(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.