Steven Pendleton

Something that uses the power of the MD, CD, and 32X together to push the limits of what that combination can do as far as possible while still maintaining an unbroken 59.92 FPS at all times.

There's a new Saturn game that I missed somehow?

PC Engine composite is pretty good, but other than that, S-video or better for everything is the way to do it. Fortunately, I have little interest in consoles that don't have native RGB out, although this is just a coincidence, and the Wondermega is an exception. There are officially licensed S-video/RGB boxes: the Micomsoft XMD series. Not sure how good they are, but they are pretty easy to find.

Buy arcade PCBs. They will be much cheaper here than they are overseas due to the exchange rate rendering our money practically worthless right now. Assuming your native currency is USD, you get everything in the entire country at basically 50% off. It's insane. I'll tell you the same stuff that I tell everyone else: If you have a goal of buying old games, stay the fuck away from Akiba and Nakano Broadway unless you want to be ripped off. These places are tourist traps, especially Akiba, with Mandarake being the single worst store in the town. Never ever go to Mandarake in Akiba unless you absolutely can't find what you are looking for anywhere else because you'll find the same stuff but cheaper and in better condition basically anywhere else. Akiba is also super devoid of old console stuff right now because a bunch of foreigners came and cleared the place out once the travel restrictions lifted. You can still find enthusiast-level stuff like arcade PCBs and supplies, X68000s, maybe an FM Towns (even the Marty that was in Surugaya for several years is gone, amazingly) and other stuff like that, but consoles and a lot of the rare console games are largely gone and a lot of those that remain had their prices increased. Go to Mikado (Takadanobaba is better than Ikebukuro). Go to Taito Hey. Go to Asakusa (yeah, it's a little bit of a tourist trap type of place, but it's still cool). Go to Tokyo Tower and/or Skytree, but stay far away from the observation decks if you are afraid of heights (you probably won't be able to see Mt. Fuji due to the pollution anyway). Go to Inokashira Park. Stay away from Roppongi; that place is a shithole and the police there like to search foreigners without a search warrant even though that is illegal because they know they can get away with it and there are legal loopholes that let them do it anyway even if you do resist. If you are not a train otaku who wants to go to the busiest train station in the world, stay away from Shinjuku Station because that place is stupidly huge and confusing.

SuperGrafx

I will not go back to that section of the forum until that useless jackass gets banned, and everyone else should do the same. Once he does, I will start a party thread... in the Mega Drive/Genesis section

Even though it's through backwards compatibility, PS5 has all of the M2 ShotTriggers games and all of the Arcade Archives games except the Nintendo ones. Xbox doesn't. PS5 wins.

I played it just now and cleared it on my first attempt. I forgot that you get 1,000,000 points from clearing the game. I recorded it, so if anyone wants to see the replay, let me know and I will put it up. Watching it might help you with the game. S - 4,031,460 - 11

Looks like I won. My office hours were extended for the past 2 months, so I have barely been able to do anything, but as of today my schedule is back to normal, so now I can actually play stuff once again. It's finally time for Toaplan again:

Same! Same! Same! is finally here! I have been waiting for this all year! This is one of the best STGs on the system. It's on the awesome M2 ShotTriggers collection that was released last year, and that is how I am going to play it because it's easy to record and take screenshots. Fire Shark is noticeably easier than Same! Same! Same!. All cartridges have both versions of the game, and the version you play is determined by what you run the game in. Put it in a Japanese Mega Drive and you'll get Same! Same! Same!. Put it in anything else and it will be Fire Shark. The game defaults to easy, but let's use these settings: Level = normal Player = 3 You should probably also turn the rapid on. For scoring, you basically have to no miss no bomb as far as you can while also picking up all of the lightning bolt things. The number of bombs you have is multiplied by a number that depends on how many lightning bolt things you pick up in the stage, and you can get insane amounts of points if you have a lot of bombs. When you die, you lose all of your lightning bolts from that stage and your bomb stock gets reset to 3, so your points will basically go in the toilet the instant you die. Don't die. In general, you should never use anything except the blue spread shot for most of the game. Green laser is so bad that it will get you killed outside of specific sections on stages 3 and 8. Flamethrower is actually pretty good when powered up, but the spread shot is better, aside from the shot limit, which does not apply to the flamethrower. Pretty sure the flamethrower also doesn't do much damage at all to some bosses, so spread shot is recommended in most cases. Let's do scores like this version (S for Same! and F for Fire Shark) - score - stage It's been a while since I played this version, but I think the stage counter continues past 10 once you finish the final stage, so if you go to 2-1 it will show as stage 11, so just write that because it's easy. Also don't forget to vote for the next game. More Toaplan next time with either V-V or Tatsujin.

More new Neo Geo games? Hell yeah~ It's Neofid, so there will probably be a digital option, which is good because Neo Geo cartridges are very expensive.

Sure, why not Might as well post a score while I am here. I actually rather like this version, if for no reason other than that I don't really like how the massive sprites of the arcade and PC Engine versions make those other versions feel rather awkward. 801040 - ABD

Yeah, I've been busy and stuff.

Looks like it's time for more Darius. Settings Player stock 3 Game level normal Player Proco Jr. Same as last time for your score. Score - Route (or Zone if you don't remember your exact route) I don't really know anything about this game other than that it seems to be somewhat different from the arcade version and that the shape of the cartridge is weird, but as usual, destroy entire formations to get extra score.

New Garou trailer:

Nomad~

That would do it; I have no idea about gaming in Asian countries outside of Japan and South Korea, and even then the only thing that I know about Korea is that StarCraft used to more or less be the national sport there. Not sure if it still is, but it used to be huge there. '97 is still an odd choice, but if they like it for whatever reason(s), I guess that works.

Yeah, we'll see. I think someone around here said that the newer d-pads on the new 2.4g version of their Super Nintendo controller still has the same unusable d-pad as the old versions. I should have mentioned this before, but this should be relatively safe if it's actually using microswitches for the clicky stick. I do wonder about why they specifically chose KOF '97 for the limited edition version, though. Why 97? The 25th anniversary of the game was last year, not this year, and everyone seems to agree that the best ones are '98 and 2002. I will almost certainly buy one of these controllers just to see how it is, and I see it as a very interesting MiSTer controller. I really wish it worked on the Switch, which doesn't exactly have a lot of controllers with great d-pads, and for it to not work on Switch is kind of strange.

I'd have to check, but I know 2 of them are older. Those 2 are the same model, though, the old Bluetooth version of the SN30. That Nt mini Noir controller is pretty okay, though the d-pad feels rather stiff. Never used a real Famicom or NES controller, so I don't know how it compares. I think one of them might have been released after, but I need to go dig it out of storage to find the product name so I can check lol. The product names of 8BitDo are very confusing, too. They mostly seem to be (something)30 (maybe followed by an additional something). I never remember which one is which. I only ever remember the M30 because M = Mega Drive. All of those (S)N30 things are super confusing.

Nope, they are extremely different. The cartridge has great conversions of 3 separate games (Darius Old, Darius New, and Darius Extra), separate boss rush modes for all three of those games, separate adjustable internal autofire settings for both ABC and XYZ, supposedly improved audio over the Mini ROM (it sounds ridiculously close to the arcade PCB. It's insane), and probably some more stuff. The cartridge version is crazy. Mini ROM gets you an unspecified version of Darius, a single boss rush, and that's pretty much it. The Mini's ROM has a single advantage over the cart, though: it saves your high scores when you power the game off. They didn't put that in the cartridge for some reason. Still, if you want to play the Mini ROM, that's cool. This time we have a bunch of different options and stuff, so you can do pretty much anything you want. Like if you only want to play the boss rush, that's cool.

I'd be extremely cautious about anything 8BitDo makes. I have like 6 of their controllers and 4 of them are complete garbage. Of those 4 trash controllers, most of the time they won't even connect to the Switch at all. When they actually do manage to connect, they have the absolute worst d-pads I have ever used (yes, worse than the 360 or even the Intellivision's disc thing) and one of them had a defective analog stick right out of the box. I would say to avoid this company completely, but one of their non-garbage controllers, the M30 2.4g for the real Mega Drive/Genesis, is one of the best console controllers I have ever used, so I have no idea what is going on with this company. Neo Geo CD controller is one of my favourite controllers, so I hope this turns out okay.

Cartridge - Extra Boss Rush - 2545500 - S Hyhome Daddy kicks my ass every time, but I think I can get a clear on this if I practice enough.

IMPORTANT FOR RETROTINK 5X USERS The cart version seems to use some sort of graphics trick that causes the RT5X to lose sync. Highly recommend using triple buffer so you don't get a black screen while you are trying to kill stuff. For once I actually have a score to post, as well, which makes me happy. I guess we can use this for the format: Cartridge or Mini - Game mode (Extra, Extra Boss Rush, Normal, or Boss Rush) - score - route Cartridge - Extra - 1106850 - ABD And here is my boss rush score. No route for boss rush, so just put the zone you made it to. Cartridge - Extra Boss Rush - 1054300 - H

Alright, Darius Extra Version is here. This is the best home console version of the game and it's unbelievably good. Depending on how you feel about the triple screen presentation of the arcade version, you might actually consider this to be better than the arcade version! Problem: I have no idea what version the Mega Drive Mini version is. I think it's Extra, but it might be Old. Not sure. I highly recommend the cartridge version because it's way better than the MD Mini version. We can also do something new and fun this time: BOSS RUSH IS HERE! Yep, you can play boss rush if you want. It's fun and cool, so might as well include it. So yeah, this is going to be a confusing mess, but here is what we can do for settings: Cartridge: Game mode = Extra OR Extra Boss Rush Extra (note which one you used) Boss type = 26 bosses Player = Proco MD Mini: Game mode = Normal OR Boss Rush (note which one you used) Boss type = 26 bosses Player = Proco How to play Darius (for arcade version, but most of it should be relevant here as well): https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=71231 In general, up is easier than down and the stages are different, so make note of what your route was if you can.

I finally decided to get KOF '98UMFE and 2002UM in the Steam sale. Couldn't decide which to get, so I decided to get both, and there is that set with those and KOF XIII that was about 100 yen more than buying just one of them, so I basically three games for barely more than the price of one. I guess I can retire my KOF '98 AES cart and ACA version now.