Retro games and emulation - Discuss retro shit in case you're stuck in the past or a hipster

Beat Blaster Master Zero recently. Decent game and recommended if you missed Blaster Master on the NES. They are similar games but Blaster Master doesn't have any saves or passwords, so if you fail a few times in a row, sucks to be you. See you back at the start of Area 1.

The whole "no saves, no passwords" makes a bunch of NES games a lot more difficult than they should be, and any "those games were designed for children, skill issue" people forget that they also assume you have unlimited time on your hands too, as children tend to have.
 
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Xarpho's Return said:
The whole "no saves, no passwords" makes a bunch of NES games a lot more difficult than they should be, and any "those games were designed for children, skill issue" people forget that they also assume you have unlimited time on your hands too, as children tend to have.
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The thing I realized going back and playing a bunch of 8 bit stuff recently was that I had to really train myself to beat the games. Where was now I can just go back to an auto save on a modern game, something like Mega Man I had to go and analyse and train doing certain parts of levels if I had a hope of beating it all the way through.
 
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foam rolla said:
The thing I realized going back and playing a bunch of 8 bit stuff recently was that I had to really train myself to beat the games. Where was now I can just go back to an auto save on a modern game, something like Mega Man I had to go and analyse and train doing certain parts of levels if I had a hope of beating it all the way through.
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Training yourself in a game is still a thing... not as common as before, but it exists. The thing is that as an adult you get to a point where you wind up asking yourself "is it worth it?", because you have more shit going on in your life than you do as a kid.

Before it was School/Homework, whatever your parents had planned for you that day, hang out with friends (if you had any), and then the rest of the time was free. So you could devote hours upon hours into a game and then even come back to it the next day. And if it was summer break, even better... that's more time dedicated to the thing you love.

Now you're juggling 15 bajillion other things, and video games is more of a "destress/unwind for the night" kind of thing rather than something to really sink your life into. At that point it becomes a "pick and choose your battles" kind of scenario in which you figure out how much you love this game to where you will give it almost all of your attention to beat/complete it. The last time that happened to me was Super Mario Wonder. I was dead set on completing it, and by the time i got to the "grind the fuck out of the game for purple coins to collect the stands" part, I cut down the time i played that game to like 3/4, because i knew this shit was going to get monotinous and boring, plus I'm doing other things after work as well, so instead I planned it out so I did 1 character set for 1 day (e.g. all of daisy's stands in one day, come back to the game next day or few days later, complete another character set, etc...) till I eventually 100% the game, and now i can focus on other shit.
 
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foam rolla said:
The thing I realized going back and playing a bunch of 8 bit stuff recently was that I had to really train myself to beat the games. Where was now I can just go back to an auto save on a modern game, something like Mega Man I had to go and analyse and train doing certain parts of levels if I had a hope of beating it all the way through.
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This is why emulation and save states are really just awesome things that massively improve QoL immensely. People will claim that "you didn't really beat the game", but they should be ignored.
 
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Lone Wandering Courier said:
This is why emulation and save states are really just awesome things that massively improve QoL immensely. People will claim that "you didn't really beat the game", but they should be ignored.
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Stuff like Castlevania or Megaman I would use save states if I needed to learn boss patterns or doing certain stages. Once I felt confident with all parts of the game, I'd run it from start to finish with no save states to beat it in the 'traditional' sense. However, I wouldn't hold others to the same standard as people don't have the time to pour hours into a 8bit platformer.
 
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Learning how to play a hard game is a big part of the fun. Castlevania 1 with savestate spamming just ruins the game. If you play it as intended you get very good at it and the whole experience ends up being incredible, it's more like climbing a mountain.

I can see if you just want to keep your place but otherwise I wouldn't even say you played the game, at some point it's more like content tourism.
 
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Baraka Obama said:
Learning how to play a hard game is a big part of the fun. Castlevania 1 with savestate spamming just ruins the game. If you play it as intended you get very good at it and the whole experience ends up being incredible, it's more like climbing a mountain.

I can see if you just want to keep your place but otherwise I wouldn't even say you played the game, at some point it's more like content tourism.
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Good point. But with Castlevania, there were certain bosses near the end of the game where I was getting smashed and couldn't work out how to beat them and having to go back and beat a bunch of levels constantly just to reach that boss again to try and learn its patterns with whatever lives I had left was something I didn't have time for. So I just made a save state and used that to try things against the boss till I worked it out.
 
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foam rolla said:
Good point. But with Castlevania, there were certain bosses near the end of the game where I was getting smashed and couldn't work out how to beat them and having to go back and beat a bunch of levels constantly just to reach that boss again to try and learn its patterns with whatever lives I had left was something I didn't have time for. So I just made a save state and used that to try things against the boss till I worked it out.
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My friend, do i have the solution for you:
2362406_e061e.png

Literally the only sub-weapon you need, as it freezes enemies on sight, especially if you have a multiplier.
 
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foam rolla said:
Good point. But with Castlevania, there were certain bosses near the end of the game where I was getting smashed and couldn't work out how to beat them and having to go back and beat a bunch of levels constantly just to reach that boss again to try and learn its patterns with whatever lives I had left was something I didn't have time for.
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I had trouble too but overcoming that and putting it altogether makes the entire game.

The game is like 40 mins long if you don't die. If you have time to play an open world game for 30 hours you certainly have time to better your skills in a game like that.
 
Lone Wandering Courier said:
This is why emulation and save states are really just awesome things that massively improve QoL immensely. People will claim that "you didn't really beat the game", but they should be ignored.
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I'm glad a lot of these modern collections of these games have these features. In almost any retro collection there's at least an ability to quick save a state, so now officially a lot of that stuff is supported.
 
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Baraka Obama said:
Learning how to play a hard game is a big part of the fun. Castlevania 1 with savestate spamming just ruins the game. If you play it as intended you get very good at it and the whole experience ends up being incredible, it's more like climbing a mountain.

I can see if you just want to keep your place but otherwise I wouldn't even say you played the game, at some point it's more like content tourism.
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I think it's fair to use them as checkpoints, and maybe to overcome blatant bullshit design but that's a slippery slope.
 
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Why didn't you fuckers tell me GOG added the ORIGINAL Resident Evil Trilogy?

Shit, I didn't think the first one ran on any OS after XP. Paid entirely too much for a stripped disc copy of PC Nemesis last October for Spookyween.

Eh, the fact that it's not the remake, they didn't fuck with it, and GOG appears to have kept Capcom from fucking it up is neat.

Plus the entire trilogy is $30. I paid... significantly more for my stripped disc copy. They shipped it in a 360 rocksmith case that was beat to fuck.

I was surprised how good Nemesis looked on 10, and it ran natively, no fuckery required.
 
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Lone Wandering Courier said:
This is why emulation and save states are really just awesome things that massively improve QoL immensely. People will claim that "you didn't really beat the game", but they should be ignored.
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it's also great because you can use whichever controller you prefer, even keyboard/mouse combo.
Some games even become better because of it, namely, Metroid Prime via PrimeHack.
I wish there was something similar to PrimeHack with Time Splitters, or even better: a Time Splitters recomp/port/fan remake project on PC (that doesn't require installing homefront 2).

Speaking of fan projects, someone used gaydot to make a contra remake, it's quite nice although it's very early in development.
there's basically no other silent playthrough, everyone has to fucking LP this game and talk like a twink, if they'd at least cut out dead air time or avoid using the webcam, since most of them look at the webcam looking braindead.
 
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