Sunday 28 August 2011

Retro Diary - 28/08/11 - "64 bits of raw gaming power!"

Yes folks, it was Atari Jaguar week this week!... *cricket sounds*...

Alright, the Atari Jaguar isn't that bad when playing single player, but they aren't any good multiplayer games, I only have 2 games for the Jaguar, and only 1 is multi-player, it didn't exactly help that I only had 1 controller.

The games we played:
    In the order we played them
  • Tempest 2000
  • Iron Soldier
Tempest 2000 was a blast to play, as always, Iron Soldier, not so much, but we did have a bit of a laugh mocking the whole "64-bit" thing, most of youse will know what I'm talking about, if not, the Jaguar was the first 64-bit console made, and because of that, Atari kept going on and on and on about it, claiming that the Jaguar was the first, and only 64-bit console, even after the Nintendo 64 came out, they still didn't shut up, I'll go into more detail later.

I got the "Rocket Raccoon" collection, which has all of the comics he appeared in priorer to his annihilation comics in 2008, and before it arrived, I kept hearing how Rocket Raccoon was "crap" and the only reason people were saying that was because he was added to the Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 roster instead of another character, forgot which, I think it was Deadpool, saying he was a rip-off and such, even though that's pot calling the kettle black, as Deadpool himself is a rip-off of Deathstroke.

For those who don't know, Rocket Raccoon is a Raccoon (Who'd thought!) Marvel character created in the 1976, and got his own 4 issue mini-series in the 80s, and then returned in 208 as part of "Guardians of the Galaxy".

I was watching Screwattack's Hard News, when Capcom announced the UMvC3 roster, and I heard the name "Rocket Raccoon", and I thought "Hey! He sounds cool!", Then I bought a book of the whole collection, because unlike most people, I was willing to give him a chance.

So I read it, and I really enjoyed them, they're funny, they're action-packed, the character is lovable, and they keep you reading to see how the story unfolds, at least in my opinion.

Apart from that, nothing really happened this week, let's hope next week will have more to offer...

Cobra!

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Retro Arrivals: WipEout and WipEout 2097 [Saturn]

Right, I said that they were stuff still arrive, and some still are, but 2 things have arrived today, 2 games in a series, both of which on a console you probably haven't expected them to be on...

...F*ck it! There's no point creating tension, you already know what they are, they're in the title, they're WipEout and WipEout 2097 on the Sega Saturn, I was surprised to hear they were Saturn versions of both games, I've always heard abut them being Playstation classics, and not a word about the Saturn versions, so naturally, I thought they were Playstation exclusives, but I was proven wrong, and I have physical evidence that they aren't.

Unfortunately, my (new) room still a mess, so it still wouldn't be a good idea to take a photo of them, nor can I take screenshots, because I only have a Scart cable for my Saturn, and my recording device only does AV, you'll just have to take my word for it.

I've discovered something quite extraordinary, as most of youse know, all Saturn games are Redbook, which means you can stick the CDs into the computer, and rip the music from the game, well, I put in WipEout to rip the songs, and you know what I got, WipEout 2097 Tracks, yeah, the tracks of this, and the official soundtrack are an exact match.
So once I ripped them, I put in WipEout, wondering if the first game has the second game's soundtrack, what will the second game have? The third game, Wip3out's soundtrack, again, an exact match, and this game was out in 1997, 2 years before the Wip3out, not to mention, the third game didn't even come out on the Saturn, that's crazy!

...At least, that's what I thought until it turns out, I looked up some of the songs on Youtube, and they;re completely different to the Saturn soundtracks, it turns out Windows Media Player got it totally wrong, but somehow I don't think that WMP got the info from the internet, but rather from the CD itself, so that's one heck of a mistake, to get the next game's soundtrack bang on, even if the songs don't match.

I'm also expecting the Sega Saturn version of Destruction Derby to arrive, hopefully that'll arrive tomorrow.

Cobra!

Sunday 21 August 2011

Retro Diary - 21/8/11 - No Wii this week...

This entry is going to be rather short, because because I forgot to remind my cousin to bring the Wii, so we were stuck with playing nothing, so I ended up leaving early.

In the short time I was there, we did a couple of stuff to kill the time, I showed my cousins this awesome video I found where this guy made the Super Smash Bros. intro with TF2 characters using GMod, you guys NEED to check this out, Click Here to see it!

Other than that, we just chatted about a couple of stuff, and then I left, so yeah, we really didn't do much, and other than my Retro Pick-ups post I posted this week, I didn't do anything for the entire weekend, really.

I'm going to College tomorrow (I know, it's early), I was hoping to end this long holiday with a bang, but unfortunately, it wasn't to be, ah well, no point going on about it, it was all my fault, well, that and the royal mail's for not delivering my stuff!

but stay tuned, I only have a 1 and a 1/2 day week, and there's still some stuff to arrive in the mail, for now, see ya!

Cobra!

"Welcome to Team Fortress 64!"

My laptop just barely fitted the requirements for Team Fortress 2, because of this, it legs like hell, and the controls can at time be delayed, even with everything on the lowest settings, including resolution, and set to windowed. Despite these, I still had alot of fun with the game.

One day, out of total boredom, I looked up "Team Fortress 64", and I found a mod which downgrades the graphics to look like a Nintendo 64 game, (although in some screenshots, they look more like Saturn or PS1) so I tried installing it, but it didn't work, all that happened was the Engineer's texture was changed, that was it.

So for a year, I kept trying to get it working, and just today, I got it working! and it's brilliant, it's not as much of a framerate boost as I hoped, but at least now the game's playable!

Cobra!

Friday 19 August 2011

Retro Arrivals: Nintendo Gamecube Game Boy Player and Lylat Wars [N64]

Before I start, I can't provide pictures right now because I just moved into my sisters room, and the curtains, wall colour (not wallpaper, it was painted), blinds, etc. are still to be changed, plus I've still to finish off everything else, it's in a bit of a state right now.

Anyway, just yesterday my Gamecube Game Boy Player arrived, brilliant! There's not much to talk about, since most of youse already know about it. I got it for a pretty good price, under £20, it came with the software disc (obviously) with all the stuff in the instructions part (manual, Nintendo club points card, etc.) still there and I got a free game: Spiderman 2 on the Game Boy Advance. what do I think of that? Well, I'll be honest, from what I've played, it's total rubbish, especially in comparison to the console versions.



I got another game, but this time, I ordered it, as in it didn't come free with the Game Boy Player, it's very likely that it would.

That game is Lylat Wars on the Nintendo 64, for the Americans and those who just didn't know, it's what they called Star Fox 64 in Europe due to copyright issues.

First thing I found that, is that the box is MASSIVE, Literally, it's over twice the size of a normal N64 box, I'm not joking, I wish I could show you a photo, but you know why. (read above)

The reason it's so big, is obviously because the game with a rumble pack, but that doesn't even take half the box, they've wasted alot of cardboard, which isn't good for the environment.

But is the game any good? I hear youse ask. Well, yes, it's a great game, but to me, what stops it from being awesome is the fact that you can't save your data, you have to play the entire game in one sitting, but there's only a few levels, so I suppose it isn't that big of a blow, maybe I'll do a record a playthrough and upload it to Youtube, because that's the only way I'm comfortable with doing something like this, is that I'll be recording the achievement. I've done it once before, with Firebugs [PS1], I sat there for an hour and a half strait playing the game, but this game I've heard it only take half an hour to complete, so that's a relief, sort of.

I'm expecting some more stuff to arrive in the mail, including something that will get you Rocket Racoon haters pissed off... I just gave it away, didn't I?

Cobra!

Sunday 14 August 2011

Retro(ish) Diary - 14/8/11 - "Thank you for flying with unsafe airlines!"

It's time of the week again folks, it's time for another entry into my Retro Diary.

I haven't got much in the way of retro to talk about, so in a way, this is just a filler.

It was Xbox 360 week this week, and it we just pretty much played shooting games, as that was all my cousin had, not that I'm complaining, we had fun. besides, it wasn't his fault, it's the developers fault for just making shooters for the console.

The games we played:
    In the order of when I think we played them
  • Mass Effect
  • Banjo-Tooie
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops
  • Comix Zone
  • Doom
  • Halo Reach (or as we like to call it, "Checkpoint reach", named after the constantly said phrase in the race game mode.)
  • Halo 3 and/or ODST (I forgot which one, I know, I have a terrible memory.)
  • Perfect Dark
 I didn't really play the first 2 games, or the 4th one, I just watch my cousin play them, but we played the others, and had a great time, in Halo 3, I managed to jam a scorpion into an elephant in forge mode (ok, that sounded wrong), and then I lifted it up with my brother and cousin in them, in fact, one of them was driving! Then the elephant dropped, and then I said "Thank you for flying with unsafe airlines!", I got that from a friend at high school who used to always say it, he said he got it from a TV show, if you would care to fill me in on where it came from, I'll give you a custard cream!

In Perfect Dark, you know how you can change your character and the head of it, well, I actually found a head that looked just like Tony Hawk! So naturally, I went as him every match.

We also discovered something else, but before I tell you, after playing Licence-To-Kill-Slappers-Only match and seeing the James Bond kill a Russian soldier in the toilet with a slapper in the film, we created an in-joke about it being the most powerful weapons built by man, well, we found out that when you turn on the hurricane fists cheat, you occasionally see the player doing what looks like a slapper, and we usually put it so that that's the only weapon you get, and it kills people, and we concluded that that was why it was so powerful, the fists just warm the body up, and the slapper finishes him/her off.

So next week is "Wii Week", we'll see how that goes.


The day before my birthday, I ordered a copy of WWE All Stars on the PS2, I got the PS2 version for 2 reasons:
  1. I don't have any of the other console the game's on, I play modern games on the PC.
  2. So I can say "I have WWE All Stars on PS2!".
Having played the Wii and PS3 versions of the game, and really enjoyed them, I had high hopes for this game.

It arrived on Friday, I didn't play it that day though, I was busy moving room. When I finally got to play it the next day, boy was I disappointed, it's by far the laziest port of any game I've ever played, it's flooding with problems, but, somehow, I still enjoyed it, alot! Maybe I'll write a review of it someday.



As well as WWE All Stars, I (finally) ordered another copy of Shenmue 2, as Discs 3 and 4 of the copy I have right now don't work, luckily, with this copy, it did! So I've been playing that!

That's all I have for this weeks retro diary, I will hope to see youse here next week!

Cobra!

Monday 8 August 2011

YES! I finally got Doom working on my Laptop!

Just a quick post, but I FINALLY got Doom (Shareware) working on my Laptop!

With the help of DOSBox, I'm sure you have all heard of it, but also with the help of DOSShell, which let me run a program without typing in any code, and before you call me lazy, I DID try coding it, but I couldn't get it working.

I also tried "Doom 95", which was made to run on PCs running Windows 95 or higher (hence the name), but even on compatibility mode, it didn't work.

I did get it working in the end, though, and for proof, here're some print screens I took.

Options screen before starting the game. Doom Screenshot

Sunday 7 August 2011

Retro Diary - 7/8/11 - "Wii? What's that?"

Yes folks, unfortunately, it's that time of week again, another entry of my "Retro Diary".

This week was "Gamecube Week", I brought the Gamecube, a couple of controllers, and a some games, and my cousins brought their Gamecube games, the Game Boy Player, 2 Wavebird controllers and a screen, not that we used that, we put it all together and called it "The Ultimate Gamecube" and we must've had about 20 games or something including doublers, that's a record, never had that many!

I got a little annoyed at my cousins mentioning and using the 3DS, Iphone and Android Apps and new stuff like that, I knew it wasn't my choice whether or not they use or talk about them, so I decided to pretend it was 2004, and my cousins started to join in, and so when anyone mentioned anything released after 2004, like say for arguments sake, Epic Mickey for the Wii, then one of us would go "Epic Mickey? What's that?".

Yep, when people still used VHSes, when YTMND filled the void until Youtube came along, when the Dreamcast (in Japan), PS2, Gamecube and Xbox were the main consoles and were in War, when the GBA and N-Gage had amazing graphics for handhelds.
I actually caught them a few times mentioning stuff made after 2004, without even them noticing, I was caught once myself.

It got old a little too quickly (no pun intended) and I got a bit bored of it after a while, although I think that was because my mum mentioned that then I still had my horrible High School to go to,I think that's what did it.

Despite this, we still has a great time with the games.
Here's what we played:
    In order of when we played them:
  • Tony Hawk's American Wasteland
  • Super Mario Bros. Deluxe (Using the Game Boy Player)
  • Billy Hatcher and Giant Egg
  • Mario Kart Double Dash
  • F-Zero GX
  • Super Smash Bros. Melee
  • Super Mario Sunshine (Well, actually, only my little brother played this, but for the sake of completion, It's on the list)
  • Donkey Konga
  • Metal Gear Solid
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
  • Marvel Nemesis
Funnily enough, I brought my own copy of Marvel Nemises for backup, and it turns out my cousin's copy didn't have the discs, and mines did, I was glad I brought my copy!

Also, it was my birthday weekend (My actual birthday is on Wednesday) so we had the traditional cake and happy birthday song, so my cousins did what I did (for a joke) to them at their birthday, and sing a parody version of it to me, you know it how it goes, I don't feel like mentioning it here, and afterwards they said "Ha! Revenge for what you did to us!", of course, it all was a joke, none it was serious, just in case it wasn't obvious.

As much as I enjoyed it today, and trust me, I had a great time, for some reason, I left there feeling depresseed, like something I've been dreading is coming up, I have no idea why.

As you may already know, I went to my cousins house on Wednesday because my family were at the beach, but I forgot to mention what games we played, I say I forgotten, I left it out on purpose, because the article was meant to be about the Game Boy Color I got, from recall, and I've probably forgot some, here's a list of the games we played that day:
    In no particular order:
  • Medal of Honour: Rising Sun [Xbox]
  • Timesplitters 2 [Xbox]
  • Timesplitters: Future Perfect [Xbox]
  • Super Mario Bros. Deluxe [Game Boy Color]
  • Metroid Prime 2: Echoes [Gamecube]
  • Mario Kart 64 [Nintendo 64]
  • Quake II [Nintendo 64]
  • Extreme-G 2 [Nintendo 64]
  • Monster Truck Madness 64 [Nintendo 64]
  • Star Wars Episode 1: Racer [Nintendo 64] (Well, we TRIED to play it, but it didn't work for some reason, it's just here for the sake of completion)
I had a brilliant time there, we also watched some Red Dwarf, which was pretty funny, as you'd expect.

Every other day of the week, I was bored out of my skull, so I decided to dig up some games I forgot all about, like Perfect Dark, 007: The World Is Not Enough and others, but they are 2 things (a game and a console) that I've dug up and I fell they're worth talking about.

Rise 2: Resurrection, if you're unfamiliar with this title, I don't blame you, it's pretty obscure game, and was for a reason...

It was the sequel to 1994's Rise of the Robots, which is considered one of the worst fighting games of all time, it's constantly compared to Shaq-Fu, having played it myself, I don't think it's as bad as people put it out to be, but it's still mediocre, it has a very limited move-set, player 1 can only go one character, the controls are very stiff and the A.I. are so stupid that you can b*tch kick them into the corner and win, I'll talk more about that another time.

Well, the sequel, at least on the Sega Saturn (I've heard bad things about the PS and PC versions), fixed all of these problems, they are 18 characters you can play as (approx.) and the move-sets are bigger, the controls are alot better, and most important of all, the A.I. are fixed although the game sacrificed a little bit of the awesome presentation to get the gameplay, but it was smart move if you ask me.

The thing that I love is that I read the story in the instruction manual, and it actually took the mickey out of the first game by saying, and I quote, "The new generation of robots now had actual intelligence", brilliant, eh?

I'll probably do a review of this game sometime, I've been dying to.

The second thing I've been wanting to talk about is the Mega Drive, I've had it in the corner constantly getting based, so I thought one day, I'll play it, so I've been rummaging though my Mega Drive games to find anything I wanted to play, and I found one, Mortal Kombat! So I popped it in, hoping that the Mega Drive, after all the abuse and collecting dust, still worked, and does, and I actually achieved something I struggled to before, I actually BEAT the game, yay!

Like I said, my birthday is on Wednesday, and by coincidence, my sister's moving out the day after, so I guess as a birthday present, I'm moving room to her's, which is over twice the size the size of my current room, which means I can fit in twice as many retro games in it, which I'll need.

Along with the new room, I'll be getting a desk for my computer, which I think will give me a better working atmosphere for when I get back to working on my projects for Gamerstorm.

That's it for this weeks Retro Diary, see youse next week.

Cobra!

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Retro Pick-Ups: Nintendo Game Boy Color + Super Mario Bros. Deluxe

This is a new feature I'm going to do, it's where I post whatever it is I pick-up, as long as it's retro-related (or in rare cases, something modern), with pictures and the story of how I got it, if it's interesting.

My family were going to the beach today, but they didn't have enough room in the car for all of us, one of us had to stay, so I decided to stay, I didn't want to go anyway.

So since I'd be on my own, I thought I'd go to my cousin's house for the day, and we were playing the Xbox (Original) and N64 all day. We were going to play the Gamecube, but he lost one of the controllers, so we went searching for it, and I found a Game Boy Color, suddenly, memories came rushing back, I wanted it so bad, so I asked him if I could have it, along with the game inside it, which was Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, and he said I could, saying that I would give it a better home than he would.

Here they are (Warning: Pictures are rather blurry, sorry about that):
Game Boy Color (Green) Super Mario Bros. Deluxe (Cartridge) Game Boy Color playing Super Mario Bros. Deluxe Game Boy Color and Super Mario Bros. Deluxe cartridge together

I'm very pleased to own one of these again, I've had so many memories with it, and I'm looking forward to reliving them...

Cobra!