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

[Cepp]

Checked out a new arcade bar called NQ64 (Northern Quarter 64) in Manchester with some work colleagues.

Played Star Wars Arcade, Crazi Taxi, Outrun 2 and The Simpsons Arcade game. Getting a go of Time Crisis was impossible sadly.

It was pretty good, £5 gets you 15 tokens and it's one token per credit. They have console games as well, 4 player Mario Kart 64 and the like. Console games are free to play.

Drinks are your typical fair but gaming themed. The Princess Peach and such. Cocktails are £8 and I had my work laptop so I only had the one.

[importaku]

Vib ribbon with weird al yankovic albums is a perfect match, been re enjoying some classic al with vibri some of the tracks are daaaamn hard to play but that's the fun.

[Cepp]

Playing Tales of Symphonia. My first Tales game, it's pretty good so far.

[fallenangle]

Just started replaying Xbox Sphinx & The Cursed Mummy.

Under appreciated LoZ-esque platformer with some great ideas and at 480p (it does not support 720p as sometimes claimed) it vies with the best of that generation's games in terms of its graphics and art design.

Old school long distances between save points will frustrate millennial gamers as certain parts of the game have higher than average difficulty.

I never experienced this myself but there are also reports of a game breaking bug, in most versions apparently including the recent reworked/re-release on PC. Backup saves after a session and read up about it beforehand to avoid the problem.

[Leon Retro]

Vib ribbon with weird al yankovic albums is a perfect match, been re enjoying some classic al with vibri some of the tracks are daaaamn hard to play but that's the fun.

Just eat it

[JazzFunk]

Jedi Academy on GWG, it's free this month. I played it when it came out and I found it slick and good looking but very beige.

Nowadays, the graphics look baaaaaaasic, still bland, but it's joyously fast, smoother than I remember, and the basic trial n error gameplay is sorta refreshing right now.

But the lightsaber feels like flailing about a carrier bag half-full of wet socks. It's a bit cacalaca.

[Cepp]

I've been playing the "let's get retroarch and emulation station to work" game.

Fun times but it's starting to take shape. Still can't get emulationstation to find boxart for anything but at least it's launching games now.

[Cepp]

Started playing Klonoa - Door to Phantomile. I've beat the Wii remake and the PS2 game but only ever played the demo for this when it came out.

[importaku]

Started playing Klonoa - Door to Phantomile. I've beat the Wii remake and the PS2 game but only ever played the demo for this when it came out.

Prepare to cry at the ending, bawled my eyes out as a kid at that one.

[Cepp]

Prepare to cry at the ending, bawled my eyes out as a kid at that one.

It's very whimsical so far, I look forward to the inevitable gut punch

[fallenangle]

Playing original Xbox Halo 2 for the first time.

Quality presentation but not particularly taken with the gameplay, in fact I'm finding it a bit repetitive and the often murky, bland looking, level design dull. It is OK but when I think about some of the other original Xbox FPS I've played or replayed in the last year (Black, Return To Castle Wolfenstein, and the two Brothers In Arms games) that magic enjoyment factor that makes you want to keep on playing just a little longer is not there for me.

I preferred the original Halo which I only did for the first time about 18 months ago. Not bowled over by that either but I enjoyed it more than I'm enjoying Halo 2 so far.

[wakka]

I’ve been playing Pokemon Pinball Ruby and Sapphire. After I was rightly corrected for my assertion that there are no good Pokemon spinoff games in the Sword/Shield thread, I went and downloaded this. Played it briefly many years ago and remember it being really good.

I’ve picked it up on WiiU (I sat the machine in the corner of the room, away from the TV, so I’m effectively treating it as a handheld) and, yeah, this game is awesome. The graphics and music are charming, and it’s of that exceedingly rare breed - a soothing pinball game.

There are a couple of really smart decisions too. Firstly, the game is designed for each session to give you a good long run. It lights up the ball save feature pretty regularly, which eases the pressure up at regular intervals. Secondly, you have two objectives each game - to get as high a score as possible, and also to catch Pokemon which will be entered into your Pokédex.

This gives it a really nice sense of progression. Even if you’re not doing so well and you’re nowhere near hitting a high score, you still know you’re grabbing Pokemon to help fill your dex, so there’s still a sense of achievement and you don’t get into a cycle of quitting out and restarting. In fact, there’s no quit or restart option on the pause menu at all, which I think is interesting.

A really lovely game. I always enjoy digital pinball done well, and this is a great and distinctive example of the genre. Highly recommended.

[teddymeow]

I've been playing the "let's get retroarch and emulation station to work" game.

Fun times but it's starting to take shape. Still can't get emulationstation to find boxart for anything but at least it's launching games now.

I was having a similar issue. Apparently the website ES uses for scraping game data changed something so it doesn't work anymore.

There's a different way around it but I haven't tried it yet

[Cepp]

Poor Klonoa That ending was more affecting than I thought it would be.

It's a very short game which was quite refreshing tbh. I'm not sure what to play next, either Final Fantasy 2 on the Origins collection or RC De Go! I'm on a bit of a PSX kick right now.

I was having a similar issue. Apparently the website ES uses for scraping game data changed something so it doesn't work anymore.

There's a different way around it but I haven't tried it yet

I've been reading up on it but nothing seems to be working for me. Retroarch itself seems to be able to match cover art to most games but Emulationstation just can't seem to manage it. I've tried some third party scrapers as well but no luck.

[dataDave]

I’ve been playing Pokemon Pinball Ruby and Sapphire. After I was rightly corrected for my assertion that there are no good Pokemon spinoff games in the Sword/Shield thread, I went and downloaded this. Played it briefly many years ago and remember it being really good.

I’ve picked it up on WiiU (I sat the machine in the corner of the room, away from the TV, so I’m effectively treating it as a handheld) and, yeah, this game is awesome. The graphics and music are charming, and it’s of that exceedingly rare breed - a soothing pinball game.

There are a couple of really smart decisions too. Firstly, the game is designed for each session to give you a good long run. It lights up the ball save feature pretty regularly, which eases the pressure up at regular intervals. Secondly, you have two objectives each game - to get as high a score as possible, and also to catch Pokemon which will be entered into your Pokédex.

This gives it a really nice sense of progression. Even if you’re not doing so well and you’re nowhere near hitting a high score, you still know you’re grabbing Pokemon to help fill your dex, so there’s still a sense of achievement and you don’t get into a cycle of quitting out and restarting. In fact, there’s no quit or restart option on the pause menu at all, which I think is interesting.

A really lovely game. I always enjoy digital pinball done well, and this is a great and distinctive example of the genre. Highly recommended.

Glad you like it. I'll get back to it at some point, although today I took my NGPC with us to the kiddy play center for some Capcom Cardfighters in between climbing and ball pooling.