Retro gaming

[Born2bwire]

Shit, can never find a copy of Final Fantasy II myself.

 

[exdeath]

$20 for everything but the blue N64.
$10 for the Ice Blue N64 with first party memory expansion pak.
$9 for NES gold Zelda, gold Zelda II, and Final Fantasy bare carts (not in pic)


And an undiscovered gem to me... a game I never played. Probably the cutting edge of 8 bit chip tunes. So I have it looping on my real NES right now on the Klipsch 2.1.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPkhhLC1tf8'

As I understand it vibrato was extremely difficult on the NES because changing the frequency register restarted the sound channel and threw it out of phase or something, so there is a hack to do it without restarting the sound channel.

 

[Doppel]

<post deleted>

I cannot actually expound my point without pissing retro gamers off, so I will delete my post instead

 

[exdeath]

<post deleted>

I cannot actually expound my point without pissing retro gamers off, so I will delete my post instead

Say what you want, don't really care Now I'm just curious what you said.

 

[shortylickens]

I dont have any nostalgia for the hardware, in fact the NES controller was quite painful, but I do love the games and play what I can get on my Wii.

I still prefer the classic FF1 cuz of the challenge. The remakes are WAY too easy all the way through. Then you get to Chaos and he's actually quite a bit harder. That makes no damn sense.
Though I did just start the SNES DW 1 and 2, I liked that better. Exact same games just improved graphics. Was nice to have the colorful backgrounds during battle again.

Of course, I still have my PS2 slim and DQ 8, so thats been keeping me busy. In face when school started I lost track. Will have to go back and finish one day. Maybe Xmas break.

 

[Doppel]

Say what you want, don't really care Now I'm just curious what you said.

Basic gist newer games have better tech, better design, better budgets

 

[exdeath]

Basic gist newer games have better tech, better design, better budgets

Alas there lies the problem. Bigger budgets, absolutely. Better tech, you'd be a retard to argue otherwise. Better design? In most places as far as execution and polish goes. Shinier graphics? Duh. But what's missing?

The big fat ZERO in story and personality. Versus mode FPS is like the fastest easiest and most shallow thing in the world to produce on cookie sheets for mass consumption. It's like gaming has gone all Hollywood, it's all about the flash and glamour and being trendy.

I play newer games too. If it wasn't for doing another Tough Mudder, signing up for a Deathride, changing positions at work, etc, .... I know better than to buy Borderlands 2 right now... sigh. I nearly disappeared from the planet with the original.

I'm just tired of mainstream shovelware. Can't walk into a Gamestop without tripping over 3/4 of the store being yet another Call of Duty and related made in China merchandise. But a game like Radiant Historia on DS wasn't on shelves for more than a month. I've been less and less excited by every console release since the original Xbox. It was the dark day in my life when RPGs suddenly disappeared in an instant and were replaced by generic shooters that I already had my fill of on the PC some 10 years earlier. In fact I skipped a few consoles like N64, Saturn, even halfassed my way with a PS2 save for a few RPGs due to my "PCs rule consoles suck" phase during that time.

So really I'm not even against modern games so much as just... shooters, especially cut n paste military theme vs mode shooters, just need to die. I'd like the next Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Zelda, etc to not "cater to the Call of Duty audience". And just so much million seller shovelware like SpongeBob and Wheel of Fortune that there is no room on the shelf for a niche 400,000 copy selling masterpiece anymore.

Where are the modern games that make grown men cry and get goosebumps?

 

[Veliko]

Where are the modern games that make grown men cry and get goosebumps?

What old games did this? It was mostly kids and teenagers playing games in the old days.

 

[crisium]

Majora's Mask still gave me goosebumps and happy-tears when I replayed it last year at age 24.

 

[exdeath]

What old games did this? It was mostly kids and teenagers playing games in the old days.

Xenogears and Xenosaga series for sure.

 

[pandemonium]

What old games did this? It was mostly kids and teenagers playing games in the old days.

I guarantee if you picked up the original series of Silent Hill (pre movie and popularity) you would've been staying up the entire night afraid to go to sleep.

That series was seriously demented.

 

[Doppel]

Alas there lies the problem. Bigger budgets, absolutely. Better tech, you'd be a retard to argue otherwise. Better design? In most places as far as execution and polish goes. Shinier graphics? Duh. But what's missing?

The big fat ZERO in story and personality. Versus mode FPS is like the fastest easiest and most shallow thing in the world to produce on cookie sheets for mass consumption. It's like gaming has gone all Hollywood, it's all about the flash and glamour and being trendy.

I play newer games too. If it wasn't for doing another Tough Mudder, signing up for a Deathride, changing positions at work, etc, .... I know better than to buy Borderlands 2 right now... sigh. I nearly disappeared from the planet with the original.

I'm just tired of mainstream shovelware. Can't walk into a Gamestop without tripping over 3/4 of the store being yet another Call of Duty and related made in China merchandise. But a game like Radiant Historia on DS wasn't on shelves for more than a month. I've been less and less excited by every console release since the original Xbox. It was the dark day in my life when RPGs suddenly disappeared in an instant and were replaced by generic shooters that I already had my fill of on the PC some 10 years earlier. In fact I skipped a few consoles like N64, Saturn, even halfassed my way with a PS2 save for a few RPGs due to my "PCs rule consoles suck" phase during that time.

So really I'm not even against modern games so much as just... shooters, especially cut n paste military theme vs mode shooters, just need to die. I'd like the next Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Zelda, etc to not "cater to the Call of Duty audience". And just so much million seller shovelware like SpongeBob and Wheel of Fortune that there is no room on the shelf for a niche 400,000 copy selling masterpiece anymore.

Where are the modern games that make grown men cry and get goosebumps?

I agree with most of this. Other than maybe a demo or two I've never played modern warfare or call of duty and every time I look there's another one that's hit the shelves. It's like they're just sh*ting them out every week. I don't play a ton these days, which means my gaming time is generally filled with premier titles so I can skip most of the tripe. I really enjoyed the Mass Effect games, though. I thought the story was great and the games were just fantastic (particularly 2 and 3).

As life catches up I seem to have less time for multiplayer. It used to be my bread and butter and now I never, ever play it, so a quality single player game is absolutely necessary.

 

[ghost recon88]

$20 for everything but the blue N64.
$10 for the Ice Blue N64 with first party memory expansion pak.
$9 for NES gold Zelda, gold Zelda II, and Final Fantasy bare carts (not in pic)


And an undiscovered gem to me... a game I never played. Probably the cutting edge of 8 bit chip tunes. So I have it looping on my real NES right now on the Klipsch 2.1.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPkhhLC1tf8'

As I understand it vibrato was extremely difficult on the NES because changing the frequency register restarted the sound channel and threw it out of phase or something, so there is a hack to do it without restarting the sound channel.

Willing to resell that $20 N64 lot for $20 + shipping

 

[exdeath]

$60 for the NES lot with 62 games, included good games like Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, Metal Gear, Mario 1,2,3, Contra, Super C, Castlevania, etc

Ill get my $60 back easily for the system and a half dozen duplicate games including all the Marios and Contra.

$3 each for PS2 and GameCube (Super Smash Bros Melee is s $30+ game).

$8 each for the N64 carts. $3 for the DS game, $7 for complete FF Tactics Advance.

$1 for a Saturn game? Sure I don't even care if it's a sports game.

Office 2007 for $1 because you can never have enough licensed copies of Windows and Office when you are the one who does all your friend's and family's computer stuff.

 

[exdeath]

Oh I didn't share last week did I.

$2 each for the PS2 games $0.10 each for N64.

 

[Arkaign]

Garage sales? I have no idea where all these deals are, hah. I've gone to flea markets and garage sales around here and (classic) games are far and few between.

 

[waggy]

I love the old games, The final fantasy, dragon warrior, etc games kicked ass. they have great stories to drive the game. no need for tons of cut scenes either.

I played my SNES until about 7 years ago when it finally died. i was one sad camper. i still have my PS2 hooked up and a stack of games to play.

 

[exdeath]

I doubt your SNES is dead, probably the AC adapter or video cable.

 

[waggy]

I doubt your SNES is dead, probably the AC adapter or video cable.

nope swapped those out (a few times) didn't work. considering the system was one i baught as a kid? yeah no surprise it died.

 

[exdeath]

Probably the jacks then. Did the AC adaper have the grey plastic barrel intact? Those are prone to breaking especially if that IO panel insert is afflicted with yellowing and becomes brittle. Replacing it involves replacing the whole IO panel and soldering since the AC adaper barrel is integrated into the panel plastic.

There is also a permanent fuse inside that blows, I've fixed enough of those.

Also the cartridge port is actually a female to female adapter that sits on a male header on the mainboard, sometimes the console side contacts between the two can get green tarnish in humid environments.

Other than those rare things its one of the most robust and indestructible systems made.

Of all the perfect condition SNES systems I come across and sell I've still kept my scratched up and half yellow unit I bought when it was new in the store. Still works perfect. And every chip or scratch has a story, like the time I had everything hanging from handle bars in a plastic grocery bag on my bike headed to a friends house for the weekend and wiped out.

 

[fatpat268]

Chances are, if the snes doesn't power up, it's a blown fuse. It's an easy fix, even for a noob at soldering.

Here's the replacement fuse:
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/025101.5MRT1L/F3170CT-ND/1984466

On a side note, look what just came in, 15 minutes ago:

Garage sales? I have no idea where all these deals are, hah. I've gone to flea markets and garage sales around here and (classic) games are far and few between.

Yea, I've given up looking. I just pay the going price on ebay, and I'm fine with that lately. Goodwill is overrun by clothes and vhs tapes. Thrift stores have pretty much only ps2 sports games, and garage sales around here only serve the purpose of getting rid of baby clothes. Craigslist is full of people trying to put 5000 games on a wii. But, that's the price I pay for living in a military town. If it's not xbox 360, then the people around here don't care.

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

Emulators are slow and jerky for starters.

And as far as SNES goes there is NO emulator whatsoever to this day that can emulate the SNES SPC700 sound chip properly or do it any justice. Example: the wind sound at the Square Logo on Secret of Mana startup is all fucked up on every emulator.

I even notice this on PS1 games played on PS2.

Take FF7 for example running on a PS2. The title screen text is very jerky as it scrolls. Smooth as butter on a original PS1. Try getting over 4000+ pts or whatever it is on Gold Saucer on the roller coaster ride on a PS2... controls feel laggy and not 1:1 and the frame rate is too jerky. When I went for my perfect save file run, I had to dig out my PS1 for that part. Soooo sooooo much better.

I thought it might be the scaler in my AE4000 projector upconverting to 1080p over component even though I turned off frame creation, put it on game mode pass through with no processing, etc. No change. Tried it on a CRT via composite just to see, sure enough same problem. When I hooked up the PS1, it was 3x smoother.

Xenogears as well, all sorts of glitches on the PS2. And this is official hardware emulation even.

It's not even close to the same. Emulation = meh.

Backward compatibility emulation has always been known to be messy. This is why I prefer keeping original systems around even after consoles have moved along to next generations.

I haven't experienced any game breaking issues emulating most cartridge based games. But once it got to N64/PS1/Saturn era & newer, emulation is crap. I'd rather have a physical N64 on hand rather than put up with crap emulation.
I don't mind the poor scaling with newer screens, as long as I can discern enough to play, I'm fine.
However, if for nothing else, I'd like to have an old CRT screen on hand, even if not for anything other than light gun games.

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

I have Saturn, Dreamcast, PS 1 & 2, GameCube & Xbox.
My GC has shitted out on me. Best bet is to get a Wii at this point. But would still rather have the GC. Too bad they dropped support for component cable so soon though. Finding all that at anything less than an insane price is shitty.
Would really like to delve back into more Saturn & PS1 games, but until I get around to figure out recording them, it's not so much in the plans.

I use component for Xbox & PS2 games that support it.
I found out couple months ago about using S-Video for Saturn, Dreamcast & PS2, so am planning to upgrade to that from composite soon as I have the chance.
I hear the difference isn't huge, but any little minimal upgrade for better quality probably isn't all that of a bad idea.

I've mostly been playing a lot of retro games for my YT channel. PS2, Xbox, GameCube & Dreamcast. But it's been pretty much dead because people only care about new stuff...

Went through not too long ago & briefly played a crapton of DC games. I can't say it's a bad system at all, but there wasn't a whole lot I was overly impressed by either.
However, without a doubt, out of all that I played, I still had most fun with Cannon Spike. Simple. Stupid. Fun. All I needed was someone to play with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5IqfgqF6cc

Got a PS3 recently, so I'll probably be hooked on that exclusively for at least a month or 2 before I go back into rotation with retro stuff.

 

[exdeath]

Yea, I've given up looking. I just pay the going price on ebay, and I'm fine with that lately. Goodwill is overrun by clothes and vhs tapes. Thrift stores have pretty much only ps2 sports games, and garage sales around here only serve the purpose of getting rid of baby clothes. Craigslist is full of people trying to put 5000 games on a wii. But, that's the price I pay for living in a military town. If it's not xbox 360, then the people around here don't care.

Goodwill and thrift stores have found out about eBay prices and got greedy so anything halfway decent gets shipped off to eBay or their own online auction site.

I've bought some stuff off eBay and most likely will be getting lots more because I'm going for complete in box NES/SNES collections, and at the very least complete in box RPG collections for all systems from NES to PS2.

But finding things in the wild once in a while for $1 helps compensate after spending $800 on a mint complete in box Earthbound and crap like that.

Garage sales are totally hit and miss, it's crazy. I almost didn't get the NES lot. Here's the story:

I almost didn't go, it was way out of the way from where I was headed next and the ad said something like "bikes, toys, kids stuff, games, etc" and didn't sound promising.

But I had some down time while garage sailing and stopped to get a bite while I surfed my phone for more listings. I had 1.5 hours until the one I was really waiting for (which actually said old NES and tons of games but he ended up not getting them out of storage) and I had nothing else to do. Also this sale started at 7 am and it was already 9 so if there was anything it was already gone.

With nothing else to do and reasoning it was only 20 mins there and back and wouldn't keep me from this other one I was waiting for, I decided to at least burn some time and maybe check out some other blind sales I might see along the way.

So I get there about 9:30 or so 2.5 hours after it started... sure wasn't going to find anything. The sale is taking place on their back patio, you walk through their car port through a utility room to get to it. And the first thing I see is a large table with a NES, a power pad, two of every first party controller, and 3 shoe boxes overflowing with games (62 carts total).

Too good to be true, it's already been picked I bet... I see Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, Super C, two copies of Super Mario Bros 3, Castlevania, lots of Konami and Capcom games... no it's all here!
Then I saw a sticker on the NES, $120. Sigh, eBayer, knew it was too good to be true. I asked if he could do any better, and said that I only wanted the Nintendo stuff, because it included a model 1 and 2 Sega Genesis and a handful of meh games.

He said he'd go down to $80.

So I ponder it, look the games over more. I'm like, looks like a bunch of duplicates here, Mario/Duck Hunt, Mario 2, Mario 3, Contra, etc and offered $60.

Sold.

Took 3 trips to the car to load it all.

My NES bare cart collection just gained like 50 games and is starting to look like a real collection now.

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

Spent a lot of the summer traveling to & from Chicago or IN, with lot's of time to kill. I stopped through at least 50 thrift stores, flea markets & garage sales. Only found maybe 2 or 3 items I cared to pick up.
Otherwise it just ended up being a waste of gas & time.
Although I do kind of regret not grabbing the Xbox's or PS1's, if not for anything else other than to mod them.