|
Dr. Quarex posted:Well this is hilarious as I think part of my learning about Defender of the Crown came from a video you made; I had no idea you posted here (and have been forever) or I would have been like "maybe Kim Justice will pop in and explain it!" Haha  to be fair I'm only on a couple of places here.To be a bit more detailed -- Cinemaware had four games they wanted to launch with Mindscape over just a few months (DOTC, Chicago, Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon and SDI). DOTC was considered the jewel of the lot especially with Jim Sachs doing the art. They gave it to Sculptured Software who proceeded to produce basically nothing whatsoever. When Cinemaware found out how hosed the whole thing was in the Summer of '86, they took it off Sculptured and gave it to no less a figure than RJ Mical, who drat near killed himself to take all of the assets and actually build them into a game in 3 months, by himself (it came out in October). So yeah, while still obv a big hit on Amiga virtually any port is better -- especially the ST and the early CD-ROM. Hell, the unreleased Spectrum version is technically probably cleaner as a game. As is often the case, The Digital Antiquarian has an excellent and detailed write-up on the game: https://www.filfre.net/2015/04/defender-of-the-crown/
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2020 19:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 15:34 |
|
|
I'm sure this is the one that Dr Quarex is talking about here. For all of Kim's modesty, it's a genuinely great watch for anyone with an interest in old games and I'd argue as close to a definitive piece on Cinemaware as you can get in an hour. That Turbografx CD version of It Came From the Desert really needs proper footage to show how things just didn't go their way in the end.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2020 22:48
|
|
|
Pham Nuwen posted:How is Amiga OS 3.1.4? I'm thinking of ordering http://amigaonthelake.com/amiga-os3-1-4-kickstart-roms-floppys-for-amiga-a3000/ for my 3000, which is currently running WB 2.something. I've also got a 2500 running 1.3, so I thought it would make sense to leave the 2500 as-is for games and such, but bump the 3000 to a newer version in order to play with later software and mess with the Video Toaster. 3.1.4 seems alright on my A1200, but it is well due for a fresh OS installed. I also got the 3.1.4 Kickstart ROMs for it as well, but my A1200 would not boot with them in.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2020 10:56
|
|
|
I went to my first vintage computer meet up for the year, and got to see some interesting machines, as well as show off a couple of mine A Dick Smith System80. Kinda related to the TRS80 range of computers.  Commodore 8032 PC - continuing the PET line as a business only Commodore, which never really caught on  CoCo 3. The owner of it is a massive Tandy TRS/CoCo collector, he does a lot of mods for them including SD Card drives and other things so they can work with modern hardware  Commodore C64 German model in the background, Vic20 in foreground  Commodore PET 2001 model from the US with its dual disk drive. The disk drive unit hasn't been tested yet.  The two computers I brought along - an Atari 1040STe with 4MB RAM and 800XL  Macintosh SE/30 and Commodore C64C  More Tandy TRS80 goodness  Microbee computers. This was Australia's own computer, to be sold to education, business and home back in the 80s. I think it was also popular in Sweden. Sadly died off as IBM dominated the market, although I think there were a couple of Microbee IBM compatible models  Picked up Windows NT 3.51 and Office 97 from the meet. There's also a copy of NT 4.0 Server that I am waiting on.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2020 04:52
|
|
|
Ah, that joystick..that was my first one. I used it from the time we moved to NSW and got out Cyrix M2 (i.e., playing a lot of Geoff Crammond's F1GP), through to emulating SMD/SNES games for 2P with my younger brother (at least the ones you only needed two buttons for, the top one just repeats one of the others)..come to think of it I probably kept that thing as long as we did that computer, which was up until we got a P4 with Hyper Threading. That was a uh...big upgrade.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2020 05:19
|
|
|
kirbysuperstar posted:Ah, that joystick..that was my first one. I used it from the time we moved to NSW and got out Cyrix M2 (i.e., playing a lot of Geoff Crammond's F1GP), through to emulating SMD/SNES games for 2P with my younger brother (at least the ones you only needed two buttons for, the top one just repeats one of the others)..come to think of it I probably kept that thing as long as we did that computer, which was up until we got a P4 with Hyper Threading. That was a uh...big upgrade. I had that joystick too! We used it to play Command Keen 4, Car and Driver, and Flight Simulator.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2020 05:29
|
|
|
I had a CoCo, I remember the lovely Zaxxon knockoff. Heck, practically every game in the CoCo's library was a knockoff. Often they didn't even try to hide it, like "Ghana Bwana" being a ripoff of Congo Bongo.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2020 06:21
|
|
|
Pham Nuwen posted:I had that joystick too! We used it to play Command Keen 4, Car and Driver, and Flight Simulator. I have the same Gravis joystick that I got recently at a junk shop in its original box for $5. It was missing the demo disk though
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2020 13:26
|
|
|
I recently discovered and have been binge watching Computer Chronicles. Most, if not all of its 20 year run is on the Internet Archive and on YouTube. https://youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT Somehow Ive never heard of this show, and it took years of daily retro computer YouTube watching for the algorithm to finally recommend an episode to me. If you were in the dark about it like I was, its an incredible, charming window into 80s and 90s (and a tiny bit of early 2000s) computing, and theres so much of it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2020 18:02
|
|
|
I used to watch a ton of Computer Chronicles when I was younger since it was a regular feature of my local PBS station(s). I'm glad old episodes exist because it's such a fascinating window into those times as you said.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2020 20:29
|
|
|
There is a whole twitch channel that runs old computer shows and Computer Chronicles comes up all the time: https://www.twitch.tv/oldtimeycomputershow
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2020 20:35
|
|
|
Long shot, but does anyone remember an application launcher from the DOS era called something like "POP! Menu"? It had a text UI similar to a "curses" app on a *nix system and was basically just a shortcut menu, allowing you to set up a list of commands that it could run if you selected the appropriate option. My grandfather had it on his Epson 286 and I've been trying to find a copy somewhere for years but between the name being rather generic and the general lack of archives from the time I haven't had any luck.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 23:52
|
|
|
I definitely had something like that.. Set it up with aubmenus and passwords and whatnot and immediately binned it because it was the age of squeezing 5k extra ram out of your config.sys etc
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2020 01:30
|
|
|
Tac Dibar posted:All right, I got my slightly beat up TI-99/4A in the mail yesterday. I bought it on the cheap, so no power supply unit and no frequency modulator for the video. This means that right now nothing goes in and nothing comes out. First step will be to build a PSU so that I can power up and see if it works at all. I am absolutely ignorant to this old technology (but definitley adore it). Is that computer rare? My dad has an identical one with a few scratches sitting around, and I always figured it was neat but have no idea what it is.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2021 04:10
|
|
|
DildenAnders posted:I am absolutely ignorant to this old technology (but definitley adore it). Is that computer rare? My dad has an identical one with a few scratches sitting around, and I always figured it was neat but have no idea what it is. No, they are not very rare as far as I know. Speaking of, we used to have a TI-99 when I was a kid as well, and Ive often wondered what happened to it. Well, I facetimed with my younger brother the other day and showed him my current TI-99 project. He went yeah, I remember that computer. I remember smashing it to bits with a hammer. Apparenly he had destroyed it very thoroughly, reducing the boards and processors and everything to gravel-size bits. So that solved the old mystery of our TI-99. I asked him why he did it, and he said he wanted to know how it works.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2021 13:01
|
|
|
Tac Dibar posted:So that solved the old mystery of our TI-99. I asked him why he did it, and he said he wanted to know how it works. Time to get a hammer and find out how his fingers work.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2021 15:20
|
|
|
DildenAnders posted:I am absolutely ignorant to this old technology (but definitley adore it). Is that computer rare? My dad has an identical one with a few scratches sitting around, and I always figured it was neat but have no idea what it is. Not at all, just old. Though some of the accessories and cartridges are probably quite rare now. I have one that my dad bought for $1 about 20 years ago.
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2021 14:17
|
|
|
You Am I posted:
We had one of those at my primary school! Had a great time with some of the games on there. The most popular one to play had 1-4 players shipwrecked on a desert island trying to explore and find food, water and shelter. I tried it out again on an emulator a couple of years ago and it is incredibly random, so no wonder we had trouble surviving for long.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2021 00:47
|
|
|
Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion is a good-rear end 2D platformer. The combat is varied enough to not get boring and the platforming isn't too over-emphasised with item collection being mostly optional. It has a real nice balance which of course the sequels which were developed by a different team did not manage to replicate at all, turning it into a collect-a-thon with wretched, aimless level design. The reload mechanic is particularly fun, adding more suspense than you'd get from most games from that time period without seeming too unfair or annoying.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2021 21:16
|
|
|
I'm messing around with WinUAE, and I did a quick search of the TOSEC archive to see which Amiga game comes on the most floppies. While it doesn't really count (as the original game came on a CD), the 30-floppy crack of The Shadow of The Third Moon got me curious. It seems like a game that'll take anything I can throw at it, power-wise (the recommended specs are, courtesy of Hall of Light, "A3000/4000, 68040/40MHz CPU or faster, KS 3.1 / OS 3.1 or higher, 2MB chipram, 8MB fastram, fast Z3 gfx card (chunky pixel), 4x CDROM drive or faster, HD", and it'll use a 68060 if you have it), but rather than just check all the more power boxes in WinUAE, I'm wondering: what's the most powerful Amiga you could build with pre-2000 parts (i.e., no turbo box that came out last year, just genuine retro parts)?
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2021 02:37
|
|
|
I am no expert, but I remember hearing of Amiga 1200s with Blizzard PowerPC accelerators and PCI 3D cards including Voodoos. Truly a bonkers amount of exotic hardware was made so that people could keep using their beloved dead computers.
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2021 06:37
|
|
|
The Amiga community got really weird for a long time and seemed to be actively trying to drive away anyone who didn't have a bottomless wallet.
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2021 21:00
|
|
|
Continuing my adventures in DOS games I have always had an interest in but never got around to playing I tried out Shadow Knights, another John Carmack programmed Softdisk published platformer. I had some fun with it, the mountain climb stage was pretty memorable, but eventually it just gets unfair with a constant barrage of large, difficult to avoid enemies. Hit detection is sloppy and the timing of your attacks needs to be incredibly precise in order to avoid getting hit by the enemy. Despite this it still ends up playing considerably better than 90% of PC-based platform games of the time, though that may be mostly on account of it's excellent performance. Player movement feels great and scrolling is very smooth, blowing away it's contemporaries like Duke Nukem or Jill of the Jungle, it's mostly the combat that lets it down. A shame, because there's a lot of it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 06:46
|
|
|
Sweevo posted:The Amiga community got really weird for a long time and seemed to be actively trying to drive away anyone who didn't have a bottomless wallet. It's horrible in Australia with A500s starting to sell in high hundreds these days. A bloke has been trying to flog off an A500 in a lovely box for AU$1200 for the past month.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 02:49
|
|
|
What, you don't want to pay $300 for a C64c with a maybe functioning power supply and nothing else with it? Every now and then I toy with the idea of getting an A1200 but I'm not made of that kind of money at the moment.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 09:08
|
|
|
I count myself lucky I got my A1200 around 2003 when I think the market bottomed out for them, and was able to get a spare case for it for $100 Just picked up an Apple //e Platinum, //e colour monitor and //e mouse as well as some hifi stuff and a boxed copy of Mac OS 9 from the same seller.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2021 05:57
|
|
|
I just picked up an old 14 inch CRT television for free. I celebrated by playing some Gianna Sisters and Henrys House. I think I havent seen an actual CRT in maybe 15 years, and it flickered more than I remembered. I used the rf video output, and the picture quality was passable (not exactly fantastic). The nostalgia factor was high, though.  I also opened up my PSU to see if I might be able to upgrade it myself or if its full of glue, as they tend to be. This one might actually be possible to work on, as theres only some at the bottom. Well see. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 18:58
|
|
|
Oh yeah, most of the beige supplies are "serviceable." I just got a VIC20 with another one of the crappy potted black supplies. Been building an internal "C64 Saver" equivalent for it, but it always seems like it gets pushed to the back of the queue. What a cute little TV! Never done it and it might not be possible on that TV, but I'd be tempted to try RGB-modding something like that. Seat Safety Switch fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Feb 7, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 19:12
|
|
|
Yeah, I was just about to point out that my power saver next to the cashew nuts shows a steady 5.20 v, which I guess is good? Sometimes the saver seems a bit overly sensitive, as when it broke the power when I was ten minutes into loading World Games. Man, you get a completely different motivation to play the game when you have to wait that long for it to load. Now I mostly play games on turbo tape, as they load in a reasonable time. Still not interested in getting a disk drive, though.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 19:59
|
|
|
chiefnewo posted:Every now and then I toy with the idea of getting an A1200 but I'm not made of that kind of money at the moment. That seems like a bargain in retrospect 
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 21:26
|
|
|
drat, and I was just thinking recently that a Falcon is probably the only retro computer I want. Maybe if I wait long enough my boxed Commodore 128 will somehow be worth a Falcon
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 21:27
|
|
|
an actual frog posted:For fun I checked the state of Falcon sales on ebay. My family all had STs and STEs when I was growing up so a few years back I thought it might be fun to own the most powerful computer Atari ever released. At the time I couldn't justify the 800-1000 most sellers were asking. i will show this to my mother who threw away our old ST 20 years ago
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 21:50
|
|
|
Yeah even basic STs in good condition seem to be going for around 200 bux, with clean STEs north of 300. I'll stick to the MiSTer 
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 22:35
|
|
|
i loved the ST, it was our home computer up to when i was about 8 years old, my dad got it for his job, i really liked messing around with the voice synthesizer chip it had which produced that cool classic computer voice, my dad would use it to say stuff to me like "go to bed it's late" etc and i'd make it say swearwords e.g. balls and gently caress used to play millipede on it although the cursor wouldnt move so itd just be me shooting, you could still get pretty far in the game without moving. it also had an early flight sim which really impressed me at the time with the 3D graphics, it looked like there was a tiny other world existing in the monochrome screen. i also had pac man and some other stuff, my favorite game was donald duck's playground though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYNPEM0Mm4I
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 23:05
|
|
|
https://discordier.github.io/sam/?textfield=Hello%2C+my+name+is+SAM.&Text+1=Say the voice synthesizer still rules
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 23:09
|
|
|
I've been interested in MSX ports of C64/Spectrum games recently so I bought Druid and it's not the same game? Not sure what's up with this one cause Dexter's ports of Night Shade and Knightlore are straight ports. There's weird fire breathing eyeballs and little miniboss caves dotted around, along with some overall map differences.    Every time you beat a miniboss this message appears (lovely image cause I'm a moron with an old camera):  Here's the box art, which is just the C64 art cropped with a new pointer finger logo because ??  I thought it might be one of those situations where an NES game was ported instead, but Youtube says nope. Kind of love the disappearing THIS LIFE IS DRUID life bar.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 04:43
|
|
|
I was at a vintage computer meet yesterday and took along some of my collection: My grumpy as poo poo A1200, I really need to do a fresh WB 3.1 install on it. Plus it gets really annoying whether it wants to run with its GVP accelerator card, whether it is the CPU or the RAM. The Apple //e Platinum is the one I picked up on Saturday. I have yet to power it own, I want to go through the PSU first and replace the RIFA cap before going ahead.  Commodore 486SLC (pretty much a hopped up 386SX) running DOS 6.22 on a CF card.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 05:56
|
|
|
Pretty jealous you can go to stuff like that - hopefully only a matter of time here too. I would love to show off some of my weird junk although I think the only remaining clubs here are Commodore-heavy.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2021 01:05
|
|
|
looked up the atari ST flight sim, it was this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWhtXgwNfsE it really was impressive, a whole 3D environment with a rendered plane, on an ST. i wonder if this couldve been realized on a console like the SNES using the super FX chip?
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2021 01:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 15:34 |
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvscxQN1JlA This is great on many levels, be you a Strong Bad connoisseur or not. Saoshyant fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Feb 13, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 21:21
|
|
