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

[Judge Dredd]

What's the best way to play the C&C games? Specifically I want to reply Red Alert 2, and Zero Hour. Maybe try Red Alert 3 as I never got to play that (I do have the steam version of RA3).

I've had a small linux or xp retro gaming PC on to-do list for a long time. But real life keeps getting in the way. If those are the best option I can wait as I think I have the CD/DVD versions up to Zero Hour. But have nothing after that.

Question about the original Perfect Dark. So the objectives change depending on the mode you select. Iirc this includes story beats (?) and the hardest mode is the only way to get the entire story so to speak?

I can't remember was it like that in Goldeneye?

Kind of, but not really.

The higher difficulties do add more content, but it's mostly filling in small plot holes, like what happened to the president clone. Also for beating the game on higher difficulties you do get a secret level that shows a minor part of backstory (like how Casandra was kidnapped) but again, these aren't story so much as deleted scenes.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

It’s the texture filtering. Filtered textures look like ass on modern displays.

The Nintendo 64 had blurrier textures but the textures were mapped correctly, often in the PlayStation due to the math calculated, they weren't.

The thing about game consoles that is that they took into account what televisions were like. People are super-autistic about this like how "actually filters are good because the TV that was connected to the Genesis was kind of shit even by 1995 standards, therefore Sonic canonically looks like a blurry, warped mess and not crisp 1:1 pixels" but it still requires understanding about the reason things were done that way. The texture filtering is not going to be very noticeable in a CRT in the late 1990s (assume that most consoles were hooked up to a TV that was already relegated to the den and not top-of-the-line). It's the same with the Atari 2600. Pac-Man took advantage of the frame rate on televisions to make four ghosts at the same time, it's very noticeable on a modern display but that wasn't the case in 1982. (Homebrew versions have created far more accurate versions of Pac-Man on the 2600, but Ray Kassar-era Atari wasn't that forgiving with deadlines). Likewise, one of the things that the Atari 2600 featured was a switch for black and white televisions, as in 1977 there were plenty of black and white televisions around (even if the main television was color, the older, secondary one, wouldn't be) to switch the console's output into a high-contrast version that could be better seen. By the time the NES took off a decade later, the need to have a black and white television option wasn't seen as a pressing issue anymore.

 

[Baraka Obama]

I think PSX games look fine played at original resolution, but N64 games look like a blurry mess doing the same for some reason.

It’s the texture filtering. Filtered textures look like ass on modern displays.

Both look great out of a real console in original res to a period correct CRT. N64 looks so smooth in a way that PS1 just can't but when done right PS1 looks so crisp. Both are great.

 

[analrapist]

the best way to play the C&C games?

Your interest seems to be in newer sequels but OpenRA is increasingly a good way to play a handful of old Westwood RTSes. https://www.openra.net/

 

[Dead Lion]

The Nintendo 64 had blurrier textures but the textures were mapped correctly, often in the PlayStation due to the math calculated, they weren't.

The main problem with the n64 was that the cartridges could only hold so much, so the textures were limited to eye watering 64x64 with more available for grayscale. A texture so small would’ve looked awful even back then so to solve the problem they’ve themselves created Nintendo leveraged the power of the 64 to filter the textures enough for the CRT to finish the job.

The PS1 meanwhile had 128x128 textures and loads of space. They were good enough that no additional post processing was required.

Another reason why PS1 games aged better is that many used pre-rendered backgrounds while the N64 used almost entirely 3D models to save on space.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

idk why N64 emulation is even being debated when a handful of games can already be built'n'played natively on PC, including Linux. Won't be long until (almost) the entire library winds up being PC native.

 

[Pissmaster]

idk why N64 emulation is even being debated when a handful of games can already be built'n'played natively on PC, including Linux. Won't be long until (almost) the entire library winds up being PC native.

It's because of that Analogue thing.

I have a SummerCart 64 and a real Nintendo 64 with a buncha controllers I bought when they were still cheap. I am the coolest. I need to find out if they make controller paks that take microSD cards because 32kb is pathetic, even by 1996 standards.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Setting the difficulty higher added more objectives to complete, which could significantly alter how levels played out. As far as I remember it didn't affect the story too much.

When I first played, it confused me. I always pick the easiest mode but I was surprised it wasn't giving me every objective.

 

[GreenTips]

Your interest seems to be in newer sequels but OpenRA is increasingly a good way to play a handful of old Westwood RTSes. https://www.openra.net/

What's the best way to play the C&C games? Specifically I want to reply Red Alert 2, and Zero Hour. Maybe try Red Alert 3 as I never got to play that (I do have the steam version of RA3).

To add to this since it's something I've recently done, you can find all the .isos with the video files and music that OpenRA is missing on the Internet Archive. If I recall correctly some even have updated packages on MyAbandonware, I know Dune 2000 has the Gruntmods edition on there that fixed things to let it work on Windows 10 but if you have the .iso instead OpenRA will work better.

 

[Never Scored]

It's because of that Analogue thing.

I have a SummerCart 64 and a real Nintendo 64 with a buncha controllers I bought when they were still cheap. I am the coolest. I need to find out if they make controller paks that take microSD cards because 32kb is pathetic, even by 1996 standards.

I think the newest Summercart firmware has a controller pak utility which allows you to back up and restore your controller pak onto the sd card in the Summercart. It's pretty useful because the N64 controller paks literally just contain a tiny volatile memory chip and a battery that keeps it alive which eventually goes dead and needs to be replaced.

 

[Blue Screen of Death]

Got an email yesterday announcing a restock of the Analogue 3D for tomorrow, now with "Funtastic" colors to cash in on the original N64's colors of the same name. The price is jacked up to 300 USD for one of those units.




I can't tell if ModRetro managed to apply pressure onto them with the M64 or something and forced their hand, but doesn't it seem pretty early for them to already be releasing additional colors? To me it's like spitting in the face of the initial buyers, and honestly puts a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm kinda glad I didn't end up buying one of the first ones, and despite my reservations, my soul is screaming at me to try to get one of the purple ones.

 

[Gamepads]

What's the best way to play the C&C games? Specifically I want to reply Red Alert 2, and Zero Hour. Maybe try Red Alert 3 as I never got to play that (I do have the steam version of RA3).

For TS and RA2, you can speed up the rendering on post-XP with the C&C Graphics Patcher. Works fine otherwise for 10, though it's been a while since I played that, or Mental Omega since it works too.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

Got an email yesterday announcing a restock of the Analogue 3D for tomorrow, now with "Funtastic" colors to cash in on the original N64's colors of the same name. The price is jacked up to 300 USD for one of those units.

View attachment 8268679


I can't tell if ModRetro managed to apply pressure onto them with the M64 or something and forced their hand, but doesn't it seem pretty early for them to already be releasing additional colors? To me it's like spitting in the face of the initial buyers, and honestly puts a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm kinda glad I didn't end up buying one of the first ones, and despite my reservations, my soul is screaming at me to try to get one of the purple ones.

Those were supposed to come out a few months after the pre-order black units were out, but their supply chain incompetence led to them hitting now, and they were too dumb to delay them.

Just more FOMO and scalperbait bullshit from Analogue.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I can't tell if ModRetro managed to apply pressure onto them with the M64 or something and forced their hand, but doesn't it seem pretty early for them to already be releasing additional colors? To me it's like spitting in the face of the initial buyers, and honestly puts a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm kinda glad I didn't end up buying one of the first ones, and despite my reservations, my soul is screaming at me to try to get one of the purple ones.

The Funtastic colors were aping the iMac five-color scheme of the time. Apple Computer had apparently made all five colors equally and forced retailers to get all five. The N64 wasn't a best-seller, I wonder how many units they actually sold, especially of the less-popular colors.

 

[Blue Screen of Death]

The Funtastic colors were aping the iMac five-color scheme of the time. Apple Computer had apparently made all five colors equally and forced retailers to get all five. The N64 wasn't a best-seller, I wonder how many units they actually sold, especially of the less-popular colors.

I'm a bit of a sucker for colored translucent plastic in that same vein.
The Funtastic systems seem popular in retrospect. However, between the N64 not being a big seller and how late in the console's life those came out, you raise a good question.

 

[Never Scored]

I assume the most popular one was Jungle Green because it came with Donkey Kong 64.

Believe it or not, N64 didn't see all that much of a drop off from SNES in North America. It was Japan where sales collapsed. The Playstation also sold much better than anything up to that point, so even though I don't think it was fair to call the N64 a flop compared to SNES and the Genesis in the North American market, the numbers Sony pushed at the time made the N64 look pathetic. The PS1 sold more worldwide than the N64 and SNES combined.

To me it's like spitting in the face of the initial buyers, and honestly puts a bad taste in my mouth.

I bought a black one in the first restock and I don't really care. A lot of people online seem really mad about it. I think they're inadvertently giving Analogue publicity, because it made the Analogue 3D trend on Twitter. Don't know if that's going to translate into sales for people who have not already bought it and are therefore not angry or not. I am curious about how many they are actually selling. Like, how big was that first restock? 1,000 units? 10,000 units? Surely it's not into the 100,000s.

 

[YautjaWeeb]

Believe it or not, N64 didn't see all that much of a drop off from SNES in North America. It was Japan where sales collapsed. The Playstation also sold much better than anything up to that point, so even though I don't think it was fair to call the N64 a flop compared to SNES and the Genesis in the North American market, the numbers Sony pushed at the time made the N64 look pathetic.

It was demographic a bit too. The people who grew up with Famicom/NES were adults when the PSX came out and it was the machine for adults with games for adults and Nintendo doing the wholesome low spec "kids crap" thing again. The kids who grew up on N64 may take offense but the stigma was there. Free high quality Sony CD player in your SCPH-1001 to be your stereo too when good sounding CD players were not cheap. No DRM yet in that model too so if you had a CD burner the thing paid for itself.

 

[Never Scored]

It was demographic a bit too. The people who grew up with Famicom/NES were adults when the PSX came out and it was the machine for adults with games for adults and Nintendo doing the wholesome low spec "kids crap" thing again. The kids who grew up on N64 may take offense but the stigma was there. Free high quality Sony CD player in your SCPH-1001 to be your stereo too when good sounding CD players were not cheap. No DRM yet in that model too so if you had a CD burner the thing paid for itself.

As a big wrestling and Zelda fan, I was very into N64, but you had to get the PS1 as well because N64 was for fags according to other 13 and 14 year olds.

 

[Two Dollars]

It was demographic a bit too. The people who grew up with Famicom/NES were adults when the PSX came out and it was the machine for adults with games for adults and Nintendo doing the wholesome low spec "kids crap" thing again. The kids who grew up on N64 may take offense but the stigma was there.

Except aside from cartridge limitations, N64 was more powerful across the board.

Free high quality Sony CD player in your SCPH-1001 to be your stereo too when good sounding CD players were not cheap. No DRM yet in that model too so if you had a CD burner the thing paid for itself.

Playstation sales getting inflated by things that aren’t video games… a tale as old as time.

 

[Never Scored]

Except aside from cartridge limitations, N64 was more powerful across the board.

That wasn't the perception in the 90s though. N64 could push more polygons and was far more powerful, but relied heavily on gouraud shading and low res textures, and people genuinely thought the prerenderd backgrounds of 3D PS1 games like Resident Evil and Dino Crisis looked better on the small CRT Tvs at the time. No doubt a game like Mario 64 is far more technically impressive than either of those with its big open worlds that are rendered in real time, but your average person doesn't think like that.