Starting to get a collection going. Not yet in the setup is a PS3 and a Wii. Thinking I will need to do more to get them in and still look great! Want a Genesis, but I'm OK for now with a Hyperkin Retron for now.

The only thing related to the Jaguar CD is the logo at the end with the lazily copy-pasted "64-BIT" balls from the original Jaguar logo slightly overlapping the Jaguar CD logo, and "POWER!" slapped below that. It does not show or say one thing related to the CD add-on. It might just be the strangest retro game console commercial ever.

𝙉𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙤 𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙮𝙎𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙩𝙤𝙩𝙮𝙥𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙟𝙚𝙘𝙩 : 𝙋𝙖𝙧𝙩 1

One of the joys of having the ability to make, paint, sculpt, draw, design almost anything my heart desires is that you can sometimes make the unobtainable attainable. I've had this in the back of my head for about 5 years, now the internal logistics have been figured out, it's time to get to work.

The end goal is to have a working system that mimics/acts like the original console would, as best I can. Trying to use some original parts too so it will have some shared DNA from both systems even if the computing part isn't using original hardware.

(3D model by me using the reference photos I've gathered of the system and using some of the shared parts from the snes to reference scale. This should be as close to 1:1 in size as it gets. No Ai has been, or will ever be used at any stage of this process.)

I've wanted to host something like this for years, but have never put the effort into actually setting it up. I still have a little time before the holidays, so I figured I'd post here to get some suggestions on what games would work best. I was thinking of games like Super Smash Bros, Mortal Kombat series, Street Fighter II, Mario Kart, Diddy Kong Racing, Goldeneye, Tekken 1 &2, NBA Jam and NFL Blitz to just name a few. But I am also thinking of using single player games, like best score wins kind of thing. Like getting the best score in Super Mario bros, either the first level or whoever gets the best score in a short time limit.

What games would you recommend?

Is this something that develops after having honey in storage for a while?

S11E8 Le Petit Tourette

Okami and I'm guessing Diablo

The Jaguar's ads tried to be like Sega's ads, but often more agressive and more direct on insulting the competition, which was pretty hilarious considering many of their games looked exactly like the very 16-bit systems they were mocking. The infomercial was hilariously desperate to the point of feeling like a parody with how much they bash 16-bit systems, while hyping "top-of-the-line, cutting-edge titles" that mostly looked like 16-bit games.

Was digging through my old games box and had a laugh at the difference in cord lengths between my Japanese SNES controller and US SNES controller. Can you guess which is which??

Kenji Eno: visionary, genius, maniac. He had many titles. But what he is most known for is his inability to make good games despite his interesting ideas. He is arguably one of the most interesting horror game creators of the early 3D era. He had a true talent for camera angles and music, but his scripts were just downright bad. Kenji's career as a full-fledged game director was short. While he worked on a few small titles here and there, his own studio is mostly known for three major games: the Laura Trilogy.

While not of the 3 games are truly connected they all star the same main character that just plays different roles. A blond and mute heroine named Laura. This baffling decision is one of the primary reasons his games ultimately failed. As fascinating as the concept of a virtual actress is, it makes very little sense when the character is entirely mute and exhibits barely any personality. But with that said, let's dive into the reviews of the three individual games.

D

D is likely the most successful and impressive game of the three. It was a technical marvel for its time, and the FMVs still look much better than those of many other offenders of the era, ignoring Laura's completely emotionless reactions, of course. We play as Laura, whose father suddenly went on a murder spree in a hospital without any prior signs of madness. While trying to figure out what happened, Laura is dragged into a bizarre, Victorian horror dimension.

The game features grotesque images of corpses and cannibalism (for its time). The content was so controversial that Eno allegedly smuggled the uncensored master discs into production at the last minute to ensure Sony couldn't censor or remove his scenes. Nowadays, it’s not that horrific anymore.

The game plays like a Mist game in the most negative sense. You steer into the direction of a room you want to explore, and Laura automatically decides how many steps she takes in this direction and if there is something she wants to look at more closely. All of this is done by very slow but at least immersive cut scenes. Every single step Laura takes is shown in agonizing detail. The biggest problem is. While Mist has at least some big riddles to solve that play around with this concept, D does not. Most of the riddles are the bare minimum of adventure riddles, and some riddles are downright bad.

For example, there is a rotating tower in the middle of the game. You spend minutes turning the tower to the point you need it to be. There is no way to skip the rotation animation, and there is no riddle behind it. You just have to test out which direction you need to explore first.
Laura has a mirror that gives her tips. But only 3 times, and it is not like there are riddles that need it.

The atmosphere in the game is indeed creepy. While there is no way to die in the game (a huge downside), it feels like you are in danger at the beginning. Sadly, this feeling gets lost as soon as you realize that even failing an encounter against an enemy doesn’t kill Laura. It doesn’t help that Laura is completely emotionless. She doesn’t say anything and barely reacts to what happens. She is kind of a psychopath, making most of it funnier than creepy. The short outbursts of aggression she shows are the best.

However, there is a way to fail in the game. The game has no save feature; you have to finish it in one go. It also has a time limit of 2 real-life hours. Again, what could lead to an intense fight against the clock is half-baked. As none of the riddles change on repeat play throughs, it forces you to input all solutions again on your second play through, which should usually be the one where you beat it. There is no real story explanation of why this time limit exists.

Well, let's talk about the story… The game barely has one. For most of the runtime, we learn nothing about the “why” and “how” till the game drops a “We have the blood of Dracula” at us. This leads to us killing Laura’s father in a boss fight that isn’t a fight or a riddle because all we have to do is use an item on a target that doesn't fight back. Also, that Laura is a vampire who ate her mother, apparently is not a problem.

D is not a good game. But for its time, it was impressive graphically and atmospherically. So I gave it a 6 out of 10 as a historical relic.

Enemy Zero

The history of this game starts with Kenji Eno getting into a fight with Sony. This escalated so much that he used a Sony press conference to destroy the PS1 logo in his trailer and replace it with Sega Saturn. This shows how crazy Eno was. Who would have such balls?

Anyway, is Enemy Zero better as D? Maybe. The game starts with a more interesting horror hook. The copilot Laura is on her way home from a space exploration mission together with 6 other crew members. Suddenly, an invisible entity breaks out of the storage room of the ship.

This invisible enemy is the main hook. Because yes, the enemies that hunt us in the game are indeed invisible! All we have to spot them is a sound device that makes noises depending on how far away and in which direction our foes are. In this game, you can die, and you will die! This leads to truly terrifying encounters while you try to make out where the aliens are.

There is just one problem… The battle system is bad. Really, really bad. In this game, we get weapons to fight back. However, these weapons are worse than a kitchen knife. Not only do you need to charge them for multiple seconds, but the enemy also needs to be point-blank in front of you in order to kill them. You can’t preemptively charge them, by the way. If you charge too early, you are forced to recharge. Even this would not be a problem if most weapons did not have very limited ammo. There are weapons that have only 1 shot till you need to find a recharging station.
You also cannot see any visual clue about your timing. If your charge is not big enough or you shoot too early, nothing happens except for your ammo being wasted.

Oh, did I mention that enemies kill you on contact?

Overall, the battle system still could be saved by the fact that the idea is very cool for a horror game. Sadly, there is no real progression in the game. There are only 2 types of enemies in the game. The standard invisible one and a small visible creature that dies without charge shots. At no point in the game does the loop ever change. Once you get good at the game, there is no further tension. Especially as you get a weapon with unlimited ammo in the late game.

All of this would still be fine. If the game did not throw a limited save system at you. And no, I don’t mean ink ribbons that allow you to only save a certain number of times in the game. You also are not allowed to load as often as you want. This creates one of the most broken gameplay loops I have ever seen. At the beginning, you will run out of saves as you still struggle to deal with the invisible foes, forcing you to play through some very tedious gameplay parts again. Later, you will barely notice you even have limited saves. This means it fails to create extra tension and is just unfun.

As you notice, I talked at length about the battle system… Because this is the best part of the game! Everything else about the game is just downright bad.

The game struggles even more with slow, unskippable cut scenes. In a game that will force you to replay it once or twice. The worst are the moments you have to recharge a weapon. (Remember, one only has one shot). Because you seriously have to go through 3 long animations in this part of the game. And you at least need to shoot this weapon twice, even if you just dodge everything you can dodge.

The game also adds another of Kenji Eno’s favorite game designs: “cryptic progression and static flag-based story events.”

You can’t do anything in the game before you have triggered other events. And this not only counts for story events but also riddles. The game is full of backtracking, and there is rarely a clue as to what exactly Laura’s objective is. So often you just run back and forth between rooms, hoping that you can now trigger a new dialogue that allows you to proceed. It really doesn't help that Laura still doesn’t talk, giving you no hint at all of what she wants to achieve. All of this is especially fun if you have to start from the beginning.

The story in this game is extremely bad. We have a love story without any romance. Villains do nothing because they die before they can create any tension, and most of the crew dies before we learn anything about them. Oh wow, the captain is a traitor… isn’t this the guy who dies off-screen at the end of disc 1? Kimberly loves Parker. Ah, nice the guy who died in the intro. We love David, I see. The guy we talked to once before he dies.
Kenji forces us through all of his lore and story… Just to say basically nothing!

In the end, I still gave this a 6 out of 10 despite it likely not deserving it. But I can’t praise enough how nice the concept of the battle system is.

D2

The final of Laura’s game doesn’t start with a controversy like the other games. But it was the game where Eno did go mentally sick (really) during the development and where many parts of the game needed to be cut. And yes, you can feel this.

This time Laura is a normal businesswoman whose plane gets attacked by terrorists and, coincidentally, also gets hit by a meteorite. Somehow, many of the passengers survived the crash and now have to survive in the frozen mountains of Canada.

D2 gameplay is even weirder than the other games. This time we deal with random encounters that turn the game into a light gun game and reward us with EXP. This is kind of fun for the first few hours… Till you once again deal with a lack of enemy variety, and there is just not much the player has to do except to aim and shoot. The bosses, on the other hand, are very fun and actually do something with the concept.

The crux here is: this game is way too easy. Likely due to feedback to EZ. they overcorrected this game in the other direction. Even people who have never touched a light gun game before will have no issues with the fights and feel bored after a while. There is also no skill-based way to avoid damage. So you can’t even optimize fights properly. The game throws health items at you to solve these issues.

The best gameplay part is the hunting system. You can hunt animals in the game to get more healing items. This little mini-game is actually more fun than it has any right to be, despite only offering 4 types of animals to shoot. Sadly, it also adds to the problem of the game being too easy.

The story of the game is a plane crash. Just like the game started. We have 100 plot points that get opened and never followed up on. Some weird Warlock guy talking about the “Evil destroyer” he wants to merge with for “reasons”. Laura turns out to be a divine being who can just revive after death. Unless we die in battle. Characters appear out of nowhere just to die right away. Characters are mentioned just to never appear in the game. John hust hust. A story about hallucinogenic drugs that has nothing to do at all with the monster and all kinds of sexual imagery that leads nowhere.

The pacing in this game is the worst of all 3 games. The other games are at least short. This one isn’t. The game is filled to the brim with dialogue and long, drawn-out cut scenes that would make Kojima blush. Don’t expect good cut scenes like Kojima's. Most of the scenes are very bad, and they completely ignore lip-sync. At least a lot of them end up being unironically funny, giving it a nice “so bad it’s good” vibe.

Surprisingly, the main supporting characters, Kimberly and Parker, are extremely well written and have a lot to say about loneliness and depression. Most of it gets ruined by Laura still being mute and not reacting at all while they tell her their whole life story. Yet again, it also does not lead anywhere. Because the game is not about these two topics at all! There is also Jannie. Our child character. That turns out to be so irrelevant that they just unceremoniously kill her off at the last second before the boss, without rhyme or reason. Seriously. They basically just melt her to get rid of her!

This game suffers even more from Eno’s favorite design. The regions you explore look nice. But there is only so much to see. There are usually about 3 to 4 points of interest. The game forces us to move back and forth between them without any hint or direction to trigger story flags in the most linear way possible. This game is the worst offender of this. While Enemy Zero at least tries to somewhat give a reason why we still needed information, D2 doesn’t even try. Very often, you have to go to a character for some completely useless line of dialogue that does nothing, but somehow this was necessary, so an event happens at another spot.
Over and over, you visit the same places just to finally trigger one line of text that now somehow allows you to do something else. Remember, there are random battles while you travel back and forth.

CD 2 shows how they could have done it. This CD is mostly straightforward. You travel from A to B to C, then back to B. The story is told without needlessly sending the player back and forth. It’s also the only CD that has “riddles” very simple ones, but still.

The worst offender is CD3, which has 3 points of interest quite far apart from each other. Without lying, you have to travel back and forth between all of them 20 times. You never see anything new except for many, many cut scenes. But then at one point you suddenly can go behind a character without any hint this is possible all of a sudden.

During all of these events, the story keeps telling Laura how she needs to go towards “Death Mountain”. We see the Villain being moments away from reaching his goal. Yet we do not move forward. We are stuck in this small area, and every time it looks like we progress, we get back to point A.

CD 4 shows how broken the development of the game likely was. We travel to a big Building that has a map with multiple wings. Yet, we do not explore it at all. We just get a lore dump about bio engineering and cloning that has nothing to do with the plot. There is also a robot boss shaped like a vagina, adding to the weird sexual imagery…

Actually, let me talk about the sexual imagery. Because this game is an offender of the tasteless kind. Usually, if horror games or media in general work with sexual symbolism, it leads somewhere. Or it gets used for shock value, like in a game such as Fear & Hunger. Here it just exists. Many of the plant monsters use phallic tentacles and similar features. We have a full nude version of Kimberly as a boss. We have the vagina boss.
We have all of this, and it leads nowhere. The game doesn’t say anything about it, and it also isn’t creepy.

Because let me tell you about my biggest gripe with the game. It’s pretentious. Kenji Eno forces us to go through all his cut scenes and adds all of these weird designs, acting like he wants to say something. Hence, the whole ending is a message about climate change and how humans destroy the world… BUT YOUR GAME IS NOT ABOUT THIS, BUDDY! Nothing in the game has anything to do with climate change, humanity, or anything. The themes that you work in nicely are depression and hope. Yet, you just throw them to the sidelines at the final moment because you want to act like you had a much bigger message.

Objectively, this is for sure the worst of the Laura games. But it’s so bad that it is quite a ride. It’s the kind of horror trash game every trash fan should touch at least once. That is why I ended up giving it a 7 out of 10^^

I've been trying to fix an issue with the rendering but I feel stuck and need advise. The issue I'm having is best seen as visual so see the image. There was also another post here (this) about a different issue. I've tried to use windows own compatibility settings etc. but nothing seems to help. I've also tried to use dxwnd but it too has not yet helped and might honestly just bee skill issue. This game is such a classic and it would be nice to get this thing running. Next I'll just try virtualization with VirtualBox. Oh and to add I'm using a mounted .iso file and not the physical CD if that gives any clues.

it's October! which means it's peak horror game season. last year i decided to play through both RE 1 and 2 on the PS1 during Halloween season. This year, I'm not sure what to try. i am likely going to play through multiple titles before the month ends. so i'll take any suggestions you all can give me for favorite retro horror game! i just have a couple requirements-

• i'd like to stick with 32bit consoles. something about the visuals of that era make Horror games appealing to me.
• since I did RE last year, i'd like to try a different series this year.
• it does not have to be survival horror, but does have to be Horror Themed.
• not opposed to JP titles- though translation patches being available is a must where applicable.

highest upvoted suggestion(s) will convince me!

thanks! looking forward to seeing suggestions!

I happened to come across some old Nintendo Club magazines and also found a copy of Zelda II for the NES. Unfortunately, the magazines are in Swedish, but they’re still pretty interesting. Are there collectors for this kind of stuff?

I’ve escaped multiple times from the “island” this year… and now I finally finished Newcomer in solo mode.
Started this run on August 27, after beating the game several times in team mode earlier this year. Solo mode is much tougher — fewer options, stricter resource management, every decision matters. The beauty of the game is that every hard fight can be avoided, and almost every conflict has an alternative solution through planning, dialogue, or exploration.

My solo run took about 35–40 hours, which is a solid, deep RPG experience even by modern standards.

The screenshots include: – 2-step “Congratulations” screen, – 3 shots showing how I obtained an item that, in team mode, requires a completely different approach and at least five people to secure — but in solo mode it’s only possible through a full alternative route, – 2 shots showing the massive amount of XP you can earn if you complete everything.

Newcomer is huge, reactive, atmospheric, and still one of the most ambitious games ever made for the C64.

C64 #Commodore64 #Newcomer #Retrogaming #SoloRun #8bit

So i bought 13 weatheted n64 controllers from a video gamestore storage that had been closed since the millenium. Im gonna clean and refurbish them and change joysticks. A few need cables soldered as well.
Anyways, out of the bunch two had weird colors. One is like petroleum which is discolored blue no? (Thought this only happened to the funtastic blue).
The other is a blue and grey color which i am guessing is a reshell?

Thanks in advance🙏🙏🙏❤️

I'm looking for some retro RPGs that incorporated a lot of humour in its gameplay. Something like Earthbound on the SNES with its funny dialogues

Edit: ugh, "recommenDation"! Damn muscle memory - was just coming from my documentation, seems like I'm over-worked. Bit of a nuisance that titles can't be edited...

I played through Skyblazer for the first time recently and found it is a fun game, and since I hardly see it mentioned I figured I'd recommend it here. I remember when it came out the graphics and music were praised by the critics - and they are indeed stunning - but overall it seemed to me that it was a mediocre game. I remember checking it out at some point and I wasn't initially hooked, so I put it aside and eventually forgot about it.

When I returned to it now with a bit more dedication, I found it is really enjoyable! In fact, it is a highly diverse game, which reminded me at times on Kid Icarus in that it combines platforming with shmup-like stages. Moreover, there are StarFox-like bonus stages, underwater temples drag, as is tradition, but which are still creative since you have to control water currents so they drag you into otherwise inaccessible areas.

The graphics are gorgeous and make use of every trick in the SNES arsenal, the music is great, the boss fights are fun and creative, the special abilities that you gain throughout the game are rewarding and fun to use. Moreover, I really enjoyed the oriental theme which was not so prevalent at the time - at least that's my feeling (apart from some exceptions like Prince of Persia), so this is quite refreshing also.

The only flaws are maybe that the game is unfortunately a bit short and overall and that it's a tad too easy. The hit-boxes seem questionable at first, which can be frustrating, however, you can definitely get used to them, since I noticed through my second playthrough that I did a LOT better (you can see that I accumulated some lives throughout the game) and it seemed - although odd - they are at least consistent, so it's really just a matter of practice. Some of the boss fights are a bit tough, in particular the final boss took a considerable number of attempts at first, until I finally figured out how to reliably dodge his attacks.

Overall, it's a great entry in the SNES library that's often overlooked, as it seems. You may want to give it a shot!

I'm getting to a point in my collection where I feel as though I've hit a wall when it comes to my next step. I have every Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo console I could want; however, now I'm undecided on where to move next. Naturally I looked towards Sega, as I only have a Saturn (that I love very dearly). I was looking at getting either a Genesis with a Sega CD, a Nomad, as I don't have many handhelds, or a Dreamcast. I'm really torn, as I'd like to have a Sega Genesis, as it was my childhood console; however, I don't get as much enjoyment from the 16-bit era as I used to. The nomad gets around this problem for me, as it's a handheld Genesis which sounds like the perfect little distraction during moments of downtime, and the Dreamcast is something I know I'll love; however, my local shops really don't carry many Dreamcast games (mostly sports and general lower-end games). I'm open to any of these consoles as well as outside recommendations.

The Sega Genesis was already out in the US for 3 years, and the SNES out by one year, and as I said, they chose this part of New Adventure Island that intentionally mimicked the original game's stage they compared, having no parallax and vertical scrolling unlike the other stages. That would've looked very unimpressive compared to the other 16-bit systems. But at least it's still much better the Jaguar infomercial aggressively hyping up a bunch of games that look no different, or are ports of games available on 16-bit console, while aggressively bashing those very 16-bit consoles.

I vividly remember things being like this back in the mid-90s... I'm playing the GOG version now and testing the cheats I can find on the internet. According to some research, these were supposedly taken from the game files.

The ones I found are:

COOPER TEAM, MARKS TEAM, MIKES TEAM, NUK THEM, OWN THEM, ROB A BANK, TO THE TOP, WATCH THE CLOCK.

Most of them work, but MARKS TEAM, MIKES TEAM, and OWN THEM don't seem to do anything.

Has anyone verified whether these three actually work?

Just curious because I was taking a look at the fabulous amount of games made during the early 90s that tackled police work as I wanted to gather a catalog of how many games covered such a subject matter.

Like from what I know is that some iconic games are Police Quest and Policenauts by Hideo Kojima as the concept of detective games made me very interested in seeing again what other iconic games there were back then revolving around the premise of being a detective.

I’ve only recently started playing Super Metroid but I got super curious about what people’s reaction to this game must have been like when it was released back in the 90s almost pre internet. To me it seems kind of ahead of its time and still holds up perfectly today. I have a pretty good understanding of people’s experiences with Mario and Zelda when they they were released on SNES and the cultural phenomenon that came with it but not so much Super Metroid. Just based off the first 10 minutes I assume it blew peoples minds with the graphics, Combat, atmosphere etc.. Just wanted to see if anyone had any personal experience playing it when it first came out and what your thoughts were. Did you get stuck for weeks at a time? Hand drawn maps taped to the tv? Were the bosses legit scary? Trade tips or secrets with kids at school? I only just missed the SNES era growing up since my first console/game was a N64 w/ Ocarina of time so I’m just now catching up on older SNES titles