Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

5 Consoles for the so called elite

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    5 Consoles for the so called elite

    1 - Fujitsu Towns Marty

    When is a computer not a computer? When it's a PC shoved into a console case. If you thought the Xbox was the first PC in a box then your about 9 years too late. Sporting a 386SX processer (a later model will have a 486SX processer but nothing used it...), it was the most powerful console of it's day and quite frankly a breath of fresh air compared to the consoles of the day.

    The CD-ROM drive delivered some cracking arcade conversions as well as some enhanced games from the PC. However the machine was very expensive in it's day and the games generally cost more then buying a current console of the day and a few games... Still it had lots of Hentai if you liked that sort of thing. ^_^;

    Nowdays, the machines can be picked up for peanuts although getting games is a tad harder.... ^_^; Although some games are like, hmm ?80 and I'm getting a worse game then something on the Saturn at ?20...

    Delights : Lucasarts Games, Tatsujin 2, Splatterhouse, Super Streetfighter 2, Viewpoint, Hentai
    Horrors : Bank balance after buying games (and you thought Neo Geo games were expensive...), CSK convertions of games (can you say dated and expensive), Xbox has nothing on the size of the machine...

    2 - Neo Geo

    Neo Geo owners are a funny lot. Spending three figure sums on games (although FM Towns Marty owners are the same) they normally have a fair collection of games with most keeping them as pristine as possible. They are also one of the most vocal of the owners, defending their machine and the games even if the games are fairly average when it comes down to it.

    The machine itself is a nice piece of hardware as it is a arcade board. It sported a 68000 / Z80 combo as most arcade boards of the day did, some nice custom chips meant that scaling and large sprites were easy to do as well as excellent music from the decent Yamaha sound chip. It was an arcade machine in your own home.

    As Neo Geo games are large it's fairly easy to get a nice collection of games without really having that many games. ^_^; However a lot of owners have seen that MVS (the arcade version) had cheaper games and the choice between spending the money of two resturant meals for two and selling a kidney to play Metal Slug meant a lot abandoned the home version for a piddly home arcade set up.

    Still your not an elite gamer unless you own or have owned a Neo Geo console (so elite gamers say... although thats like a elvis fan saying your not an elvis fan unless you visited graceland).

    Delights : King of Fighters Games (pre 98 specfically), Fatal Fury Special, Shooters, Flying Power Disc, League Bowling, large ammount of fighters.
    Horrors : Price of 'rare' or newish games, the range of fairly mundane and average games, Metal Slug, meeting Neo Geo owners.

    3 - PC Engine

    Small is beautiful as they say and the first white PC Engine is a delight, smaller then even the Famicom and packing more of a punch the 8Bit (yes it is 8Bit) PC Engine was the pinacle of 8Bit Gaming. It also had the first miracle and the first rubbish of the modern gaming era with the CD-ROM unit.

    Now NEC weren't stupid, why make a fully blown unit when you can take the CD-ROM unit from your other machines and make a interface unit for it and PC Engine and now you have a gaming suitcase. However that wasn't enough so they brought the Super Grafx, and if truth be known it was rubbish from the time it came out out with only two half decent games and although thats 33% of good games that also means 6 games... And if you wanted to use the PC Engine CD-ROM unit then it would sprawl across the table ^_^;

    But if you wanted an Engine you were spoilt for choice PC Engine, Core Grafx (make it a more manly grey colour, Core Grafx 2 (slightly change the case, they won't know the difference...), Capsule (buy one for the kids), GT (play games on the move with a fairly naff screen), LT (play games in your house as your too scared to take it anywhere just incase you know ?50 off the value), Duo, Duo R (R for Rahhh!), Duo RX (X for XXXX not another PC Engine...), zzzz

    It had nice games if slightly spoilt by the fact that a lot of games were better on the Megadrive or Super Famicom, the few that were PC Engine exculsives tend to be expensive for no good reason... ^_^; So if you bought one and you wanted to justify it? Well you could always buy the glut of Anime and Hentai games available on CD-ROM... ^_^;

    Delights : PC Engine CD-ROM2 unit with PC Engine, PC Kid series, Anime cut scenes on CD-ROM games, being able to stick your whole collection of games and the machine in a small bag, the price of PC Engine games.
    Horrors : Collecting System cards, Realising that Strider on Arcade CD-ROM is crap and you wasted ?50 on a version that costs ?5 on the Megadrive and is better, People who spent ?800 on a LT, the price of PC Engine games.

    4 - Sharp X68000

    Okay it's a computer rather then a console but it hosted games that blew everything else away at the time. Most people will have first seen this from tiny little screenshots printed in C&VG and Ace and that would have been it before it was emulated and everyone could see how good it was. Although this is like saying you drive a Ferrari when your playing F355 Challenge rather then owning the said Ferrari... ^_^

    It was a fairly powerful system having a 10Mhz 68000 (2Mhz faster then the Atari ST and Amiga), better sound chip (Yamaha chip, although you could whack on a Roland or Yamaha sound module and get music to die for...) and graphics to die for, with more colours, sprite and graphics mode that the Amiga A500 could only dream about. The only thing that let it down a little was the use of high density 5.25" discs compared to 3.5" drives as used on more or less everything else. Still it was what was on the discs rather then what they looked like.

    So what could you play? Lots and lots of games and much better then what most consoles of the day could do them... Capcom and Konami did some cracking games including Strider, Ghouls and Ghosts, Final Fight, Gradius II and Dracula X and Sega games appeared on the system too.

    To be one of the elite gamers you must either own the said machine or at least pretend you do by owning at least a few games on the system, then you can say the machine is in storage or something and boot up an emulator... As the X68000 sold in decent numbers unlike say the FM Towns (thats the FM Towns as a whole, computer systems and Marty) there are lots of games and getting hold of games is surprisingly easy. Although setting up and getting the games running is a tad more difficult and may require lots of patience. ^_^

    Delights : Near arcade perfect games, Strider, Dracula X, Cotton, Final Fight, Gradius II, Dive On. Seeing one working in the flesh. Feeling like that Elite gamer you always thought you were.
    Horrors : Finding out the discs are buggered, just getting hold of the X68000.


    5 - Nokia N-Gage

    What could be more elite then having a phone that played games that is shunned by all proper game players as nothing more then an overpriced phone?










    Nah only joking...

    So what isn't it?

    Well it's not the

    Super Famicom, every one and it's dog (and it's fleas) has one of these, even if you do weird things like collect all the semi hentai games on it. Even if you don't own a SFC you probably own a SNES and a convertor, plus Nintendo fanboyism isn't a pretty sight.

    The Megadrive isn't here either as the UK Megadrive means that unless you are a hardcore collector, insane or both your going to balk at paying three or four times more for the game in a different box to the PAL version, even to the extent of paying several hundred times more for the japanese version of a game in a UK box(!), which is effectively what Maximum Carnage is. Even the Japanese only releases of really must have games are quite few and far between. Basically even if you own 300 Japanese games it still has less kudos then owning 100 odd PC Engine games or even 10 Neo Geo Games.

    Saturn? Again too common and easy to get hold of most games. In a perverse way the Japanese Playstation has more Kudos due to a stupid ammount of games and tracking them down can be fun. New consoles have no kudos, to an extent the Japanese Xbox is probably the most elite as most people don't go that far, play American games on a Japanese system? Are you mad?

    Anyway, out of time again. ^_^;

    More soon. ^_^

    5 - Any american console released in Japan

    Now why would that make you elitest? Well spending 3 to 20 times the cost on a console that plays exactly the same games as the american system does and having the benefit of some katakana or better still a sticker over the american cartridge and paying for the priveledge is a little like being charged 5 quid a mile by a taxi driver as he takes you from London to Scotland.

    So what consoles could I sample then? Well Bandai have most of them sorted as they released several, including the Bandai Kousokusen (pretty word for Vectrex), Bandai Intellivision and Bandai Arcadia to name three. Even Atari have the Atari 2800, which was a nicer looking Atari 2600 with interesting controllers and if your a sucker for punishment you can get an Atari Jaguar with some pretty stickers on the box saying it's a Japanese version and pay through the nose for one.

    So what about 3DO? Well as it did get a proper Japanese release and does sport a range of Japanese games it doesn't really count, even if it is amusing to see Samurai Shodown in Japanese and to play count the games that aren't for kids, dodgy american games, hentai or softcore porn.

    Even looking at Xbox games in Japan you do feel like your the only person in the country to own the system with the xbox aisles being fairly empty of people and this is of course if you can find the xbox games hidden between Dreamcast and Nintendo 64. So if you own at least 2 american systems released in Japan then you can at least say Elitest with a capital E.

    Okay there should be five but had to add this one in.

    6 - Kiddy Consoles.

    Effectively this is Sega Pico, Bandai Playdia and Bandia Atmark (or Apple Pippin) although you could add Famicom Clones with Education cartridges, the various Tomy consoles and handhelds and even the G-Tech computers, and if your a sucker for punishment you could add the Philips CD-i which although not a kiddy console as such a quick scan of non movie titles would reveal more edutainment titles then any other games.

    So why does owning a console aimed at a five year old make you Elitest? Well just buying a machine that wasn't aimed at you and then having games for said system is either a sign your mad or something worse and therefore to justify having the machine you need to say you own for a specific reason like I wanted to collect all the Sonic games or there is a really good game on the Atmark/Pippin or even the good old it looked nice, which I've heard for a reason to own the Bandai Playdia, one of the first consoles to show that purple is not a pretty colour for a console.

    #2
    I always fancied one of these when Edge featured it years ago. They hailed it as the second coming.

    Comment


      #3
      Real nice machine and one of my favourites.

      There are some surprising games out on it, many of the Lucasarts adventures received enhanced ports as well as top arcade conversions. Great for shooters like KU++, Flying Shark, Raiden and it also has the best conversion of Splatterhouse in existence.

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by MD
        1 - Fujitsu Towns Marty

        When is a computer not a computer? When it's a PC shoved into a console case. If you thought the Xbox was the first PC in a box then your about 9 years too late.

        Although one of the most powerful consoles of it's day, it was expensive with hard to get hold of (and games that cost more then a Super Famicom....) with near perfect arcade conversions and lots of Hentai... ^_^

        Nowdays, the machines can be picked up for peanuts although getting games is a tad harder.... ^_^; Although some games are like, hmm ?80 and I'm getting a worse game then something on the Saturn at ?20...

        4 to 5 to come... ^_^;
        Sounds cool.
        Is it classed as 32 bit or 16bit?

        Where can I get a marty in UK for peanuts?
        Do people have hidden sources for this type of stuff or something?

        Cheers.

        Comment


          #5
          I remember reading about this, since it had the best version of LucasArt's Zak McKraken on it.

          Comment


            #6
            Yeah, Zak looks beautiful on it if you run it in the enhanced resolution. Zak will cost you about ?200 though, it's one of the rarest games on it.

            Boxed machines still go for a fair amount, about the price of a new machine like the PS2. You should be able to get an unboxed one on ebay when they turn up for less than ?50 though.

            Comment


              #7
              32Bit hardware , the first model being a 386 /2MB of ram and the second model housing a 486.Nice piece of hardware with some of the finest pads to use imo , especially the 6 button model.

              If it wasnt for VING releasing some excellent arcade ports then the machines library would be have been pretty weak well weaker than it is ..


              Also it plays host to the only home port of Tatsujinou ( aka Expertking)

              Comment


                #8
                Thanks for the info.

                Just done some searching on ebay, maybe this was a bargain?


                God bless the strong pound.

                Surely the seller could have got more for that?
                I would have bought that if I had seen it, dunno what the games were worth though.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Wayhey! Anything with LeChuck's Revenge included is automatically a bargain!

                  Comment


                    #10
                    yep, that auction was pointed out to me after it had finished of course.

                    Either the seller didn't know what he had or he has scammed someone.

                    Monkey Island 2 is the only Lucasarts game I do not have for the Marty and goes for over ?200 a time, Indy is in a similar price bracket.

                    So yes he could have got more for it. The buyer is probably still pissing himself laughing at his bargain.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Are we supposed to name the other three consoles for the elite or will they be announced in a future post?

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by goldbricker
                        Are we supposed to name the other three consoles for the elite or will they be announced in a future post?
                        The post originally only had 1 console so i think he's just updating it over time

                        Comment


                          #13
                          I like this thread a lot

                          I've recently bought a Duo-R and now have 14 games. All of which are PCE exclusive, therefore I think that

                          It had nice games if slightly spoilt by the fact that a lot of games were better on the Megadrive or Super Famicom, the few that were PC Engine exculsives...
                          (italics added) is a little misleading, if not disingenuous. The PCE has lot of original content, some of it good, some of it not. Of the 14 games that I have, I can say that 8 still stand up well today, 4 are curios, and 2 are complete rubbish. At a push, the PCE could produce graphics akin to a middling Mega Drive game, although it appears to have issues with parallax scrolling and sprite flicker in some cases.

                          Then again, I am a Neo owner as well .

                          I'm presuming that the Japanese Mega Drive will appear somwehere in this top 5? 8)

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Somehow I can't see the Megadrive being an elite gamers console as hardly anyone really collects it. Know people with more complete Neo Geo AES collections then half way complete Megadrive collections... ^_^;

                            Still only one machine to go (although i might add more depending...)

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by MD
                              Somehow I can't see the Megadrive being an elite gamers console as hardly anyone really collects it.
                              I only need 160-ish games for a complete Japanese Megadrive collection. Am I L3373?

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X