Steven Pendleton

NES Contra can't be the best because Famicom Contra is better, but neither of them are the best anyway because Slap Fight MD exists.

That's part of why I said to get the PS5. 4K support still depends on the game, though. The other reasons are that the PS4 is over a decade old now and will almost certainly stop being supported in terms of both customer support from Sony and software before the PS5 and that the PS5 can sometimes run PS4 games significantly better than the PS4 and PS4 Pro can, even if the game didn't get a special PS5 patch or something and the PS5 simply has enough power to take advantage of an unlocked framerate that the PS4 struggles with. The PS5 really is the best PS4, even if it doesn't have 100% compatibility.

Oh yeah, Death Stranding was cool. I know some people really hated it, but if it works for you it's really good. It's an acquired taste, so no promises that you won't completely hate it.

Battle Garegga

It gets even more awkward when you realize Nintendo's games run better through emulation on other systems than on Nintendo's own hardware. What even is the point of those other systems anymore? Just play everything on PC.

This is a reminder that Sonic Mania does what Nintendon't (Probably) Guaranteed to piss off some fanboys, which makes it even better.

Obligatory "Sonic Mania is the single greatest game released in the past 15 years and EVERYONE REALLY REALLY REALLY NEEDS TO PLAY IT, PREFERABLY RIGHT THE HELL NOW!" I played it last week, and I played it two days ago, and I played it yesterday, and I think I'm going to go play it right now even though I'm sick and really need to sleep because fuck that, Sonic Mania is officially better than being healthy or whatever.

Hishouzame is moderately more difficult than the overseas versions. As far as I know, the only difference between Flying Shark and Sky Shark is the logo on the title screen.

Here, let me help you with some stuff. You can use runahead to reduce input lag; in theory, you can have lower input lag with runahead on an emulator than you can on a real PCB on a CRT. Runahead can introduce glitching of various kinds, however, and I have heard that setting it incorrectly can do some really weird stuff. M2 uses an optional input latency reduction for their ShotTriggers program, and this is most likely runahead. With the input latency reduction enabled, sometimes you get stuff like a shot coming out and then disappearing if you press the shot button for a very short duration of frames, but it's mostly good and there is basically no advantage to turning it off at all. What is the native refresh rate of the game as it runs in normal gameplay on the PCB, what is it actually running at here, and what is the refresh rate of the monitor? NTSC standard refresh rate is approximately 59.94Hz, but many arcade games and home consoles released prior to somewhere around the Saturn run at refresh rates that differ from this. Sometimes companies use the original PCB refresh rates, and in this case using a 59.94Hz monitor that does not have freesynch/VRR/whatever can cause stuttering, and this is possibly what happened in this case. Sometimes they just match it to 59.94Hz to get a smooth presentation, but for older games where game logic is dictated by the framerate, this will cause the game to run faster or more slowly than intended; this is part of why R-Types on the PS1 is more difficult than the arcade versions, as the games quite literally run about 10% faster on PS1 than the original designers intended. Sometimes the user is given the choice of using either the original refresh rate or 59.94Hz; ACA Thunder Dragon 2 does this, for example, but I don't think it's too common.

That's weird. There shouldn't be any sort of bus conflict from just running a normal cartridge game, but it says 120 MEGA on the back of the box, so maybe it's not normal, although I have no idea how they did that megabit size. Bank switching shouldn't cause any problems like that, should it? Just like with last time, I don't really see anything that couldn't be done in a regular 40 megabit cartridge. Honestly, the audio quality seems quite poor, but maybe that's just because I'm playing on a stock Nomad. It's past 0300 here now, which means it's WAY past time for me to go to sleep, especially since I have work today, but I'll set up my primary normal Mega Drive with the Mega-CD and Super 32X when I get back from work (which is going to be in like 20 hours lol. Yeah, I don't have typical work hours) and test it to see what happens.

I was thinking about this game maybe two days ago or so, and just now it finally showed up. Haven't even opened the shipping box yet, but I'll play it for a bit on the Nomad and see how it is.

Is it normal for the ROM chip stickers to say Red Fox instead of Dead Fox?

Use rank normal and 5 ships. Yes, this game gives you 5 stock by default. I don't remember anything about this game from when I played it several years ago. It's one of the most rare and most expensive games on the Mega Drive, but I'm sure someone can find a way to play it. Hopefully I don't forget to put my score up this time.

Uh I forgot to submit my score. Oops. I played this game a lot, and I almost cleared it, but I never put my score up. Too late now... time for Eliminate Down.

I should be clear about Sonic R; I don't think it's actually better designed than the other 3D games. By far better I mean that it is way more fun than those other games, even if the overall game design is not actually better than the others. Since games are toys and exist to be fun, I would consider a fun game that is poorly designed to be "better" than a boring game that is well-designed.

Sonic 3D Blast is far better than all of the actual 3D Sonic games aside from Sonic R. Game's programmer made a video that explains how he was able to fit it on the cartridge:

Yep. This is why red shot level 3 lets you more or less chill for the rest of the game once you get it. Can't do that on the arcade version, though.

Normally I'd vote PC Engine or Neo Geo just to throw those a vote, but I choose Mega Drive instead specifically because it will piss off the poll creator. Kirk can't hear you over the sound of his confirmation bias, and I imagine that probably backfired even when it was in his personal quarantine zone. Speaking of that, nobody should ever reply to Kirk topics, whether seriously or for the purpose of trolling. Having violated that rule by posting this, I'm going to put up the deuces myself and not come back. Enjoy your existences or whatever.

Flipped a coin to break the tie and got this. I REALLY suck at this game. Next up after this are Eliminate Down next month and finally the infamous Kyuukyoku Tiger, possibly the single most difficult game on the system, in December. Yeah, stay away from that evil game if you don't like suffering. It's fun, though. Just like Same! Same! Same! and Fire Shark, Tatsujin is slightly harder than Truxton and both versions are on the same cartridge and the game you play is determined by the hardware you run the game on. Kill stuff and pick up excess powerups to get points. I highly recommend playing the game at max speed, partially because it's easier that way, but also because the extra speed powerups will give you more points. Break the colored capsules near the end of some stages with the weapon of the same color to get a 1UP item. There is a famous glitch in this game where bombs deal damage while the game is paused. I won't say not to use it, especially because there is no way to prove that you didn't, but it does reduce the fun of the game somewhat. The music in the standard release is famously too fast due to a communications failure between Sega and Toaplan, but this was fixed for the Mega Drive Mini 2 release, so I highly recommend you play it there if you can. The ROM for that version is floating around out there somewhere, and it does work on real hardware, but this new ROM uses the busy behaviour thing to run the music, which results in the music not working properly if you play it on any real Mega Drive 2, Genesis 2, the MiSTer, and the Analogue Pocket. It might work on the Mega Sg, but I don't know. For now, the music in this new ROM only works properly on the Mega Drive Mini 2 or a Mega Drive/Genesis. Let's just do Score - round - stage this time to make it easy.

Yeah, probably shouldn't have posted a clear score on day 1 lol. Now I have to break the tie and figure out which game is next. I guess I will flip a coin. Coin flip says Tatsujin, so that's what it will be. Joy, a game that I want to enjoy but am ultra terrible at.

At this point I'd skip the PS4 entirely and get a PS5 instead.

Micomsoft is still around; you'd have to talk to them about it, but given that they put out the USB Cyber Stick themselves last year, they could probably make more XE-1APs if they wanted to.

The only thing that needs it more than this is the SuperGrafx + Arcade CD. Anyway, if you really want to do something cool, support the XE-1AP and make a game that has online multiplayer on real hardware somehow. The Demons of Asteborg dudes wanted to do this as part of the Kickstarter project, but they wanted a ridiculous amount of money for it, so it of course never happened.

Here is an unreleased game in one of my local arcades. It's in my other local arcade, too. Aside from this, this same arcade has Saidaioujou. There are only about 500 Saidaioujou PCBs known to exist. I have also seen and played Repulse. I myself have a very rare PCB as well. It's Kyuukyoku Tiger, which itself is quite common, but I have an extremely early version of the PCB that was produced in very small numbers before they changed the PCB to a slightly different version. It's apparently likely to be one of the first 300 Kyuukyoku Tiger PCBs made.

I never had a Game Boy, and I have only used one a single time when I borrowed my friend's for a single day to play his copy of Solar Striker. I already had a GBC at the time, so I just wanted to see how the original GB compared. I don't remember anything about my impressions of the original GB at all. I do want a Game Boy Light, however. That thing is really cool. A broken one costs ~10,000 yen now, and a functional one is in the 15,000~20,000 yen range, which is insanely expensive for what it is. That's the equivalent of spending $200 USD on a Game Boy, and I do mean a Game Boy, one which only plays Game Boy games, not GBC or GBA/SP or anything else. If they were cheaper, I'd totally do it, but at that price... perhaps someday if they become cheaper (not likely), but not now. They are really cool, though.