/vr/ - Retro Games

>>7806531
They're fucking amazing. If you've played MGS Ghost Babel that's kinda similar in terms of game design aside from the sunlight and rpg elements. Having to play it in sunlight at times is such a weird gimmick but it just works and brings something to the game. I'm pretty much emulation all the way these days but those are two carts I held onto on purpose.

That said, though the sun thing is a cool immersive gimmick, it's hardly mandatory. I haven't looked but would bet there are roms with work arounds that make it playable and even taking away that aspect they're just plain awesome games.

>>7806531
>did any of you guys play this game before on the actual GBA?
I didn't, but you can increase sunlight levels on emulators. There's also a patched version that uses R+A+LEFT/RIGHT to increase or decrease sunlight.

>>7806586
I used mgba btw

>>7806531
Yeah I had both the first and second games for GBA SP. I played them with both sun light and a plant grow light. For the second game you can buy energy capsules and also use the megaman arm canon to get around it.

>>7806531
Emulator fan boys BTFO, again.
>>7806586
>Just download this romhack and its totally the same experience!

>>7806935
You don't have to download a romhack and the sensor is adjustable.

>>7806971
>sensor is adjustable.
Like lifting a snooker table to sink every ball.

>>7806994
?

>>7806531
VBA could emulate the sensor for this game all the way back in 2004. It was just another gay checkbox fix like the RTC in pokemon GBA games.
>did any of you guys play this game before on the actual GBA?
Hell no. I never even saw this game anywhere IRL. Plus, it cost extra. For the money they wanted for this game, I could've bought a PS2 game.
That said, having played on emulator, the game is cool. The light gimmick is just an inconvenience and the devs used to complain about people cheating it and it fucking game sales so bad that the sequel nerfed it. IMO, if you're gonna play this, you may as well play Sword of Mana.

>>7806935
Yeah totally going to spend a fortune hunting this one game.

WHY DOES KOJIMA LOVE GAMES WHERE YOU SNEAK AROUND LIKE A LIL FUCCBITCH?

>>7806994
If someone wants to cheat they can, but they can also just as easily play earnestly for the best experience.

>>7807074
Like giving a drunk a barrel of booze and telling him to have only 1 drink. Why can't you accept all emulator players are save staters, rewind cheats?

>>7806531
its a good game i wish i played with the real cart also i had never heard about it when i had a gba

>>7807089
that is a (you) problem

>>7806531
There's patches nowadays, but I own and played all 3 games in real hardware, it was super fun

>>7806531
how am i supposed to play this now when i can't go out and soak my laptop under the sun?

>>7806531
Ive been meaning to try this game, but this always seemed like a really unfun gimmick to use. Looks like an alright game besides that tho

>>7807938
>Go outside in the sun
>unfun

Playing it on GBA right now. It's an interesting fusion of a GBA game and an alternate reality game like pokemon GO. Some day's you can't play at all unless you saved up a lot of solar nuts. If you are not playing the game you are still paying attention to the weather for when the option arises to continue the game. For example I can only play in house on the afternoon.

I also predict later bosses will be hard enough that a bit of sun will not be enough and you actually have to wait for a very hot day to have the power to beat it.

It's not bingeable like other games. Needing sun almost gives it an episodic series feel, especially in colder climates.

>>7807965
Whats your take on emulator boys playing it without leaving the house?

>>7806531
yes this game was awesome
the solar power thing was kind of a gimmick, but it made it very memorable. i used to go lay out in a corn field near my house and play it
it was awesome

>>7806935
the sunlight gimmick wasnt nearly as mandatory as you seem to be implying

>>7807970
the gameplay is interesting enough to stand on it's own, but the game is in my experience balanced around having the solar meter at around 3-4 blocks for an average day. putting it on much more than that is playing on easy mode. Of course they miss out on the main feature of the game and are not really experiencing boktai, but they already know that

>>7807990
>but they already know that
I'm not so sure. Look at >>7807981 >>7807031 >>7807041

>>7806935
>Emulator fan boys BTFO, again.

>go outside in the sun
>massive screenglare
>meanwhile EmuCHADS play at 100% sunlight in the shade

Played this on my GBA SP back then, what pushed me to buy Boktai was the short animation Konami made to present the game, it was really well made and the use of the sun was showed in a such cool way that as a kid I was really impressed.

Most of the time I played in my garden, I remember switching places a lot cause I was trying to have full bar on my sensor ( and I really liked holding the gba sp above shoulder facing straight to the sun, in fact I was just imitating the kid from the short animation I mentioned above ) and after recharging the solar gun I was searching a place under shadow cause you know... even with back light the screen was still really hard to see under the sun.

Anyway I have fond memories of Boktai, I don't think you can really reproduce the experience with emulation, yes it works but it's not as much fun.

>>7807996
Are you that desperate for validation?

>>7808254
Emu boys like >>7808039
have to be exposed one way or another.

>>7808268
Imagine being a grown man and caring about how people play their games. Sad.

>>7807031
As I said here. People greatly disliked this gimmick because all it does is end up gatekeeping certain things in the game and manipulating you into picking it up and putting it down not just when you want, but when it's good to play. It has few other significant impacts on the game. It drove up the cost of the game cartridges and made them excessively rare. It hampered sales. It annoyed enough people to impact it's use in the sequel.

I'm not acting like it's horrible or something. Just that it was a gimmick. It was done okay; a fun game; I liked it. But, a gimmick is a gimmick, and this one cost everyone involved money at every step. It also drove development of the feature itself into emulators, because so many people wanted to play but nobody could even find it if they wanted to buy it. This thing was harder to find than Riviera or Mech Platoon.

>>7806531

Cool! A game that makes you play outside in the bright sun!

>takes GBA with no fucking backlit screen out into the sunlight
>can’t see a fucking thing

What were they thinking?

>>7808292
The sun illuminates the non-backlit screen, doofus. Ironically it’s the backlit AGS-101 and Micro screens that are hard to see in sunlight.

>>7808292

Taking it into the sun was the ONLY way you could see the damn GBA screen. You wanted to sit on its surface.

>>7808296
>I have never used a GBA outside

I played it last summer, it was fun but I prefer the sequel, which I played as a kid. I still have to replay it on hard and collect all the shit but haven't had time to go back to it. Fighting the last boss during sunset and having to get the right angle on the cartridge to increase my damage was cool, just like in le commercials

I kind of want to get a UV sensor, stick it outside my window and connect it to a PC, then use it to control the level of sunlight in an emulator.

>>7808448
IIRC you want natural light but it shouldn't hit the screen directly or you get glare, if your body kind of obscures the screen it doesn't reduce the sensor's ability to detect UV light and you can see without a problem.

>>7808465
Pasty nerdfaces reflect the light right onto the screen

>>7808287
It is rare IN THE WEST because westerners hate good games, go look at secondhand cartridge prices in Japan, they are cheap as hell. I got the full set for $20-30.
>>7808471
Why are you on this board?
>>7807990
I agree it's a bit easy in summer with strong sunlight, but there is a hard mode and if you're going for S ranks it can be challenging anyway.
>>7807031
>doesn't play the real game
>cheats around a major gameplay element
>whines and calls it a gimmick

>>7807948
>game on a non-backlit screen with a highly reflective front window relies on going out into the sunlight where the screen becomes impossible to see
Why would that seem fun?

>>7808296
>it’s the backlit AGS-101 and Micro screens that are hard to see in sunlight.
This is easily disproved with any cell phone. Go outside and turn the brightness on your phone to 0 and observe the screen, then turn the brightness to 100 and observe the screen. Without backlighting you can't see shit.

>>7808448
Now try actually being under the sun.

>>7808490
Modern smartphones have a much, MUCH higher peak brightness than any GBA.

>>7808478
>Why are you on this board?

To not play games on a tiny screen with a cramped handheld, outside. Emulation is infinitely superior to handhelds.

>>7808494
And you talk about "pasty nerds". Projecting much?

>>7808492
>Modern smartphones have a much, MUCH higher peak brightness than any GBA.
The point is that any amount of backlight improves LCD visibility in sunlight so that anon is talking out his ass.

>>7808503
No, I’m not. In direct sunlight a non-backlit display will be more readable than a backlit display with pitiful brightness levels, like the AGS-101 and Micro screens. Stop LARPing, zoomy. Your own “point” proved you need high brightness for backlit displays to be visible in sunlight.

>>7808498
I go to the tanning salon, get fucked seethtard faux retrogamer.

>>7808490
Are you retarded? Turning your brightness down doesn’t make it the same as a GBA screen lmfao

>>7808514
>Your own “point” proved you need high brightness for backlit displays to be visible in sunlight.
The implication was meant to be that all brightness brings improvement to the situation, which is true. Any amount of brightness on the screen makes the contents more visible.
Nice picture of a backlit GBA model in indirect sunlight, by the way. The subject is Boktai, which requires direct sunlight.

>>7807089
Or telling your fat ass to stop eating.
Get a grip

>>7806531
>I assume that it would be hard as fuck to play emulated
https://github.com/Prof9/Boktai-Solar-Sensor-Patches

>>7808542
>The implication was meant to be that all brightness brings improvement to the situation, which is true.
Yes, a backlit display’s visibility in sunlight is dependent on brightness. So in regards to backlit displays: the brighter, the better; anything helps. I’m glad you’re able to grasp this simple concept. Now please understand we’re comparing different display technologies. The backlit GBA models don’t have the NITs to outperform a non-backlit GBA display in direct sunlight.
>Nice picture of a backlit GBA model in indirect sunlight, by the way.
Boy, you sure are a special kind of stupid. That’s an 001 with the frontlight off. And if it were in direct sunlight the screen would look even brighter.

>>7808573
>if it were in direct sunlight the screen would look even brighter.
If it were in direct sunlight you wouldn't be able to see through the glare without backlight.

>>7808483
the GBA screen actually was the most clear under direct sunlight, you wouldn't have the usual problems playing the game as you would indoors. Plus, the solar sensor needs UV light, you could simply sit near a window and play as sunlight hits the sensor.

t. played the 3 games a lot on my GBA. This thread actually made me dig them out, fuckers and the GBA still work!

>>7807990
Since the sensor works on UV and not directly sunlight strength, if you live in somewhere, say, Texas like McAllen, even on winter you'd get 6 sun blocks or so. During spring one year I got the full bar.

Living in the desert does not justify Boktai pro stats tho.

>>7806935
>dude the eXpErIennnce of the stupid gimmick which made the screen hard to fucking see when powering up
Fuck you, game's still good without it.

>>7806935
Dude I live in Novosibirsk. We don't have any sun at all.

It's a good thing I don't care about the opinions of autists about emulating, original hardware, or "intended experiences"
>the lack of integer perfect scaling skews my sprites by 2 pixels, I can't enjoy the game!
>there's save states available, you know I have no self control! CHEATINGGGG!
>the frame pacing on your chink handheld is imperfect and out of sync by 2ms, you shoulda used a PSP which could run it even worse at 48fps, but it's better because it's the thinkpad of emulation handhelds!
>the colors of your LCD will never live up to the intended CRT experience, grovel at my PVM plebs!

I'm just the retard over here playing the games and not worrying about insignificant details. I grew up playing on the shittiest TVs, with the crappiest connections, and it was awesome because the games were awesome. It amuses me to see these autists get upset over people only caring about gameplay and not the cartridge or the machine or the screen.

>>7807089
Because I emulate and don't bother with any of that because it detracts from the fun. If you're the equivalent of a retro games alcoholic who can't resist using cheats even if you objectively know they'll ruin the experience that's your problem to deal with. But in the same way that I don't think I should be restricted from drinking beer because someone else can't handle it and will become alcoholic, the "problems" associated with emulating old games only exist if you have other problems.

>>7808582
Why do zoomers pretend to know things about hardware they’ve clearly never owned?

>>7809902
But I'm 31 and did own an original GBA. I avoided playing with it outside because of the glare.

>>7809837
Imagine this approach with movies

>Who cares that those movies are being shown at lower resolution then they intended
>Who cares if they cut off parts of the edge
>Who cares that they edited the dialogue
>Who cares if you set your TV's color saturation so everything is off
>Who cares if you got a crappy version of the movie that's compressed and looks like shit
>Who cares if the audio track is off by a quarter of a second

>>7809919
Thank god it's video games and not movie(unless we are talking about modern games).

>>7809932
All games have an aesthetic element. It's only sensible you would try to make that as good as possible.

It's one thing to care about mechanics more then visuals, it's another thing to just make the visuals worst.

>>7809214
Turns out that this is a video game, not a movie or a book. So yes, the environment in which you play, HOW you play, matters greatly.

>>7809919
>(You)s me
>Rebuts my point by arguing against a point I didn't make, about movies.
>>>/tv/
>Hostile and antagonistic about how others enjoy something they own "the wrong way"
I love how you get so upset because I'm enjoying my games wrong in my own home on my own PC with my own Logitech controllers. I'm over here too busy actually having fun with the games to change anything.

>>7809837
Dishonest comparison, none of these affect gameplay significantly besides maybe the lag argument for some genres of games. Visually displays were never homogeneous, but trying to reproduce the CRT look via shaders is common and it does usually look much better as properties of CRT and composite input were (ab)used to create a different look than what you get by pasting the frame buffer on an LCD.

Other things that actually matter:
- controller layout
- contrast, saturation and response time on early handhelds (gb/a, ws/c)
- portability (i.e. ability to move around, especially for a series like boktai)

You're free to play a gimped version of the game by using a solar sensor patch and playing on an emulator on desktop displayed on a bright LCD with nearest neighbour or bilinear upscaling, controlled with a keyboard, cooped up in your basement not even seeing real sunlight, but that experience will be far removed from actually playing boktai by its rules, same as if you claimed to beat a difficult game when you used save states to do it, or if you download dungeon maps off the internet to play Wizardry instead of drawing your own. At that point you may as well just watch a longplay on YouTube, or pick a different game to play. Why bother?

>>7809973
autism

>>7809984
brainlet cope

>>7806531
>totally the same experience
Not like it was a very good experience to begin with

>>7809973
You’re free to use the solar sensor patch in a way that matches the current amount of sunlight outside.
>B-B-But you’re not holding up a hunk of plastic to the sky like a massive manchild
Who cares? You’re making the “authentic” experience out to be a bigger deal than it really is. Well, I mean, it can be a big deal to you—but your value judgement isn’t a universal truth.

>>7809837
I don't have a special set of criteria or standards which need to be met in order to play a game, as I said here. It's only a problem if it diminishes my enjoyment of the game, and I enjoy games how I want to without regard for anyone else including who made the game or what they thought.

I'll play using retroarch on my android phone with a bluetooth controller and bluetooth audio with the screen color inversion mode on from down in my grandmother's sub-basement, naked while watching anime dubs and eating instant ramen without water.

>>7810006
You can't actually estimate it correctly because you are not playing the real game.
You also fail to account for the sun moving and its light shifting during the day, and clouds obstructing it.
You also don't have to deal with actually going outside in the sun yourself.
And if you think you're capable of keeping track of what's going on outside when you are not there, you are fooling yourself.
I know, because I tried to do the same thing (in 1, having played 2 on real hardware). It's not remotely comparable to playing the real thing.

Argue about that all you want, but the only one you're fooling is yourself.

>>7807061
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44ZNMhWdr5U

>>7810037

>>7808519
>I go to the tanning salon
HAHAHA. What are you a chick? Oh my god anon have some shame. Can't you go to the beach or simply work without your shirt on?
>>7808280
If you've been on this site for more than a day you will see a theme of emulation being superior despite none of these same people ever playing on original hardware.
>>7809997
>Sour grapes