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

[Leon Retro]

Great shooter for 1989!

Well done. It's definitely a nice shooter for the era.

[importaku]

Great news... I'll be playing the Parodius Collection on my big screen.

Also, what is that 'vacuum tube' thing you have near the TV?

I tried using retroarch but it seemed to hate boku no natsu 4 as in certain screens it slowed down to single digits of framerate not sure if it's the emulator been crap or more likely my pc just not fast enough to run it properly. Used another emulator called ppsspp and it plays things perfectly although you do need to tweak the scaling settings and download some custom shaders as the built in ones are terrible. Scanlines for psp stuff isnt really accurate as they are not lines but dots, have found some excellent shaders that replicate the dots. It's a really polished emulator, im now amassing a load of games i never got to try on my original hardware. Funnily enough i have parodius collection it plays pretty great, never seen the original version of parodius before. It looks unlike the parodius da version of the arcade & console versions.

Been playing space invaders extreme as i have only played the superior ds version but the psp one is pretty good too. Took a screengrab so you can see how the lcd dots look but it looks better when the forum isnt crushing the pics down, clicking on the link will let you see the shader effect better.

https://i.imgur.com/Bh4Q9Th.jpg

Custom shader files can be found here in this thread of the ppsspp forum

https://forums.ppsspp.org/showthread.php?tid=6594&page=23

the ppsspp shader bundle is what you need, just unzip the folder and copy the files into the assets/shaders folder of the ppsspp emulator directory to enable them to be selected.

https://forums.ppsspp.org/attachment.php?aid=16286

As for the vacuume tube thing, it's a clock i made. Built it from a kit it was loads of fun to make but tested my soldering skills as there's quite a few tiny joints to do along with soldering the tubes to the boards they have a ton of tiny legs and the tubes are expensive so if you are not careful you can wreck them. Thankfully it turned out ok, been running non stop for years now.

[Leon Retro]

IScanlines for psp stuff isnt really accurate as they are not lines but dots, have found some excellent shaders that replicate the dots.

Yeah, the dots don't look good. I'll download the shader files.

Funnily enough i have parodius collection it plays pretty great, never seen the original version of parodius before. It looks unlike the parodius da version of the arcade & console versions.

It's also quite a bit more difficult than other Parodius games.

it's a clock i made.

It looks really cool. Can you buy them ready made?

[samanosuke]

I attempted to play KOTOR but my god is it a nightmare to run today. The Steam version crashes if you have frame buffer effects turned on. Soft shadows aren't selctable for some reason either. Even then some of the character models aren't rendered correctly. I tried running it on my old PC with a 6800GT but it ran like a dog there. No clue why, I remember it running well with an FX 5200.

In between all the downloading and installing I played some rounds of NES Open on the Switch. I've always loved NES golf games, they're very relaxing and this one's no exception.

Dude, you can get it on iPhone for a few quid. Runs great and you can play it on the crapper. What’s not to like?

[Ghost]

Just finished a run through of the original Star Fox after playing a bit of Star Fox Zero. I remember being blown away when the game first came out as it was unlike anything I had played before and I loved the character designs. The game still really holds up well and is fun to play, it also has one of the best soundtracks in a Nintendo game, the Armada track is in my top 5 favourite video game music.

Its strange that no developers have tried to emulate the Super FX chip look in their games, most indies are NES or SNES inspired graphically but I'd love to see some more games with the look of the original Star Fox, especially in HD at 60fps.

[HailMary]

Been playing through Eternal Darkness for theGamecube, but I can't get past the Great Guardian as Peter Jacob. I know how to beat it, but it's incredibly tedious with the wandering zombies. I rage quit it and might go back to it soon. I might stick on Crystal Chronicles as I've been wanting to re-play that for ages.

[Cepp]

I'm up to chapter 5 in Baldur's Gate having just reached the city after adventuring up and down the Sword Coast for a good while.

I feel like I've fallen in love with this series all over again over the past week or so. It really takes me back to when I first played it and my jaw just hit the floor. I'd only played JRPGs up until that point but this was just on another level entireley.

I'm playing a Fallen Ranger after a slight misshap near the start, possibly involving cold blooded murder. My party consists of Imoen, Minsc, Dynaheir, Branwen and Viconia . Viconia doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the party being Lawful Evil and all but she's cool and Clerics are pretty baddass in this game.

Dude, you can get it on iPhone for a few quid. Runs great and you can play it on the crapper. What’s not to like?

It's on mobile

It doesn't look too bad tbf especially on iPad but I'll hold off for now.

[wakka]

I began ploughing into Morrowind on Friday night, and ended up putting 4 or 5 hours into it. Really enjoying it - I'm playing the Xbox version on a One S, so I don't benefit from mods, but it runs terrifically well. 1080/60 and load times between rooms/the outdoors are a couple of seconds long.

I love TES, and after playing Oblivion and Skyrim very extensively in the past, the wait for a new game has begun to feel interminable. It's fantastic to have a brand new one to play. I did play Morrowind on release but it only ran at about 10fps on my PC, and I didn't really know what I was doing so didn't get far with it.

The only fly in the ointment currently is that sneaking is poorly implemented and quite buggy. It's a shame as I generally play a stealth-focused thief/rogue character - I came up with my own custom class for this, which I titled 'Grifter' - but there are plenty of upsides to balance that out. I'm very intrigued by the number of guilds this has versus the later games, and I LOVE the replacement of fast travel with Mark/Recall spells and Silt Striders.

I'm currently in the first proper city you get to, Balmora, doing quests for the Thieves Guild. Haven't ventured into the great outdoors yet, but I'm excited to play more of it.

I also secured a VGC/NM copy complete with the map on Ebay for £13, so that was nice.

[HailMary]

I began ploughing into Morrowind on Friday night, and ended up putting 4 or 5 hours into it. Really enjoying it - I'm playing the Xbox version on a One S, so I don't benefit from mods, but it runs terrifically well. 1080/60 and load times between rooms/the outdoors are a couple of seconds long.

I love TES, and after playing Oblivion and Skyrim very extensively in the past, the wait for a new game has begun to feel interminable. It's fantastic to have a brand new one to play. I did play Morrowind on release but it only ran at about 10fps on my PC, and I didn't really know what I was doing so didn't get far with it.

The only fly in the ointment currently is that sneaking is poorly implemented and quite buggy. It's a shame as I generally play a stealth-focused thief/rogue character - I came up with my own custom class for this, which I titled 'Grifter' - but there are plenty of upsides to balance that out. I'm very intrigued by the number of guilds this has versus the later games, and I LOVE the replacement of fast travel with Mark/Recall spells and Silt Striders.

I'm currently in the first proper city you get to, Balmora, doing quests for the Thieves Guild. Haven't ventured into the great outdoors yet, but I'm excited to play more of it.

I also secured a VGC/NM copy complete with the map on Ebay for £13, so that was nice.

Morrowind was my first TES, but never completed it. The 'invisible dice roll' mechanic of the combat made it a bit lackluster. They need to give it a proper HD remaster with the Skyrim skill tree and combat mechanic.

[wakka]

Sadly, they've said that will never happen, and I can kinda see why. The work required would be comparable to building an entirely new game.

I've not done a lot of the combat yet, but I'm OK with the dice rolling. It is what it is - I play D&D in real life, and Morrowind is very much digital D&D. I can see why a lot of people hate that/find it frustrating, but I actually find it quite interesting.

The idea behind Skyrim/Oblivion's move to more videogamey combat seemed to be based in large part on the idea that your skill at playing the game would govern how accurate/effective your attacks were. This is a good idea (the reason D&D features dice rolls is because it's a pen and paper game, so your real skill at manipulating an axe can't be measured!), but let down by how consistently poor the combat is in the games. I still love them to pieces, but melee is a joke compared to something like Dark Souls.

A big part of TES for me is 'living' the world. I'm really looking forward to doing more of that in Morrowind.

[importaku]

It looks really cool. Can you buy them ready made?

You can but when they are fully assembled they tend to cost a lot more. Be warned though they are not cheap things, even in kit form the one in my pic cost £130, you can get cheaper models but it depends on what style appeals to you. I do love the glow of it though plus on some like the one i have you can have it change colours as each hour passes.

[gamelife]

got the urge to play Mario 64 yesterday...and already up to 75 stars lol...might go for all 120 again

[fallenangle]

Loved Morrowind on the original Xbox, played the GOTYE with the Blood Moon and Tribunal expansion over about three years in around half a dozen months of dedicated sessions. I ended up putting somewhere between 500hrs and 1000hrs into it.

Balmora - my home town . Home base was the building you can buy close to the Silt Strider 'station. The game is so big there are still places, caves, temples, hideouts I'd barely explored.

The original Xbox version had plenty of glitches, particularly when the save file exceeded a certain limit; there are places it would freeze consistently and just down the road from Balmora to Fort Moon Moth I had this invisible large hole the where you could fall through the scenery into the sea despite it being an inland town.

Worst glitches: Silt Strider 'driver' at Balmora falls off the steps and apparently can't be recovered, rendering that station redundant. In my case during my very final visit to Balmora/Morrowind miraculously I actually found him walking on the road near the fort and had to lead him back, using spells, around the hole in the scenery. Replaced him where he should have been and that was actually my last act in the game.

One thing I did not like were the stupid number of Racers in some areas - fighting them got really old.

Game starts very slowly too and the supposedly 'real time' combat is as others have said very much mathematically calculated like a turn based RPG to the point of stupidity. Until you level up you can easily get killed by a rat even if you've hit it five times with an axe.

[Tetsuo]

got the urge to play Mario 64 yesterday...and already up to 75 stars lol...might go for all 120 again

I recently got a new stick for my N64 controller, so Super Mario 64 was the first port of call. Ended up getting all 120 stars over a few evenings last week, it's just so much fun choosing which stars to tackle, and coming up with new or different ways of getting them.

After that, I've done the same with GoldenEye. 00 Agent, 16:9 mode, to the end over a couple of evenings. It's still so well paced - I love how you can approach the stages in any way you like: stealthy with a pistol so no guards are alerted, or go running around with machine guns and explosives.

[Cepp]

I began ploughing into Morrowind on Friday night, and ended up putting 4 or 5 hours into it. Really enjoying it - I'm playing the Xbox version on a One S, so I don't benefit from mods, but it runs terrifically well. 1080/60 and load times between rooms/the outdoors are a couple of seconds long.

I love TES, and after playing Oblivion and Skyrim very extensively in the past, the wait for a new game has begun to feel interminable. It's fantastic to have a brand new one to play. I did play Morrowind on release but it only ran at about 10fps on my PC, and I didn't really know what I was doing so didn't get far with it.

The only fly in the ointment currently is that sneaking is poorly implemented and quite buggy. It's a shame as I generally play a stealth-focused thief/rogue character - I came up with my own custom class for this, which I titled 'Grifter' - but there are plenty of upsides to balance that out. I'm very intrigued by the number of guilds this has versus the later games, and I LOVE the replacement of fast travel with Mark/Recall spells and Silt Striders.

I'm currently in the first proper city you get to, Balmora, doing quests for the Thieves Guild. Haven't ventured into the great outdoors yet, but I'm excited to play more of it.

I also secured a VGC/NM copy complete with the map on Ebay for £13, so that was nice.

The work Microsoft have put into backwards compatability this generation is nothing short of amazing, I'm always impressed by it.