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

[fallenangle]

Why is the English dialogue so often clunky just as if it has been translated from Japanese? A subtle joke to make it sound like a Japanese made RPG?

French Canadian perhaps? That would explain it. No, Bioware is based in Edmonton. Alberta.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Empire#Writing

From the wiki: "Dialogue was intended to blend BioWare's established writing style with the game's Eastern influences."

So they invented a new, fantasy Chinese language used in the game but the English translation sounds and is awkward at times - odd, I wonder now if it is deliberate.

[wakka]

Just followed your link - it's an interesting approach that they took:

While much of the script is in English, many characters in the game speak Tho Fan, a 2,500-word Asian-style constructed language translated for players using English subtitles.[20][21] Similar to the development of the Elvish languages for The Lord of the Rings, Tho Fan was developed to add to the personality, realism and immersion of to the setting of Jade Empire. The team chose not to use a real-world Asian language as Jade Empire was set in a fantasy world despite its Asian influence, with Tho Fan being used to add a level of exoticism for players.

I haven't played the game but I like the sound of what they were going for there. Kind of reminds me of Gravity Rush, which also featured a made-up language.

[samanosuke]

So they invented a new, fantasy Chinese language used in the game but the English translation sounds and is awkward at times - odd, I wonder now if it is deliberate.

[Baseley09]

Bought Ridge Racers 2 for PSP and sods law can't find the system (I think I have 2, god knows). In angst installed the emulator on Shield and Jesus christ it's mint. Upscaled and jitter free, sound pumping on the surrounds

[wakka]

Nice. What an excellent game. I really want to get back into that actually, I’m gonna grab it for PSP. Or I wonder if it’s available on the Vita store...?

[Baseley09]

It is incredible if you're an RR fan, I rinsed the life out of RR7 in its day and feels quite close to that.

[Hirst]

I was in my storage lockup looking for something work-related when I chanced upon the Scart cable for my original Xbox, which has been sat around gathering dust since... mid-2000s? Anyway I plugged it in to see what happened, expecting it likely to be dead from capacitor failure.




Other than the DVD drive tray being a bit stuck at first and needing a bit of help initially, it fired up lovely and I had a good go on The Warriors (best version) and Burnout 3. Thinking I'll order some component video leads and have a general tinker about with it. Need to remove the time bomb clock capacitor for a start, but considering the replacement hard drive and modding options available today. I've still got a dozen or so games for it, but I'm not confident the disc media will keep working forever.

[BigDeadFreak]

Playing through Nights Into Dreams and I just can't get into it. I beat the first six levels and I know I need to get a C grade in three of them per character to start the final stage, and its all about points and such, but its just not fun.

The boss music's pretty good though.

It took me ages to get into Nights. I the game just felt pointless and a bit too easy. Once I got my head round the fact that's it's a game that you are supposed to play rather than win it started to make much more sense.

Unfortunately, the remake removed the analogue control and made it digital. This seems completely counterintuitive as the original came with an analogue controller and that was a major selling point of the game. I tried it on the Xbox 360 and it just wasn't the same.

[Wools]

Bought Ridge Racers 2 for PSP and sods law can't find the system (I think I have 2, god knows). In angst installed the emulator on Shield and Jesus christ it's mint. Upscaled and jitter free, sound pumping on the surrounds

I had no idea that the PSP was emulated so well!

Thanks for the heads up, I'm just downloading the Emaulator and game now. Can't wait to revisit this and WipEout Pure.

[gunrock]

Love the typo 'Emaulator' - that's what a lot of bad emulators do, maul the experience.

[gunrock]

[MENTION=7652]Hirst[/MENTION]: I've been screwing around with my Xboxes recently, I had a drive swap and TSOP mod that was flaky - finally worked out it was iND-bios attempting to load its config from the disk before the disk had properly spun up and finished setting up the partition table. Spent ages looking at it, even wrote some investigatory code to help diagnose the issue.

Changed to another bios Evox M8 plus- works fine now. Occasionally get a drive lockup in XBMC4XBOX file manager - only happens after a cold boot.

Either my drive (Toshiba) spins up really slow or the SATA/Pata bridge is a bit crud (shouldn't be, its a Startech one).

[fallenangle]

Lots of people on original Xbox forums report all sorts of random issues with even recommended SATA/IDE adapters like the Startech.

[phillv85]

Been playing K-1 GP 2000 on PS1 this afternoon. I think it’s my favourite K-1 game they made including the PS2 games. So many modes and all the great fighters.

[Cepp]

Been playing K-1 GP 2000 on PS1 this afternoon. I think it’s my favourite K-1 game they made including the PS2 games. So many modes and all the great fighters.

Just checking YouTube videos and it looks pretty fun!

I started Colony Wars tonight. There's some rough frame drops I wasn't expecting and only being able to save every three missions is rough. It's really easy for your team mates to turn on you when you accidently fire on them as well. The analogue controls work nice though and overall its been fun so far.

I'm in a space/flight sim mood at the moment. I've got the three Colony Wars games plus Omega Boost to go. I really want the PSX Ace Combat games as well.

[fallenangle]

Try to get the English translation patched Jap version of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere.

The PAL and US NTSC versions of the game are a travesty in terms of the story elements which were unceremoniously excluded and apparently 16 of the original 52 missions are missing too.

https://www.dualshockers.com/ace-combat-3-fan-translation-released-can-finally-experience-story-cut-localization/

Colony Wars: Vengeance was the first game I ever played on the PS and a big motivation to buy it. Bit of a mistake getting so excited about that as a complete noob gamer at the time - rock hard (still is) and the alluring FMV that had attracted me was nothing like the actually gameplay. The branching mission tree means there are still ones I've probably never beaten or even seen.

Played Colony Wars: Red Sun later and the original game too. The latter I've had trouble with motivating myself to play - the graphics were of their time and in an ambitious outer space set game series like this the compromises and failings, like the the short draw distances in particular, for me, are hard to take now.

Give me a game like Descent or Forsaken with small tighter 'indoors' levels in preference.