(Retro) What have you been playing this week? Vol.2

[QualityChimp]

My main memories of playing Super Monkey Ball was playing it with mates and winding one up by singing our own theme song every time he had his go:
"Super... Moooooonkey Baaaaaall"

[wakka]

I played quite a bit of WarioWare Twisted at the weekend. It's a really, really good WarioWare. I guess this is effectively 'WarioWare 2', since it's the first proper follow-on from the first game (it was preceded by the GameCube one, but that was more of a multiplayer adaptation really).

I had thought it might feel like I'd already played it since many of the minigames appear in Gold on 3DS, but it doesn't at all. It's an absolutely corking entry. Up there with the very best of what's been a bit of a patchy series over the years.

I'm playing it on my phone, funnily enough, using an emulator, since I don't have an original cart. Works great with the phone's built-in gyro. You only occasionally need to use a button, and only ever the A button, so playing on a touchscreen doesn't hurt it at all (at least so far).

[dataDave]

A good hour plus on Sin & Punishment 2 on Saturday night, then followed by roughly the same amount of time progressing on Super Mario Galaxy 2.

I think the Galaxy games are better than Odyssey. There's something about the control. Visually I'm always in awe at just how lush everything on Galaxy 2 is. Like all the grass, rock, and gemstone textures, and the tactility of all the little water streams that you can splish-splash through. When played on a CRT with SCART the video quality goes up to being 9.5/10, compared to being a 4/10 (at best) when using component going to a flat panel. I'd love to find out how a TINK4K can help the Wii upscale.

[egparadigm]

My main memories of playing Super Monkey Ball was playing it with mates and winding one up by singing our own theme song every time he had his go:
"Super... Moooooonkey Baaaaaall"

The minigames are rather good, had quite a but of fun with racing and fighting. Shame I don’t have 3 others to play with!

[egparadigm]

A good hour plus on Sin & Punishment 2 on Saturday night, then followed by roughly the same amount of time progressing on Super Mario Galaxy 2.

I think the Galaxy games are better than Odyssey. There's something about the control. Visually I'm always in awe at just how lush everything on Galaxy 2 is. Like all the grass, rock, and gemstone textures, and the tactility of all the little water streams that you can splish-splash through. When played on a CRT with SCART the video quality goes up to being 9.5/10, compared to being a 4/10 (at best) when using component going to a flat panel. I'd love to find out how a TINK4K can help the Wii upscale.

I almost bought an RGB scart cable the other day for my Wii (for Monkey Ball). Then I remembered RGB isn’t supported on/in NTSC consoles/games.

Luckily I have a Saurian-modded RGB cable for my gamecube at least. I remember my reluctance to spend £50 on it at the time, bit I guess I get my money’s worth all these years later!

[dataDave]

I almost bought an RGB scart cable the other day for my Wii (for Monkey Ball). Then I remembered RGB isn’t supported on/in NTSC consoles/games.

Luckily I have a Saurian-modded RGB cable for my gamecube at least. I remember my reluctance to spend £50 on it at the time, bit I guess I get my money’s worth all these years later!

Yeah, you need a soft modded console with a loader of some kind that lets you configure the video mode for each game. My Wii only displays red until I’m in-game. 😅

[egparadigm]

Yeah, you need a soft modded console with a loader of some kind that lets you configure the video mode for each game. My Wii only displays red until I’m in-game. 😅

I do have mine soft modded but haven’t updated in years. Is there a way now that you can run NTSC Wii and Gamecube games in RGB through scart?

[dataDave]

Is there a way now that you can run NTSC Wii and Gamecube games in RGB through scart?

I don't think this is anything new, as it's been eight years since I last updated mine. All the games I've tried which cover both platforms boot up in full colour at 60Hz, or else I wouldn't be playing at all. Although you have to sometimes Google the video mode to select from the loader for a particular game. It saves your prefs, so it's a one'n'done.

Anything outside of the loader, for instance VC/HBC stuff, will be displayed in red only. If you have any emulators on there YMMV, like SNES9X is full colour, but I know some other emus aren't. I know you can boot VC games from inside the loader, however I've not done a deep dive into the settings associated because I have a MiSTer for all my retro needs. The only reason all the VC stuff is still on mine is because this console was one half of my main gaming setup while I was abroad. Also, all of this 'red only' issue can be circumvented by connecting using component, but there is a very minor degradation to picture quality there compared to SCART.

If you've never played a Wii on a SD CRT over a decent connection be prepared for an absolute treat.

[egparadigm]

I don't think this is anything new, as it's been eight years since I last updated mine. All the games I've tried which cover both platforms boot up in full colour at 60Hz, or else I wouldn't be playing at all. Although you have to sometimes Google the video mode to select from the loader for a particular game. It saves your prefs, so it's a one'n'done.

Anything outside of the loader, for instance VC/HBC stuff, will be displayed in red only. If you have any emulators on there YMMV, like SNES9X is full colour, but I know some other emus aren't. I know you can boot VC games from inside the loader, however I've not done a deep dive into the settings associated because I have a MiSTer for all my retro needs. The only reason all the VC stuff is still on mine is because this console was one half of my main gaming setup while I was abroad. Also, all of this 'red only' issue can be circumvented by connecting using component, but there is a very minor degradation to picture quality there compared to SCART.

If you've never played a Wii on a SD CRT over a decent connection be prepared for an absolute treat.

Thanks for the advice, that’s super. I might pickup a RGB scart at some point then. Yeah I reckon a lot of my GC and Wii days was spent on an HD ready TV so could be quite startling!

[wakka]

I'm on the last level of WarioWare Twisted, and it's driving me mad! The final challenge, a rhythm game called Wario de Mambo, is such a pain in the behind.

[QualityChimp]

I'm on the last level of WarioWare Twisted, and it's driving me mad! The final challenge, a rhythm game called Wario de Mambo, is such a pain in the behind.

You're holding the maraca controller in the wrong place, then...

[fuse]

Stumbling about on the Switch for something I felt like I could play, and I found myself losing some time to Mario's Super Picross in the SNES app. I've not played a huge number of Picross games (Murder by Numbers was the one that started me off) but that kinda works in its favour as I'm not expecting some 20 years of Picross QoL stuff. Could do with a bit more variety in its BGMs, mind.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Stumbling about on the Switch for something I felt like I could play, and I found myself losing some time to Mario's Super Picross in the SNES app. I've not played a huge number of Picross games (Murder by Numbers was the one that started me off) but that kinda works in its favour as I'm not expecting some 20 years of Picross QoL stuff. Could do with a bit more variety in its BGMs, mind.

Picross is underrated.

You should probably get on the GB Mario's Picross games as well, but the BGM is the same as the SFC game so the music won't win any points from you!

[QualityChimp]

Not played any retro, but found this video interesting:

[fallenangle]

Had this installed from original disc on PC for years without doing anything other than check it actually worked: Legacy Of Kain - Blood Omen. It is the only one of the Legacy Of Kain games I have not played. On the original PS Soul Reaver was one of my earliest forays into action/adventure games having caught the bug from the Tomb Raider series. I later replayed that on DC too.

Started LoK:BO last night and I think I might get into it once I've got to grips with the controls and changed the controller mapping (which it natively supports) to a set up I'm more comfortable using.

Reminds me so far of the DC game Record Of Lodoss War which I last playedprobably 20 years ago. That became tough really quickly and was/is a much more traditional RPG with leveling up and endless spells/armour/weapon upgrades. At this point LoK:BO feels more of a hack & slash with stripped down RPG elements but I'm perfectly happy with that.