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

[dvdx2]

I didn't play very much, however I did clean out almost 24 years worth of gunk from inside my PVM. It's squeaky clean now. Finally sorted out a slight tilt with a yoke adjustment, too. Perfect geometry.

this the 14" BVM , Dave?

[dataDave]

this the 14" BVM , Dave?

Nah mate, the BVM-14M4 is still in the flight case. Still looking for a replacement power supply board for it. If you ever come across any borked 14" screens that at least switch on do please let me know!

I'm getting quite handy with these things now. I reckon I can carry out a re-cap when need be.

[Strider]

All this talk of PVMs is reminding me of my monitor that arcade club couldn't fix

Anyway, I've started playing Mystical Ninja starring Goemon and it's great fun. Never experienced it back in the day and it's a lot of fun. It's not always clear where you're supposed to go next, but the variety of it is pretty impressive. Just done my first impact battle and took out the dragon.

[Leon Retro]

Anyway, I've started playing Mystical Ninja starring Goemon and it's great fun.

A really nice alternative to Mario 64. It manages to retain lots of the Goemon charm found in the previous SFC games. The colourful game world is a joy to explore. Now I feel like going back to it.

[Strider]

A really nice alternative to Mario 64. It manages to retain lots of the Goemon charm found in the previous SFC games. The colourful game world is a joy to explore. Now I feel like going back to it.

Yeah, agreed. I've not played the later SNES games but I have watched videos and it's excellent how the Impact sections have been added. It's not always clear where you need to go but I am really enjoying it. Whether it's worth 120 quid is another matter.

[Leon Retro]

Whether it's worth 120 quid is another matter.

£120 It should be around £30-40, but the retro market is bonkers at the moment.

[Strider]

£120 It should be around £30-40, but the retro market is bonkers at the moment.

Well of course, but unfortunately that's not the case if you're after NTSC US games. They're typically double the price of their PAL counterparts.

[importaku]

Put a few hours into Momotarou densetsu on the teeny tiny PSone as i was in the mood for some very oldschool RPG fun, first impressions have been good so far it has a charming artstyle unlike a lot of RPG games from the 8-32 bit era that pretty much all look and feel the same which is one of the reasons i really don't play many retro RPG games as they can be pretty dull. This one however has the same artist who did the Momotarou dentetsu series of board games very cartoony and light, a lot of kanji in it though and it's pretty hard going trying to work everything out but i'm getting there.

Amusingly i recruited a yellow turd in the first village who wanted to accompany me on my adventures, he doesn't do much fighting but every so often he will double the yen dropped when you win a battle so he's useful to have around. It very loosely follows the traditional kids story of Momotarou but i have yet to find any of my animal sidekicks to come with me in the oni ass kicking voyage. Managed to free the animal village from the demon in the hills so they could hold the fire festival and just recently went to get a mouse near the river an onigiri so he would let me into the tunnels under the river where they all live in a pretty run down looking mouse village so i can get through the other side but i'm slowly levelling up as i have a feeling this game isn't one you can power your way through you don't get much yen from battling and things are expensive however the battling isn't too harsh although the encounter rate is lol, you can sometimes not even walk another step and be flung into another battle but i have amusingly discovered once you become stronger the enemies will crap themselves and run off before you even get to hit them but you will get all the spoils from winning the battle so it speeds things up with levelling which is kind of a nice touch.

The enemies keep dropping cards but i have no idea what they are for yet as i can't find a menu to look at them and they don't appear in any options i can see so far. Did kick an old mans ass in a hut out of the way and for winning the battle he taught me some jutsu which i'm guessing act like spells in this game. Have yet to try it out in battle. So far i'm enjoying myself, although i have a feeling i'll have to play it in small blocks as it's not one i can play for marathon sessions as i need to be in the mood for RPG gaming.

[Cepp]

Cloud Master is so brutally hard when you lose your powerups. I sleptwalked my way to round 3, died and never recovered.

Gorgeous game on SMS though.

[Cepp]

Beat Seal of Evil whcih is about 20 hours too long. I really should have stopped but I'd already invested so much time and I kept expecting it to end but it just wouldn't

The last two chapters are so combat heavy and filled with enemies that hit, run and heal, they aren't fun to fight. It's a shame because the games has gorgeous 2D bitmaps and character models, great music and it's just cool to have an RPG with a Wuxia setting. It prompted me to start reading up on Pangu, Chi You, The Yellow Emperor and the Baiyu people.

[Cepp]

Man, I was playing Ultima 3 on my NES, turned off the system to get rid of some graphical corruption and it wiped my save!

The manual does state you should hold reset while turning the power off like a lot of NES games but I've never done this and never had any issues. The cart still had old saves from the previous owner so the battery should be fine.

It wasn't too far but still...

[Atticus]

Powered up the Pie over the weekend.

First up was one of my favourite Mega Drive games: Sub-Terranea. Still brilliant.



Then me and one of the boys took turns on Neo Driftout to see who could get furthest on one credit ...



... before enjoying some 2-player beat-up action on a few Capcom greats including AvP

[fallenangle]

Decided to do original Xbox COD2: Big Red One as I felt the need to do another WW2 FPS.

A bit disappointing so far TBH.

Compared to XB360 COD2 it is a very different type of game almost harking back to previous PS generation FPS like Medal Of Honor/MOH Underground in its rigid linearity. Compared to Xbox Return To Castle Wolfenstein ToW which I replayed again last year and thoroughly enjoyed it is thin stuff.

Putting it up against what I would claim are amongst the two best console FPS of the original Xbox generation the two Brothers In Arms games it looks even worse in almost every respect. Those are squad based with tactical control over up to six characters in two teams but the set up in COD2 BRO is practically identical except you have no control over your dumb, almost indestructible and useless platoon section.

[Cepp]

Like an idiot I fell asleep at 6pm and woke up at 10:30pm so I'm probably going to be wide awake for the rest of the night.

I've been watching a bit of Game Centre CX and saw the Russia 2 hour special, so now I'm making my way through Ice Climbers which is fun, depite the wacky controls.

[samanosuke]

Unsurprisingly with this lockdown I’ve had a chance to play quite a bit...

Final Fantasy III/VI (SNES) - a game I really should have played through by now but never got round to it. I have the original cart and strange as it sounds had an aversion to playing it as, if I completed it, that would be that, and it’d no longer there waiting to be played. I know I’m weird. Anyway, fook it, that (metaphorical) rainy day has arrived and I’m loving every minute of it. Just done the opera scene and it just gets better and better. Beats the crap out of VII which is generally regarded as the high water mark of the series.

Space Adventure Cobra (Mega CD) - yes, it’s very linear, almost to the point it’s difficult to classify as a game and yes, the storyline isn’t all that which, for a visual novel, is criminal. But as an acquaintance of mine often says, it’s chewing gum for the eyes. An easy, non-stressful play. From memory (I haven’t played/finished it in about ten years) I think I’m about half way through having just finished Hebda City. My motivation to play it? It’s worth a fortune these days so hard to justify still owning it when it just sits on my shelf. Yes, more of my weirdness. I should just sell it. I mean, at the end of the day it’s toilet and there are mugs out there willing to pay obscene money for trash...

Cosmic Fantasy 2 (PC Engine) - I know, right? Two RPGs on the go at once. Normally I’d never do this (like reading two books on the go) but my missus has decided it’d be great to get me the PCE Mini I bought for Christmas so I don’t get to play it just yet. And hampering for some PCE action I decided to fire this up in my Wiz. Absolutely loving it so far and can’t believe it’s been overlooked by me up until now having only really considered the Ys games as worthwhile (English translated) RPGs on the system.

Star Cruiser (Megadrive) - playing through the translated game on my Wiz. An open world game with RPG elements, fully 3D space battles and FPS sections ON A MEGADRIVE? Yes the FPS dips into single figures but this game is as compelling as it is impressive. It has something almost Phantasy Star-esque about it, I think it’s the environments, and I would highly recommend it to any Megadrive fans who are into sci-fi, adventure RPGs, and have a hankering for something for a little more depth than its typical library of shmups, arcade conversions and more shmups.