Algus

I love X (I actually like X-2 as well... Yeah....whatever Sailor Moon Final Fantasy is ok with me) but after all these years I have ~never~ been able to wrap my head around Blitzball. It seems cool and probably is for people who can get into it but whatever. What I liked about FFX? It actually made use of the ~entire~ party since you could switch battle participants on the fly and needed to cycle between them to exploit enemy weaknesses. I also liked how weapons only provided attributes. I had a ton of different swords for Auron and Tidus and switched between them as needed based on the enemies I fought. Lots of fun. I like Tidus too. Instead of some badass Dark Knight or whatever, you're just a dumb spoiled kid who's good at sports and not much else. He grows a lot from the whiny little punk he is early on. Man, now I want to start a binge of my own LOL.

Load times were a noticeable annoyance of Final Fantasy Anthology (FF5 and FF6) back in the day. FF Chronicles (FF4 and CT) notably improved load times but they were still bad vs playing on SNES (or just emulating which was perfected for SNES by the time Anthology hit the US) I've got a couple friends who were really into 12 too and surprised when I said I didn't like it. I found the combat system tedious and I disliked the characters. Ivalice as it was in FFT was much more interesting to me than in any of the other games set on that world. FF8 is where it went downhill for me. I actually love that game's visuals, music, and story but the gimmicky combat system with scaling enemies irritates the hell out of me. Try to play casual and enjoy getting stomped on by super-charged enemies. Plan a little bit and faceroll the whole game. Bleh.

Several of the earlier titles, including FF3 (the Japanese one) are available on iOS/Android and Steam. Square-Enix's pricing for these games is pretty outlandish though. I used to be a pretty big FF fan. My username is a character from an FF game and prior to 11 I had played them all, including the spinoffs. In those days you had to get the fan patches for the older ones that were Japan only. Series lost me after 11. I was not a big fan of 12 or 13 and have not played many of the spinoffs/etc that have come out since then. Some of the games are really memorable and some of them are fairly tedious. PC is a good place to be for playing them right now though as you can easily emulate the first nine and several of them are also legally available on Steam. I think FF will always have a special place in my heart but at 30 (har har I know Im a youngin here!) the series just doesn't have the same appeal to me as it did when I was 10. FF6 is still one of the most beautiful games I have ever played though.

Honestly I really only like games that have some degree of character customization because of things like this.

Delicious BBQ at my parents? We just toss a little chicken, sausage, and steak on the grill. Sort of a BBQ buffet. It is delicious.

Star Trek at its best far exceeds Star Wars for me. Unfortunately with that many movies and episodes there are entire seasons worth of stinkers. Take the good with the bad I guess. We really need a new Star Trek TV series.

Easter is actually my busiest weekend of the year but I have Mondays off, so Easter Monday is definitely the best for me! Saturday is the worst.

Nah, I've been pretty sick over a long period of time before too and the last thing on my mind was poking my head around the forums. Granted I am nowhere near the kind of contributor to this community that Ax was but I can totally understand him not coming around here.

Tried out Path of Exile the other day... Game is terrific, hard to believe it is entirely F2P. Anyone who contributes to this game through micro transactions makes me happy because it is awesome! To me it beats the pants off Diablo III. I'm still on my first character but I can already see how the leveling system could offer some awesome dicking around.

I never much cared for Windows 9x. I remember thinking the start menu was really cool and revolutionary but the main thing I remember that era for is compatibility issues with my games. I had stacks upon stacks of cheap DOS games at the time. and constantly fighting off malware from the internet (jesus my dad was a horndog, he had so much shit on our computer from his porn sites.) I actually had a a Compaq Presario laptop w/Win 95 and a 1 gig hard drive that I ended up using more than my desktop because Win 95 ran DOS games about 100% and was more powerful than any of the software I was gonna throw at it needed to be. I think I still have that laptop but the hard drive or mobo or something died out in it long ago. I didn't really start to develop a fondness for Windows until I got my XP machine after graduating High School. I finally had a computer powerful enough to run all the 9x era games I'd missed out on (both my 98 machines were shitty celerons that struggled on Starcraft and Diablo) and XP was in general pretty decent. Vista took care of that though LOL As far as nostalgia goes, I am ~VERY~ nostalgic for 90s era Macs, which I love. I used them heavily throughout school and System 7 runs most of my favorite office software. Much less of a hassle to use than Windows IMO.

Colecovision is awesome but it is kind of pissy to get it working right and sometimes you have to be careful as people will overpay. If you don't mind spending some time hunting I'm sure you can eventually find one through private trading here on AA. Genesis is a dime and dozen and many of the best games are also very cheap. it is about as enjoyable to collect for as the NES with many similar games (but better graphics obviously). The systems and carts are quite reliable.

Most emulators have "patch" aka Game Genie support so it is really only a matter of getting the proper codes from the internet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJF4VjTMeHI http://www.gamegenie.com/cheats/gamegenie/nes/ninja_gaiden.html

Man, the early greats on 360 like Condemned and F.E.A.R. are definitely retro now. I remember when PC F.E.A.R. was used as a benchmark test for video cards too. Could probably max it on my integrated chip if I wanted now.

I don't know if it's fair to call them hard but to me its games like Silver Surfer NES. I love shooters but jesus, finger fatigue will do me in long before anything else. I ~guess~ a turbo controller would fix that but it is kind of like cheating. I don't have the patience for most side scrollers so even games that many say aren't that hard, I'm like "screw this" Toughest two games I've stuck out for are probably Batman NES and Ninja Gaiden NES. Both are awesome games but I get bored of the same couple of levels over and over again and then I can't progress anymore.

I said I wouldn't buy one but I am a sucker for the Halo franchise. I am sure I will get weak once Halo 5 hits.

IIRC Gamestop was honoring Duke Nukem Forever preorders no matter how old they were but you had to have the proof of preorder on your end. Good luck keeping that thermal paper visible after all those years LOL

I love the Wii U but man is it goofy. They just need something that ships with a normal controller by default. I don't have to many games for it even though several have since come out that I wanted. More to do with migrating from consoles to computers for my gaming habits. Man oh man though, I'm a night manager at a local Wally World and Nintendo really packs 'em in for the midnight launches. Warcraft has them beat (one game vs a whole company's product lineup, hmmm maybe not a ringing endorsement). When that gold Mario Skylander or w/e hit the other day, we were having to beat them off with sticks. Also, I had to manage the whole thing because, you know, the salaried electronics manager couldn't be bothered to stay up for it.

RPG eh? You'll be going up against Dungeon, aka the most fun I have ever had with my 2600. I will gladly pay more if it includes things such as an old-timey hint book and maps and charts that show the early parts of the game. Just like Dungeon's beautiful poster map! Godspeed. I expect great things.

You will find this useful Summary: hobbyists have designed a circuit that fixes the audio in all models. Because the hobby community for Genesis is almost as awesome as the one for Atari. Just don't get a Genesis 3, it doesn't support RGB natively and isn't really compatible with the expansion devices. For Genesis 1, HDG version as well as others, you will only get stereo output from the headphone jack. I use one of these to deal with that issue. Cheap and effective.

If you're on a Mac, you need to look into OpenEmu. It is very easy to configure a USB controller with. I actually use a synced PS3 controller. I own some of these ATGames Genesis clones, specifically one of the older portables that takes an SD card. They are not ~bad~ and it is nice having all those classic Sega games out of the box (hell, that's about 80% of what you'd actually want to play right there) but the emulation is noticeably inferior to what is available on home computer. I can't imagine choosing the console over a nice computer setup where you can easily just torrent the entire US library and have it loaded in after a few minutes. If you must play with physical carts and go with a clone, get the RetroN 5 and pick up the Genesis 6-Pak as your first cart. (Do that if you get an actual Genesis too...it's awesome). Flash carts like EverDrive are pretty rad. They all work about as well as Harmony does on the Atari 2600. Just load your games to SD card and you are good to go. I wouldn't bother with that physical hardware though unless you plan to buy at least some games.

Well there are some kids that just aren't going to want to sit in front of a compiler all day and are going to have other interests. That's fine, not everyone needs be good at everything but even if a project like this has a really low return on investment (i.e. cost of providing equipment to everyone only generates a small pool of people who might not otherwise have become interested in the topic) it is still cool to see an organization, country, etc. do this. We've got to expose our kids to as much as we can. We don't know what will stick but man when they do take off with something, what an awesome thing.

Absolutely my favorite cheesybad horror franchise. I actually LIKE the NES game, which has a few minor annoyances but for the most part is pretty cool and ambitious given the limitations of the NES. I'll be keeping an eye on this one. It'll probably be one of those fun blast through in a few hours type games.

I really want to buy one of these for my Performa 637. I lurked around on eBay for quite awhile before I was able to find the right NIC for my old Mac. Right now I just ethernet it and FTP things over my home network. I've also toyed with the idea of finding an old Power PC Mac to use as a crossover and write floppies the old fashioned way but it seems a hassle to search for, buy, and then store old diskettes.

If you old people weren't so DAMN ENTHUSIASTIC about your ancient computers, I probably never would have gotten interested in them and given the 800 XL a spin. I'm an Apple guy but I vastly prefer Atari 8-bit to the Apple ][, which I actually did use as a kid. I'll be 30 in May though, so I guess I'll get to join some of you in the higher age bracket LOL

I need to give Shadowrun Online a spin. The P&P game has a great setting with a lot of interesting lore. The rules are decentish but I absolutely hate character creation. It's fine if everyone knows the system and is ready to go but really gets dragged out when trying to teach new people the game and showing them all the different things they can do. I really like how Returns and Chronicles simplified it and boiled it down to its core.