NE146
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Posts posted by NE146
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15 hours ago, Reaperman said:
With all the Analogue and MiSTer talk surrounding N64, I've been playing this thing. I've been buying all the analog systems lately so I'm sure I'll keep that trend going--they still owe me my last two orders.
Today's N64 adventure was tackling F-Zero X, completing the lowest tier of jack and queen cups.
This is probably more time than I've previously spent on this game, even though it does exactly what I keep saying I want racers to do.
I usually get distracted by other racers after less than one cup.
I went 'back' to f-zero x after getting my rear royally handed to me by F-Zero X Climax--which is how playing that always goes for me
'makes sense, I clearly haven't put in the time yet, despite Climax being the subject of probably half of my posts in this thread.
I wish there was a beetle adventure racing hack that lets me save to controller pak #2.
that's another n64 racer I generally neglect, and starting it up again today I was instantly greeted with that reminder why
Hey, I've been playing N64 as of late and in particular F-Zero X too. Just last night even. I got the N64 with S-Video output to a Retrotink 5X and it turns out I don't like it with F-Zero.. It gives the graininess to the tracks and the movement kind of gets confusing. I'm sure there are 'tweaks' you can do to the retrotink but I don't have the patience for that tbh.. I was just thinking I'll move the N64 back to the CRT over composite and call it a day. THEN all the games by default would look exactly how it should: Nicely blurred!
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Yeah np.. I guess just to be clear, as an example:
1) If you start on left side of the very bottom corridor, then push right, pacman will start moving to the right.
2) Then quickly "tap" up (push up for a moment then let go)
a) In your version, once he passes the first upward corridor, he will go into it, even though you're not touching the controls.
b) In the arcade game pacman will still continue to the right until he reaches the dead end on the bottom right side of the corridor (he then faces upward but remains at a stop)
Not too huge a deal at the end of the day 😛 I think it's a great job as it is tbh!
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Looks and plays very nice. Just one observation: If the intent is to match the arcade game as much as possible (I'm not sure if it is), then the controls don't exactly match.
e.g. if you let go of the keys and "tap" a perpendicular direction while going down a path, your pacman will automatically take in the next available passage in that tapped direction. In the arcade game if you do the same thing, Pacman will not take the next turn but instead reach the end of the tunnel and simply face the tapped direction.. if that makes any sense.
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Wow I had no idea there were different version of the game with varying difficulty (bug notwithstanding). I'll have to check it out
On that note.. speaking of difficulty another one that always bugged me was 5200 Super Pac-Man where the blue-time of the ghosts on all the versions I've tried was way shorter than it's supposed to be. Did anyone ever get around to hacking that to be fixed? I seem to remember someone doing it but my memory is getting pretty bad
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I probably would have loved to but I was only in middle school / high school when the 2600/5200 faded away and when the Famicom/NES eventually showed up at retail. So my personal income = a big fat ZERO
And no way my parents would know where to start to buy a computer at the time.
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I might be totally off on this but I recall Berzerk and Phoenix coming out pretty well after Pac-Man gave us shellshock lol. But yes, Atari definitely hit their stride when it came to arcade ports after Pac-Man. Most everything from them after that seemed pretty decent whether it was Vanguard, Phoenix, Berzerk, Ms. Pac, Moon Patrol, Joust, Dig-Dug, Pengo, whatever. (and of course the much later games like Jr. Pac and Stargate). the games were all VCS'-ized/downgraded but there was definitely an effort to capture the arcade game in at least some way.
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21 minutes ago, BassGuitari said:
IIRC the optimum display with Space War is to dial the color saturation on the TV all the way off (or use a B/W TV), but leave the Color-B/W switch on the game system set to "Color." "B/W" mode yields a light gray background that (IMO) doesn't make much more sense than the astroturf green, but I suppose it's easier to just accept the green (or light gray) as a quirky design choice than fiddle with settings on the TV.
lol well yes! I remember what we would do is turn down the brightness a ton which made the background turn black, then totally jack up the color to get the ships super saturated. Then everything would have tracers as they flew around the screen... it was great
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Yeah I like Analogue, but I'm not all that excited about N64. I was an early adopter buying the system 1st day of launch, purchased games for it regularly, and really did enjoy it in its time. But as it is now, I've come to realize it's not exactly a library I find myself wanting to go back and play very often. Others may vary of course.
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1 minute ago, davyK said:
Atari had a rule at the time that only space games could have a black background. Madness I know - they had hangups about the use of colour. Frye's problem was the 4K limit.
Unless it's Space War! I remember on the horribly adjusted TV I used to have when I was a kid, the game basically made you feel like you were flying around a golf course.
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4 hours ago, Zonie said:
Here's a thought. What would everyone think if the original Frye Pac Man was changed only slightly to have a black background and blue maze as the ONLY changes? Has it been done? Is anyone here capable of making that change as I presume it may be as simple as changing two register values? I've never coded for the 2600 otherwise, I'd probably try it. Just curious how much less annoying the game would be with better colors.
it's been done a few times by various folks.
The most crazy one being Nukey Shay's Pacman8k where he just kept going and going to mod the game until it had intermissions and everything while still keeping the 2600 maze..
Re: whether 2600 Pacman made you "feel" like you were playing a home VCS version of the arcade game or not, the most earnest embodiment of what we were all hoping for when it came to "a Pac-Man for the Atari" back in the day, is I think, Raindog's 1999 hack of Ms. Pacman. i.e. Not much modern frills added.. simply altering the maze, etc. to change it to the game as it was, to Pacman. Seeing how the Ms.Pac came out around 1983(?) for the VCS it's not far fetched to think of the same type of arcade closeness for Pac-man in that same timeframe on our 2600s.
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Pretty interested in trying out the Saturn core except it seems like there's still a few hoops (e.g. RAM can be finicky, etc.) as well as the task of converting all my bin/cues which I use for the MODE on a regular Saturn, to CHD format for better access. It might take me a while to get around to it.
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Geeze counting by the amount of downloads that original link had.. Think this forum came up in a few google searches for Odyssey 2 roms?
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Yeah I was fully familiar with arcade Defender and I remember when I first tried the 2600 version, you could feel there was definitely an effort at trying to bring the arcade game home to the VCS. It ended up being one of my favorite games to play for some time.
Pac-Man on the other hand, I've NEVER said it was a bad game or even that I "hated" it (I did not, and played it a ton), what it was, was a big shock how much it failed to bring home any essence of the arcade game.. unlike Defender above for example. Or Missile Command, or even Crystal Castles! None of those will fool anyone as being the arcade versions, but we all knew they were the arcade games scaled down for home play on the VCS. At a time when the arcade games were the kings of the video game world, we all liked the home ports to try and get a little of that excitement for each of those games in the comfort of your home. You never got that feeling at all from Pac-Man though.
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8 hours ago, Yakumo1975 said:
Japan has the right idea for these minis. Quality finger exercise on the way.
Well good they're doing it, and with the official tunes and mapping because the Tiny Arcade DDR my kid has now is a piece of crap.
It actually runs ok I guess, but the songs are too slow with zero challenge.
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How does the composite look? When I first got my MiSTer 3 years ago, all I wanted from it was composite output.. i.e. basically how we rolled with most 8-16 bit consoles during their time. But it turned out to be not easy to do at all.. so I gave up on the idea.
Eventually I went hunting for a CRT that accepted component (since all of mine were cheapo consumer ones). I found some in a junkyard eventually and turns out, I really liked how it looks. Sure it's not PVM level but man it still looks great. So while I'm probably sticking with that, I'm still curious though how the composite is out of the MiSTer.
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Emulators + Save States =
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I believe the Super Gameboy Core allows you to run the cart.. and if it's a flashcart, then so be it, same as if you were plugging an Everdrive into a Super Gameboy.
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On 9/7/2023 at 9:24 AM, Video said:
Wait, analog can do SGB mode? I'm definitely going to try donkey Kong this weekend. I was always bummed the probably nicest looking SGB game gets dumbed down to a redish brown grayscale on everything else. For a game that topped out at 16 colors, I never understood why it wasn't in color on, well, color handhelds lol.
Yes it can do SGB and you can get that particular palette and border that way. However it's ALSO worth noting that Donkey Kong is one of the 40+ or so 1st party Nintendo games that has an "Assigned Palette Configuration" when played on an original GBC that gets you the similar custom palette. To get those colors (e.g. the red girders in the 1st two pics below) the only option for the moment is to play it in the OpenFPGA cores.
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5 hours ago, Video said:
Um, the first image is the green blue option. If it was solid color it would be ok, but the weird scan lines thing gust doesn't "do it" for me. Of course, color of games could be an issue, as the handful of games I played were reversed color, like battlezone, which I love. It magnifies the terribleness of the green blue setup I assume because of the weird flickering it does.
That's the thing.. GB/GBC is one of the things the Pocket does the best. Between the Analogue GB/GBC Core, the OpenFPGA GB/GBC Core, and the Super Gameboy Core, there's actually an extensive amount of options when it comes to available palettes. And if you're talking Battlezone that gives you even more options since it's SGB Enhanced!
e.g.
1) If you're running the Pocket GB core (i.e. from the cart slot) sure you get the "green blue" option, but you can also get the GB Lite, GB Pocket (pretty much grayscale), and also the pinball matrix option which works pretty well for the game.
2). If you run Pocket GBC mode.. you get the game in color which also removes the pixel simulation
2b) You can also get a slightly different color look (no pic taken) if you load up the rom in the OpenFPGA GB/GBC core.. which uses a particular bios from a company that starts with N. The openFPGA core also allows all the GBC Palette combos that you can do on a regular GBC
3) Or you can load up the SGB Core and play it with a border.. and other colors resembling the arcade version.
Plenty of options
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14 minutes ago, madman said:
I agree on the GB displays being very nice, mine was originally recognizing GB games as GBC so I was a little confused I was seeing the old school spinach display option, had to force the Pocket into GB mode. This was from an Everdrive BTW, the one original GB cart I could find was detected properly.
Yes.. with the flashcarts it basically recognizes them as GBC carts, so you do have to force into GB mode if you want the Gameboy display modes.
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14 hours ago, Video said:
GB, uh, not so much. That one I did adjust to a true grayscale. The green blue it uses native is just nasty lol.
Hrm? Gameboy is one of the best looking things on the Pocket!
Especially with the DMG/GB Pocket/GB Lite display simulations. What's this green blue native you're talking about?
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1 hour ago, roots.genoa said:
I don't pirate stuff because I don't like being overwhelmed with fullsets and spend an hour deciding which game to play, then realizing I don't have the time to play it anymore.
Yeah man that syndrome hit me hard once upon a time and took a while to break out of it. When I got a CD burner and was able to burn PSX games, I found myself with spindles of hundreds of games and barely playing anything. And that state of paralyzation continued for years especially with emulation, etc. and after a decade+ I thought about it and realized I really hadn't played anything of note. lol
So eventually (not too long ago actually) I tried to go back to the mindset of "One game at a time".. just like it was when I could only afford to purchase one game at a time and got good, or simply finished it (e.g. NES Ninja Gaiden, or SMS Phantasy Star). Or for today "One game at a time per system". So I choose a game on a console, I try to stick with it when I play that console until it is finished, or at least until I've had enough. It requires a little discipline to keep going back to the same game again and again for a period of time, but at the end of the day I don't torture myself. If a game is a dud, I move on. Overall though I'd say I'm much more happier enjoying gaming this way.. forcing the focus on single games just as I used to when it was the only option I had.
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7 hours ago, roots.genoa said:
To be honest, I still have to download any third party core (except a few ones at the beginning of OpenFPGA, the Pong and SpaceWar ones)... I applaud the work of the community but I'm not sure I trust them enough to produce flawless cores, especially since they usually lack the proper documentation to do so.
Trust as in there's a chance they may brick your Pocket? My assumption is that can't happen...but regardless, those cores are almost the entire value and attraction of the Pocket for me. Not even mentioning the arcade and handheld cores, to just sit there and have the lion's share of SNES, GEN, TG16, NEO-GEO, NES, SMS, 2600, 7800, Colecovision, etc. console libraries all in the palm of your hand with an awesome screen and (mostly) everything runs as expected is what it's all about.
The ONE drawback to me (sometimes) is.... well it's not software emulation. (lol) Occasionally I do prefer emulation for easy save states (although some Pocket cores support them), and more importantly.. REWIND.
I recently got all the endings in GEN - Contra Hard Corps on the Switch thanks to save states + rewind. I could probably never finish that on the Pocket even with the Jap/hacked versions that make it easier.
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What's your journey with gaming been like?
in Atari General
Posted
Being old,
I first saw EM arcade games where my dad had to hold me up to play. That led to occasionally playing b&w games & Pinballs in the 70's.. which eventually lead to my total obsession and addiction to Space Invaders (and video games) when I was in elementary school.. so I'm pretty happy to have basically been a witness to the evolution of video games, both arcade and at-home ever since.
In the early 80s when arcade games were king, my family would travel to Japan or Hawaii during the summers at least every year or other for vacation or whatnot (since both are non-stop plane rides from Guam), so I feel very fortunate to have experienced the Japanese arcades of the early 80's and 90s, as well as the golden age of arcade games in the US/Hawaii. As time went on, the Japanese arcades came to a point where they seemed to never end and you would walk from one building to another up and down the block and it was constant arcade machines. They don't have that anymore so I'm pretty happy I got to experience that in its heyday. Eventually when home machines started getting much better I latched onto nearly every generation (skipping some like Neo Geo), and that's continued to this day and that's about it!