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

[Two Dollars]

Xbox 360 modding is going places:

You can’t run backups, and it both takes some time to run and goes away when you turn off the system, but this is still the first major exploit that works on any 360 running the latest firmware and doesn’t require another game (only a demo that can be copied from your PC).

I’m looking forward to when XNA framework games (“Xbox Live Indie Games”) can be played this way since they don’t work at all in Xenia.

 

[Baraka Obama]

Any love for vintage PCs?

I have about 10 hardware setups capable of running Windows 98 that I put together up until around the end of the lockdown days. For a variety of reasons I had to dismantle my preferred desk setup (4 systems on a 4 port KVM) and have been grabbing a small thin client to use when I wanted to play DOS or Win9x games.

But things have changed and I had an urge to have a more permanent solution, over the weekend I decided to treat the systems as a pool of parts and to just build one really great Win98 PC. I ended up with:

CPU: 1GHz Pentium 3 slot-1 card
GPU: 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Sound: Yamaha Audician 32 Plus, connected to a Roland MT-32 and Yamaha MU-90
Mobo: Asus P3B-F, rev 1.0.4
RAM: 128MB SDRAM
Storage: 128GB SSD
Case: Lian Li PC-G50 (silver aluminum)

I didn't take any photos but you can imagine this with parts in it:


Only major problem I had was that I originally wanted to use a Quadro FX1100 (workstation variant of the Nvidia FX5700) but it seems my card has managed to cook itself to death in it's last system. The Voodoo is a more interesting card but it leaves something to be desired for really late Win98 compatible games.

Anyone else have a vintage PC build?

 

[Road Work Ahead]

Anyone else have a vintage PC build?

I've got one, it's just an old PC my Dad found in a closet so I saved it from a trip to the landfill.

CPU: Intel Pentium w/MMX 233 MHz
GPU: Matrox Mystique
Sound: Creative AWE64
Motherboard: ASUS TX97-XE
RAM: 160 MB
Storage: 7 GB HDD (I think)

It also has another HDD with an install of Red Hat Linux, but my dad forgot the user password for it.

 

[Captain Syrup]

I’m pretty sure I’ve still got an ancient Gateway computer stashed away in storage somewhere. You remember those, right? The ones that came with "cow spots" branding?

Anyway, it’s not like I left anything important on there—SimCity 2000 (Urban Renewal Kit included) Bard’s Tale II (which I probably rage-quit), and Civ II, where I inevitably got obliterated by barbaric hordes.

 

[George Lucas]

After blowing through the Ridge Racers I played through Gran Turismo 1 again. I can't tune the NSX Type S Zero for shit. It slips around like a bar of wet soap. Still a badass looking car though, especially in 240p. That's how the game is meant to be played. Playing it with an emulator set to hi-res makes everything look like a cartoon.

There are a lot of variations between the different regional releases of Gran Turismo. They changed all the music for the American and PAL versions, including the menu music. They juiced the cars in arcade mode so that they go faster and handle better. And I'm not sure of this, but it seems like they made the handling worse overall, maybe a bug. The Japanese version of the game is harder but the game as a whole is easy as long as you don't drive like a moron. The AI follows a neat racing line and slows down massively on turns, so the AI ends up being much slower than a competent driver in the same vehicle would be. I think the Japanese version is the best version. It's nice having the arcade cars drive as they would in the simulation mode.

Are there any real old school strategy or tactics games? I'm thinking 8 bit systems like the NES or the Spectrum. I know of Famicom Wars, Fire Emblem, and Laser Squad, but that's basically it.

Failing that, any kind of game with tactical choices. I know JRPGs kind of fit the bill, but not really?

I'm looking for them as reference material.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms II is what you want.

On the Western side, there was a company that exclusively made these types of games in various quality. It was called Strategic Simulations, Inc. You will need to hunt down the manuals if you have any hope of playing them. They are not intuitive to modern gamers. These games are dry simulations with a basic graphics and flavor text. They are more substance than style.

 

[LifeAlert]

In yet another example out of the countless there are of journofaggots getting the facts wrong, no, the SNES is not "somehow getting faster":

https://archive.ph/5EVZZ

Fucking journofaggot cocksuckers and autistic eunuch speedtards spreading false information and fear porn because they're fucking retarded. Your SNES isn't dying and you can safely disregard this entire nothingburger fake news while simultaneously chanting TJD, TTD in the streets

 

[George Lucas]

In yet another example out of the countless there are of journofaggots getting the facts wrong, no, the SNES is not "somehow getting faster":

View attachment 7093278

https://archive.ph/5EVZZ

Fucking journofaggot cocksuckers and autistic eunuch speedtards spreading false information and fear porn because they're fucking retarded. Your SNES isn't dying and you can safely disregard this entire nothingburger fake news while simultaneously chanting TJD, TTD in the streets

What? Do these retards think you can run the parts faster and they will still work somehow? Even if all the electronics can cope with a faster clock, the TV won't sync. What's the debate here? Is it a case of 'it doesn't sound like how I remember it.'

Btw, the HDMI mod just seems like a lazy hack. HDMI can easily handle the 60.10 Hz rate of the NES. But they were probably using a chip that only supported specific modes.

 

[Baraka Obama]

In yet another example out of the countless there are of journofaggots getting the facts wrong, no, the SNES is not "somehow getting faster":

View attachment 7093278

https://archive.ph/5EVZZ

Fucking journofaggot cocksuckers and autistic eunuch speedtards spreading false information and fear porn because they're fucking retarded. Your SNES isn't dying and you can safely disregard this entire nothingburger fake news while simultaneously chanting TJD, TTD in the streets

The article that I saw about that cited the most retarded looking bluesky users imaginable and I was immediately skeptical.

BTW I did the SPDIF mod a long time ago, it does correct the clock but yeah it has quirks not the least of which is you lose expansion audio used for Super Game Boy.

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

Any love for vintage PCs?

CPU: 1GHz Pentium 3 slot-1 card
GPU: 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Sound: Yamaha Audician 32 Plus, connected to a Roland MT-32 and Yamaha MU-90
Mobo: Asus P3B-F, rev 1.0.4
RAM: 128MB SDRAM
Storage: 128GB SSD
Case: Lian Li PC-G50 (silver aluminum)

I love vintage builds. In my garage, i still have my grand dad’s pc from 2006 that he bought a few years prior. It’s a old Dell optiplex. But i’ve been thinking of turning it into an old retro gaming pc. Play shit like Quake, Starcraft, Diablo 2, and C&C.

It still has XP and feels like a time capsule.

 

[JustSomeDong]

I miss my old Amiga. I should find my Amiga forever discs.

I guess I'll need to find one of my old optical drives, too.

 

[ShadowAngel785]

Any love for vintage PCs?

I still have two of my old PCs and they still work.
AMD 486/DX4 100 MHz, 16 MB Ram, 1 GB HDD, 4 MB ATI Mach 64 (that was dropped in later to replace that generic 1 MB Trident) and a Soundblaster 16 in a 33 year old case that originally housed a 386/DX 40, so the LED to this day only displays 40 MHz, not that it could go higher than 99 anyway). That HDD is full of memories and my first attempts at programming in qbasic and later pascal.
Pentium III 600 which i frankenstein'd the hell out, replacing the crappy AMD Rage 128 with a Geforce 2 GTS, went from 64 MB Ram to 128 and ultimately to 256, replaced the crappy loud 20 gb Maxtor (does anybody remember how loud maxtor was?) with two 40 gig Seagates and dropped in a Soundblaster 1024 Player because that AC97 onboard shit was ear cancer and of course replaced the cpu cooler (it's a Slot 1 with teeny tiny 4 cm cooler, it's almost too cute looking) and added in some case fans. Still runs on the same ancient PSU though, which is amazing i think.

I still could kick myself that i sold my Cyrix 6x86 with the Voodoo 1 and Matrox Mystique (i was young and needed the money, lol) and the AMD 2400 XP i had, not because of the Hardware but because of that super cheesy case i bought for it (Enermax Silver Wizard II - and now i want lit up water colums with bubbles back on my pc case )

 

[Baraka Obama]

replaced the cpu cooler (it's a Slot 1 with teeny tiny 4 cm cooler, it's almost too cute looking)

Did you replace the fan or the whole cooler assembly?

My 1ghz P3 didn't even come with a fan, I think it was supposed to be cooled by an OEM case fan with baffling, so I stuck 120mm fan vaguely in front of it. Even with that semi dodgey setup I was surprised to see it running at 93c, so I took the heat sink off an found the thermal pad it originally came with must have experienced some sort of plastic degradation and became very hard and thin, of course fused on so hard it was impossible to remove. A bit of thermal past added on top and it's running at 30c.

 

[SmallKiwi]

Azahar emulator has been released, good luck getting this thing to run games if you don't own a 3ds (and if you do, it's annoying work).

https://github.com/azahar-emu/azahar/releases/tag/2120-rc1

https://azahar-emu.org/blog/game-loading-changes

 

[HexFag]

Azahar emulator has been released, good luck getting this thing to run games if you don't own a 3ds (and if you do, it's annoying work).

https://github.com/azahar-emu/azahar/releases/tag/2120-rc1

https://azahar-emu.org/blog/game-loading-changes

Just an FYI, all you need to do is change the extension for your .3ds games to .cci to get them to work just fine

 

[SmallKiwi]

Just an FYI, all you need to do is change the extension for your .3ds games to .cci to get them to work just fine

Depends. I had redownload some of them. They didn't work even with the filename change, giving me a "app encrypted" error. If you downloaded from some shady rom site years ago, it's possible it won't work. I won't bother with dumping them with my 3ds, it's much slower and inconvenient. Myrient is a good place if you're looking to have them work on Azahar.

 

[HexFag]

Depends. I had redownload some of them. They didn't work even with the filename change, giving me a "app encrypted" error. If you downloaded from some shady rom site years ago, it's possible it won't work. I won't bother with dumping them with my 3ds, it's much slower and inconvenient. Myrient is a good place if you're looking to have them work on Azahar.

Probably because I run all of my 3ds roms through this decryptor beforehand. Its very useful because depending on where you get your files from, it could just not work. Link here.

 

[73_Autistic_Fuck_54]

Does anyone here have experience using hyperkin clone systems? I've recently bought a mega retron hd, it's pretty nice, even has good hdmi output, it's made me want to try out their snes clone system.

 

[Atlas Sneezed]

I shelled out $810 for a Retrotink 4k. Why? Because after owning a 5X Pro for more than 2 years I never could get the scale&crop shit correctly, for any resolution. The PS2 is an eggregious example of this. I'd set it up with a test pattern, boot up GT3 or Ace Combat and it looks fine. Boot up FFX and I have a huge black fucking bar at the bottom. This isn't the Tink 5X's fault, but for the love of God how did this shit work on real Trinitrons back in the day? Or did I forget that shit was imperfect because I was 14?

Anyway the 4k has auto scale&crop which means that instead of fighting with the shit for an hour I'll just be able to play the damn game. At least that's the promise. My time is worth more than the stupid $800, but it is an eye watering sum to pay for an FPGA

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

So is there a current list of the N64 recomps? I remember Mario 64 being really fun but no idea which version I currently own and if there's been an update to it. I know there was SOME Zelda game nearly done as well as a Banjo Kazoiie one but no idea how far along they all are.

 

[HexFag]

I shelled out $810 for a Retrotink 4k. Why? Because after owning a 5X Pro for more than 2 years I never could get the scale&crop shit correctly, for any resolution. The PS2 is an eggregious example of this. I'd set it up with a test pattern, boot up GT3 or Ace Combat and it looks fine. Boot up FFX and I have a huge black fucking bar at the bottom. This isn't the Tink 5X's fault, but for the love of God how did this shit work on real Trinitrons back in the day? Or did I forget that shit was imperfect because I was 14?

Anyway the 4k has auto scale&crop which means that instead of fighting with the shit for an hour I'll just be able to play the damn game. At least that's the promise. My time is worth more than the stupid $800, but it is an eye watering sum to pay for an FPGA

IIRC it has something to do with PS2 Underscan. I have a GBS-C and it does the same thing with there being black bars on every side of the screen. Some games also have some form of underscan for performance reasons.

I don't think a 4k is worth the price, but I might get the CE if I ever decide to get an FPGA. Are the CRT filters good/accurate for a PS2?