What’s with the title of those two “Complete Guide” volumes? “Rebirth” and “Fantasy” volumes? Is that right?
Yes, there are split in two, as the game sort of is. The first part takes good old Naponaga to his stabilizing central rule. He then survives his “suicide” at the Honnoji (“Fantasy”). The battles are historical (lots of coughs, as usual with Japanese takes on History), but the content is totally romantic and ahistorical and just loads of silly fun.
The game then takes a what if turns, as to what would have happened if he had survived (“New Life”) and had been the anarchist douche he is often caricatured as, because that’s funnier than turning the game into Civilization Zipango Edition. My understanding is that the game is actually more nuanced than that, because Koei’s CEO is a Nobu fanboy (as all smart people should be!).
I forgot about this thread… thanks for bumping!
There’s a thread at RGB about the DSi and more specifically a lot of discussion of the DSi XL, which I never knew is the best looking of the DS models due to its dual IPS screens!
https://www.retrogameboards.com/t/nintendo-ds-ot-everyone-buys-a-dsi-xl/984
You are guaranteed to get the top quality screens in any XL as far as anyone can tell. Knowing that, and knowing I still like to pull out DS games now and then, I bought one that popped up locally last week…
It’s lovely. The screens are the best of all the DS systems I own. There are other comparisons around on the Internet, but I’ll probably do my own soon. I was playing Contra 4 on it yesterday and that looks fantastic.
The important difference between this and 3DS of any kind is the aspect ratio is correct with the OG DS so all the games look right and definitely not washed out. Well worth the cost for me.
Yeah, I hung on to my DS Lite for that very reason, and for Game Boy Advance games.
I still have my OG DS, and it works. But sadly I’ve gotten rid of most of the games.
It really had a fantastic library.
The Lite is a close second when it comes to DS gaming. It has brightly lit screens but the viewing angles are not as good as on the DSi XL is my understanding. I have a few of those and a few DSi’s as well as one of the original models.
Probably the best way to play Game Boy Advance games is on the GBA SP AGS-101 but really only if you’d need multiplayer. I think the Lite is just as good when it comes to screens but you cannot do system link stuff. I am definitely on the lookout for a Game Boy Micro, though. I’d really like one of those.
They’re so compact and adorable!
Pricey too! Everyone that has one raves. I definitely need to add one to my collection.
The drawback of the micro is that it had no original Gameboy port, if I recall?
I never owned any GBA, so I can’t speak for the quality of Gameboy gaming with one.
Speaking of DS, my second mission has been, for years, to spot the elusive translucent card holder preserving what were my 6 favorite DS games… And still no luck on that front.
Putting them together in that case seemed like a smart idea back then, grumble!
None of the shoulder buttons of any DS Lite that were in the house survived - I stick with “bricks” because of this (and because I am a cheapskate, those go for nothing nowadays). The bricks’ large directional pads also help with my oversized fingers, but I never tried an XL model of any sort, and I probably should!
The Mario 25th anniversary edition’s colour scheme of the DSi is both discreet and great looking. If everybody could have gotten a clue when doing their own special designs!
I highly recommend the DSi XL for you. The one I bought can go for as little as $30 by itself and I’m sure you’ll have a charger for it (any 3DS charger works). The dpad is the same as the Lite.
I have a New Nintendo 3DS XL as well and I’m sold now on the XL line for the premium experience with a DS/3DS. I do like the density of the pixels on the smaller models, but the screens on the XLs are just so much nicer in general. The biggest issue with the original DS is the screens which are just not that bright.
DS Lite shoulder buttons are notoriously fickle, just like the GBA SP before it. I destroyed the R button on one of those playing Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance. So far so good on the XLs.
You are correct that the Micro does not play OG Game Boy games (or GB Color). They took out the backward compatibility, likely to make it so small.
Oh, I didn’t know there were fickle GBA builds. I have always been tempted to get an SP because I love the clamshell design, but I never jumped because it wouldn’t be really to play GBA games (I own only very few of them, and I played them on the DS already), but out of curiosity for the backlit screen on the Gameboy emulation mainly.
Still haven’t found my DS best selection games yet, but digged up old fanzines about console games I was writing when I was a kid (because I remember being already tired of the bs 7-9 scale back in 1991, ha!).
The micro is funny, because when it was released, I remember the market being generally very dismissive: “Oh who wants a tiny GBA? Give us a new real handheld.” But now it’s a terribly expensive collectors item.
I’m not sure where to put this because it’s modern stuff but it’s a retro channel, so here seems best…
Sure, you know about most of these, but I do love SNES Drunk and his presentation. If you like this video at all, I highly recommend checking out the stuff he does. It’s easily my favorite YouTube channel by far. Have a great rest of your day!
I made a video!
I pre-ordered a device called the RetroTINK-2x earlier this year. It cost about $110 including an HDMI cable, which I do recommend because you probably do not own one like it. One end is smaller than the other. It’s typical of more modern HD video cameras is my understanding and it’s only $10 more than the device alone so it’s reasonable. Mike Chi is the man who designed, built, and manufactured it. It’s a true enthusiast device.
Anyway, the video less than ten minutes and I do some explaining in there but bottom line is this thing is AMAZING and it has opened up my entire back catalog to being playable on my HDTV! It accepts composite, S-Video and Component input from your machines and it does a “simple” line doubling to take the original 240p analog signal up to 480p in digital.
There is NO perceptible lag.
That’s the key, and what makes this device so valuable to me. If you have ever tried to play say a Sega Genesis on a modern TV, you may have noticed that things don’t move right on screen, music and sounds may not be correct and worse, you may not move on screen when you push a button. Frankly, it’s unplayable and it sucks.
There are more expensive devices out there that will bring your old consoles to life properly on the TV, but they have been pricey. The two most known are the Framemeister and the OSSC (Open Source Scan Converter). Both of them require a lot more technical expertise and financial wherewithal to get going. They also will handle RGB input which means console mods, better and more expensive cables, etc. Basically, that’s the Ferrari crowd and I’m somewhere in the Ford Mustang or Mazda MX-5 arena right now for the stereotypical car analogy.
Long story short, it works! It’s easy! I played Viewpoint, one of my all-time favorite videogames, on Neo Geo CD on my HDTV! The Neo CD is bigger than a PS4 Pro!
Obviously, you can play videogames emulated for free and let’s please not have that discussion now that wumpus is gone. I will use emulation when it’s the only affordable route for me, but having worked as a writer in the industry, I like to buy and own my videogames to support the people who helped me have a brief career.
Total cost of what’s in the video was $220 for the Neo Geo CD (single-speed top loader) with two controllers and Fatal Fury 3: Road to the Final Victory, $45 for Viewpoint on CD, and $110 for the RetroTINK-2x. Assuming you own a bunch of old consoles you plan on a CRT today (and I do…), this may get your great retro games back out of the Retro Cave and into the living room again!
I have never owned an HDTV (don’t laugh), and I had absolutely no idea there were such issues!
To get back to nostalgia: as I wrote earlier, I don’t feel nostalgic toward games of my youth for the most part, but I do feel a lot of nostalgia toward the hardware itself: the knobs, the buttons, sometimes the odors, and specifically the picture and sound quality, or lack thereof depending on the plugging. The PSG or FM sounds, in particular, have a “warmth” on the real hardware that no emulation can provide, yet — the bias of vinyl record lovers, transposed to another media, I guess.
Edit: I may not share your love for Viewpoint (you already burned me for this, you can’t do it twice!), but that hiscore sound jingle sure gave a warm feeling going here!
I tracked down the memory lane, and I think that is because Viewpoint was one of the few single player Neogeo games, so when someone was playing it on the communal console, we were stuck watching it.
Yeah, HDTVs are made for digital input. It’s a huge issue for all the old analog consoles. Some games were even created specifically knowing that a CRT would display it so certain effects were done with tricks that made them look right on a CRT and when you move to the digital only, you lose some of that character or worse, it looks different. As we get further down the road, 240p becomes even more of an afterthought.
I find that it’s not so much nostalgia that drives me to play these old games. It’s just that many of them are timeless. The simplicity of a game like Viewpoint, while offering that totally unique perspective on the shooter, with lots of personality in graphics, music and gameplay, holds a significant place among all videogames for me. It’s not just that I have fond memories of playing it then. I have just as good a reaction to playing it now!
I wholeheartly agree — I fidn this especially true since I didn’t have the luck to experience most games back then!
About the CRT, I remember one thing was NTSC rendering being often panned (RGB looking so much better!), but I play my PC Engine games in NTSC because a lot of them were made to look somewhat “better”, creating an aliasing using artefacts line on fonts for instance, that exploited the admitedly poor composite signal. I never owned a NES, but I suspect that console used the same sort of tricks.
That looks incredible. Why wasn’t this console a big success here?
I think its main issue is that it was late to the party: it offered CD versions of older games, at a time the console were downing a bit (right before the PSX crazy success).
It also didn’t have any popular (in the Mario or Dragonquest popular sense) license to support it.
All right, just curious then why you don’t keep a CRT around for older analog games? I realize there’s an inherent assumption that space isn’t an issue, but you seem to have more classic consoles and games than I have, and I hung on to a CRT pretty much solely for them.