Now you're playing with SUPER POWER)
I don't know that kevtris working with Analogue more directly is going to be what stops extra cores from happening. The company was pretty openly wink-wink-nudge-nudge about the jailbreak — they contacted press about the jailbreak basically as soon as the it hit and encouraged us to check it out.
ThreadAnalogue Super NT - orders and shipping(Now you're playing with SUPER POWER)
No, I didn't. I said the cartridge slot design wouldn't scratch up expensive carts such as R2. I don't own R2 and was not able to test it. Please don't misquote me.
ThreadAnalogue Super NT - orders and shipping(Now you're playing with SUPER POWER)
Yeah, and with most Super NES games you're losing about 8 pixel rows of graphical information (4 top, 4 bottom) total if you use 5X scaling. The Super NES output a 240p signal, but in my experience the majority of Super NES games only used 224 pixels of that vertical height for active graphics (and sometimes less, as in Star Fox and DOOM). There's usually an 8-pixel black "dead" zone along the top and bottom of 240p Super NES capture. So far all of all the games I've recorded for my Super NES retrospective videos, only Super Bases Loaded has made full use of the full 240-pixel height. So on the Super Nt, 5X crops out very little visual information the majority of the time.
ThreadGame Boy / Color / Advance Collecting |OT| Now you're playing with power; PORTABLE POWER!
Hey Game Boy folks! If you're going to be at Midwest Gaming Classic next weekend, bring a Game Boy and a link cable. I'm really hoping to get a 16-person Faceball 2000 match going. I've got the carts and the 4-player adapters, but I don't have enough GBs or cables to go around. (And I'm not really keen on trying to carry 16 Game Boys onto the plane in any case.)
ThreadHands On: Polymega Is Shaping Up To Be The Ultimate All-In-One Retro Emulation Box (Jeremy Parish)
Oh, hi. Just for the record, "ultimate emulation box" was not my headline. The published headline kinda sets a tone I didn't intend.As mentioned in the article, I demoed Shadow Over Mystara, so....Not enough to distract me, and input lag is something that really bugs me. MiSTer is awesome, but it's the opposite of a plug-and-play solution, and it doesn't do 32-bit systems. We're a long ways away from FPGA solutions for PS1 and Saturn being realistic or affordable, so emulation boxes are the way to go for now.
ThreadHands On: Polymega Is Shaping Up To Be The Ultimate All-In-One Retro Emulation Box (Jeremy Parish)
For sure, and that's why I love playing my Rhea-modded Saturn on a PVM. But that's not exactly a realistic option for, like, an actual, normal human being.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Pretty sure the only JP-exclusive Dreamcast content I would find even vaguely interesting is El Dorado's Gate. That series, if I actually tackled it, would be 100% U.S.-focused.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Yeah, the only post-N64 console I'd ever be interested in tackling is DS, because that library had so many game concepts that appear nowhere else. I guess Dreamcast could be good, too, because it didn't fare well enough be buried beneath the piles of trash that every other disc-based platform suffered.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Lynx Works is in development! I might kick it off later this year depending on how Virtual Boy goes.
With WS/NGPC, I'm waiting for someone to come up with a hardware hack to allow video capture. But I would chronicle the SHIT out of NGPC if I could, you have no idea.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Yeah, I don't really care if people don't like it as much. With Eva hitting streaming distro this year, I want to keep the same theme without the risk of having my entire channel blitzed with copyright strikes.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
My deal for anyone who wants me to do ______ Works: you set me up with the necessary RGB capture hardware and the system's complete boxed library and I’m in.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
I will be thrilled if I can add “toilet pizza” to the list of terms I’ve helped ease into the cultural lexicon (see also: metroidvania, battle panties)
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Rygar, along with some others like Karnov, was one of those NES games that probably made my friends think I was an asshole. I borrowed Rygar from a friend who told me it was a weird game that they couldn't finish. A few days later I gave it back and was all, "That was easy and fun," having completed it over the weekend.
It was nice to revisit it for this project and find that it really is a nicely made little game, like I remember it being!
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
It's Super Game Boy. Color was built into the system, and many later GB games were designed around it. In the case of first-party legacy titles, Nintendo even programmed specific palettes to activate for those games.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
I was buying almost every NGPC game back when it was new and no one gave a crap. Cotton, Rockman, Gals Fighters, the Metal Slugs... but I had to downsize that collection (and stuff like Snatcher, EarthBound, Panzer Dragoon Saga) in order to relocate across the country multiple times, back before they were all anywhere near their current value. Sigh.No one knoooooows
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
NGPC was 80+ games! And it's apparently nearly impossible to mod the system for video output. I'll do Lynx (70 games) first.
Speaking of which, that'll happen... man, I don't know. I got mouths to feed.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Yes. Pretty much the only series that could be completed more quickly would be SuperGrafx Works.
Speaking of which, that'll happen as soon as I can find and photograph the complete SuperGrafx set.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
I have a reservation placed for the Virtual Boy RGB-out mod kit, so it comes down to when my order comes up in the queue and when I can get someone to install it for me.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
I don't know if you guys are seriously about a Monty on the Run FDS request, but it would be fun. In any case, I do appreciate this modest, steady expression of interest in the Video Works project here.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Are you watching videos while driving on the LA freeway system, ThankDougie? Please do not die in my account. (Thank you all for the kind words, though.)
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
I sincerely enjoy the fact that you posted that remark without this week's video, so it's just a random drive-by pop culture reference with no context.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Yep. Tiny budget, short development time, lack of give-a-shit on the publisher's behalf. I mentioned in the video that this was a tie-in to a four-part OAV series that appeared over the course of one year, and this appeared halfway through the series. Clearly not a lot of time was given to creating a quality game. But the kids probably bought it, so mission accomplished.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Heiankyo Alien is a good episode and doesn't need to be remade. I'm only remastering the first seven GBW episodes, which had terrible audio and video quality (from the crappy emulation device I was capturing from) and were uploaded in standard definition.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
I am here! And I even finally got rid of the "ToastyFrog" handle some mod stuck me with against my express wishes more than a decade ago! Glad you guys are still enjoying my videos and/or nap time.
ThreadJeremy Parish Presents: Retronauts Video Works (Chronological Retrospective Series)
Why should that be the case? Things get delayed, schedules get shuffled. It happens.
Also, Hyper Zone is the name of the bad guy in Kirby's Dream Land 3! Lots of Hyper Zone talent went on to make Kirby games. These are concrete connections for sure.
Hi! The best way to capture original Game Boy is through a Super Game Boy (or better yet, import a Super Game Boy 2). Run it on a Super Nt and it's going to be crisp and crunchy via HDMI. If you have an Nt Mini, you can jailbreak to get the same effect with GBC and Game Gear.
There are consolized mods out there for Game Gear and Lynx (look up McWill) and GBA (by Woozle), though the GBA is still in early days and I'm waiting for more orders to open up so I can get my hands on one. No one appears to have been able to tap the video feed on WonderSwan or NGPC yet, which is a shame.
I've asked literally all the questions I can formulate for TBT. The CRPG focus of the past year has been a total coincidence—tons of CRPG devs were at GDC last year, and Brian Fargo wanted to hype up Wasteland 2.
I used the Hell House card as the basis for the cover art of the first FFVII episode.
BTW, before anyone dives into those hardcover GI Joe collections, the 9th volume has been delayed/MIA for more than two years. Doesn’t seem like they’ll ever complete the set.
I mean, we pretty much did! Poor ’99 gets like... 1/3 of the episode's total running time, if that. And we started in on ’89 in the previous Revue episode....
Oh, sure, it's just that my shameful confession here was that I bought a Dreamcast on launch day and then spent the next two weeks engrossed in FFVIII.
I still haven’t mailed the DVDs, because the last 3 months have been a shitshow for me in terms of productivity—nonstop travel and other obligations. It’s been stressful. Once I’m done with MAGfest I will have two or three glorious months free of distractions in which to get stuff like that taken care of.
Frank has begun working to find them, get them logged and documented, and (if possible) dump them for preservation. He's tweeted some photos recently of his growing collection and it's something else. Sounds like the dumping phase will be a real challenge, since a lot of the circuits on these things are slathered in cheapo epoxy.The neat thing about High-Score Girl is that I no longer have to imagine a reality in which Ready Player One came from Japan.
For the record, my official stance on complaints about us discussing a games-adjacent topic that has been profoundly influential on gaming as a medium is that one ASCII drawing of a guy shrugging
Realistically, I think internal 3D support in the SNES hardware would have resulted in a lot of ugly, clumsy 3D games and fewer attempts to push the bounds of sprite art. I’m kinda glad it didn’t happen, even if it’s a cool what-if.
I would love to record more like this. It's all contingent on convincing very busy people to come into a studio for an hour and a half while we happen to be in the same space...
It was cheaper for us to produce about 300 extra discs than the exact number due to volume discounts, but we won’t sell excess discs for a while. Backers should be able to enjoy theirs first after waiting so long.
I dunno, I kind of find it comforting to have confirmation that everything I've done in the past decade has been hollow garbage grasping desperately at some elusive, bygone, accidental glory.
They never got the Crimson Guard right after the original version.
As for Action Force, I picked up a few of the European Missions reprints they did of those and they weren’t especially good. Kind of a bummer! I think they printed them on Baxter paper, if you remember when that was a thing.
To David Cage's credit, he was the only person with the vision to immortalize David Bowie in licensed digital form. Too bad his career went downhill from there. Dude peaked early.
That's one of the rare episodes for which we put together no notes at all and decided to just let the conversation go wherever it wanted. Can't do that too often, but it's always fun to hear the results.
I don't see why anyone would NOT play Portrait maining as Charlotte. There are lots of Castlevania games where you can be a dude hitting things with a whip, but only one where you can be a girl smacking monsters with an extremely large and stabby book.
Hollow Knight hadn't hit Switch yet when we recorded that episode, and Ori didn't get a mention (from me, at least) because I don't really like it all that much.
I mean, the title "Urusei Yatsura" takes a coarse pronunciation of "urusai," which means "annoying," and writes the "sei" part of the word with a kanji character that means or (and which can be read as "sei"). So in addition to the title's literal translation, which is roughly "those annoying guys", that substituted character also turns it into something like "those annoying aliens from Planet Uru".
So... I don't think it's a stretch to ascribe a little more meaning to the title Ranma 1/2 than the strictly literal reading.
At this point in my life I consider a game played and cleared off my backlog if I've stared longingly at its cover or menu icon for more than 30 seconds.
Those MacVenture ports were announced about a week after our Mac episode, as it happens. My episodes cause games to be reissued... Bob's podcasts kill celebrities. It’s a weird dynamic, but it works for us. (Probably not for the celebrities, tho.)
Glad you enjoyed the episode. I seriously can't believe that interview made it to air. Making it happen involved such a convoluted, weeks-long process that I was certain it was going to be shut down at any moment.
Any ad you hear me or Bob read, like the Shaq podcast promo, appears in all downloads. There are some ads like that one which we build into the show, and some that are auto-injected at the time of download.
(And yes, I used Shaq Fu music, because why wouldn't I!?)
This Miz micro sounded better because it was recorded on three powered mics on a mixer vs. one USB mic in the middle of a conference table. A suitcase of gear makes a difference!
Anyone who complains about our supposed Nintendo bias after the incredibly involved SEGA episode that's going public next week is legally obligated to fling themselves into the nuclear heart of the sun.
I didn't realize that tier was filled up. Huh.
Well, don't feel bad. I wrote about Phantasy Star recently, which means we think about it more than SEGA does!
Thanks, folks. I've thought a lot about ways to get more current topics into the show. It kind of depends on other people's schedules, which could make it tough, but I do have some ideas I'm hoping to explore in the coming months.
Thank you! I am lining up some potentially great stuff for the coming year, and I'm always on the lookout for more opportunities to talk to people about their games on-tape.
FFVI was recorded a while ago and will be my next "Retronauts West" post. We'll probably get to FFVII by the end of the year, but first there's Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy Tactics to tackle…
The main story is pretty OK, sometimes even quite good. The really bad stuff is mostly relegated to side material (like Daravon's tutorials) and the fact that there was no story bible for the localization (which resulted in things like some key terms and names being spelled in many different ways).
I'm glad that I haven't seen a single "these interview episodes are terrible, please stop." Much to my surprise, I've conducted as many dev/pub interviews in the past two months for this podcast as I typically did in a year in the mainstream press (outside of trade events like E3, and even those dried up as a source for interviews a few years back). Of all the outcomes to arise from taking Retronauts full-time, "doing more actual journalism" was not one I had anticipated.
It's also difficult to expect developers to remember such minute details about games they created under incredible time constraints 20 or 30 years ago. The reality is that you, the person who last played the game in 2018, can recall a lot more of the moment-to-moment particulars of a game than the person who helped put it together in 1988. I've had many, many interviews where I ask about something fairly specific and the dev has to think back to what I meant — e.g., I mentioned something about the Beast race in SaGa games to Akitoshi Kawazu and he had to think for a moment to remember what makes Beasts unique. That's a pretty fundamental trait of a game that launched his life work! But you know, he helps run a major corporation, and he worked on dozens of games in his career.
You could probably have a meaningful conversation about a game's design if you sat down with a dev with the game and let them discuss elements as they see them, but the expectation for a meaningful academic discussion like that in a standard "empty conference room with a half-dozen PR handlers hovering nearby" is something that actual interview experience will quickly disabuse you of.
I remember seeing a Peter Gabriel CD longbox, back when CD longboxes were a thing, with a note penned by Gabriel. It mentioned something about how good artists copy but great artists steal. That always stuck with me.
Later I realize he plagiarized that statement from Pablo Picasso, which made it even better.
Yeah, Wii VC on a CRT is great. Otherwise, though, it's not worth rebuying those games. Wii U VC quality varies from platform to platform – NES is junk, GBA is great. It's not perfect, but it's OK.
We don't take requests, but... we're recording another metroidvania next week, and I interviewed Matt Bozon about Shantae in an episode slated for the end of the month. So you got lucky.
And yes, I asked Matt about what influences he drew on for the game. I have a genuine interest in the evolution of the medium and am always fascinated to learn how inspiration and influence drive the growth of game design.
I'd be happy to sit in on a LaserTime show (assuming they'd actually want me to). The problem is that I only stick around in SF long enough for weekend Retronauts recordings, and I'm pretty sure they record their shows on weekdays.
I'm sensitive to the disproportionate burden Patreon's idiotic new scheme places on low-tier supporters, and I'm not happy about it. Doesn't seem like we've lost more than a handful of supporters, but I know I'm open to alternate support streams. I'd like to do more research before committing to anything, though. I don't want to have to ride herd on half a dozen different backer formats, so whichever alternative we set up will need to be a definitive choice.
Yeah, it was yeeeeears ago. We'll be revisiting Chrono Trigger pretty soon as a corollary to our game-by-game Final Fantasy run. Chrono Cross and RD will probably show up as a companion piece to that one.
Glad you liked the collecting episode, krae_man. My absolutely favorite Retronauts episodes are hands-down the ones in which we ditch the script and discuss anecdotes about personal experiences. Alas that lived experiences are finite resources – we have to space them out. But they always turn out well, especially now that I've begun using them as a springboard to bring the community's comments into the episodes through the letters section. That arcade memories Retronauts East from a few months back turned out to be especially great thanks to all the listener perspectives we were able to include.
Yeah, "Thanks for taking several hours out of your working day to be on my podcast, please also be sure to play through this entire list of games before coming" is not really a reasonable expectation for us to place on show participants. There are gonna be gaps.
And I honestly have never heard of several of those PC games, despite having been researching and actively crowdsourcing info on this topic for years now.
Yeah, I don't take any of these complaints personally anymore. The show is doing insanely well in terms of download numbers, so for every complaint I see there are tens of thousands of people who either enjoyed the show or found it at least mildly inoffensive enough not to raise a fuss. Which is not to say I don't take criticism seriously, but I do take it in stride.
The name "Retronauts" came from my own acceptance of the fact that there's a vast amount of video game history I am unaware of, and my desire to explore it and learn more. I've put that learning process on public display, missteps and all. And the nature of fandom fosters jealousy and a sense of us-vs-them in some people. Every fandom has a few self-appointed gatekeepers who can't help but interpret "I don't know much about this topic but want to give it its due to the best of my ability" as "I am a poser who thinks this topic is stupid and not worth my time and everyone who likes it also bad and dumb." I mean, there were folks in the Chrono fandom who listened to me talk about how Chrono Cross literally changed my life, and how deeply I love it despite its flaws, and then went on public tirades about how I'm a monster who was unfairly badmouthing the game. Internet's weird, man.
Thank you — sorry I can't help. I just checked the latest episode on the iTunes Music Store and it's playing correctly at its full 2-hour length. Are you able to get the show that way?
Yes, we upload in two segments and PC1 combines them, but I haven't heard any indication that other listeners have experienced this issue, so I'm at a loss to explain why you are.
If there's one thing I love about podcasting, it's being scorned because my family couldn't afford a home computer until 1993 and I only had enough money to buy a single console and a few games per year until I began working full-time. Sure, I got by on food stamps and free lunches throughout elementary school, but I don't have extensive first-hand experience with 8-bit microcomputers and non-Nintendo systems simply because of my deep personal biases against corporations and platforms. I definitely didn't drool enviously over my friends' computer games and feel a painful stab of covetousness every time I touched an in-store Sega/TG16/Atari demo unit that I couldn't possibly hope to afford for the entirety my childhood, nope.
NES Works 1986: Print adaptation of the video series by the same name. Never before published in print.
NES Works 1985: New, slightly revised Good Nintentions 1985 (which we delisted from Amazon a while back). New layout to match NES Works 1986; some small edits and tweaks, but otherwise the same book as GN1985.
I have to be something of a generalist due to the sheer volume and breadth of the work I do, and the same holds true for Bob… which is why we always try to bring in guests who know a topic to shore up the gaps in our own lived experiences. But podcasts are highly improvisational and unpredictable despite the planning that goes into them, and we never know how a conversation will play out until it's happened. Usually they're great, but sometimes a well-intended show doesn't go as well as we'd hoped. For example, our original attempt at a Master System episode didn't go as I hoped, which was frustrating at the time. And continues to be frustrating! People are complaining about it a decade later, despite the fact that we flew two Sega historians to Midwest Gaming Classic last year out of pocket for a second run at the topic that turned out great.
I love the energy Chris brings to the show, but by his own admission he's only able to hold court on a handful of classic gaming topics. He'd have been lost on the HyperCard episode, for example.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm still frustrated and angry about the way you put Bob in the crosshairs of a hate mob. But I realize the spirit of these forums is "reset," so… thanks for this offer. I would like to take you up on it.
Miyamoto never should have made his daughter the star, that's for sure.
We are definitely due for an episode on Donkey Kong, and the Final Fantasy VI episode will go up most likely in January.
I'd say we weren't that different as people from who we are now, just less . One of our coworkers asked us not to use that word because they found it offensive and demeaning, so we respected that request and stopped using it. It took a little while, but we did it, and the show didn't suffer for it.
Oh, the VO videos are fine and I'm happy with the level of quality I've managed to train myself up to, but I wish I had the capacity to do more ambitious things.
The Breath of the Wild/Zelda roots episode has gone over really well, so I have plenty more queued up for the next few sessions. I'm sure Bob will do likewise from time to time, too!
I'd like to have Sharkey and Jenn on again, but they've both bowed out of the public eye for this sort of thing. Jenn especially, and I absolutely respect the boundaries she's drawn up and her reasons for doing so.
Our current host doesn't support Google Play, I don't think, but the current feed is on iTunes, PodcastOne, etc.It's a complex mathematical formula involving the timing of upcoming anniversaries, relevant new releases, and totally random whim… weighted heavily toward that third factor.
I'm 99% certain the Bonus Stage stuff was lost to time. It wasn't GREAT material, but I think it could have gotten there in time… I was just starting to understand video editing. Man, I wish I had access to cameras and people like that now and could make videos that aren't just me doing V.O. atop game footage.