GRcade Retro Gaming Chat 2.0

PostRe: GRcade Retro Gaming Chat 2.0 by **kerr9000** » Fri Jul 29, 2022 9:29 pm

Today I got a complete copy of Rocky for GameCube in good condition for £3. I had this game when it came out and might still have that copy somewhere but thought this was a good price for it, and my Autistic nature makes me enjoy buying games so why the heck not.

PostRe: GRcade Retro Gaming Chat 2.0 by **jawa_** » Sat Jul 30, 2022 12:49 pm

KK wrote:...Looking back, from around 2003-2005 I don't think there was one genuinely great PlayStation or Xbox magazine between the lot of 'em...

kerr9000 wrote:I think there was a time when magazines thought that all of there readers wanted them to be edge lords and this was why we ended up with magazines that were kind of cruddy and pandering to a certain mindset...

Oh yes! Gaming mags from that period often aped the "lads" mags such as Loaded; all of a sudden there were gratuitous pics of girls and plenty of embarrassing writing. PlayStation Power was a great unofficial PS mag that turned to that lads-mag style as Power... and quickly became pretty bad. There were exceptions; Xbox World was terrific for it's opening year before Future bought it from Computec Media and turned it into another lads mag.

Chocolate-Milk wrote:...The SNES is baffling to me, because apart from the Super Famicom face plate, the rest is all from one original unit. So how come it's only yellowed on the bottom half, and there's a big stripe on the controller port?

Plastic discolouration does seem to be pretty random. My PSone and controller(s) are slightly discoloured; my SNES was yellowing the last time I looked; and my Amiga computer and monitor have yellowed terribly. Even my Sony CRT TV which is silver has discoloured badly, too. I don't smoke and so it must be some combination of sunlight and fire-resistance chemical damage. In the future I would like to look into this chemical/sunlight fix!

kerr9000 wrote:Today I got a complete copy of Rocky for GameCube...

Nice pick-up, kerr. Your gaming collection continues to grow!

- - - - - - - - - -

Seems that there has been some cool developments for the RetroTink firmware:

twitter.com/dark1x/status/1553338412400254976

PostRe: GRcade Retro Gaming Chat 2.0 by KK » Sat Jul 30, 2022 4:57 pm

Maybe they changed it, but the few copies of Xbox World I read in mid 2004 were incredibly dry and tedious - the template of the magazine mostly mirroring that of stablemate PSW. I think ‘world wide Webber’ was about the only mildly amusing spark I can remember in the entire thing. Tim Weaver had only just taken over at this point (commencing from the Driv3r issue). They then completely overhauled everything for the launch of the Xbox 360 and it quickly ended up becoming the best 360 mag on the market. The team dynamic echoed that of N64 and PSM2’s best years, the covers were outstanding and often strikingly done, the cover disc was constantly evolving, the design was excellent, interesting features made a return again…I look back very fondly on Xbox World 360, especially from 2008-2011.

Xbox Gamer was the one that was a total shambles to me. It ran for just over 3 years and they kept changing its design and scoring system. Internally at Future back in 2002 I believe alongside Official PlayStation 2 magazine it was considered a big sales dissapointment. It started off as X-Gamer, which I guess was supposed to be kinda like the Xbox equivalent of PSM2, but it wasn't hitting whatever sales targets they had for it (though surely sales were always going to be hampered in that opening year by sales of the console itself), so they bolted a cover disc onto it in 2003 and went for a white, clean design - but alongside that was this need to put a model on the cover and throughout the magazine. From 2003 if I recall correctly the magazine didn’t feature one solitary piece of game art on its cover, opting most of the time for women seductively - well, as seductive as you can be - gripping an Xbox controller. The disc cover also looked more like a porno DVD. When that didn’t appear to work for sales, they started giving away free Prima strategy guides (I remember Halo and Brute Force) and other freebies, like an Xbox keyring. The desperation was palpable, but you can't deny the gifts were quality, even if you didn't give a gooseberry fool about the magazine. They then redesigned it for a third time in 2004, and they also lost the cover disc (it was instead assigned to Xbox World). The magazine was killed off in maybe February or March 2005. I don’t even think it got the opportunity to say goodbye, they just scrapped it. Once you have a cover disc and take it away, you're basically doomed. By that point a cover mount of some sort was practically mandatory.

PostRe: GRcade Retro Gaming Chat 2.0 by **jawa_** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 1:09 pm

I've been watching Digital Foundry's series about games that run in 1080p on PlayStation 3... and it's great! I've watched three of the four episodes so far and it has been so good to view and learn about the technical aspects. Thoroughly recommended.

Edit: John refers to the PS3 as the "Triple"... ... ... I like it!

kerr9000 wrote:Today I got a complete copy of Rocky for GameCube in good condition for £3. I had this game when it came out and might still have that copy somewhere but thought this was a good price for it, and my Autistic nature makes me enjoy buying games so why the heck not.

I had this on the Xbox (possibly still do) and it was excellent. You even start off by fighting Spider Rico!

There were a handful of really rather decent boxing games around this time. I think Victorious Boxers: Ippo's Road to Glory on PS2 was my favourite, but this ran it close.

GamesTM was my main magazine of choice in the early 00’s, great mix of current and Retro articles, was gutted when it was stopped.

PostRe: GRcade Retro Gaming Chat 2.0 by **jawa_** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 6:08 pm

ITSMILNER wrote:GamesTM was my main magazine of choice in the early 00’s, great mix of current and Retro articles, was gutted when it was stopped.

Man, yeah, that was one of my faves, too! I still have the issues from 1 through around 120 in my loft!

My all-time top gaming mags are:

Mid to late 80s: Zzap! 64, Commodore User, Computer & Video Games
Early to mid 90s: Mean Machines, Amiga Format, Amiga Power
Late 90s to early 2000s: Official PlayStation Magazine, Official Nintendo Magazine, PlayStation Power (up to issue 49)
Mid 2000s: gamesTM, Xbox World (first year), Nintendo Official Magazine
2013 to date : Official PlayStation Magazine, Play

Big shout to Retro Gamer, too - and to FREEZE64, a current fanzine.

I used to read GamesMaster and Computer and Video Games when I was younger as well, still used to grab CVG up until the end. In terms of console specific magazines, I loved NGamer, great humour and covered not just Nintendo games but all the merch and other bits and bobs.

I do miss the days of getting my news from the latest gaming mags, I used to buy at least 4-5 magazines when it was the months covering E3 :lol:

PostRe: GRcade Retro Gaming Chat 2.0 by **kerr9000** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:42 pm

My latest Retro Purchase

Tested it all everything is ok apart from one wii-mote it's home and minus button are not working. First thing I did was hack it, then ordered a 32gb sd for it.

Was in York yesterday on my holidays and anyone who lives there is a lucky, lucky bastard because that Sore Thumbs shop is very cool.

Kerr, how many Wiis do you need man?!

Drumstick wrote:Kerr, how many Wiis do you need man?!

I don't really need the Wii's but the add on stuff is good.

My nephew is highly autistic and is very upset his Xbox has broken and my brother cant afford to replace it, So I am thinking I might hack one of these and set it up with lots of things he would like and give it him with one controller, its not an Xbox but would keep him busy till my bro saves up.

I have given a surprising amount of systems away over the years .... I just tend to buy bundles to get the other bits.

Plus with a Wii its fun to see if there's anything in the disc slot what's on the machine.... in this case there was a scratched up but working Sonic/Mario Olympic games.

PostRe: GRcade Retro Gaming Chat 2.0 by **jawa_** » Tue Aug 02, 2022 7:54 am

Rex Kramer wrote:Was in York yesterday on my holidays and anyone who lives there is a lucky, lucky bastard because that Sore Thumbs shop is very cool.

I did some digging and it does look to be bloomin'' great, Rex. The shop even had Nintendo Life writing a huge article about it a few years back!

Did you pick anything up there, dude?

No but I was sorely tempted by a boxed Atari STFM discovery pack (probably fueled by reading the Dungeon Master article in the RPG collection Retro Gamer mag this week). I held out though. Mostly because I've ordered an Ayn Odin which I assume I'll be able to do all sorts of emulation on.

Looks like there is going to be a piece on 40 years since the C64 on Newsnight at some point in the next 20 minutes. Could hardly believe my ears when the SID chip music for Ghostbusters started playing at the beginning of the show.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:Looks like there is going to be a piece on 40 years since the C64 on Newsnight at some point in the next 20 minutes. Could hardly believe my ears when the SID chip music for Ghostbusters started playing at the beginning of the show.

Five Live had a segment about this today. They asked people what their favourite games were then the presenters didn't believe that Jet Set Willy was a real thing - "don't Google it we'll get sacked lol". Outstanding broadcasting :roll:

Disappointing but I suppose it’s still just us weirdos who think that a name such as that is as much pop culture as Citizen Kane.

PostRe: GRcade Retro Gaming Chat 2.0 by **jawa_** » Thu Aug 25, 2022 8:02 am

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:...Could hardly believe my ears when the SID chip music for Ghostbusters started playing at the beginning of the show.

Incred! Did you subconsciously press the space bar, kaz? :lol:

.

Dowbocop wrote:Five Live had a segment about this today. They asked people what their favourite games were then the presenters didn't believe that Jet Set Willy was a real thing - "don't Google it we'll get sacked lol". Outstanding broadcasting

.

The C64 :wub:

. Although I occasionally proclaim that the PS4 is my "fave console ever" I always make sure that I'm out of earshot of my C64 when I do so. What a system; amazing memories.

jawa_ wrote:
kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:...Could hardly believe my ears when the SID chip music for Ghostbusters started playing at the beginning of the show.

Incred! Did you subconsciously press the space bar, kaz? .

Dowbocop wrote:Five Live had a segment about this today. They asked people what their favourite games were then the presenters didn't believe that Jet Set Willy was a real thing - "don't Google it we'll get sacked lol". Outstanding broadcasting

.

The C64 . Although I occasionally proclaim that the PS4 is my "fave console ever" I always make sure that I'm out of earshot of my C64 when I do so. What a system; amazing memories.

It was my first reaction. I could hardly believe it to be honest. I was talking with my wife at the time and I think she could see my eyes glaze over the moment the music started.

Probably in the top 10 moments of my life.

PostRe: GRcade Retro Gaming Chat 2.0 by **jawa_** » Thu Aug 25, 2022 8:26 am

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:...Probably in the top 10 moments of my life.

.

I recently posted the theme tune in a response to someone else's "Ghostbusters" Twitter post. Alas, I think they were a bit too young to realise what it was and I got the impression that they just thought "what is this crappy version of the music?"... rather than realising that it is a seminal piece of audio coding excellence worthy of great reverence

.

GRcade Retro Gaming Chat 2.0

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