Messages

1

Classic Video Games / Re: My on-going SMS test thread

« on: September 18, 2024, 11:03:07 am »

This is something I can't quite confirm - Ayrton Senna's Super Monaco GP II has quite a good reputation as a racing game of it's time, being one of the favorite childhood games of David Hamilton 

That's the Mega Drive Version which is a vast improvement over the first one and had Ayrton Senna work on directly. The Master System game is basically just a lazy rehash of the first SMGP, the SMS version, which was already quite mediocre and the stiff controls are annoying.

Never been the greatest fan of master system, has some decent games but that soundcard  I can see why the Nes crushed this era

In Europe the Master System outsold the NES 5 to 1 or so, it was far ahead in the UK, Spain, France, Italy and Germany (altough Ariolasoft dropped the ball there initially, then again, Nintendo Europe did a way worse job to the point that SMB3 came out after SMW for the SNES was already on the market)

cause grapicly it's only a slight upgrade compared to what Nes

Graphically, the SMS is so far ahead of the NES it's not even worth to mention really. Just compare Ghostbusters, Shinobi or any other game that got released on both platforms. Look at SMS games like Aleste, Sonic 1, Land of Illusion, Lucky Dime Caper (nearly looks like a early Mega Drive game), Phantasy Star (the FPS 3D dungeons especially) and it should be obvious that graphically the console was miles ahead and the SMS didn't suffer from the insane flicker (compare Double Dragon) or the garbage pixels on the edges of the screen (just look at Nintendo World Cup) which plague the NES

Gotto say ever since I got a system with sound FM mod. allot of games are allot better. music while not great like Nes is pretty decent not ear crushing.

Depends i would say, quite a few games i think sound better in PSG as FM lacks the low frequencies and sounds too tinny, Aleste being an example, Golvellius another. It's probably a question of taste but sound was never the strong suit of Sega, despite having some great composers like Yuzo Koshiro or Tokuhiko Uwabo on board.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Concord - PlayStation's biggest flop?

« on: September 18, 2024, 10:49:32 am »

Don't forget that Sony also acquired Firewalk Studios, the team behind Concord last year. between how bad the game did, it's budget (which I've seen numbers between $100,000,000 and $250,000,000) and the Studio Acquisition (can't fine a number). Considering what the Break-Even point can possibly be I'm thinking it might be one of the biggest AAA flops

The 200 million dollars is usually seen as both the cost of the game and the aquisition of the studio combined.
I'm not surprised it failed, the genre of hero shooter games is so oversaturated that you really need something amazing to even have a chance. Most of those games are free to play. Concord was a 40 dollar game with "live service" on top of it, that will kill a ton of interest. I don't think the woke stuff played too much of a role, yeah it's ridiculous to use pronouns and put them on a robot, but if the gameplay and game design was great, it would've been a hit regardless.
The game was just horribly made though, gameplay was the same by the numbers design and the characters were just horrible to look at, as if it was more of a parody of games like fortnite and apex and all those other hero shooters out there.

I'm still amazed it bombed as badly as it did and i'm amazed that even the announcement of the servers ending didn't leat to a increase in player numbers, i mean there are enough achievement nuts out there who would revel in having these super rare achievements, but...nope, at least on steam the numbers still declined

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General / Re: Old Youtube gaming channels/videos nostalgia thread

« on: September 18, 2024, 10:43:10 am »

I had to unsub from WhatCulture Gaming because they were just factually wrong about stuff all the time.  I'm pretty sure it was just engagement bait, but they would never acknowledge just how wrong they were about certain things.  The only WhatCulture channel worth anything these days is probably the Star Trek one, because it is the only one that seems reasonably well-researched.

I never understood the popularity of WhatCulture. They try to do a jack of all trades but their lack of knowledge is obvious. The worst is their wrestling channel, they make so many mistakes it's shocking, like for example claiming that World Class Championship Wrestling was located in Florida, when it was actually in Dallas, Texas (the legendary von Erich family territory)

As for old: AVGN was fun until around 2013, before Screenwave got in and he got lazy and showed that he just doesn't care much about games. Spoony is another one who was hilarious (his Swat 4 LP is legendary) but seemingly fell on really hard times. Pushing Up Roses was ok before all the drama, she is one of the worst on social media, to the point where i can understand why DHI is making fun of her.

Yogscast is another old on. Shadow of Israphel was probably one of the most creative Minecraft story/lp's way back until they just dropped it. Then there was all that drama, sexual harrassment stuff, i stopped following them.

The only ones i still follow are Civvie11, Accursed Farms, MandaloreGaming and Ahoy, the latter only does a video every few months or so, but the are always high quality.

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General / Re: Which Generation Of Console Or PC Games You Think Contain The Best Graphics

« on: May 29, 2024, 07:09:01 am »

But in the mid 1990's till about year 2000 AD. all PC games sucked because A PC would cost about sometimes up to $500USD more money in America at least for a lower powered gaming system if you were to buy a PC instead of a console from  years 1996 AD till about the year 2000 AD.

I find that a very silly argument. Just because you were poor and couldn't afford a PC, doesn't mean that all the games suck or were technically bad.
Objectively, the PC has been the best gaming platform since at least 1992 (before that i'd argue the Amiga, it had the best 2D Graphics of any system, just look at games like Defender of the Crown, Superfrog, Lionheart or Shadow of the Beast, to name a few) especially on the technical side when SVGA came out, followed by 3DFX's Vcoodoo, which was insane. Just compare Rise of the Robots (crap game, but easily the finest graphics in 1994) with the console counterparts. Compare Tomb Raider 1 on consoles with the 3DFX version. And so on.

And the games were great as well. Tons of highly imaginative, boundary pushing, creative games and genres that simply never properly existed on consoles as well.

The PC doesn't really have "Generations", since it's a ongoing system, but i would say graphically the 90's were the best, with the nicest 2D Graphics that can be found, thanks also to actual comic and cartoon artists working on games (like Steve Purcell for Lucas Arts or Dave Gibbons' work on Beneath a Steel Sky or other noticable titles like Toonstruck and Broken Sword) and the 3D Era was the best looking as well, thanks to way higher resolutions and more hardware power. When you look at the PS1's 3D graphics for example, they are absolutely disgusting, insanely pixelated, all the texture warping thanks to the missing mip-mapping and thus, even the most creative texture design is kinda lost.
And back then the games were graphically diverse and interesting, unlike today were you get the feel that there are only 2 graphic sets available: Grey, boring, grab "realistic" worlds and NES style 2D Graphics.
Quake 1 was mind-blowing in 1996. Fully 3D, high resolutions, high textures and a very unique art style with its mix of Gothic, Industrial and Medieval elements

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General / Re: IGN just acquired a ton of their competitors

« on: May 23, 2024, 11:03:34 am »

Game journalism has been... not great... for a long time. There's a lot of crap out there. The best of the gaming sites IMO, GameTrailers.com, died out a long time ago.

Was it ever good? Granted my experience with US and British magazines is a bit limited (id did read quite a few PDFs though) but seemingly there were always cases of "Paid Review" (best example: Rise of the Robots, both in Germany and in the UK some magazines handed out suspiciously high ratings), like the Driv3r scandal of Future Press and even back then a lot of these journalists had their agendas, wether it's being a pacifist shitting all over "violent games" or the british overrating each and every football game ever made.
Looking over the ratings, even 30-40 years ago it is baffling what these magazines rated and you can see bias everywhere.
In that regard not much has chaned, only that the bias changed from "I rate genres high i love" or "we take bonuses for ratings" changed to "we're left leaning SJW's who can't tolerate anything but our oppinion".

Unfortunately, both IGN and PushSquare groups are heavily left leaning, so if they post anything that has to do with politics, even moderately conservative opinions will be removed and users banned.

I would argue the worse part is that these so called journalists directly try to push their agendas, directly want to take influence on creative freedom and basically dictate what is ok and what isn't (in their mind). Prime examples are the crying about Stellar Blade or 6 years ago the massive bitching about Kingdom Come: Deliverance's "lack of diversity" and them trying to push Warhorse into adding black NPCs. The Eurogamer review of KC:D is a prime example, as it's obvious the reviewer desperately needs to rate the game badly because of "racism and sexism" but can't flat out say it, so instead he nitpicks minor stuff and thinks a couple bugs are the end of the world

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General / Re: Games with great stories.

« on: April 23, 2024, 07:47:18 pm »

Probably the best in writing were the old Infocom Text adventures, since they were just text, they had to be at least on the level of novels and thus much betterr than most video games even to this day: Trinity,  Planetfall, A Mind Forever Voyaging and Lurking Horror are great.
Planescape Torment is still one of the best, most mature stories around
L.A. Noire with it's mixture of based on real events crimes, real events turned fictional solution (Black Dahlia) and the whole tragic but very noire story of Cole himself
Gothic Trilogy, yeah the third game was a letdown and the ending wasn't all that it could be, but the ride from "Prisoner to Hero" and the friends we made (Diego!) was great.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. That's the fourth and last Indiana Jones movie made in my world.

With the announcement of the sequel, also Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I can't wait to see how the story further unfolds.

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: April 23, 2024, 07:37:38 pm »

Addiced to Helldivers 2 pretty much
Also a bit of WWE 2K24 (so far, no real changes from 2K23, a bit disappointing) and returned to Stardew Valley (Coop) thanks to the update and new mods appearing, still a lot of fun

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General / Re: Games you must play before you die.

« on: April 23, 2024, 07:25:18 pm »

You mean updating/expanding the list with games came out since 2010?

Fallout: New Vegas
Red Dead Redemption
Dark Souls
Portal 2
Mass Effect 2&3
Alice: Madness Returns
Dishonored
The Witcher 2&3
Grand Theft Auto 5 (single player)
Metro: Last Light
Wolfenstein: The New Order & The Old Blood
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Ori and the Blind Forest
Doom 2016
Dirt Rally
NieR:Automata
Cuphead
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Wasteland 2
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Resident Evil Village
Elden Ring

Nice list but personally, i'd swap ME3 (bad writing, not just the ending and some meh level designs) with ME1, just way better writing all around, driving the car was annoying but nothing is perfect.

To add to the list of post 2010 games:
Red Dead Redemption 2 (even if it has some annoying forced woke parts, it also has some great moments, like the Unshaken ride and the entire second chapter)
Defense Grid (The greatest Tower Defense game ever made)
L.A. Noire (misjudged and underappreciated because it wasn't "GTA in 1946", but every few years i replay it and love the story all over again)
Jagged Alliance 3 (after what felt like 5 billion failed attempts at a sequel, including a bad kickstarter, we finally got a great follow up to the amazing JA2!)
XCOM 2 (Modding makes this beyond amazing, storm trooping Aliens with the A-Team, Star Trek characters, Hulk Hogan, Tommy Wiseau or Homer Simpson gets never old!)
Inspector Schmidt: A Bavarian Tale (Formerly "Totgeschwiegen - A Bavarian Tale" - maybe because i'm bavarian and thus i just resonate a lot with the setting, the voice acting but it's a wonderful RPG/Adventure)
Lollipop Chainsaw (It's Suda51, you either love the quirky insanity or you hate it. I love it and all the references to old-school horror and old-school video games is awesome. The Harvester level with Dead Or Alive's You Spin Me Round is basically stuck in my memory)
Enderal: Forgotten Stories (Yeah, it technically is just a total conversion of Skyrim, but goddamn, it's one of the greatest TC's in history, so well written, voice acted, gameplay improvements, everything that it feels like a proper "AAA"-title and puts those from bigger studios to shame actually)
Door Kickers Franchise (Door Kickers 1 & 2 are strategy games, while Action Squad is a awesome sidescroller with Co-Op)
112 Operator (You operate police/medics/firefighters in a city with calls, like Paper's Please and other games there's a ton of story depth to it and decisions to be made that can give you a insanely bad feeling or make you insanely happy if you manage to safe lives)
Yakuza 0 (in my oppinion easily the best of the entire franchise)

Lastly, the in my oppinion trifecta of greatest PVE Shooters ever:
Payday 2 (The total failure of Payday 3 shows how great it truly is)
Deep Rock Galactic (Drunk Dwarves in Space kicking alien ass, what's not to love?)
Helldivers 2 (It's so over the top, even Starship Troopers looks tame in comparison, it's beyond amazing)

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Modern Video Games / Re: What are your thoughts on Simulator Games?

« on: February 21, 2024, 01:30:26 pm »

I tried euro truck simulator and I don't understand the fun.

I try to explain:
- The driving is fun if you have a FF-Wheel. It's definitely not a lot of fun with KB/M or a Controller.
- In American Truck Simulator i just enjoy driving through the US, listening to US radio stations (altough their censorship on classic songs like Money for Nothing gets a bit annoying)
- It's relaxing. Not a game i play every day or every week but every week as a change of pace from all the fast paced action games basically.
- There are multiplayer mods/it has some mp  and driving around with friends is fun but then again, every game is more fun with friends.

As for the job simulator genre:
The only one i play is House Flipper 1 and 2. At least you can be creative there, yes, in a way it's basically like Sims, without the annoying Sims and their life simulation, but the first perspective adds a lot. Designing houses can be fun. Again, it's also relaxing.
On the other hand i don't really understand the more mundane Simulators like Gras Mowing Sim (you do that in House Flipper too and it's the more annoying part) or Power Wash (again, you can do that in House Flipper as well), they are too limited in their scope.
I don't get why that is fun, then again, even the Simpsons made fun of that when Bart & Lisa refused to mow the grass in their back yard but went crazy over the VR Gras Mowing Game...and that was a episode from the 90s before the Simulatore craze!

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Classic Video Games / Re: Old video game ads.

« on: January 28, 2024, 10:20:37 am »

Sega in the UK had some really insane ads, i can only imagine what would've happend if they had been dropped in the USA





Germany wasn't far behind though

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General / Re: January 2024 - Recently Added to Collection/Recently Purchased New

« on: January 11, 2024, 01:59:42 pm »

Steam:
Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe Edition
Sniper Elite 5
Pinball FX: Godzilla vs. Kong Pack
Rez Infinite
No Creeps were harmed TD
The Last Starship
Elevator Action Returns S-Tribute

Game Boy:
Golf
Hoshi no Kirby
Pro Wrestling
Dr. Mario
Donkey Kong Land
Asterix

NES:
Tiny Toon Adventures

N64:
Pilotwings 64
Perfect Dark

SNES:
Pilotwings
WWF Royal Rumble
Flashback

Mega Drive:
Global Gladiators
Shadow Dancer

Xbox 360:
Gears of War

Playstation:
Mass Destruction

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General / Re: 2024 Gaming/Collecting Goals

« on: December 31, 2023, 11:53:13 am »

1. Own a Wrestling game on every System and combined with that, own all the WWF Games released in the 80's and 90's. Pretty much all i need is In Your House on Saturn.
2. Get all the Master System games back i had as a kid. I'm still missing 5
3. Reaching 100 Mega Drive games and the question if i'm really willing to fork over that much money for Shinobi 3 (and Alisia Dragoon)

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General / Re: Emulation Test Preparations Part 1

« on: August 01, 2023, 07:05:32 am »

To add some games:

Magical Quest starring Mickey Mouse
Plok
Doremi Fantasy
Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Bust's Loose

Phantom 2040 is another one of those "hidden gems"

Metal Marines is a fun strategy game

Cybernator and its unofficial sequel Metal Warriors are two good run n' gun games

Zombies is a lot of fun, run n' gun shooter with a B-Movie feel

Space Megaforce/Super Aleste is the best shoot 'em up on the system

And Rock n' Roll Racing is always fun for a round or two

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Classic Video Games / Re: Your Opinion Of Golf Games

« on: June 20, 2023, 03:11:22 pm »

Being an avid golfer, with a golfing family, we started with some old PC and Leader Board, followed by World  Class Leader Board on Master System, followed by a upgraded PC and Link and then Link 386, those were great. I started to play golf later (there's a age limit on golf at least here in germany), by the time Link LS was out.
I definitely prefer the real time swing with a mouse (like current day Golf Club, PGA 2K and the like) over the simplistic 3 click. That was fine before i really learned golf and experiencd mouse swnig. I can't go back to the click stuff.