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

[Calandrino]

Ah, I assume there's a bind for controllers as well then that isn't enabled by default.

As I recall, when I set up LaunchBox, it auto-magically set up retroarch with rewind and ff assigned to shoulder buttons and I had to unmap them because I did not want that

 

[Jaimas]

So I learned something neat and I wanted to share it. And it actually involves a game I beat on my channel, Dracula X.

My relationship with this game has always been a tad.... Adversarial, in no small part because of some really frustratingly shit level design, specifically in Level 3 and in the last two boss fights.

The game isn't exactly what I would call bad - there's at least four CV games that I have played and would consider worse (Adventure, Legends, Haunted Castle, and Vampire Killer) - and its music is great, but it being a kind of mid port of a vastly better game never sat well with me.

As it turns out, the game has a much more interesting - and tragic - story behind it. Dracula X was not intended, at least initially, to be a semi-port of Rondo of Blood. Instead, it was originally developed, according to some articles I read from the time, as a Sequel to Rondo, and one of the biggest games yet for the SNES. At least, that was the concept. You can can actually find a few screenshots from dev interviews back then, showing environments that are clearly not Dracula X's current ones and also obviously not repurposed Rondo assets. By all accounts, they got about 70% or so of the way through their dev build and the project was going comparatively well. It was intended to be a free-roaming CV game similar to 2, but with you exploring the whole castle.

Unfortunately, at this point, the 1995 Kobe Earthquake hit. Konami's main dev office working on the project (among several other Konami titles in development) was turned into a fucking crater. Konami lost everything they were working on due to this. With a hard deadline coming up fast, and a few extracted assets left over from the attempt to port some of the graphics and audio to the SNES, they cobbled together everything they had into what was essentially a watered down port. It was all they could do.

Those more familiar with Koji Igarashi, however, would know that the man does not accept defeat lightly, and when he's been thwarted on a title in the past, he has a tendency to come back strong and try to finish it proper later - something he did with Castlevania 64 (the result was Legacy of Darkness, which I consider an unsung gem) and Harmony of Dissonance (which I discussed earlier; the result was Aria of Sorrow). So when this happened, predictably, he went back to the drawing board to complete the game the way he always intended.

Two years later, he'd get his chance. Ultimately, this game was rushed a bit too, but it hardly mattered, as the result was one of the most beloved Castlevania games of all time:

 

[Carpenter Trout]

Dracula X.

Worth nothing mentioning that there is a PSP Remake for that game which is pretty neat. You can also unlock a version of Symphony of the Night with a slightly re-done dubbing.

Very informative post, I always wondered why they didn't tried to make something like Castlevania 2 on the Super Nintendo.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Unfortunately, at this point, the 1995 Kobe Earthquake hit. Konami's main dev office working on the project (among several other Konami titles in development) was turned into a fucking crater. Konami lost everything they were working on due to this.

Damn, that's horrible. It's really interesting that there's essentially a lost Castlevania game that can't ever be recovered.

 

[Gingervitis]

You can also unlock a version of Symphony of the Night with a slightly re-done dubbing.

I’m gonna be honest, the voice acting was better when it sucked. The hokey acting made it more fun

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

We did

iirc there was a proof-of-concept of Resident Evil 1 on the GBA but it was like, some 3rd party showing that you _could_ do the ps1 game basically as-is (rather than the amazing GBC prototype that iirc actually ran off the original code, just tweaked for the GBC and sprites instead of polygons)

I’m gonna be honest, the voice acting was better when it sucked. The hokey acting made it more fun

yeah if I want good voice acting I'm sure the JP is quite nice, when I'm replaying SotN I want the classic memes of WHAT IS A MAN!?!?! and so forth

I like this one:
View attachment 6079331
https://www.mariowiki.com/All_Night_Nippon:_Super_Mario_Bros.

that was cool how they had some of the SMB Arcade levels in that, and iirc it used the slightly-more-refined SMB2jp engine instead of SMB1
I forget, I think there was a romhack mushing the arcade game into an NES rom, and like, select was insert coin
I should dig that up

 

[Pissmaster]

Can anyone recommend some ROM hacks that add new content on par with the original game? I'm not into any that are memey or trannied up. For example I've found this video for a Super Mario World ROM hack called A Plumber for All Seasons:

Earthbound: Hallow's End is a total conversion hack of Earthbound that's a full-length halloween-themed RPG. I think it took me around 30 hours. Extremely impressive. The same creator also made a much shorter one, Holiday Hex, which is Christmas themed, and only about an hour long.

There's also Earthbound: Halloween Hack, made by Toby Fox of Undertale fame. The final boss says "tl;dr eat shit, faggot".

Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes is one I haven't gotten around to playing through, but it's high effort and looks neat. It was 99% done when Squeenix sent them a DMCA to kill the project, but oopsie-daisy, the 99% complete rom leaked.

Final Fantasy VI T-Edition is some well-known Japanese romhack of Final Fantasy VI that makes it "hard" (excessively grindy), but adds sidequests and new dungeons and stuff throughout the game. I gave it a shot, didn't enjoy it, but it looks neat enough that I figure I'll just try it again with cheats.

There are also assorted Super Mario Kart hacks with new levels. They can be pretty strange.

 

[Jaimas]

Worth nothing mentioning that there is a PSP Remake for that game which is pretty neat. You can also unlock a version of Symphony of the Night with a slightly re-done dubbing.

It's actually a bit more than that.

It has all the added content from the Japanese version that was lost in transit (the Faerie familiar that sings (now available in English!) and the Nose Devil Familiar) as well as the original Japanese castle layout (this does mean you will need to farm for a Holy Sword if you want one). It also includes Maria mode and some assorted bugfixes.

The devs wanted it to be the definitive port of Symphony, and if they had the chance, they would have included all the areas and goodies from the Saturn version (Older Richter Sprite, added Alucard animations, the three new areas in regular and reverse castle, all the new enemies and their associated drops), but they couldn't get the assets out of the Saturn version in time and extracting the resources from it would have taken ages, so they were forced to go with what they had.

Ironically, that version is now the basis of all current ports of Symphony you can get, so they sort of got their wish.

 

[BananaSplit²]

Those more familiar with Koji Igarashi, however, would know that the man does not accept defeat lightly, and when he's been thwarted on a title in the past, he has a tendency to come back strong and try to finish it proper later - something he did with Castlevania 64 (the result was Legacy of Darkness, which I consider an unsung gem) and Harmony of Dissonance (which I discussed earlier; the result was Aria of Sorrow). So when this happened, predictably, he went back to the drawing board to complete the game the way he always intended.

 

[ForgedBlades]

I finally got all my ROMs and emulators set up and running on my new gaymen laptop (LaunchBox is a great piece of software by the way, aside from a few annoying quirks I can't say enough nice things about it). I knew spending a month and a half last summer downloading every ROM set I could get my hands on would pay off. It was a pain in the ass transferring everything from my desktop but everything is running smooth as glass now.

 

[StMaryPiper]

Anyone have any retro conversations out in the wild? Good or bad as long as it’s interesting. I ask as I Was recently at a local retro store and had a back and forth with someone who was a really big retro collector. Older guy, Said he paid off most of his college by selling a copy of Cheetahmen II and talked about the early days where you could get games at a Dollar Tree

 

[The Cunting Death]

Clock Tower Deluxe

I just played this on actual hardware

Basically it adds QoL stuff based on the PlayStation 1 and Windows 95 ports along with SNES Mouse support. Adds a few scares that were left on the cutting room floor too. It's neat.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Unfortunately, at this point, the 1995 Kobe Earthquake hit. Konami's main dev office working on the project (among several other Konami titles in development) was turned into a fucking crater. Konami lost everything they were working on due to this. With a hard deadline coming up fast, and a few extracted assets left over from the attempt to port some of the graphics and audio to the SNES, they cobbled together everything they had into what was essentially a watered down port. It was all they could do.

Japanese games also have a lot of lost source codes and assets, and I figured that it was just poor management. I guess in Konami's case that was when the losses happened.

If you're a big company, always make backups off site...I think that Kyoto Animation did that.

 

[Judge Dredd]

If you're a big company, always make backups off site...I think that Kyoto Animation did that.

There was some pixar film that was saved because an employee had files on his home computer. I don't remember if he was supposed to have them or not, but it saved the movie.

 

[Carpenter Trout]

There was some pixar film that was saved because an employee had files on his home computer. I don't remember if he was supposed to have them or not, but it saved the movie.

It was Toy Story IIRC.
A woman that worked at pixar had a maternity leave and while she was gone there was an accident in the office that led to the accidental purging of Toy Story including backups.
She had a slightly outdated backup copy on her own PC for work reasons and saved the movie. At least that's how the story goes. They took a picture of her and hung in the office or some shit. This is confirmed in a couple of interviews they took after Toy Story got released.

Spoiler

This was also during the Silicon Graphics days, those thing took ages to render, while now you can do the whole movie by yourself using Blender 3D alone and maybe and render it within the day if you use EEVEE. Crazy.

 

[Lone MacReady II]

Japanese games also have a lot of lost source codes and assets,

Like Silent Hill 2 when Konami tried to get western barbarians to remix it . That's how we got the abysmal "HD" collection.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

There was some pixar film that was saved because an employee had files on his home computer. I don't remember if he was supposed to have them or not, but it saved the movie.

Toy Story 2, basically somehow they had a Unix system where someone had somehow activated rm/* and deleted most of the movie. The backups failed and it was only some work-at-home employee who kept most of the film. Featurette from the DVD:

 

[Enig]

Damn, that's horrible. It's really interesting that there's essentially a lost Castlevania game that can't ever be recovered.

Given there's pics of it from magazines we can only hope either a cart slips on ebay by mistake or another hyperautist from Ingerland hacks Konami and it's discovered in ancient emails from a tape backup.

 

[Pissmaster]

Given there's pics of it from magazines we can only hope either a cart slips on ebay by mistake or another hyperautist from Ingerland hacks Konami and it's discovered in ancient emails from a tape backup.

A lot of game prototypes were found, like, in the back of a closet, or estate sales, or something like that. I know that's how SimCity NES and the Play Station (SNES-CD) were found.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I tried PS3 emulation today to try GT5. After more than an hour or fiddling with it, I gave up. Long story short, the game crashes on menus about half the time. Each time it's "compiling shaders" and spikes my CPU usage. I assumed it just needed time to compile, but after several minutes nothing happens. There's a high chance it does this each menu, and given how menu driven GT5 is, I couldn't get to a single race. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but my PC is quite toasty so I'm going to leave it for a later date.

I'm also downloading Dragon's Crown. I'm not really interested in the game, but it's small by PS3 standards, and has good compatibility, so it might make a better test.