/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10844814
I had only vague memories of Simon's Quest from my childhood since I only ever watched my friend play it and I assumed it would be kind of a slog when I finally got around to marathoning the series, but in the end I kind of liked it. Nowhere near my favorite and I don't know if I'll replay it anytime soon but I never had that "fuck this sucks I'm wasting my time" feeling.

I'll freely admit I played with a guide and that made the experience much less painful than it might have been but that's honestly the authentic experience. Back in the day everyone had that issue of Nintendo power or at least knew someone who did.

>>10810337
I don't know why they need to be so defensive about it still. It was a spectacular failure but it was preceded and followed by spectacular successes and it was really their only turd until the WiiU. And it's easy enough to explain away, just say the technology wasn't quite ready and you were too ambitious. That's mostly true

>>10808471
We weren't even mad back then, the strategy guides used to be good right up until IX when they started selling guides that told you to go to websites

>>10784840
>Nobody was really doing backwards compatibility back then

From what I remember it's less that people didn't want it so much as the old systems were so ubiquitous it was kind of unnecessary. People didn't cycle through their tech so quickly or trade shit in, and the consoles themselves tended not to wear out easily. Most people who bought an SNES or Genesis still had it. Shit, most people who bought an Atari still had it.

Younger retro enthusiasts today would be shocked by the average family's hardware hoard in the 80's/90's. At me and my friend's houses we'd have gen 1 stuff and tabletop games in the garage, an 8 and 16-bit system, a C64 and a game boy somewhere. We weren't really trying to hoard stuff, there was just no reason to get rid of it if it worked.

>>10781295
It kinda makes sense. Even if you had a PC back then a lot of them couldn't run it that well. My tech-savvy friend did his best to optimize my settings and it still ran like ass on my PC. And the 32x was a lot cheaper than a high-end computer so that was one selling point.

Although the problem was the 32X version was still missing some shit and had some gimped audio. It was a pretty good port but considering it wasn't the best version of the game available and it was ported to fucking everything it just wasn't going to drive interest in the add-on by itself. But at least it was a decent game for the 32X. It didn't have many

>>10760553
Neither add-on was really what you'd call successful. People just didn't want to make frankenconsoles at home by buying stupidly expensive add-ons and awkwardly assembling the pieces. Sega and NEC should have just held their horses and released the CD based consoles as standalone units.

Especially in NEC's case, the add-on element was destined to fail because if the TG16 didn't have a huge install base as it was then there was already a limited market for the add-on. Whereas anybody could buy a Turbo Duo because it didn't require you to already own any hardware. It worked by itself, so they should have just made the leap and not tried to bridge the gap.

>>10721636
Yeah the enemy patterns don't change, it's just that the damage scaling means you have less margin for error so there's a little added intensity and you have to be a little more defensive and be very judicious wit your magic. The scaling from hard to hardest isn't TOO crazy, it's not like things just become insane damage sponges and you can still take out regular enemies fairly quickly so I thought, for the most part, it a nice challenge. It's just that there's one or two places where that extra scaling tips things over the edge into being unreasonable. God help you if you go into the clone fight without a full rage meter

>>10719017
I think Kojima just considered any game he wasn't directly involved with non-canon by default, but it's really not that big a deal since there's no other game that spans the same time period. If you really delve into the lore there might be some contradictions but it's not like it blatantly conflicts with the contents of other games

>>10716132
if it works, it works

>>10709065
Enter was acceptable for the time but it was just another part of their mostly failed attempt to create an EU and the feature the EU is attached to at the same time. In theory, the game, the animatrix and the films would all support each other and form one synergistic experience but in reality it just took an IP that really wasn't there yet and spread it too thin too fast.

It was an interesting accompaniment to the movies in the sense that it repurposed cut content from the films and told a parallel story but at the same time, the only reason you gave a fuck was because of its connection to the movie. It was pretty janky and generic and Ghost and Niobe on their own aren't really all that interesting. They put the cart before the horse and presumed people would want more of these characters but in reality no one gave a fuck. Not a single person was thinking "oh good, I'll finally find out what Niobe was up to during the films." It was pretty meh then, I don't think I'd even want to play it now.

Path of Neo made much more sense because you actually played as the MC from the films, which is what everyone wanted to begin with. It still wasn't particularly good but enjoyable in the way that all competent tie-in movie games are. Even when it's half-assed It's fun to play your favorite scenes as the protagonist. So it was much more satisfactory, but the problem is that because they went for the parallel story first and did the proper adaptation second it came years after the fact. By the time it came out the sequels had already come and gone and and 3rd film in particular went out with a whimper. I enjoyed it but it should have just been where they went with it to begin with.

>>10489473
I love retro games but honestly I never lost interest in modern consoles either. In a weird way I've actually found modern consoles to be a good source for retro gaming. Just this year I got the castlevania and Contra collections for less than $10 each off psn because even though I had some of the original consoles and cartridges it was much cheaper to buy the retro collection than seek out the missing pieces. If I'd bought the original versions of contra III, aria of sorrow and simon's quest it would have cost a pretty penny and I got them all for less than one cart would cost online.

I also got Bad Dudes, Final Fight, Metal Slug, Darkstalkers, Strider, Splatterhouse, Another World..my PS4 probably has as extensive a collection on it as any of my actual retro consoles. Even if retro is your thing it doesn't mean the current-ish gen has nothing to offer. Although I do usually stay one generation behind just for affordability

>>10488929
The thing about the pre-NES era is we've kind of filtered out all the insane amounts of shovelware that brought about the industry's collapse and now we just talk about the actually good games of the era. Because there's really no point in talking about some piece of shit very few people bought and no one remembers from 40 years ago.

Which is fine, but I think it also distorts our perception of the era a bit. We just look at the greatest hits and forget about the randomness and confusion that came with not knowing which of all those games with the cool-looking cover was actually good or just well-marketed crap. Or the disappointment in buying what should have been a sure thing like Pac-Man for the equivalent of $100 in today's money and finding out it was a half-assed port and sucked balls. I remember the Atari era fondly but it was a mixed bag

>>10454476
I liked the PS3/4 HD port just fine. The calligraphy technique feels a little more brush-like with a wiimote I guess but like pretty much every game you can drop the motion control gimmick and not really miss it

>>10436448
I liked Strider 1
I liked Strider 2
I liked the NES version
I liked the ps3 one

>>10393583
>they just didn't have a solid idea to build a game around

Yeah the thing is, it's not a very action packed movie. E.T. spends most of the runtime chilling in Elliot's house. Although I still say they should have just gone the obvious route and turned the bike chase scene into a grand prix rip-off. Sure, it would have been unoriginal but it probably would have gone over better than the levitating simulator they wound up with.

>>10319825
Just finished it, all the games seemed just fine to me. You can turn off the pop-ups >>10320676
was talking about.

Also has save states and a rewind feature which I admit I abused occasionally. I've beaten these games multiple times on original hardware, I can savescum now and not feel too bad about it

>>10250297
Believe what you want fagot but I was born in '78 and I was there when these things came out. Saw them in the Sears catalogue but my parents thought it was too much to spend on something that only played one game. My cousin had one though and we thought it was awesome

>>10238216
The thing is, people talk about VIII like it's hopelessly broken right out of the gate but unless you really, really go out of your way to do some autistic shit like getting Lionheart in disk 1 you mostly break it gradually as part of the natural progression. Ultima is broken as a junction but it's also not just laying around everywhere. Aura is broken but same thing, you don't get a ton of it until late in the game.

Card modding is probably *the* most broken mechanic because high-level cards give you crazy items and often in large quantities but again, the prerequisites are having learned card and then card mod, having found the GF that has the ability to convert the items into magic, and having found the card itself. Yeah, 100 megalixers is basically cheat code but you only get the Bahamut card by beating , Bahamut, which means you have to go all the way through the deep sea research facility. So you can break the game with but only after you've beaten arguably the hardest part. I don't see how this is worse than just grinding until you're overleveled like you would in a more conventional FF game. I'd rather use the game mechanics intelligently than just brute force my way to victory by accruing exp.

>>10235074
If you played Rondo then you've basically played the Dracula X chronicles. It's about as faithful as a 2.5d remake could be but it's also just kind of pointless since it doesn't do anything better than the original and the 2D pixel art has more soul. But since it included the original Rondo as an unlockable anyway it doesn't matter which version you prefer because you get them both in the same package. The version of SOTN it comes with has a few dialogue changes and and a 2nd faerie familiar but honestly the differences from the PS1 version are so marginal it really doesn't matter.

Also, I know I'm in the minority here but I'm one of those people who thinks Lords of Shadow 2 is severely underrated. It had a great aesthetic, a deep and fun combat system, a ton of secrets to discover, and while the stealth sections are annoying and unnecessary they're like 5% of the game. The Spider-Man game everybody thought was the greatest thing ever forced you to play as Mary Jane and Miles fucking Morales multiple times for lame-ass stealth sections much longer and more obnoxious than anything in LOS2.

>>10130295
In the purest sense, no. The game is what it is and it exists as is and we can just live with what we have. But if I'm being honest I don't feel the need to be cynical by default when it comes to good faith remakes. I can play early PS1 games and still enjoy them, jankiness and all, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't dig how REmake looked on my big HDTV.

If a good game gets a significant visual overhaul that brings it up to par with modern tech but doesn't lose the core gameplay, what's the problem? Something like 2 where they dropped the fixed camera angles and made it a shooter is a different question but REmake is a mostly faithful recreation

>>9686314
You permanently lose her weapon and armor when she dies but her materia and accessory go back in your inventory so you don't lose any of your exp gains and can give them to someone else

And since the cure materia is readily available for fairly cheap from stores anyway no reason not to have 2 or even 3 copies by then. Making her the designated healer makes sense given her limit breaks but if she's the only party member who can heal at all you were being lazy with your setups

>>9679658
I had the PS3 version and I know /vr has a hateboner for HD remasters but I found literally nothing wrong with it. Looked good, played good. No glitches that I encountered. Don't know if it's still available the store or not though

>>9666026
Could be your familiarity with the game diminishes the returns a little bit. So much of the fun in SM is in the exploration element. Finding a secret is exciting. Heading right to the secret because you already know it's there is less exciting.

And I never thought the game was too difficult although that fucking fish boss in Maridia still gives me fits sometimes.

>>9651226
The version on PSN is an excellent port and it was like $10 when I bought it.