Has buying retro died on Bordersdown?

[nakamura]

Interesting thread.

I don't buy anywhere near as much nowadays because I have most things I want. I am aiming to sell more of my stuff too as I tend to focus only on SNES, PS1 and PS2. I am also lucky in that most games I don't own that I want aren't especially expensive.
Changing to a PVM was a boon and it really brought me back into gaming after a lull last year but I do enjoy 2D stuff on a new TV with the right settings.

I'll keep a CRT until we have decent interlaced to progressive video converters. Mainly because I don't find the majority of games nowadays to be any better than many games I have on the PS1/2 era of consoles. Racing games, my favourite genre are mostly so dull in modern form.

[QualityChimp]

Do you still have WedSNESday, [MENTION=13193]nakamura[/MENTION]?

[Strider]

Do you still have WedSNESday, [MENTION=13193]nakamura[/MENTION]?

No, we've not done it for a while. Life getting in the way and all that

[speedlolita]

I always enjoy WedSuperFamicomday myself

[QualityChimp]

No, we've not done it for a while. Life getting in the way and all that

Shame, I loved those posts from you pair!

[Strider]

Shame, I loved those posts from you pair!

I'll have a word with Mart and see what we can do. I'm sure the terrible rendition of us singing along to Super Castlevania is still floating around the internet :P

[Tetsuo]

I prefer wave race on pal, as that I was what I played originally. The US version was too fast, and didn’t feel right to me.

Never heard that one before. You might be the only person in the world who likes PAL Wave Race 64, too.

I value authenticity (in general really, not just in videogames: censorship is another bugbear), and have always despised anything to the contrary. I distinctly remember feelings of melancholy when discovering Mario 64, F-Zero X, SFII etc. in their original, full-speed, full-screen glory on Japanese machines. The thought of so many wasted hours, that no amount of cognitive dissonance could take back.

[Asura]

I value authenticity (in general really, not just in videogames: censorship is another bugbear), and have always despised anything to the contrary. I distinctly remember feelings of melancholy when discovering Mario 64, F-Zero X, SFII etc. in their original, full-speed, full-screen glory on Japanese machines. The thought of so many wasted hours, that no amount of cognitive dissonance could take back.

I actually kinda understand this PAL thing; not with videogames as that rarely offers a reason for me to choose PAL.

However, despite the fact that I prefer anime subbed, I often watch 90s stuff dubbed; Patlabor, Macross Plus etc.

It's because that was how it was introduced to me back in the 90s, and it's heavily tied into my nostalgia for those movies.

[Team Andromeda]

I love Percy Pal in my younger days , I didn't have the 1st clue over 60 Hz and just loved the gaming on the Zx Spectrum and Master System; Speaking of which, I have to say the Pal Master System box art was (and is the best ever)


If I was to get back on Topic though.. I just feel imports are too easy now, there's nothing special at all in it now.Not like in the old days when I I used to think it was incredible that a system or game had come all the way from Japan, with the most stunning artwork on the box and months before the game or system would ship in Pal land


These days anyone can click and buy a game from Japan or America

[ZipZap]

On top, even though the CPU inside the PAL C64 runs slower than the NTSC CPU, it actually uses less clock cycles as a result, so you can get more done in the background.

The PAL C64 actually has more cycles per frame. NTSC C64s have a couple more cycles per line, but the PAL C64 has 312 lines, where as the NTSC only has 263 (I had to look the last one up ).

Each instruction requires a number of cycles.

Eg;
LDA #0
STA $D020

...will change the border colour to black and requires 2 cycles for the first line and 4 for the second.

Like you say, when utilised, this means that a lot of PAL software is still drawing a frame when an NTSC machine has moved on to the next one, but even the cycles per line will mess up anything that relies on accurate timing (and even fairly simple programs often rely on knowing exactly where the raster is a particular point).

[_SD_]

If I was to get back on Topic though.. I just feel imports are too easy now, there's nothing special at all in it now.Not like in the old days when I I used to think it was incredible that a system or game had come all the way from Japan, with the most stunning artwork on the box and months before the game or system would ship in Pal land


These days anyone can click and buy a game from Japan or America

Well it’s certainly a lot different to sending off postal orders (or getting your Mum to write a cheque) to random adverts in the back of Mean Machines or Super Play...

[Team Andromeda]

Well it’s certainly a lot different to sending off postal orders (or getting your Mum to write a cheque) to random adverts in the back of Mean Machines or Super Play...

Postal Orders those were the days lol. I too had to use my mum's credit card to buy my import games, way back in the day

[J0e Musashi]

I value authenticity (in general really, not just in videogames: censorship is another bugbear), and have always despised anything to the contrary. I distinctly remember feelings of melancholy when discovering Mario 64, F-Zero X, SFII etc. in their original, full-speed, full-screen glory on Japanese machines. The thought of so many wasted hours, that no amount of cognitive dissonance could take back.

Easily the MOST dramatic post I've ever read. How do you feel about Diet Coke?

[Atticus]

Thinking back to the Pal years I think ignorance might have been bliss. Discovering the ntsc difference was expensive and a bit obsessive.

[Leon Retro]

There are a bunch of reasons for borders on Amiga games:

It has always got on my nerves when Amiga games look like Lotus 2 and Continental Circus above. Big Run is virtually full screen and looks far nicer than the image only taking up around half the screen in some other racers.

The internal resolution of the NES is 256x240 - and most NES games run full screen. NTSC games for all sorts of consoles tended to use the full 4:3 frame. There were exceptions, but you usually get NTSC console games filling a 4:3 frame.

The typical huge borders you get in lots of Amiga games just doesn't make sense to me. Why are they so huge? It makes me think that lots of developers simply didn't bother to optimise their games to display full, or near full screen in PAL territories. Which would be strange seeing the Amiga was not popular in NTSC regions.

I still get a kick out of seeing full screen Amiga games, because they look so much nicer than games with huge black borders spoiling things.