Retro Diary - 1/7/12 - "It's challenge, challenge, chalenge!"

Monday 25th June 2012

My Wolfenstein 3D PC collection (Wolfenstein 3D + Spear of Destiny) has arrived today... but they didn't work... However, I got the games working on DOSBox, which odd as they're supposed to be Windows ports, but at least I get to play them! As I mentioned last week, it came with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, which works just fine on my PC, so that's good!

I also got my Brick Buster game, which is a lot of fun, considering it's a budget game.

I got my PC back!!!! ASUS have actually fixed it! It feels so good to be sitting back at my desk!

Yeah, despite my attempt to upgrade the PC, which would've voided the warranty, they fixed my PC, it seems to them the warranty doesn't matter, either that or they don't mind people upgrading PCs, ad they make graphics cards and all, and on their help website solutions to problems sometimes involve "removing recently installed hardware", they can't be referring to USB devices, otherwise they'd of said "devices"...

Anyway, I'm not complaining, my PC works fine (touchwood), so now I can play games in stunning HD (No really, 1080p resolution) one again!

Just in case, I'm only going to upgrade my PC once the warranty has run out, that way, even if it breaks, ASUS won't fix it, my mum apparently know someone who could fix it for me, sop it's not a problem, hopefully...

I tried out Trackmania Nations Forever on the PC, and WOW is it a massive improvement, on my laptop, it ran at 30fps on low settings at best, but being how beat my PC is, I can run it highest settings at 60+fps, and it looks beautiful and runs beautifully!

I also tried out The Wrestling Channel 4: Fight! on it, same things, only it doesn't look as good, it still runs fantastic!

However, I wanted to play FIFA 12, but as usual, Origin is being sub-par, it was saying I didn't own EURO 2012, when I clearly bought it.

It turns out, and I wasn't told until I closed it and opened it back up that I needed to update it, it wasn't until I did, when it finally installed EURO 2012.

The problems didn't end there, though, I wanted to get saved on EA servers (yeah, great start), to my PC, I had to restart Origin 5 times before it successfully synced, and even then, it took 2 hours to do so, this is what you get when the evil overlords of gaming go cheap with everything...

After all that, I finally played the game, and everything was in order, although it took longer to load my data, I blame an update, because every other game I tired played the same as before. So I played the Italy vs. England EURO 2012 challenge, and then quite because I wanted to play other games.

Then I played a Co-Op Session of Portal 2 with my cousin, Steven, at first it thought it was my first time playing, because it showed the beginning intro which you only see when you first play Co-Op, so I tried restarting it to see if that was a one time thing, thankfully, it was, it loaded my data the second time, unfortunately, at that time, there was something wrong with the Portal 2 servers, because both me and Steven were both lagging like crazy and kept disconnecting.

After that, I saved up money for the past week or two to get a much of PC games for my new PC, so I ordered a bunch of games, including the Sims 3, Trackmania United Forever, and Stranglehold.

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Tuesday 26th June 2012

I played my brother in FIFA 12, and I kept scoring against him, and he was scoring against me as well, I wasn't counting the score, but when I looked at it after I scored a goal, I realised I was beating him 10-4! Ooft! I'm a lot better at FIFA than I thought!

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Wednesday 27th June 2012

3 game I've ordered have arrived today, Toy Story Mania, Toy Story 3 and Dreamcast Collection, all on PC. Also, my Stranglehold strategy guide arrived, although I've yet to receive the actual game...

Toy Story Mania came as a surprise when I found out about it, I thought the game was a Wii exclusive casual mini games game, and I was right, but I found out a year or so later, only in Europe, they made a PC version, I usually wouldn't have bothered with it, but since I was getting Toy Story 3 for the PC and this was less than £5 brand new, I thought "What the hey!", and ordered that alongside Toy Story 3 and a bunch of other PC games. I got it, and it sucks even more than the Wii version, half of the features don't work in this version, and by that, I mean basic things you have to do, such as shake the Wiimote/mouse, that doesn't work on the PC version, and it's just overall boring to play, but I suppose for £5, I shouldn't be complaining...

Toy Story 3, on the other hand, is brilliant! I've played the PS2 and Wii versions beforehand, and really enjoyed them, so I thought I'd get the PC version, because usually, PC versions of games are the best if you have the right hardware and a decent controller, and I had both (I use the Xbox 360 controller with wireless receiver!), and I was right, the PC version, is the best version at least from the versions I've played, it had a great Toy box mode much like the Wii version but has more and the game runs much faster, 60++ fps!

As for Dreamcast Collection, I wasn't going to get this one either, since I hate collections of old games, I think they abuse the original systems and deplete any value they have... but since the PC version of Dreamcast collection was only £1 brand new, I thought I might as well.

However, just like Toy Story Mania, I was disappointed with this one, it took, literally over an hour to install for starters, then I tried out Crazy Taxi, the controls were confusing as heck, and you couldn't change them, and most importantly, they ruined it by replacing the music, I understand Sega may no longer have the licence to use Bad Religion songs, but if that were the case, they shouldn't have bothered at all, it's just not Crazy Taxi without Bad Religion, they aren't any improvements in the game anyway, it's not even in widescreen like they claimed, it's in letterbox mode, they aren't any widescreen resolutions, so just stick with your Dreamcast original.

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Thursday 28th June 2012

Ultimate Quake on PC and Twisted on the 3DO have arrived today!

Unfortunately, I've been having problems with both at first. With Twisted, my 3Do stopped outputting sound, although I soon realised it was playing sound, just very quietly, and found out when the system warms up, then it plays the sound at normal volume, strange, but at least I know what the problem is exactly, now to find out what causes it and how to fix it... oh yeah, and Twisted worked perfectly, so I can just throw my broken burnt CD away, I have a genuine properly, working copy now!

Quake Live was a slightly different story, Quake 1 installed and played perfectly fine, but Quake 2 and 3 didn't install at all...

With Quake 2, it turns out all "install" did was move content of a certain folder into a folder in Program Files, so I just did that manually, and it worked... sort of, I could only play it windowed, however, I found out about a source port called "R1Q2", which fixed this problem, so I installed it, and it worked perfectly!

Quake 3 Arena was a weird one, the install didn't work at first, but I could run the game off the CD, but if I were to do that, I'd have to insert the CD key every time I start it, so I decided to try it again in compatibility mode, and it worked!

Remember when I got Wolfenstein 3D and it only worked in DOSBox? Well, it turns out there exists a source port called "New Wolf", which not only makes the game work on Windows, but also supports higher resolutions, a bigger screen, and it runs much smoother! I've applied it to both Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny, which, by the way, I found out if you cope the folder from the CD to your hard drive, you can make the game work without the CD, so I did that.

I've also discovered GZ-Doom, which is an extension of Z-Doom, it improves it even further, supporting higher resolutions, and makes 3D models out of the doom levels, so you can look up and down without it looking awkward! There are also tonnes of little things that make GZ-Doom that much better! I've also found some Doom PWADS, one is called "Call of Dooty", which makes fun of modern shooters! Another is "Doom Center", which is a town, it has a bowling alley, and an arcade, in the arcade, there's a duck hunt game which you can play using doom itself, it's pretty awesome!

I've played a Co-Op session of Portal 2 with Steven again, this time, with the server up and running like normal!

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Friday 29th June 2012

The Sims 3 arrived today! I'm just about to play it...

...I've had a go, and it's absolutely brilliant, it's very addicting!

I've had a game of FIFA 12 with my brother on the PS3, a few, actually, and I've beaten him in pretty much all of them, one of them was completely mad, full of shots that ended up hitting the post and bar, one, in particular, my brother explained in detail, I had to wait for 5-10 minutes for him to type it.

EA claimed that you can pre-order FIFA 13 Ultimate Edition for the PS3, Xbox 360 and the PC, so I thought "Great! A PC version, I'll be getting that!", but guess what? No store have the PC version for pre-order, not even EA's very own Origin! EA: Trolls of the century!

I've been playing more Sims 3, and I was so into it, I didn't realise the time, so when I finished, when I stopped playing it, it was 1:15am!

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Saturday 30th June 2012

Trackmania United Forever had arrive today, and it's awesome!

I've played another (partial) game with my brother at FIFA 12, we only play for about 10 in game minutes, until he left, neither of us scored...

We played a full game of FIFA 12 later on, we both did random teams, he ended up with Arsenal and I ended up with some Portuguese team... We played another game afterwards, I believe it was an El Classico

Also, I'm going to make a new feature of my blog. It'll be similar to "Horse of the week", but it'll be with my and my brother, and we'll be recording the scores of games we do, there's a twist, which, chances are, like Horse of the Week, we'll soon stop exclusively doing that, is that we'll be using sliders for our games...

My friend from college, Jamie, got the Sims 3 as well, just a day after I did, which is pretty cool, we've added each other of the community website.

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Sunday 1st June 2012

It was 3DO week at grans this week...

I played a bit of Starblade and Need for speed first of all to get the sound on (It's quiet until it's been on for 5 minutes.), then when my cousins came in, we had a game of Twisted! Giancarlo technically won it, I say technically, we didn't finish it, but he got the furthest.

We had to leave after that, we brought our cousins up for the Euro 2012 finals (Spain vs. Italy), before the game, I played a bit of Sims 3, then my and Giancarlo played a match of Mortal Kombat Armageddon on the PS2, and then we played a race in the Motor Kombat mini-game.

After the Euro 2012 game, I showed Steven GZ-Doom, and a cool custom wad, which makes fun of modern FPSes, called "Call of Dooty", then I showed him Trackmania United/Nations Forever, and he said me might download Nations, as it's free, then he had to go.

I showed Giancarlo the Sims 3, and he said it looked like a lot of fun to play, and said he might get it, awesome, 2 people I know will (hopefully) have it!

After that, he left.

I'm going on holiday to Italy tomorrow, so there won't be a Retro Diary next week, but the week after, I'll be adding a lot to this site, like the Sliders feature with me and my brother being added.

Next time at our grans, it will be Saturn week.

Alright, see you in a couple of weeks!

Retro Diary - 24/6/12 - "This-Game's-Great!"

Monday 18th June 2012

I finally got around to playing the Browser version of Plants vs. Zombies, and I really enjoyed it, the Game of the Year edition of the game is only £5 brand new on Amazon, so I suppose it's a why not, I'm getting it!

My PC got sent off to get fixed today, well, I hope they actually fix it, I have a gut feeling they'll just send it back, broken...

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Tuesday 19th June 2012

My MDickie compilation DVD arrived! I was expecting the Disc to contain absolutely, pretty much like it was claimed to, but sadly, it didn't, a few DOS games and the original version of the 3D Big Bumpz was missing, I've downloaded the rest, as they're all free, but it would've been nice if they were on the DVD as well.

However, I found that the DVD contained 2 mods to his popular Wrestling Mpire 2008, one of them being called "The Wrestling Channel 4: Fight!", which featured far improved graphics and presentation, and the game had a better atmosphere too, I can honestly say that this is the best wrestling game on the PC now, it'd be awesome of Matt Dickie himself and the team and modded it joined forced to make a sequel, how awesome would that be!?

So yeah I've been playing that, even if it runs like crap on my laptop, I want my PC so bad...

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Thursday 21st June 2012

My sister came up to my room to play some Mega Drive, she reached the same spot before getting bored, she keeps saying to me she'll come over and we could complete it like we did with Sonic 2, but never does, I'd be lucky if she even comes up to play it half the time.

I've just noticed, my brothers have nearly finished school, which sucks, I was hoping to spend those extra weeks off by playing some awesome PC games while my brothers are at school and aren't here to annoy me, but my luck doesn't want any of that, and my PC broken down, seriously, why me!?

I suppose on the bright side, I haven't heard anything back from ASUS, no "we can't fix your PC", or any of that crap, so I suppose no news is good news, but I have a feel it's still just in a very long line of PC that are to be inspected, and I bet knowing my luck, it's be weeks until they finally get to my PC and say "Sorry, we can't fix it!", making all of that time, waiting for it to get "fixed" gone to complete waste!

I saw Wolfenstein 3D + Spear of Destiny on eBay, and as a bonus, that particular copy also included Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, all on PC... Ordered!

I was once looking at a "Let's Play", or rather a "Retsupurae", which makes fun of bad Let's Plays, and found one on Ultimate Doom, so I decided to look at it, and saw that this guys copy ran faster, had a different HUD, and was running on a bigger resolution, I thought, "Wait, how come my copy isn't as good!?".

It turns out, he had a mod put in which makes all those improvements and more into all the Doom games, it's called Z-Doom, called so because you can look up and down, unlike the original, I tried it out, and it was like upgrading a computer or to a new computer, you suddenly get a massive improvement in performance! I was in awe playing it, the resolution could go much bigger, and therefore looked so much sharper and clearer, it ran much faster, the new HUD rules, and tonnes more, I practically fell in love!

Later on, I was browsing for my games because I was bored and wanted something to play, then I discovered a few PC games I've had for years, but never played, one of them being a £1 budget game called "Winter games", I decided to try it out.

I've tried other budget games published by the same people, and they were quite enjoyable considering they're only £1, but this one sucked!

However, I discovered trial games that came free with the game, one of them being "Brick Buster", which is a 3D breakout game, I decided to give it a try, and I really, really enjoyed it, so I looked it up online to see if I could find a copy cheap.

You can download the game, it costs £10, which is outrages, however, on eBay, I found a retail copy which also came with another game, and that was less than £2, seriously, why do people digitally download games these days?

Physical copies are usually cheaper, you can install them on other PCs/Consoles, and if you feel nostalgic for a game years later, chances are, the digital download will no longer exist, but you can still install the physical copy!

My sister came into my room to play my Mega Drive again, which I don't mind, she gave up, again, because she wasn't doing as well as usual, so I had a go, and done even worse...

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Friday 22nd June 2012

I've been told I will get my PC on Monday, hopefully fixed, but they haven't said otherwise, so that's a good sign, but I'm still not getting my hopes up...

I discovered a Free-to-play game on Steam called "Trackmania Nations Forever", which is a game all about whacky tracks, and the fact you can make your own! I had a go of it, and I loved it! Unlike every other F2P game I've ever played, it doesn't ask you for money anywhere in the game!

I might know where they'd get income then, from their other, more advanced game, Trackmania United Forever, Nations is a Free Trackmania game, everything else is like a mainstream game, a case with a disc, that costs you about £20-£30. United Forever is all of the Trackmania games and expansions put together into one game. After playing and Loving Nations, I'm definitely getting United Forever!

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Saturday 23rd June 2012

My sister came into my room and played Sonic 1 for a bit, then gave up, so I gave it a try, and I actually reached Labyrinth Zone Act 2, by far the furthest I've ever gotten, until I got a game over!

I completed Episode 2 of the Ultimate Doom, and the end boss for that episode, is absolutely merciless, I couldn't defeat him no matter what I did, I lost count of the amount of tries it took, not that I counted in the first place.
So I decided, f*ck it! I put a cheat in to get the BFG, and then I completed him my first try... Alright, second try!

I realized it was 3DO next week, and I didn't have a working copy (or even a proper one at that) of Twisted, and that games makes 3DO week, 3DO week, so I went online, and there was only 1 copy left, it was £15, but I made an offer of £10, and not even a minute later, he accepted it, so now I'm getting a proper copy of Twisted! Hopefully it'll arrive before next Sunday...

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Sunday 24th June 2012

It was Mega Drive this week at grans, unfortunately, I only had one controller, so I brought along the Sega Master System controller, in hopes that it would work... It didn't.

I was playing a bit of Mortal Kombat for a while first.

Then I played a bit of Aladdin, still trying to figure out the level skip cheat I knew of years ago, it seems it's activated when I press A, B, B, A, while rocking the D-pad, but it doesn't do it when I leave it alone or hold it in any direction.

Then Giancarlo played Streets of Rage for a bit, he reached the boat level before getting a game over.

Then Steven came in a while later and played Spiderman, and couldn't get past the first level.

Then he played Bart vs. the Space Mutants, same thing there, couldn't get past the first level.

Then he played Micro Machines 2, he played a lot of races before getting bored. We have something new to say during the countdown of that game, while it counts down, in rhythm with the countdown, we say "This-Game's-Great!"!

Steven decided to let someone else play a game, so Giancarlo then played Sonic 2, because we couldn't go through Mega Drive week without playing that, no really, we couldn't!

While he was playing, he mentioned that once he gets a job, he's getting an Xbox 360, and he also mentioned he's getting a computer as well.
I thought "What's the point?", I mentioned he could just get a gaming PC, sure it may cost more to get a gaming PC than a console, but you're going to buy a console and PC anyway, it doesn't cost much to get a PC that can play all the modern games and PC games are generally cheaper than their console counterparts to pre-order and get brand new the day a game comes out. (Sometimes with £15 in difference!)
Besides, me and Steven play mostly on the PC now, so it'd be awesome if all 3 of us did!
It's his choice, I know, but I'd go for PC gaming if I were him, but then again, no one's like me.

He reached the Casino Stage Act 2, but then Giancarlo had to go, so Steven took over, and reached Hill Top Zone Act 2 before we left.

I bidded for an item of "Ultimate Quake!" for the PC, basically, that's the first 3 quakes (including 3 arena) for I think modern OS PCs, luckily, no one else placed a bid on it, I wouldn't think anyone would, these days, if anyone who's not me wanted a PC game, they'd get it on Steam, not me, I hate digital download games and try to avoid them as often as possible, luckily, I don't need to download anything to play Quake 1, 2 and 3 Arena any more!

Next week is 3DO week, it's time to land on the Challenge Square!

Retro Pick-Ups: Starblade [3DO], FIFA 97 [SAT] and Forsaken [N64]

I went into G-Force again, which is a shop I sometimes go to on my way home from college, for those new to this blog.

I noticed the old games weren't where they usually are, I thought they threw them out, but it turns they did almost the opposite, they now had a whole dedicated to them, not only then, they had more games for more consoles, like 3DO, NES, SNES and they had more Saturn games!

So I thought since my EMA came in that week, I thought I'd buy some stuff, and I found that a lot of the game were quite cheap, the NES games went for only £5 each, they were loose carts, but that still doesn't sound bad.

and that was the NES, that apparently did awful over here, I found a few games I had wanted for a while, I had always wanted to play Starblade again, I used to play it in Tekken 5, and I knew for a while there was a 3DO port, and was apparently the only version to make it outside Japan, I could be wrong though, and luck would have it, the store only had one 3DO game, and it was none other, than Startblade!

I think it's a US copy, I could tell by the CD being pretty thing, in the US, they had Big boxes with little jewel cases inside them, over here, I believe we just had jewel cases, but they were the double CD cases you used to get.
However, on the back of the case, it said "This title displays in letterbox format on the 3DO PAL System", and on the bottom it said "Made in UK", hmm...

I also got FIFA 97 for the Sega Saturn, I normally wouldn't have bothered, but it was only £2, so it was a why not.

Last, but not least, I got Forsaken for the Nintendo 64, my friend said he loved the game back in the day for the PS1, and the N64 version is supposed to be the same, but with more levels, nice!

This really isn't a "Pick-Up", but I thought I'd post it here anyway, my copy of Back to the Future the Game on PC! Unfortunately, I got impatient and opened the seal before I took the photos, but hey, look at the bright side, I can show you what's inside now.

Speaking of, here are the photos:

Retro Diary - 25/3/12 - "You've landed on the challenge squa- Oh, it froze..."

Dear Diary,

I've had a rather quiet week this week, apart from the obvious, nothing has really happened.

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On Sunday, it was 3DO week, however, I ran across a few problems, on the main TV, despite it working before has all of a sudden stopped showing it in colour, it was in black and white, so I had to get another TV to get it showing properly.

The second problem I cam across was that a few games all of a sudden stopped working properly, at least in some parts, if you select certain cars in Need for Speed, the game wouldn't load, and in Twisted, some of the mini games crashed the game. I have no idea why these problems were occurring, the discs weren't any more scratched than before, and I've never really been "abusing" my 3DO, despite how frustrated I was at it for not showing properly on the main TV, maybe my 3DO is suffering from CD-rot...

Luckily, I got need for speed working properly again, it turned out the disc was just a little dirty, I cleaned it, and it worked a charm once again. Twisted, however, didn't, the mini games that crashed the game before still done so, but less often, I checked the disc, and there were a few scratched, but not enough nor were they deep enough to cause reading errors, so that was strange, every other game works perfectly, and Twisted worked perfect before, strange, isn't it?

So I can only conclude that it was the CD with the problem, even though it didn't make sense, it was the strongest lead I had, so I'm getting myself an official copy (the one I had was a burnt copy) so we can play it properly, if it still doesn't work, then I will really worry...

Anyway, the week started off with my little brother playing Need for Speed, unfortunately, the problem I was having before ruined it.

Then me and my cousin, Steven, played Twisted, then we encountered that error...

So we tried Corpse Killer to see if it worked, and it did, no problems, we had a laugh playing it because it was so bad, as usual.

Then me, Steven, my other cousin; Giancarlo and my brother; Riccardo all played a 4-player game of Twisted, hoping that the errors have been fixed, and we all went quite far before the game crashed, the mini games that were supposed to crash it, worked a few times during the game, unfortunately, my bad luck caught up to me, and crashed the game.

All in all, apart from the errors, we had an alright time. I swear, if these problems are going to reoccur every week, I'm going to stop the whole week thing.

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Throughout the week, my two little brothers have been watching my Sam & Max cartoon series DVDs.

The surprising thing is: I never persuaded them to do so, they decided to try the show out, out of their own free will, and they love it, so much so that I'm always hear them talk about it and they always recite lines and moments from it, and they even downloaded trials of the games on Xbox Live, and sometimes ask me to play the full version on the PC, as I have all of the game.

I just thought I'd mention it here, as it's interesting, and more importantly, proves that the show, despite many people bring surprised it got a PG rating and that was aired on Fox Kids, it's still a perfectly good show for kids to watch. That alone in my opinion makes this show one of my favourites, it has all the humour that people my age would love, but kids can also watch it and find parts funny as well.

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Next week is Saturn week, I would hope that I wouldn't have any problems, but then if I do, I let my guard down, and my luck would ruin everything, it's done that many times before.

Retro Diary - 8/1/12 - "He is okay, Wo-mon!"

Dear Diary, I've had a busy week this week...

On Wednesday, my cousin, Steven, came over to fix a problem with my mum's Paypal, so I can get a copy of one of the old McDonalds demo disc 1! I invited him up to my room to play a few games.

First, we had a few game of the infamous Rise of the Robots on the Amiga CD32, being that he was the 2nd player, he got to choose the opponent, I couldn't. I had to stick with the Cyborg.

The first match, he went as the Sentry droid, a.k.a. "Rook", he won that match.
The second match, he went as the Soldier droid, a.k.a. "War", I won that match.
The third match, he went as the Builder droid, a.k.a. "Ape" or "Prime-8", it turns out that Ape didn't have any aerial attacks, and since the game usually consists of them to win matches, that was a bad thing, I won the match because of that.
The forth match, he went as the Sentry droid again, I won again.
It was 3-1 to me, yes!

Next we played World Tour Racing for the Atari Jaguar CD, it turns out that the control setting only apply to the first player, even if it's the second player choosing them, that sucked! We raced in England, which didn't look like England at all. However, we were amazed at the graphics, they were great for the Jaguar, it was a fully 3D textured-polygon game, which is rare for a Jaguar game.

Next, Steven had to help my brother in Portal 2, but as well as do that, he showed us a secret level, which was cool!

We then went on Garrys Mod on my PC, because I said to him the face poser in the game didn't work, it turns out they didn't work with the Team Fortress 2 characters.

We then had another race at World Tour Racing, nothing to say about that.

Then we had a game of wipE'out 64 for, what else, the Sega Saturn!... Wait, that's not right...

2 player in the game was surprisingly smooth and fast, I might even go as far as to say it runs faster than single-player!

After that, he had to leave.

In short, here are the game we played:

In the order we played them:
• Rise of the Robots [CD32]
• World Tour Racing [JagCD]
• Portal 2 [360]
• Garry's Mod [PC - Steam]
• wipE'out 64 [N64]

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The next day, my sister came over, and she discovered that I had a Mega Drive, she had, what is called, a "Nostalgia-gasm", which means, she got a memory triggered of something she remembers dearly, and get exited to play it again. She said for a joke that she wanted to move back into the house.

I popped in Sonic 2, and she pretty much played it all night.

It was probably the first time my Mega Drive had been booted up in years!

She said that she's going to buy a Mega Drive off eBay, and asked me if she does, if I would go over to her house to help her set it up, I said I would, it wouldn't be a problem.

She took a photo of the Mega Drive on Facebook, and said it was okay if I posted it here, so here you go:


She got to Zone 3 Act 2 before she had to leave.

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Friday was an awful day, it was the day my Sega Saturn died, I was trying out Sonic 3D, and it didn't read it, so I cleaned the lens, the outside, pushed the lens to the top, left it for a few hours, even opened it up to see if the drive was connected properly, but none of those worked, it wouldn't read anything...

R.I.P. my Sega Saturn, 2008 - 2012... Oh well, time to find another on Amazon and eBay.

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On Saturday, me and my cousin, Steven, were having a Robot Combat battle on Gmod, can can find more info on that here.

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Today, at Grans, it was 3DO week, and it wasn't as fun a I hoped, but I had a good time nonetheless.

We started off by playing Corpse Killer, which is one of those it's-so-bad-it's-good FMV games, my cousin, Steven got up to a fortress level of sort until it became too hard, not in the challenging way, they just threw too many zombies at him, most of which were invulnerable to bullets, which isn't fair!

If you didn't know, Corpse Killer is an FMV game that tried to be a rail shooter, but fails miserably, the main protagonist, apart from your character, is a one-dimensional stereo typical Jamacan man, who's always saying stuff like "Foo-pah!", "He is okay, Wo-mon!", there's a female character by the way, who has no personality whatsoever, at least not that I've seen.

Next, he played a race in The Need for Speed, not to much to say about it, except while he was playing it, we were writing that Gmod article I linked to above.

Then we played Twisted, we never finished the game, we had to leave before we could, but we enjoyed it.

In summary, here are the game we played:

In the order we played them:
• Corpse Killer
• The Need for Speed
• Twisted: The Game Show

I had a great week this week, next week was supposed to be Saturn week, but as we know, my Saturn died, so we're skipping to Playstation (1) week!

Random Photo (I was bored)

I was bored today, So I decided, since I now have all of the major 5th generation consoles, I thought I'd take a photo of all of their controllers side by side, similar to what some guy did with the 6th gen console on Wikipedia. The reason I didn't do console. because it'd be too much hassle unplugging them all lifting them off, putting them all on my bed, take the photo, lift them all back and plug them all back in, it'd be a nightmare.

Anyway here it is:

Retro Diary - 18/12/11 - "You've landed on the challenge square!"

Dear Diary,

This week wasn't as busy as other weeks, so it shouldn't take as long to write this.

---

On Saturday, while me and my brother were wrapping the rest of our other brothers' presents, when my mum came in with a package, I recognised it, it was my 3DO, my mum said that I had too many presents for Christmas already, so she gave me the 3DO early!

On the same day, me and my brother went Christmas shopping, and we went HMV, Game, we bought a few presents for others in the family, and then we went to The G-Force store, there, I found XIII on Xbox for £2 and the Pokémon Soul Silver Strategy Guide for £10, I couldn't resist.

When we were back, we were going to our Gran's for some reason, but we were still going the next say, and our cousins were coming up, with that said, I decided to bring my 3DO up, the usual happened, I was playing a few games on my own before my cousins came, and my brothers were watching me, I asked them if they wanted a shot, they tried it out, my 8-year old brother hated it, but my 6-year old brother loved it, he was playing for most of the day.

When he wasn't playing it, my and Giancarlo tried out Super Street Fighter 2, it was my first ever time playing it, so I set it to the easiest mode, and I got thrashed every time, I only got a win if I was lucky.

Then we tried Corpse Killer, which is an FMV (Full Motion Video) game, which nowadays, are supposed to be so bad, they're awesome. We almost cried of laughter the fist scene, it had a very bad actor in unconvincing zombie/undead costume zombie and a Jamaican character, who couldn't possibly be more stereotypical if he tried, and then it went to the actual game, it was just awful, we had a blast!

Then we tried Twisted, another FMV game I had for the 3DO, but this time, it was actually a decent little game, it's a board game, it's like Mario Party meets Monty Python's Flying Circus. A major complaint with it, though, is that it's a stricly a 4-player game, you can't have A.I. in the game, so you need to play in 4-player, or you could play it in 2-player if you're playing as 2 characters each, which was what we did.

Most of the squares in the game are called "challenge squared", where you do a challenge (Never(!)), if you win it, you get to roll again, otherwise, it's the next player's turn, it said alot of variations of stating where you've landed, to avoid repetitiveness, and it actually works. When we packed the 3DO, we kept quoting the things said in the game, mostly "You've landed on the challenge square!".

Later that night, my mum said to me that she had all of my presents wrapped except for one, because she ran out of wrapping paper, so she just gave me it early, it was a money bad, with a Mario mushroom picture on it.

Then I came across her room, the door was left wide open, and I saw Driver San Francisco Special Edition for PC, still unwrapped, and my CD32 under it, I told my mum about those, and she just let me have those early too, yes!

---

I tried out Driver: San Francisco on my PC, and it wouldn't install, it wasn't until the next day when I finally got it installed. (InstallAnywhere is a piece of sh*t!)

My laptop just met the game's minimal requirements, heck, the RAM was way above the requirement, meaning that I can run it, right? Well, apparently not, the game ran at like 3 frames per second, the controls were delayed by a full second, and it crashed after a minute of playing. Those liars!

Steven was a work again, so it was just me and Gianni, instead of my original plan of bringing the Dreamcast, I thought that we didn't play enough Twisted, and brought the 3DO again!

We played pretty much the same games as we did yesterday, but this time, the cousin that we played the Dreamcast with a while ago was there, he lived through the era, and recognised the 3DO, he said he never had one or knew anyone who did, but he said he remembered it being around.

We showed him Corpse Killer, and he seamed to enjoy it for it suckage! I would've thought that although the FMV games suck now, they were great at the time, they looks amazing, but my cousin, who was around at the time they were new, thought they were an awful idea, so it turns out they sucked back then.

He actually got further then I did, and we discovered that the game's only attempt to increase the difficulty is to just throw (sometime literally) more zombies at you, they didn't even make them stronger or get stronger ones in the game.

We were also talking about bad films, well, the so-bad-it's-good type of films, including The Room and Troll 2.

In a nutshell, here's what we played, both days coincidentally enough in the same order:

• The Need for Speed*
  
• Road Rash*
  
• Crash N Burn*
  
• Corpse Killer
  
• Twisted
  
• Escape from Monster Manor**
  

* = We didn't play it on Sunday. ** = We didn't play it on Saturday.
Not sure what we'll do next week, because it's Christmas day... I'll get back to you on that...

Cobra!

Retro Arrivals: Panasonic 3DO

It turns out I was getting alot of stuff for Christmas, so much in fact that my mum gave me one early, to avoid making my brothers jealous, it seams I got a little carried away with the things I wanted, but they were all pretty cheap, being that most of them are old, so I thought that'd balance it out, especially since my youngest brothers are getting a 3DS plus a game each, but apparently not.

It doesn't really matter anyway, I'm too fussed by that, as long as I still get the Sam & Max games, I'll be happy!

So I was given my Panasonic 3DO, I was looking forward to getting that, so I got exited when I was given it early.

For those who haven't heard of the 3DO, it's a console released in 1993, 1994 over here, it was overpriced, but given the time it came out, the graphics looks really nice, it was the first console to have 3D textures polygon games, such as Crash N Burn, and Need for Speed.

The model I have is the Panasonic FZ-1, which I think was the first one, here are a couple of pictures:




As you can see, the power cable is hard-wired in, so if you somehow break the wire, you're f*cked!

The model I have is an American model, so the plug obviously isn't the same as the one we have:


However, because the seller who originally had it lived in Britain (not sure whereabouts, probably England.), he had a converter:

As you can see, the plus is huge! I can hardly fit it in with my Jaguar plugs, and that was the only spare socket I had left!

Because the 3DO I have is the American one, I would need a TV that supports NTSC, luckily, mines does!

The controller is pretty cool, it's like a 3-button Mega Drive controller with shoulder pads:


Another cool feature with the controller, although I forgot to take a photo of it, is that it has a controller port at the top of it, the 3DO console itself has only one controller port, so the second controller would plug into the first controller, the 3rd player controller would plug into the 2nd controller's port, and so on. You can daisy chain up to 8 controllers this way, well, theoretically, it can go on forever, but the console only allowed 8-players, I love this feature, it eliminated the need to buy a multitap!

Won't you need to stay close together to play it? I hear you ask. No, you probably won't get the impression from the photo, as I tied the cable up to fit in the photo, but the cable is massive! I could fully outstretch my arms while holding it and they'd still be some cable dangling on both sides, and I have before, just to see how long it was, so you won't have to stay close to play it.

However, I've heard that the controller is awkward for fighting games, and it seams that the previous owner was a fan of fighting games, my 3DO came with Samurai Showdown and Super Street Fighter 2, and also, an adapter which allows SNES controllers to be used for the 3DO, as I don't have a SNES, at least not as of yet, I have no use for it.





It came with a couple of games, however, they're all burnt ones:

Some of them don't even work! I suppose though I'm not the one in the wrong, the original owner was for copying the games, they came with my 3DO when I bought it.

I've tried out some the games that do work, and surprisingly, the 3DO has a pretty solid library of games, they are some gems in the pile I have, such as GEX, Crash N Burn, Road Rash and The Need for Speed, although most of the games for the 3DO were later ported to the Saturn and the PS1.

The only exclusive 3DO game I have right now that's good is Crash N Burn, which is great! I've also heard the Shockwave games, with the exception of Operation Jumpgate, were never ported to other consoles either, and I've heard that they were good, so I'll check them out in the future.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some 3DO to play!

Cobra!

Retro(ish) Diary - 30/10/11 - "There are Trip Bombs everywhere!"

It's been a fairly busy week this week.

On Wednesday, my 3DO arrived, although I wasn't supposed to get it until Christmas, (I know it's early to be Christmas shopping, but I found a really good deal on eBay, so I bought it before someone else did.) my dad accidentally put it in my room, like he usually does, he forgot he wasn't supposed to this time around. I was thinking of testing it anyway, to get a preview of it, so I did, I played

• Need for Speed
• Crash N' Burn
• Gex

I only wanted to preview 3 games, being that they were just copies anyway, just to test if the console worked, and it did, however, some of the games didn't, after trying out the first 2, I tried playing "Stargate" and "Samurai Showdown", in that order, both of which didn't work.

The next day, I found an Amiga CD32, the other console I'm after, for £50, unlike the previously mentioned item, it came with a controller and the UK power supply, and, you'll never believe this, I still don't, 1700 games! They're all copied onto 3 CDs, apparently, they're Amiga Computer games burnt onto a CD for the CD32, I'll try them one just to see if the console itself works, then, I'll perhaps throw them away... nah, probably not, and pop in Darkseed!

It was £20 more then the one I mentioned weeks ago (Including delivery), but if I were to buy that one instead, separately, I would have to buy a controller, which are usually £20 plus £2-3 delivery, and a plug converter, which is £2 with free delivery, totalling to £25! So I actually saved £5!

---

It was Xbox week at grans today, well, sort of, my brother wanted to bring his PS3, because it was the rare week when he wasn't playing a match at Rugby, I decided we could bring both, and once we got bored of the Xbox, we'd play the PS3, very much to my surprise though, we wanted to keep playing the Xbox, so we did pretty much, here's what we played:

• Black
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
• 007: Nightfire

Unfortunately, we forgot the one game we started playing the Xbox again for, Timesplitters: Future Perfect, so that was all we played, and only one of them was multi-player, that didn't matter though, because we found new love for 007: Nightfire, we chose to randomise the weapon set each match.

Just so it's easer for me to write and for you to read, we'll label the players of the game, but at the same time, trying not to give out their real name:

• 1st Player - my cousin - Stephen
  
• 2nd Player - me - Cobra!
  
• 3rd Player - my other cousin - Gay Gian
• 4th Player - my brother - Retardo

The first match, we had the usual, a match in the snowy level with a burst sniper rifle, surprisingly, I dominated that match. However came last almost every other match...

The second match, the level was loaded with Golden Guns, which kills people with one shot, although for some reason, Stephen couldn't find them, at least not for the first half of the game. I came last even with that advantage, but it was rather close.

The third match, and the first my brother, Retardo, joined in as the 4th player, we were all armed with a couple of trip beam bombs, and we all ended up setting them at this one tunnel, there were so many trip beams in that tunnel and some of them in the most awkward places, it looked like one of those security halls you see in films, with all the awkwardly placed beams. I always went into this one room, planted all of my trip beams there, so no one can get in, well, that was the theory, and took control of the nearby mini tanks, and killed a couple of my cousins in it, IN THE GAME! of course. However, when I did that a few times, Gay Gian somehow got in without setting off the trip beams I planted, and while I was controlling the tank, pushed me into the trip beams, killing me, that b*stard! In the end, I came 3rd, I think, and Retardo came last, with 2 kills and 22 deaths, what a record!

The forth match, we were armed with sniper rifles, all kills were caused by sniper-ing one another, so not much happened, but we enjoyed it alot, a moment I remember was that me and Gay Gian were at opposite balconies, we were both aiming to headshot each other, but we were both strafing, to avoid the other's fire, it was hilarious, then I saw Stephen in the balcony blow, but he didn't notice us, so I aimed for him instead, and before I knew it, Gay Gian shot me, great! We got ourselves in that situation a couple of times, and he always came out on top. I came last, again, but for a round with just sniper rifles, it was action packed, and fun.

The fifth and final match, and also my favourite, we were all armed with Remote Controller Missiles, There was so much going on, with explosions and all that, that the game slowed down constantly, it seams not even the powerful Xbox can handle the awesomeness of the game! I don't blame it to be honest. I came out last in the end, but boy, what a match that was! I'll be remembering that for a long time!

After that, we put the Xbox away and we started playing the PS3.

All we played on the PS3 was Driver: San Francisco, it was amazing how you can play multiplayer in the full map and still be playable, but for some reason, I had no interest of playing, I just wanted to play more Nightfire!

That was what happened this week, next week is Gamecube week, I hope as usual, that will turn out great!

Cobra!

Retro Diary - 23/10/11 - "It's like they're on the moon..."

A lot happened this week, at least as far as retro gaming goes.

---

On Wednesday, my friend came over to my house to have a game of FIFA 12, on PS2!

He thought it was rubbish compared to the Xbox 360 version, well, he said it was completely different and that it didn't fell right, but he said that it might be okay once you get used to the controls, even though I didn't say so, I agreed with him, because after seeing gameplay of the Xbox 360 version, it looked MUCH better.

We then watched some Red Dwarf and some Fawlty Towers, then he was playing Pokémon Pinball on my Game Boy Color, he was playing that for a good while.

We played a few more games, here's the complete list of what we played:

In the order we played them:
• FIFA 12 [PS2]
• Pokémon Stadium [N64]
• Pokémon Pinball [GBC]
• Half-Life [PS2]
• Timesplitters: Future Perfect [Xbox]
• FIFA Football 2003 [PS2]
• Ready 2 Rumble Boxing [DC]

The most fun we had was playing Half-Life and Timesplitters: Future Perfect, we played both of them for hours and before we knew it, it was time for him to go, so we played a couple of games of Ready 2 Rumble Boxing and then he left.

---

On Saturday, my Atari Jaguar Memory Track arrived! So now I can save data on my Jaguar CD games. (well, game)

It says on the back it can box "125,000" bytes of data, that's only 250KBs, even back then, in 1996, where you had the fairly small 1MB PS1 memory cards, that was rubbish, and it says also that it can store data from up to "250 Jaguar games" but when I went to the memory track manager, the previous owner had data from 3 games, Battlemorph, Hoverstrike: Unconquered Lads and Myst, and that almost took up the whole cart, only about 100 bytes remained! 250 games my ar*e!

---

On Sunday, before we went to grans, my brother wanted someone to play him at Co-op in Super Mario Bros. Wii, he asked me first, I didn't want to, so he got our dad to do it.

When I went down for a coke later on, he was still playing and looked so bored playing it, so I thought since I had nothing else to do, I thought I'd take his place, and surprisingly, I enjoyed it, even if it was my brother playing it, he always shouts and makes loud noises while playing it, we got every star-coins, whatever they're called, in world 1 and managed to unlock level 1 of world 9, we didn't complete it, but I'd love to give it another shot!

---

At grans, it was PS2 week, and since my cousins were still to arrive.

So I decided to play a game of FIFA 12 career mode, when I first played when the game arrived, I didn't like it the framerate was very unreliable and the controls were very awkward (I'm playing on "Be a player" mode by the way), but playing it a second time, I started to really enjoy it, the dynamic camera angles you get when your near a goal I thought were a very nice touch, and I managed to score 2 goals, and it felt very rewarding... and then I got sent off, after "bumping", for lack of a better word, the score to 2-0. Then the opponent team scored not 1, but 4 goals against us! Talk about a bad move, eh? I had to watch the rest of the entire match, the first half wasn't even over yet, I couldn't skip, I could quit, but all progress would be lost and it was count as a retire, it was some of the most boring moments of my life. The score ended 3-4, we lost, and I got the blame, the newspaper said it was my fault and that I was sorry for the loss, bullsh*t!

Then my brother wanted a shot at career mode, but as a manager, so, since I had plenty of memory card space, I let him, and he was playing for about half an hour, despite claiming he hated it,
I told him "I thought you hated this game.",
and he replied "Well, I suppose it's alright when you get used to the controls.",
which was exactly what my friend said, well, assumed, and he was right according to what my brother said.

When my brother started playing, my cousins arrived, and we were talking about how there's still PS2 games being made and making jokes like
"(Cobra!) has probably made a spike in the sales charts for the PS2 version!",
I played along, saying stuff like "Breaking news! Someone bought the PS2 version of FIFA 12!", we had quite a laugh.

I was also mentioning what I wanted to get for Christmas, spent with my EMA money (I know, I'm buying my own presents, sad isn't it? Well, I'm not buy all of them, just most of them.) as I have £300, if saved up, to spend, and I mentioned that I got a 3DO with a few games for just £50! Not bad considering they usually go for £120 with no games, and I told them that I found an Amiga CD32 for just £40, although it had no controller and a EU plug, I can buy both easily for a decent price.

So if you want a CD32, there are 6 available, so get yourself one, just leave one for me, please?

Then, after my brother was done playing FIFA 12, we popped in Timesplitters 2 and played some co-op multiplayer, we only finished 1 level when the cousin I was playing with had to leave.

My other cousin was still there so we decided to play some Timesplitters 1, since he never played it before and was curious as to what it was like, it was kind of boring, I was aware that all of the goals were, get this, then go back, and that it was repetitive, this especially showed in co-op multiplayer, I got bored of it after just 2 levels.

We then had a game of WWE All Stars, just to show him how bad it was, and the game was so bad, it was awesome! Surprisingly, we had a great laugh out of it, because of all of the over the top moves. He said that "It's like they're on the moon!" because of this, and I mentioned that the bad sound effects and lack of music (Yeah, there's no music in the PS2 version.) kind of helped that effect.

So as it turns out, WWE All Stars is like the PS2's Monster Truck Madness 64, it's so horrible, that it's awesome!

Here's the complete list of games we played:

In the order we played them:
• FIFA 12
• Timesplitters 2
• Timesplitters
• WWE All Stars

On the way back, my cousin was dropping me off my house, due to our car not being there yet, and on the way, we were actually talking about this blog, and he mentioned that he liked the logo at the top and I mentioned that it was outdated, as my collection grew quite a bit since, I got a Jaguar+CD, a Game Boy Color, an N-Gage,
and he added; "...with a 3DO on the way!",
and then I added afterwards; "... and a CD32!",
I was surprised at the fact that it even remotely interested him that I was getting a 3DO, of course in a good way, my only guess it was because I was at one point hosting a competition for a game about what console to add to it, and he entered with the 3DO, I cancelled it due to lack of entries later on, so technically, he was the winner, although the game was cancelled.

That was what I was up to this week, next week is Xbox week, a very underrated console in my opinion, in fact I'm probably the only person in the world to prefer it over the Xbox 360. Hopefully, it will be as fun as this week was.

Cobra!