Gaming irks

[fishbowlhead]

Even more fun was trying to get the component cables in the right order without pulling out the whole TV so you could actually see.

Kids these days don’t know how good that have it not having to move a crt tv that weighed the same as a small rhinoceros, just to swap your consoles over, risking limbs and life each time.

[importaku]

Even more fun was trying to get the component cables in the right order without pulling out the whole TV so you could actually see.

I used to stick my phone down the back and take a pic so I could figure out the order, at least the first hole then guess the rest from there.

[hudson]

Somewhere in another dimension TV manufacturers have installed decent chips into TVs where user is having an absolute blast navigating around the TV menus using the remote control. In this dimension TV remote users can be seen muttering crazily to themselves like they are an enemy from RE4.

My new TV (a Samsung) had me doing a dance trying to summon this alternate dimension.

[egparadigm]

Moonwalker on the Megadrive. I love it, but if I haven't played it in a long time I somehow forget that the last hostage on 1-3 is hidden behind a window. Up until this point all hostages had just been either out in open or behind doors. Happened to me again last night. Ow!

My Dad pulled out loads of old printed pages from the loft a while back. They were the game code from Adventure. I think he said he printed it at work with a colleague because they got to the end of the game and they couldn’t work out the solution.

->Open Spoiler<-

Apparently it was the only time the game you had to enter “North-west” as a verb or similar.

[egparadigm]

Double post.

[hudson]

Ha, I feel a thread idea coming on.... Games that had illogical tasks in them (or something)

[huxley]

Somewhere in another dimension TV manufacturers have installed decent chips into TVs where user is having an absolute blast navigating around the TV menus using the remote control. In this dimension TV remote users can be seen muttering crazily to themselves like they are an enemy from RE4.

My new TV (a Samsung) had me doing a dance trying to summon this alternate dimension.

my Samsung tv runs like **** if its connected to the internet.

[hudson]

Dunno if your TV does this, but if I connect a console, the TV tries to be helpful changing to a Game Mode UI. It also tells me (with brand logos) that a Switch or an Xbox has been identified and then sits on the Samsung Game mode UI. JUST GO TO THE AV CHANNEL I SELECTED!!!

[huxley]

Dunno if your TV does this, but if I connect a console, the TV tries to be helpful changing to a Game Mode UI. It also tells me (with brand logos) that a Switch or an Xbox has been identified and then sits on the Samsung Game mode UI. JUST GO TO THE AV CHANNEL I SELECTED!!!

Yea it does, Naming them seems to help. I disabled all the auto mode crap.

Back on topic. My current irk is things being prefixed with "pro". Implying those that dont pony up are lesser beings

[Asura]

Moonwalker on the Megadrive. I love it, but if I haven't played it in a long time I somehow forget that the last hostage on 1-3 is hidden behind a window. Up until this point all hostages had just been either out in open or behind doors. Happened to me again last night. Ow!

It's kinda amazing how much bull**** some old games got away with.

I've always wanted to love Super Star Wars, but I can't get on with how you can only shoot up and horizontally, while enemies love to attack from an angle. It's like you turned up for a round of golf and are expected to use some spare plumber's piping instead of a set of clubs.

[Hirst]

Yeah I'm with you on that. Most of this stuff is just kitsch. I find myself looking at less retro gaming stuff than I used to because the obsession and excitement over things like promotional standees for WiiU games is just...what. Why would you want that in your house? People on retrogaming subs go absolutely mad for old shop fixtures as well. I don't get it.

I mean I'm sort of glad in a way that some old game history ends up preserved, in a roundabout way, but I can't imagine ever wanting to fill my home with it. Each to their own, but I'm not pretentiously calling things a "piece" as if I'm the curator of some kind of art gallery. I think it's a term that originates from the American collecting scene, where people seem to be interested in basically anything other than actually playing the old games they buy, so they give loads of extra gravitas to some stinky Mario teddies or mouldy old cardboard boxes.

The full set thing is a mad one, because everyone I've ever seen doing it here is going for a full PAL set but with absolutely no interest whatsoever in Japanese releases. They're into games enough that they want to own every game for a system (and let's face it, any big mass-market system you're looking at about 70% complete junk), but have zero interest in actual good games they couldn't get here. Really weird to me, imports always seemed like the logical next step for people into games, but apparently they're too busy paying £1000 for Cindy's Fashion World on the PS1.

By the way, the absolute masterstroke of Moonwalker was them adding the ability to pointlessly go "hoo!" by pressing up. Game of the year.

[Yakumo]

Ha, I feel a thread idea coming on.... Games that had illogical tasks in them (or something)

I'd for sure add Disc World to that list. Even at the begining some of the solutions were strange.

[hudson]

I'd for sure add Disc World to that list. Even at the begining some of the solutions were strange.

This was the only game that crossed my mind when thinking about this for a split second

Me: Catch butterfly
Eric Idle: "That doesn't work!"
(20 years later in real life) Eric Idle: "That (still) doesn't work!"
A guide on the internet:

->Open Spoiler<-

Go back in time and put a frog in the mouth of sleeping drunk... Now you can catch butterfly.

[Hirst]

I got reasonably far on Discworld and then became completely stuck. Then I got the sequel and I didn't even get as far.

[Hirst]

I'm in the middle of trying to organise the room where I keep my games and what an ordeal it has been. The difficulty is that rather than have any kind of ordinary setup, I've insisted on having several - really, really stupid - principles:

1. Every game console is simultaneously connected and I never have to swap any wires (difficult)
2. It must also be possible to simultaneously record footage from any system without also swapping any wires (more difficult)
3. I'd like everything to be in the best possible native format for each system (insanely difficult)
4. Also I don't like expensive all-in-one solutions and prefer to just cobble things together piecemeal (not difficult, just a bit pathetic)

I almost - almost - thought I'd got to the end. Everything goes in HDMI in some way, either natively or linked to a terrifying array of (completely manual) switchers. I'd even found a HDMI switcher that had 6 ports in, 2 ports out, switch by remote. Will do for now - ideally could do with a few more ports but it goes really expensive after that. At least it isn't like my last switcher that inexplicably bled power back through the system and would cause my video scaler to be turned on even when it wasn't.

However, I then found that (since it's probably more aimed at presentations or in-store display use) the switcher doesn't handle audio out of the HDMI and instead strips the audio out into two separate optical audio ports. Not mentioned at all in their spec sheet. For my own display, no problem - just run an optical audio from the switcher to the sound bar. But for the recording setup? Well, my PC doesn't have optical-in - not many do. So then I have to buy another weird adaptor that takes optical audio and feeds it into my PC by USB. Then I have to special order in a longer optical cable, because it's fairly rare to find ones longer than 1m off-the-shelf because optical cables were specced for some guy running stuff between a Hi-Fi stack and not some weirdo needing to send audio across the room to another machine.

I'm starting to think I might actually be near the end now, though I'm genuinely at the stage where if anyone else was to use it but me I'd need to produce a huge workshop manual to explain how many steps are required if you want to play something on the Famicom.