Load "Retrocomputer Gaming Thread",8,1.exe

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d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Captain Rufus posted:

What is the point of buying this stuff to merely sit unused and unloved?

This is what I wonder whenever I come across the guys who collect video games as if they were stamps or something, I never understood buying games you're not gonna play and probably wouldn't like if you did, and filling your house with that poo poo. If you honestly like games you've probably developed a specific taste and you should stick to that so you don't turn into a sad hoarder who lives an a flea market.

EDIT: And yeah the 1084 is a great thing, that's what I used to use with my MSX before I sold all my MSX stuff (I really miss it!)

d0s fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Jan 17, 2014

# ¿ Jan 17, 2014 12:20

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 12:51

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

I just make sure to judge old games the same way I would judge brand new ones: "does this look like something good?". I don't want to buy something for irony or kitsch, or rarely even for nostalgia. I can laugh at Bebe's Kids or the diabetes game in an emulator, I don't need them on my shelf reminding me that I spent actual money on them. If I find myself thinking "well, this was probably cool for the time" I usually put it back, something truly good is kinda timeless, nobody sits around complaining about SMB or Castlevania's graphics because those games are still fun.

EDIT: It's not to say I don't only stick to the "classic" games that everyone knows are good, a lot of the fun in this hobby comes from discovering lesser known stuff that is really great. I just make sure to do all that research before spending any money, with Youtube longplays or emulation. I seriously go through a console or computer's entire library lists on Wikipedia or whatever, keeping an eye out for developers I like or game names that sound familiar that I've heard good things about, research those and find out what I like, then make a list in Evernote for that system that I can access anywhere on my phone and stick to it, rarely buying something without knowing exactly what I'm getting.

Sometimes blind buying is fun, but I do it mostly on stuff like the Gameboy which has a huge library and many great games that can be found for a couple bucks, and if I end up not liking it I have something to give away or whatever.

d0s fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Jan 17, 2014

# ¿ Jan 17, 2014 12:54

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

RadicalR posted:

A kind soul redirected me to here. I'll just paste what I wrote in the other thread.

While we're on the subject of retro games, (when aren't we ever) I figure this is a relevant thread.
For the X68000, there was an exclusive Run and Gun game called "Die Bahnwelt".

Finally finished translating it. I would give more information, but I'm about ready to crash.

http://radicalr.pestermom.com/game.html#dw

Also, thanks to a kind UK goon, I have the actual copy of the game on the way here!

Man I am super hype about this but I'm having all sorts of problems getting it to load

# ¿ Feb 1, 2014 05:09

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

RadicalR posted:

Ah, that's a MIDI error. Set your MIDI card to ID 1, Level 4. It should work now.

That made the error go away but it still just hung on that screen lookin' all weird. Switched to WinX68K HS and it worked great though, I'm loving this!

# ¿ Feb 1, 2014 06:17

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

RadicalR posted:

You COULD use the emulator in the readme. There's a modified version of XM6 called XM6 Type G that works great.

Totally missed the readme, but I've actually never tried Win68K and I like it a lot more than XM6 so it worked out well.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2014 06:37

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Genpei Turtle posted:

Yeah dude, you are getting awfully system warrior here. I had a IIe and a C64 growing up (IIe was the parents' computer, C64 was the kids) but played on both so it's not like a case of rose-colored glasses here. I'm not trying to be a dick in pointing this out, but you're kinda relying a lot on arguments to authority and non-sequitur arguments (Electronic Games magazine said Atari was better! Jobs wanted to kill the A2!) then actually focusing on the games. If you want to argue the Apple is inferior to the C64 and Atari in all cases that's fine but so far the only thing you've really offered is that the graphics are better. Which is true, but a silly thing to get hung up on when we're talking about 8-bit computers, since none of them have graphics to write home about.

Let's get down to brass tacks here, the capabilities of the systems. Checking things out I realize I was wrong earlier--the Apple II was a more powerful computer than the C64, full stop. Even without expansions. The disk drives on the Apple were faster (good god I was trying to put my finger on why Deathlord on C64 is garbage compared to the A2--it's the excruciating load times). The clock speeds are the same but in practice the C64 was about 10% slower because of its architecture compared to the Apple. The Apple had an open architecture; you had the logic board, the RAM, and that's it, so everything ran direct to the metal. C64 lost a lot of cycles to OS wait states/hardware wait states. (Know how you can boot up a C64 without a disk in the drive and get that "READY" screen with Load"*",8,1 and all that? That's not free cycles-wise) Another thing interesting about the Apple II is that it had a built-in text generator the C64 lacked--you had to make weird calls to get text output on the C64 which made it more difficult to program applications that had a lot of text. To the end user it's not immediately visible, but it makes a difference in a lot of games.

So what does this mean for games? On the C64 you had a dedicated graphics chip/sound chip allowing for better graphics (though ironically lower resolution) which was a big plus--though the Apple's artifacting could be used to great effect, look at Karateka or Prince of Persia for an example. (NTSC only though--the artifacting looked like hot garbage on PAL displays) But you also had a lot less power. For a lot of games, even the majority, this made no difference. For simple action games and the like, you load the game into memory, play and go. That's a huge library of 80s games, and where the C64 shines. Add the better graphics, and the C64 becomes the choice of computer if you mainly want to play these types of games, hands down.

Once you get into games that are more complicated and/or games that have a lot of text, however, the C64 starts to lose out and lose out hard. With less memory to work with, a slower processor, and slower disk access, you have a problem--either you have to hit the much slower disk more often to load things into memory, impacting the performance of your game greatly, or you have to make sacrifices in terms of game complexity to make it work. Sometimes both! For this reason a lot of RPGs, strategy games, etc for the C64 had simplifed systems, AI, or even maps in a few cases to make up the slack. Who cares if they look better if they don't play better? Most RPGs and complex titles like this were programmed on the Apple for this reason--you had more resources to work with, could program straight to the metal, and didn't have to deal with hardware wait states gumming up cycles that could be used for more important things.

As for expansions, that's not goalpost moving since that was one of the primary draws of the Apple II. The Apple II was built with expansions right out the gate, with internal slots and everything. And they were common and robust! The aforementioned Transwarp essentially offloaded all of the Apple's logic processing into an overclocked chip inside the Transwarp itself. I can't stress how awesome that was for RPGs in the age of slow 8-bit computers. The C64 was a very slow machine, but the Apple wasn't that fast either! Remember the Apple II was built primarily as a hobbyist computer, and came with charts detailing processor architecture and PEEK/POKE listings. There was a thriving market for expansions, given the demographic that primarily bought Apples. It's dumb to bring up the IIc in this context since that model was specifically marketed as a "portable" (*snicker*) computer and was not the same way as the rest of the line. Though it did have more memory out the gate than the IIe, which was the model everyone owned.

The C64 was more of a so-called "toy computer" on the other hand, made on the cheap for the mass-market rather than the enthusiast, and that allowed their larger marketshare/game library. But they couldn't do as much, both out of the box and with expansions. For a lot of games that's perfectly sufficient. But if you want to play wargames, RPGs, strategy games, and that sort of thing then the Apple II is your best choice. Or if you want to play the Bilestoad. And honestly there's zero reason to own an Atari 400/800 when the C64/Apple are available--it doesn't have the library of the C64 or the power of an Apple.

Again, it boils down to what type of game you want to play. If you're an RPG/Strategy enthusiast like me, the Apple II will be your best choice among 8-bit computers. If you're more of an action/arcade guy, then the C64 beats the Apple hands down.

You are probably right but in that guy's defense I just google image searched "apple II games" and then "C64 games" and the latter's games just look better. If I was purely into games in the 80's I'd want a C64. If I wanted a more versatile computer I'd want an Apple. I know that's unscientific, I know next to nothing about these machines because I'm more of a Japanese retro computer guy :spergin:

but that's just a layman's impression.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2014 16:59

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Genpei Turtle posted:

I'm a Japanese retro computer guy too BTW. PC-98 mostly. Though I have a non-functional PC-88 in box, with a boxed copy of Ishin no Arashi I can't play. (With original receipt! 9800 yen in 1988! drat Koei games were expensive...)

I used to be a MSX2 guy but I had to sell my entire setup at one point when I lost my job. I kept my nearly complete collection of Compile Disc Stations but I lost:

Panasonic FS-A1 MKII
Sanyo Wavy 70FD

Aleste (complete)
Aleste 2 (complete)
Puyo Puyo (complete)
Girly Block (complete)
Yuureikun/Mr. Ghost (complete) (source of my avatar)
Metal Gear
King's Valley II
Castlevania
Kiki Kai Kai (complete)
Valis (complete)
Maze of Galious
Usas
Garyuoh

I have never stopped kicking myself. I should have sold my car. Normally I'm happy to sell stuff as I really hate hoarding but this was a system and games I absolutely loved. I'm expecting something in the mail today that's gonna ease that pain a bit though :retrogames:

# ¿ Feb 3, 2014 17:56

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

I nearly beat Castlevania but it's a total pain in the rear end in later stages. I'm almost purely an action gamer who likes a handful of JRPGs as well so yeah the MSX2 was the system for me. PC-98 was THE system for the type of games you're into though (and all kinds of other games), jesus what a fantastic library that thing had.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2014 18:16

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

WHAT HAVE I DONE

d0s fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Feb 4, 2014

# ¿ Feb 4, 2014 01:14

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Genpei Turtle posted:

Goddamn it man, how much did that cost you? And where did you get it? Do you know how much I would kill for an X68000 like that?

I know you said you're more of an action guy but you need to dip your toes into the RPG/strategy titles that are available for that thing now that you have it. If you don't have to deal with a language barrier I can give you a ton of recommendations.

It's the one from this auction http://www.ebay.com/itm/331115517792

The guy was apparently originally selling it for $900 on the shmups.com forum but by the time I learned about it it was up on eBay with bids. I didn't even want it originally, I thought I would hold out for a full sized machine and actually buy games but then I realized that would be way too :retrogames:

. This was a high initial price but it's kinda worth it to have every single game at your fingertips on real hardware. Also the lack of 5 1/4 drives prevent me from deciding I want a legit game library and selling my car for games or something. Also some of the crap included in this auction is a nightmare to track down on it's own, like the RAM expansion, Sacom MIDI board, CM-500, XE-1, etc. This guy built a very nice setup.

Sadly I know next to no Japanese, wish I did. If you know of some good fan translations I'll totally check them out!

EDIT: I am kinda bummed that it didn't include a legit keyboard/mouse for that price. The mouse I can live without but I really want a real keyboard, just so I can experience Cotton's "dancing keyboard"

d0s fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Feb 4, 2014

# ¿ Feb 4, 2014 01:46

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Genpei Turtle posted:

That's some amazing dedication to retrogames to go to those lengths to get an X68000

That's a really great way to sugarcoat financial irresponsibility, I gotta remember that

In reality, I've wanted one of these machines since I first learned about them so many years ago. Next to the PCE it's probably the best system for the particular type of games I'm into and it's something I'm going to enjoy to the fullest. I'm not a rich guy and it really is a big sacrifice, but my hobby makes me happy and keeps me sane and it's worth it to me. Until a week ago I was a pack and a half a day smoker and have been for almost 15 years. I just quit and this is my gift to myself, I promised myself if I pick up the cigs again I'm gonna part this thing out and sell it.

RadicalR posted:

Nothing quite like playing a shootemup on the X68k through an XRGB3. No MIDI card though, but the FM chip is nice to listen to!

The FM sound is loving great on it's own and on a lot of games sounds even better than the MIDI. I want an XPC-4 so I can do 15khz, I tried using a VGA->BNC cable with my PVM but there's some weird sync issues and I can't get a stable picture

# ¿ Feb 4, 2014 03:50

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

RadicalR posted:

Dang d0s. Do you not like talking to me? I sent you two PM.
I just want to :retrobucks: with a fellow X68k...

Holy poo poo dude I had no idea, I thought I had it set to give me a popup notification. Real sorry, checking em now!

# ¿ Feb 4, 2014 04:36

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

I just wanna say that RadicalR's Die Bahnwelt translation kicks rear end, you guys really need to try this game out it's absolutely fantastic!

# ¿ Feb 5, 2014 06:50

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

So Rufus asked me to do a writeup on the X68K for this thread. I hope you like it!

The Sharp X68000 was a computer released in 1987 and sold only in Japan. Back in the day it was "seriously" used as a graphics/video/music workstation and a game development system, sort of like a Japanese Amiga. Like the Amiga in Europe, the X68K became a favorite of hardcore game fans. It's architecture and specs were close to actual arcade hardware of the time and the machine was host to many amazing arcade ports, but it also saw many original games and my focus in the games post will mostly be on those.

Hardware

The original X68000 was a 10mhz machine with 1mb of RAM. Most X68000 games don't need specs beyond these to run well. Later machines bumped the clock speed up to 16mhz, but allowed you to limit the processor's speed to 10mhz, as some games react badly to the faster processor. While 10mhz/1mb is the bare minimum to run most games, a good all-round setup would be a 16mhz machine (XVI) with 4mb of RAM. Avoid the X68030, there are reports of incompatibilities with the '030 processor.

The X68K has seven LEDs on it's keyboard, which some games take advantage of. If you don't have a keyboard, you can get PS2/USB adapters here. You can get mouse adapters here too, but there's next to nothing on the system games-wise that actually requires one.

Most X68Ks have dual 5.25 floppy drives and this is the medium 99% of retail games came in. The XVI Compact has 3.5 inch drives, to run original games from disk you can try to find the Sharp CZ-6FD5 external 5.25 floppy drive (impossible!), or write the disk images to 3.5 floppies. You can also use a SCSI hard drive or use a CF card. My XVI Compact has an external Sun SCSI enclosure containing a CF AztecMonster adapter with a 2gb CF card loaded with eidis v3.

Running Games

Eidis is a nice way to have a great majority of the good X68K games at your fingertips, but some games require being run from floppies. If you don't have a way to write floppies, you can do it on the X68K itself if you can get the disk images onto the machine, I use a SCSI CD-ROM (Panasonic KXL-D740) but you can also use a null modem cable. Here's an example of how to write a disk image using a SCSI CD-ROM on a machine with the eidis image booting from a HDD or CF card (because this information is nowhere to be found in English online):

Write any X68K XDF disk image to a CD-ROM on your PC. I just use Nero with standard settings and it works fine. our example will be anime_porn.xdf. Put the CD in your X68K's CD-ROM and boot the machine. Once in LHES, press "K" to create a directory called "XDF" (or whatever) on the root of your HDD. Navigate to that directory and press "X" to enter a command. Type

code:

CDROM

and press Enter. You'll be presented with a blue CD navigator screen, find anime_porn.xdf, press Space to mark it and press "G" to copy it to your current working directory. Press "Q" to quit the CD navigator.

_{This screenshot is from an emulator, normally there would be a directory tree here instead of this error message.}

Insert a blank floppy disk into either drive, then press "X" in LHES and type

code:

FORMAT

On this entirely Japanese screen choose the first option, on the next screen choose the first option again and select the drive containing the disk (usually b: or c: for drive 0 and 1). After setting the disk choose the fifth option in the list and hit Enter. Hit Enter again to confirm and the disk will be formatted. When this is finished hit Escape a few times to quit back to LHES.

On your PC, download 2HDSIM. Extract it and burn the contents to a CD. Use the steps above to make a directory on your X68K called "2HDSIM" and copy the entire contents of the archive to it. Quit the CD navigator again and put the formatted floppy disk in a drive, then use LHES to select MKIMG.X in the 2HDSIM folder. Press Enter to bring up the command line, and edit it so it has the following arguments:

code:

MKIMG.X -R x: y:/XDF/anime_porn.xdf

where X is your floppy drive and Y is your hard drive (usually a:). Press Enter and then Enter again to confirm, if all goes well your image will be written to disk.

MIDI

First off: The X68K'S internal Yamaha FM sound chip is awesome. Your games aren't going to sound bad if you don't buy a bunch of expensive sound hardware, but sometimes people prefer LA or GS over FM, so this is for them. This is also gonna be really, really simplified so if you're a huge MIDI nerd please don't kill me!

Your X68K will need a MIDI interface board to use an external MIDI controller. I have no idea where to get one of these, mine came with one already installed. I have a feeling a lot of X68Ks out there already have one. Once you have this board installed you need a MIDI module. 90% of MIDI compatible X68K games will expect either a Roland MT-32 or a Roland SC-55. There are other modules that are functionally similar/the same but in the interest of simplicity I'm gonna stick with these two.

The MT-32 is an LA synthesis module, which means it can sound like anything the programmer wants it to . The SC-55 is a GS module, so it's sounds are limited to the built in instruments. This doesn't make the SC-55 bad, just different. In many ways it is a more advanced unit than the MT-32 and can sound even better. Typically, older games want the MT-32 and newer games want the SC-55. Lots of people get both. Another option is to find a Roland CM-500 which is like having an MT-32 and SC-55 in the same (ugly) box with no cool display or anything but two LEDs and a volume knob. Use the rear selector to choose "B" mode for LA and "C" mode for GS. Remember to reset the unit so the change takes effect.

Here's a list of some games and MIDI information.

Display

Chances are, you don't have an original X68000 monitor. The system can be attached to a VGA monitor with an adapter. The problem is, most modern VGA monitors want a 31khz signal and won't display a 15khz signal at all. Most of what you'll be doing on the X68K will be 31khz by default. The OS, most of the games and software, etc. There are just enough games that boot in 15khz to be annoying. Sometimes you can blindly navigate the menus to find the option to switch to 31khz (use an emulator to find out what to do). A tiny minority of games don't run in 31khz at all.

The best way to get an X68000 to display everything on a modern monitor is to use a Micomsoft XPC-4. This ridiculously expensive box is explicitly designed to make old computers work with new displays, and according to it's users it does the job wonderfully.

You can also just find an older VGA multisync monitor, many support 15khz mode. Here's an incomplete list.

Controller

The X68K has two DB9 Atari type controller ports. Any Atari/Amiga/MSX/FM-Towns/etc controllers will work. Sega controllers will not work without an adapter. Capcom made an adapter to use it's CPS Fighter with the X68K. Micomsoft made several excellent sticks that work with the X68K. The XE-1 Pro is the best of the bunch, with fully adjustable turbo fire and trigger hold, and an awesome Knight Rider-esque row of LEDs to display the trigger speed. The XE-1 ST and ST2 will also work, but if you want turbo you have to hunt down a XO-1 or similar device. ASCII's excellent Stick II Turbo is another great choice.

I'm pretty tired of writing all these words, my next post will be all about the X68K's games!

d0s fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Feb 8, 2014

# ¿ Feb 5, 2014 11:49

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Genpei Turtle posted:

If you don't mind, once you're finished that I can chip in with some suggestions of my own about X68K games. Some of them are really, really, good, but easily overlooked because of the language barrier.

That would be awesome! My post is gonna be entirely about action games that require no Japanese and a few good fan translations. It would be really interesting to hear about all the stuff I'm missing out on.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2014 21:58

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

McCracAttack posted:

So you're the one who drove that thing out of my price range! It was for the best really so thank you.

Man I wasn't even planning on buying the thing until I convinced myself that I don't really need a full sized machine because that would have been even more expensive in the long run, what with games costing what they do. Sure, I'm gonna miss out on having a shelf full of very pretty boxes but honestly I'd rather have a CF card full of games to play, at least for this system.

The keyboard the guy included is the biggest piece of poo poo on earth though, which is weird because it's made by SGI and in my experience they made some pretty good poo poo, at least back when they were actually called "Silicon Graphics". But this keyboard... man some of the keys don't even respond if you type fast. You have to type everything v e r y d e l i b e r a t e l y.

If anyone knows someone with a super secret stash of legit X68K keyboards get in touch with me please :retrogames:

# ¿ Feb 5, 2014 23:10

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

This guy is another source of endless X68000/other Japanese computer entertainment:

http://www.youtube.com/user/superdeadite

# ¿ Feb 6, 2014 00:45

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

McCracAttack posted:

Well, you did get an XE-1 stick with that bundle so don't expect much sympathy from me.

I'd seriously trade it straight up for a real X68K keyboard, that's how janky this keyboard is. If it was a pro model I wouldn't though, I need turbo.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2014 02:10

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Does anyone where to buy bulk 3.5 floppy disks for cheap? Those things got expensive since I last had to buy a bunch (When I got a Super Wildcard DX in 1997)

# ¿ Feb 7, 2014 06:32

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Games Part 1: Sting, Zoom, Exact, Fill-in Cafe

This post is all about the X68000's games. The few "best of" lists online focus mostly on the many fantastic arcade ports on this system, and of course, Castlevania. I'm going to take a different approach and talk about the games developed specifically for the X68K. Many of these games also got ported to the consoles of the time and, I'll note that where possible. Sadly this isn't the most common system out there and a lot of the ports are more than acceptable. This is gonna be sorted by developer and I'll try to include a bit of info about the developer's history when I can. Finally, I'm going to focus entirely on action games, since I can't read Japanese and very few text-heavy games have been translated. If you have some reccomendations for great X68K RPGs/etc please post them!

We know Sting primarily as a developer of RPGs, they're responsible for the Evolution games on the Dreamcast, and the excellent GBA titles Riveria and Yggdra Union. They got their start developing shooters though, their first game was Psycho Chaser on the PC Engine.

Last Battalion 1991

This is a fun vertical shooter with kinda caravan style gameplay. You have a lot of cool weapon powerups and a speed selector, not shooting for a few seconds charges a powerful shot. This is a pretty basic game that's not going to blow minds but it's fast and polished and a great way to kill some time, I find myself playing this a lot whenever I have a few minutes to spare and don't want to get into something deeper. There was a slightly different version of this game released for the PC Engine called Override.

Zoom was responsible for stuff like Lagoon on SNES and Zero Divide on PSX, but before that they created a few really great X68000 games.

Genocide 1989

This was an early game and it kinda shows, the game is kinda stiff but it's not awful or anything. You're a giant robot with a light saber and your goal is to open the door at the end of each stage by killing all the enemies in it. This got a really lackluster PCE-CD port.

Phalanx 1991

This is one of, if not the best horizontal shooters on the system. Beautiful design and pixel art, very interesting stages and enemies, great weapons and just a total blast to play. The music is excellent too! This got a pretty good SNES port everyone knows about because of it's stupid box.

Genocide 2 1991

Daaaayum. This makes the prequel look like a turd. Same mechanics and ideas but everything has been improved tenfold, the gameplay is much more fluid and the stages are much more interesting. It got a SFC port I haven't played.

Exact made exactly six games before being folded into Sony and having their soul sucked out after creating the best PSX game ( :colbert:

) Jumping Flash. A supremely creative team, they never made the same game twice but their style is all over everything they made. They are absolutely the superstars of commercial X68000 development. The MSX and PCE had Compile, the Famicom had KID, the Genesis had Treasure, the SNES had Square, the X68K had Exact. Respect.

Naious 1990

This seems like a standard horizontal shooter until exactly one minute in when you actually fly into the giant ship hovering over you and begin navigating it's interior. It's still very much a "first game" but Exact's unique sense of style is evident even here.

Aquales 1991

Hey, do you like the grappling/swinging mechanic of Bionic Commando, Umihara Kawase and Fausset� Amour? Would you like to do that with a giant robot with a laser sword and machine gun? I don't think there's anything bad about this game.

�toile Princesse 1993

This is kinda like Kiki Kai Kai meets Popful Mail. It's a top-down action RPG(ish) game where you're an anime. You don't really have to know Japanese to make it though, since the gameplay is good enough to carry the whole thing.

Geograph Seal 1994

This is Jumping Flash's dad. It has the exact same gameplay mechanic but swaps the hallucinatory whimsy of that game with a futuristic robot war setting. It's one of the best reasons to own a SC-55 as the music is excellent. In fact, everything about this game is excellent. A programming marvel on a system with no dedicated 3D hardware.

Asuka 120% Burning Fest 1994

Asuka 120% got remade several times but this is the original. A really great 2D fighting game with extremely fluid animation in a Japanese school setting, this is one of the best fighters on the system. This was ported to the PCE CD and several other consoles, but I think the original is the best.

Mad Stalker: Full Metal Force 1994

Yet another excellent giant robot game. This one's gimmick is the use of simple fighting commands to perform attacks, for instance QCF+A fires your gun. It sound clunky but I promise you it's ludicrous fun, there's something really satisfying about dashing with your sword and knocking stuff across the screen. SUPERB graphics, the pixel work here is eye-popping. You must play this game. Mad Stalker got a pretty good port to the PCE CD (Arcade Card) and a kinda lame one to the PSX.

That's all for now, I wanted to cover the developers I liked best/was most familiar with first, in the next post I'll be going over single games without a focus on the devs.

d0s fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Feb 7, 2014

# ¿ Feb 7, 2014 11:27

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Zeether posted:

Last Battalion has a great "bug" where letting the bonus score timer that comes up during boss fights hit zero suddenly makes it tick down from 9 million points so when you beat the first boss you get a ton of 1-Ups. You can max out the score by the end of stage 2 this way.

Also drat, Genocide 2 looks cool and I never thought to check out Zoom's other titles.

Man I can't get this to work no matter what. Do you have to let it sit at zero for a certain amount of time? All this is doing is making my scores really bad :haw:

# ¿ Feb 8, 2014 21:22

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

McCracAttack posted:

Well, there's another X68k auction that's about to close and it's has close to 900 page views. I dunno if I still want to take a crack at it or not. There might be another d0s lurking out there.

Do ittt

EDIT: drat I wish mine had that much ram. You can def use Deadite's "baller" version of eidis: http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=4923.0

(I use this too but some things don't run due to lack of ram, he uses a very inefficient method of loading the games. For stuff like that I just write em to floppy.)

d0s fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Feb 9, 2014

# ¿ Feb 9, 2014 07:37

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Zeether posted:

The shmups forum has a whole thread on it: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=28911

The PC Engine port is also broken according to one of the users.

Edit: I made a video of it, this was done on XM6 (which is a pretty good X68000 emulator) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvhNTHx1648 If it's not working then I guess maybe you have some rare bugfixed version?

Holy poo poo that seriously doesn't happen to me on real hardware. I'm using the one included on the eidis disk image, it probably comes either the TOSEC ROM or some guys copy of the game. I'm gonna try in in an emulator in a bit to see if that's what the problem is.

Also holy poo poo http://www.ebay.com/itm/350981265485

Over $1,600 USD god drat. If one of you bought that take some of that pressure off and sell me your keyboard

# ¿ Feb 10, 2014 21:32

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Genpei Turtle posted:

Awesome

Holy poo poo that's great. I'm one of the dudes who grew up with Apple IIs in school, so I do have a soft spot for them (mostly for Print Shop weirdly, I loved making stuff). I do have an Apple IIe system I've put together from thrift shops and stuff, but haven't really messed with it in years. The other day I took it down and tried to use it, the machine powered up/beeped and the disk drives made the "booting up" noise, but the screen stayed blank.

Is there a particular cable that needed to be used, or should anything that fits the RCA/RF ports work? I totally forgot everything I knew about these systems.

EDIT: I'm using an Apple monitor made for the system, not a TV or anything.

d0s fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Feb 15, 2014

# ¿ Feb 15, 2014 02:33

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Check out what I've been working on

It's an Amiga 1200 set I've had for a very long time (originally found in box at a Salvation Army with all disks), I installed a hard drive in it at one point but there was no actual mounting bracket so I covered the circuitry with paper and duct taped it to the shield :v:

(I was like 15 okay). I can't remember doing much with this besides playing the included games (Whizz and a pinball game) and some stuff from Amiga Format demo disks. They used to sell that magazine here, which was weird as hell because I am the only person I have ever known in this country with an Amiga.

I'm debating either selling it or getting something like this and finding out what the big deal is about this system.

EDIT: I also have a '030 accelerator for this thing which causes the machine to boot to a black screen, I think because it's standard power supply isn't strong enough.

Also, a question for the Amiga people: Will this play all A500 games/games for older Amigas?

d0s fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Feb 15, 2014

# ¿ Feb 15, 2014 11:56

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Prenton posted:

My A600 needed a "degrader" disk (which copied the A500 ROM into RAM and rebooted to use that) for some old games. I assume the A1200 with it's faster processor and AGA has it worse, but (like that ebay auction mentioned) there's a thing called WHDLoad that lets you do patched up HD installs of a lot of games.

Yup, I'm using something called ReloKick to boot some games and WHDL for others, it's really hit or miss since I'm using a bone stock A1200, and I don't have an RGB cable for my 1084 monitor so I'm going through composite so lots of things don't even sync video (I've ordered the cable).

The games that have really impressed me so far are Turrican 3 (can't get 2 to work and 1 is pretty but jumping with up :cmon:

) and the Lotus games.

EDIT: Holy poo poo Jaguar XJ220. Dear Europeans I love your old racing games :swoon:

d0s fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Feb 15, 2014

# ¿ Feb 15, 2014 23:00

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Captain Rufus posted:

I'll have to find and scan an Amiga magazine I have tonight if this snow keeps me at home. It has a 1200 mini guide with it that lists a metric assload of games that do or do not work with the 1200/4000.

(Edit. Found the booklet. I now need to scan it if the snow keeps up this rate after my S.S.S. Regimen that all good people should do every day. It's like 48 pages but I should be able to easily get 2 pages into 1 image given how wee this booklet is.)

Please scan this, I'm having a miserable time getting stuff working on my 1200. For every game that runs there are 10 that crash horribly in ways that make me think there's actually something wrong with my system until I load up an AGA game like Super Stardust or Whizz and everything's perfect, or the odd game that works with no headaches like XJ220.

I know WHDLoad would fix this but 90% of what I try to run on there wants more RAM as that loads the disks into memory or something and I have no working expansion so I'm stuck writing .adf files to disk and trying them that way.

If I had actually bought a 1200 back in the day I would have been really pissed, it seems most of the good games are for the 500, and only really work well on that system (unless you have a super expanded 1200 that's able to basically emulate a 500).

# ¿ Feb 16, 2014 04:10

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Jedit posted:

I had an A1200 and I can count the number of games that wouldn't run on it on one finger. There were sometimes issues with pirated games not working, though.

This is the problem then, (although I think when even archive.org is hosting the TOSEC set we call it "abandonware") I think it's a combination of an NTSC machine and the fact that legit Amiga software is very hard to find/expensive in the US. I'm burning .adfs to CD and writing them to floppy on the 1200 and trying them that way. Just about every one has had some kind of trainer or cracktro.

al-azad posted:

Amiga emulation is pretty simple, what are you having trouble with?

Not emulating, Getting A500 games working on a real stock A1200 (can't use WHDLoad for most things because not enough memory)

# ¿ Feb 16, 2014 22:41

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Bing the Noize posted:

What's the issue with cracked games not running on real machines?

The crackers probably concentrated on A500 compatibility, combined with the original developers who concentrated on A500 compatibility. It's just another layer of stuff that can go wrong. Add my having an NTSC system to that and it's no surprise the majority of stuff doesn't work. The ideal situation for me would be a PAL A500 with a bunch of legit games, I have the opposite of that.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2014 22:51

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Bing the Noize posted:

I mean you couldn't throw more RAM at it and then use software workarounds?

That said I don't remember if the A1200 is one of the ones where you gotta get that expansion card before you can even add more RAM though

It is, and search "Amiga 1200 expansion" on eBay to have a laugh. That poo poo is expensive. Would rather just have a PAL 500 which are dirt cheap in comparison. I'll keep my 1200 to play the AGA games and do the writing of floppies, since I don't think there's a way to get a CD-ROM working with a 500.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2014 23:06

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

EgillSkallagrimsson posted:

Also, you can acquire uncracked, pristine, floppy images with a google search for Amiga ipf. You'll probably have to convert to adf for writing them out, though.

Isn't the whole point of having cracked ones so they'll run without having the original disks though? If I write pristine images surely whatever copy protection there is will notice?

# ¿ Feb 17, 2014 00:48

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

So I've got everything working on my bone-stock A1200, thanks to ClassicWB and a tip I read somewhere to set my HDD's max transfer rate to 0x1FE00.

ClassicWB gives you a nice WHDLoad games launcher that you can run before starting the OS by holding the right mouse button, freeing up tons of RAM and getting rid of the out of memory errors (for most A500 games anyway, some newer games are simply too large but that is to be expected).

The max transfer thing is what really helped though. Apparently all my transfers from CD to hard disk were being messed up due to this and I was trying to run corrupted data, resulting in horrible crashes that were making me think I had a serious hardware problem. Not so! If you're just getting into Amiga stuff please remember this magic hex value: 0X1FE00.

Lotus 2 is loving awesome

d0s fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Feb 17, 2014

# ¿ Feb 17, 2014 09:26

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

I really like that ClassicWB includes a bunch of great mod files just, y'know because.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2014 14:47

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Red Warrior posted:

I remember a lot of crackers actually fixing otherwise A500-only games to work on the A1200.

Yeah I was totally off the mark, the problem was mostly my screwed up maxtransfer setting. Also, lots of stuff was loading to a black screen because I wasn't turning PAL on at boot, it's a NTSC 1200. A rare few things are still glitchy no matter what, like Lionheart. It runs but it's not exactly stable, seems like the controls were awful anyway. What is it with otherwise awesome Amiga games having terrible controls? What sort of controllers were people using where it's a good idea to map jump to up? So many games on this system do it and I can't figure out the reasoning behind it, I've tried both a stick (XE-1 ST2 in Sega mode) and a pad (Genesis controller). Are most people playing with a keyboard or something?

# ¿ Feb 17, 2014 18:02

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

EgillSkallagrimsson posted:

There's a guy that makes amiga->psx/ps2 controller adapters that can map up to a button.

I've looked everywhere and can't find this, do you know where to get one? That sounds perfect.

I am really loving this system

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbg19P-jASk

# ¿ Feb 19, 2014 03:40

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

Captain Rufus posted:

Also totes jeallin you have an NTSC 1200.

Dude I wish it was PAL, putting it in PAL mode before playing like half the games is annoying as hell, and apparently some stuff just flat out doesn't like NTSC machines even in PAL mode.

Are there any benefits to having an NTSC 1200?

# ¿ Feb 19, 2014 04:46

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

RadicalR posted:

So I got my MIDI card in for the X68000...

It uses a propriety cable. gently caress.

I... am godawful at cable stuff, but I did find some instructions to create one.

http://www.sssp.mihara.hiroshima.jp/~shimsoft/x68/midicable/mkmidicablee.html

I'm willing to pay for the parts and shipping.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/230596569248

# ¿ Feb 19, 2014 18:38

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

RadicalR posted:

If I'm not mistaken, that won't work, being some cables needs to be switched around.

This guy says it works fine:

http://www.illusionware.it/x68000.htm

# ¿ Feb 20, 2014 19:19

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

I've been messing with my A1200 for the past couple of weeks, and feel confident enough about it that I can do a decent megapost about the things. Please remember that while I've owned the system for a very long time I only just started using it seriously and exploring the library beyond Aerial Racers which came with an issue of Amiga Format I had. Aerial Racers also happens to be a very, very slow game so it gave me a bad impression of the Amiga as a game machine, but it's just badly coded.

I'm going to be kinda critical at times in a way people who grew up with this computer wouldn't be. This is an extremely beloved system and it's fans are absolutely hardcore. I can understand why, it's really an amazing system; but I'm not seeing anything through a nostalgia lens so please understand that before yelling at me

These are the observations of someone brand new to a very complex (and entertaining) scene.

Hardware :geno:

The Amiga hardware lineup can be kinda confusing, and some games are only compatible with some systems. For the sake of simplicity I'm only going to focus on the A500, A600, and A1200. If you're mainly into games don't bother with any of the desktop systems, they're rare and expensive and don't do anything the all in one systems don't games-wise. If you're crazy and want to do actual work on the Amiga this article isn't for you. There is also something called the CD32, and apparently it's a really good way to play lots of great Amiga games painlessly. Unfortunately I know nothing about it so I'm not covering it here.

A500

This is the system 90% of the Amiga's games are written for. If your primarily going to be playing legit games or using a floppy emulator, get this system. Ideally you'd want a revision 6 NTSC machine, rev 6 includes the "Fat Angus" 8372 chip which can be switched between NTSC and PAL modes with software. This is important because many great Amiga games are PAL-only, but some are NTSC and PAL and the NTSC versions are nicer. If you can't find a rev 6 NTSC machine you might as well just get any PAL system because the vast majority of good Amiga games will work great with it. You want a system with Kickstart 1.3 ROMs, so avoid the A500+. All A500's have monochrome output on the composite jack, so use the RGB output or get a A520 modulator.

A600

This is an A500+ in a small case with no numeric keypad, but with the option of an internal IDE hard drive (2.5") and color composite output. It shares the A500+'s incompatibilities due to it's Kickstart 2.0 ROM. If you're dead set on getting one of these or an A500+, a ReloKick boot disk will solve most of the compatibility issues. The A600's small size allows you to put it in your entertainment center and pretend it isn't a computer at all!

A1200

The A1200 has an upgraded 68020 processor and 2mb of RAM standard. It has new graphics hardware (AGA). It shares all the incompatibilities of the A600 and adds a whole bunch more thanks to all of it's advanced hardware. Not many games were written to take advantage of AGA and out of those very few are worth playing. Thankfully the A1200 is powerful enough to run WHDLoad, so if you have one of these and are willing to put in a little work, compatibility issues are no problem. WHDLoad is RAM hungry though, so to run everything you may need an expensive accelerator/memory board (the A1200's RAM is only expandable through the expansion port, so extra RAM is added to the accelerator). Most of the good games will work perfectly without any expansion though. I recommend ClassicWB which makes setting up an A1200 to be a game jukebox painless, you just need to add games.

Workbench :pwn:

Workbench is the Amiga's awful GUI. The less you see of it, the better. ClassicWB allows you to bypass workbench and boot right to a list of WHDload games by holding down the right mouse button, this has the added benefit of freeing up RAM to load the games; on unexpanded systems this is crucial. I've played with every enhancement to workbench there is, nothing makes it pleasant to look at or use. I'm sorry Amiga fans I really tried to like this, but I like my Amiga more when I think of it as an awesome video game machine with a keyboard, imagining doing real work with this makes me break out in a cold sweat.

Games :dance:

I need to confess something: Until I started exploring the Amiga's library, I didn't "get" European retro games. Sure, I loved DMA design and Psygnosis, but beyond that Eurogames seemed like a bland sea of furry 'tude mascot platformers that really want to be Sonic and action games that really want to be [insert Konami game here]. It was a really unfair way to think, but I grew up playing Japanese action/arcade console games, so that's what felt "right" to me. Most of the games that caused me to think like this were actually really bad ports of great Amiga games to various 16-bit consoles. You can tell the Amiga was the system the developers wanted their games to look and play their best on.

The Amiga has a lot of ports of Japanese arcade games and I'm not going to cover those because they're mostly crap ports of great games. If you must play a Japanese arcade game on your Amiga try Silkworm, Saint Dragon, or R-Type. I think the most interesting parts of this system's library are it's truly original games.

One thing that threw me off at first is the fact that most Amiga games are deigned to be used with a one-button joystick. This makes any game that involves jumping and attacking kinda awkward, as jump is usually mapped to up. You get used to it, but it still kinda ruins platformers. I've seen one instance of WHDLoad patching in a second button, for Ruff n Tumble but this caused the game to crash on my setup. Turrican 3 and Blastar allow use of a second button natively. I use either a 3-button Genesis controller or a XE-1 ST2 in Sega mode. Plugging in a six button Genesis controller causes weird results in some games.

All of the games listed here except Slamtilt and Super Stardust will work on an unexpanded A500 with disks and an unexpanded A1200 with WHDLoad. They will probably work on an A600, some may require ReloKick. Slamtilt and Super Stardust will work only on an A1200 as they are AGA games. There are also AGA versions of the Chaos Engine games and maybe others here that give enhanced graphics on an A1200.

Okay, here's what you came for. I'm not going to talk about the games much as there are so many I want to list. I'm sure there are many more I've missed as I'm still so new to this system. Please post your own favorites!

Agony - Art & Magic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYxIJxqrv6U

Horizontal shooter featuring an owl, beautiful artwork.

Alien Breed SE '92 - Team 17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFqtJLZ7SsU

Overhead shooter clearly inspired by the Alien movies with an exploration element.

All Terrain Racing - Team 17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8mM3wJYAiY

First of many fantastic overhead racing games I'll be mentioning.

Hybris - Cope-Com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QBStOhiIzA

Vertical shooter with great music.

Battle Squadron Cope-Com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4LnzE8Ea3g

Sequel to Hybris with more great music.

Blastar - Core

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqrqU_wTPAw

Excellent multi-scrolling shooter similar to the overhead stages of Thunder Force II.

Cannon Fodder 1/2 - Sensible Software

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBkadqCX96o

Really addictive point and click war "sim".

Chaos Engine 1/2 - Bitmap Brothers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ6JmIzmUeM

Steampunk overhead run and gun with great graphics and music.

Disposable Hero - Boys w/o Brains

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1gID8faNPw

Very slick horizontal shooter.

Gods - Bitmap Brothers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBgt7XkLxvQ

Action platformer with high production values.

Lotus Series - Magnetic Fields

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Su-OEO3qRI

drat good series of racing games, Lotus 1 is good, Lotus 2 is an absolute classic and 3 is just OK. If you're into racing games at all, Lotus 2 is the Amiga game.

Lionheart - Thalion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoiHk_3siYg

Beautiful sidescrolling platformer marred by terrible, terrible controls. It's not just a matter of jumping with Up, the attacks are super sluggish. It's still cool despite the controls because the atmosphere is so great.

No Second Prize - Thalion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Uzqibllme0

3D motorcycle racing game controlled with the mouse, really impressive for the time.

Jaguar XJ220 - Core

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n__WagRmTw0

The other great Amiga racing game. Pure class.

Overdrive - Team 17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AJdPN0XA-E

Another fun overhead racer.

Pinball */Slamtilt - Digital Illusions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6cAhBFo0xI

Sim-ish pinball games, I'm more into crush type pinball but these are cool enough to be fun.

Project X SE - Team 17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leeDMO_T-1U

Pretty Gradius clone.

Stardust/Super Stardust - Bloodhouse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le0K3ws1uPc

It's Asteroids only fun!

Super Cars/Super Cars 2 - Magnetic Fields

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lstd2FhxKH4

The best overhead racers on the system, 1 is a pure racing game, 2 introduces combat features. I prefer 1, many people prefer 2. Both are a total blast.

SWIV - Random Access

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzD81DjnLl0

Fake "sequel" to Tecmo's Silkworm. Really an original vertical shooter by the best porter of Japanese arcade games, Random Access. Try their ports of Silkworm and Saint Dragon!

Turrican Series - Factor 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW4CDWyhxLw

The famous run and gun platformer thing deserves it's hype. 3 introduces a second button to jump thank god

Ruff N Tumble - Wunderkind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfBFxvelfVM

Good luck getting this to work properly on anything other than a PAL A500. It's possible but a pain, and the WHDLoad is crashy as hell. I had to try several cracked ADFs before I found one that worked on my 1200. My reward was a beautiful and fun game with an idiotic mascot.

Vroom - Lankhor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVKDvLM8pKw

This would be up there with Lotus and Jaguar if not for the stupid no-button controls. Up to acclerate, down to brake. Come on :negative:

Walker - DMA Design

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lQJ9UEG-Co

One of my personal favorites, this is a mech game where you walk with the arrow keys and aim with the mouse. Tons of fun.

Apidya - Kaiko

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMrOMWaJAP8

Crazy shooter where you play a dude who turns into a bee. Looks really Japanese but I think the developer is German?

EDIT:

It's pretty criminal to make an Amiga megapost and not talk about demos. Problem is, I know nothing about the demoscene beyond State of the Art. It would be awesome if someone knowledgeable would make an Amiga demoscene megapost listing the coolest demos!

EDIT 2:

Here's some stuff I neglected to include in my games post because I'm an idiot:

Leander - Traveller's Tales

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mROgK7srbDM

Very good platformer/hack and slash by Traveller's Tales. Reminds me of Conquest of the Crystal Palace for NES of all things. :woop:

ALLOWS A SECOND BUTTON FOR JUMPING :woop:

Cybernoid/Cybernoid II - A.P. Cooper

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0k_kS49sek

Very "C64-ish" series of shooters, cool music.

Wolfchild - Core

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lF1rSfZFhI

You're a werewolf trying to save his dad or something :furcry:

. Strange plot but great graphics, lovely controls.

X-Out - Rainbow Arts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeEmfFdyLlM

Cool but very difficult shooter where you can build out a ship before the game which adds an element of strategy. Great atmosphere.

Assassin - Psionic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j0GQ0vQwUI

Inane sidescroller with bad controls, still kind of fun??

Shadow of the Beast Series - Reflections

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-U6HUaAONI

Famous series of sidescrollers with great art direction.

Speedball/Speedball 2 - Bitmap Brothers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH5_h5iowgc

Excellent futuristic sports game.

d0s fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Feb 25, 2014

# ¿ Feb 23, 2014 11:55

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 12:51

d0s: Jun 28, 2004

..btt posted:

Nothing could be further from the truth - the CD32 came out when Amiga's popularity was already rapidly waning.

From what I understand it's because people have made CDs full of Amiga games that you can just pop in your CD32 and play on your TV. Like I said though, I known nothing about this so I could be totally wrong.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2014 12:33

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > Load "Retrocomputer Gaming Thread",8,1.exe

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