Pretty certain I first saw it during "The Wizard" I still use the secrets/tips they revealed to this very day.

This picture is of Act 3 of Green Hill Zone. Does the dithering look okay? Isn't this the spot where if the dithering on an emulator is configured wrong then the water won't be transparent?

And what is this machine? It has to be running an emulator and probably not a mister right? That is a lot of money for a machine that can only play one 4 games. It is weird that they replaced the d-pad with a joystick too.

I know that this isn't a crt. I just tried to emulate the shell. Not to replace any crts. I have 4 myself and love them dearly <3

I've got this cheap aliexpress screen a while ago and tried to make a shell for it to look like an old crt shell. I think it came out pretty good.

What do you guys think of this? Was this a waste of time or is it neat?

Edit: realized that someone might want to make their own. Files here: https://makerworld.com/models/3477929?appSharePlatform=copy

tl;dr If you like Cybernator or Metal Warriors and also like RPGs (maybe even if you usually don't) then do yourself a favor and play this game.

Hello to u/SNESdrunk and thanks for pointing me to this gem—in an 11 year old video I discovered lately. I loved Cybernator but never heard of Gun Hazard. It's a spinoff of the Front Mission series and unlike the other games, it's not a strategy game but a run-and-gun action platformer with RPG elements. You control a battle mech through numerous missions that are grouped in operations, all of which are somewhat connected by the narrative. You receive EXP and currency for each completed mission, in order to level up and buy equipment, such as weapons, armor, ammo, and other items. There are characters that join your party, each of them with unique abilities, and you can let them assist you during missions, give them commands, level them up, buy equipment for them, etc. Similar to Metal Warriors you can also exit your mech and run around, which you sometimes need to do in order to progress, which I found a nice touch.

At first glance the game is real similar to Cybernator/Assault Suits Valken to the point where I was baffled by the audacity of using identical weapons, and control/gameplay elements, almost identical designs, etc.—until I read that some of the developers were in fact coming from the Cybernator team. Compared to the latter though, Gun Hazard is far less action centric and builds more on the story (and on RPG elements, obviously). While Cybernator is rather short and intense, this game here feels a bit overstretched in that it features numerous stages that seem redundant and generic, are real short, don't even have a boss fight, etc., which starts to drag a little at some point. However, I never found myself in the situation where I had to play missions over and over again for grinding, I just played every mission and it was fine (19 hours total), I never really felt underpowered. Quite the opposite, actually. Only exception: final boss fight at level 37 (without maxed-out mech and weapons) was a bit tough—required me to retry twice.

I already mentioned it's story-centric; be warned that there is a LOT of dialogue—if reading through those is not your cup of tea, the game is not for you. For me it was borderline since I felt it took the momentum out of the action but what kept me going is that the story is pretty dark and narrated in an engaging way—kudos to the Aeon Genesis team for the terrific translation patch. I feel like if there would have been an official English version, it would have been much more streamlined in terms of language. Certainly, the story would have been censored here and there (as was done for Cybernator).

Overall, if you like this combination of genres, the game is terrific and well worth your time. Coming from the action firework that is Cybernator, I was not so impressed by the SFX, but boy, the music is superb! Mostly composed by Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda (Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger...), that's no surprise. The graphics are fantastic for the era, in particular the weather and light effects are just awesome, as are the animations. The operations are scattered across Earth, so each has its distinct look and atmosphere to it. Minor flaws include inconsistent controls which can be real annoying, and the fact that some of the dialogue is happening while you're fighting, and RPG fans may complain that the game is quite linear.

Unfortunately, there is no English manual, which means that some of the game's aspects are a bit cryptic, like the leveling system for your equipment and how to equip your mech, etc. I also did not immediately realize I can let party members join me in the missions and it also took some time to realize that I can give certain commands. I recommend heading over to GameFAQs and get a guide like this one here and read through the basics, FAQs, controls, hints, and the equipment part.

Anyways, if you don't know this game go check it out.

Souce from my retro account - LoveRetroBTW

Thank you to everyone that came to check out Downing's Basement / The BitBuilt Experience at RetroWorldExpo and Portland Retro Gaming Expo! My good BitBuilt friends and I had tons of fun showing off our custom consoles and educating about our hobby, and how you too can make your very own custom portable console!

For those who don't know: BitBuilt is an online forum community focused on "portablizing" ie. taking home consoles, chopping them up, and building them into custom portable handhelds / micro consoles. We got to show off a handful of our portable Wiis, N64s, Gamecubes, SNESs, custom Gameboys, and even Wii Us!

Catch us at Midwest Gaming Classic 2027 to see an even wider variety of custom console mods!

A few weeks ago, I made a post about the “curriculum“ I had created while trying to decide which video game to play. I figure that since I am recording my thoughts anyway I might as well share them here as I go in case there is any ongoing interest.

Curriculum

Reflection** **this post as a google doc

Reflection on Semester 2 of: A Comparative Chronological Survey of Interactive Electronic Entertainment Through Primary Play Experiences (1958–2005)

Introduction

Semester 1 was largely about the origins of video games. Experiments on university mainframes, research projects, and the occasional commercial success. Semester 2 is where things start to look like an actual industry, although the university computers, home consoles, and arcades are still developing along very different paths.
This semester also marked a change in how I’ve been approaching the project. I spent some time reading contemporary magazines, looking at source code, and trying to experience the games with something resembling their original controls. I’ve found that the surrounding history is sometimes just as interesting as the games themselves.

Hunt the Wumpus (1973)
Creator: Gregory Yob
Original platform: Mainframe / terminal
My rating: 7/10
I started by tracking down the source code and the 1975 issue of Creative Computing that published it. One of the interesting things about reading the actual magazine was discovering Civil War immediately afterward, a recognizable descendant of The Sumerian Game I’d encountered in Semester 1.
These games weren’t isolated milestones to contemporary readers. They were programs being shared, modified, and passed around.
Hunt the Wumpus itself is surprisingly entertaining. The game is simple enough to understand almost immediately, but navigating the cave without getting eaten, falling into a pit, or running out of arrows is another matter.
I spent a while drawing maps and trying to reason through the cave. There’s a fair amount of luck involved, but I could easily see myself getting sucked into trying to win a complete round. I eventually moved on without beating it.
What I found particularly interesting was how naturally the game encourages you to map its world. There’s no graphical representation, just descriptions and connections between rooms. The game exists partly on the computer and partly on the paper sitting next to you.
Contemporary reading: Creative Computing, September/October 1975⁠

Colossal Cave Adventure (1976)
Creators: Will Crowther and Don Woods
Original platform: DEC PDP-10 mainframe
My rating: 9/10
This was probably the most engrossing experience of the semester.
I spent a couple of hours exploring Colossal Cave Adventure, and even with decades of gaming experience behind me, it’s difficult. The parser is limited, the puzzles can be obscure, and there’s very little guidance about what you’re supposed to be doing.
I can only imagine how frustrating it would have been for someone encountering it in 1976, without any established adventure game conventions to fall back on. If you discovered it on your university’s timesharing system, you probably didn’t have a manual or access to the source code. Maybe somebody else in the department had figured something out.
But that also makes the experience fascinating.
I got goosebumps thinking about what it must have been like to browse the available programs on a university computer, notice something called ADVENT, and launch it out of curiosity. Suddenly the machine you’re using for FORTRAN assignments is describing a little brick building at the end of a road and inviting you to explore a cave.
Speaking of FORTRAN, I actually learned FORTRAN 95 in college, so discovering that the original game was written in an earlier version of the language was a fun connection.
I didn’t finish Adventure, but I enjoyed the time I spent with it. The sense that there’s an enormous world waiting to be discovered is still compelling, even when the interface is doing its best to fight you.

Breakout (1976)
Creators: Atari; concept by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, hardware design by Steve Wozniak
Original platform: Arcade
My rating: 6/10
Breakout is hard as shit.
I got the original arcade version running in MAME, but playing without a proper paddle controller was frustrating. The game demands precise positioning, and digital controls really don’t reproduce the experience of turning a dial. I struggled to reach some of the ball trajectories I wanted.
I would have been pretty annoyed spending a quarter for three balls back in 1976.
What I really loved was the presentation. The original machine used a black-and-white display with transparent colored overlays to produce the appearance of colored bricks. It’s a wonderfully clever solution to a hardware limitation, and the effect is still satisfying.
There’s also the remarkable bit of history involving Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak working on the hardware. It’s strange to encounter them here, just before Apple enters the story.
I suspect I haven’t given Breakout a completely fair assessment because of the controls. I’d like to revisit it with a mouse or an actual paddle controller someday.

Space Invaders (1978)
Creator: Tomohiro Nishikado (Taito)
Original platform: Arcade
My rating: 8/10
Still addictive. Still satisfying. Still capable of making me feel completely incompetent.
For this one I decided to improve the experience and found somebody ten minutes away selling a Mayflash F500 Elite arcade stick for $25.
Unfortunately, better hardware did not help me stop the invasion.
There’s something enormously satisfying about the rhythm of Space Invaders. The descending formations, the defensive barriers gradually being destroyed, the accelerating movement, and that relentless sound all work together beautifully.
It’s also interesting how much tension the game creates with relatively little happening on screen. The enemies aren’t particularly complicated, but the situation becomes increasingly desperate as their numbers decrease.
This is one of the games from the semester that I could easily imagine returning to just to improve my score.

Galaxian (1979)
Developer: Namco; designed by Kazunori Sawano
Original platform: Arcade
My rating: 5/10
Galaxian is a beautiful game, particularly coming immediately after Space Invaders. The colors are striking, the formations are more elaborate, and having individual enemies break formation to dive toward you adds a new dimension to the shooting.
Unfortunately, I think it suffers a little from its place in history.
I’ve played enough Galaga to recognize where this is heading, and Galaxian feels very much like an intermediate step between the two games.
That’s not entirely fair to it. In 1979, the presentation and enemy behavior must have been a considerable improvement over Space Invaders. But playing it today, with its successor already familiar, makes its limitations more apparent.
It’s a solid game in its own right, just overshadowed by what came next.

Adventure (1979)
Creator: Warren Robinett (Atari)
Original platform: Atari 2600
My rating: 4/10
What a whimsical fever dream.
Coming from Colossal Cave Adventure, it’s fascinating to see someone attempting to translate the idea of exploring a world, finding objects, and solving puzzles into something that works on an Atari 2600.
It’s also frequently harder than it feels like it should be.
The graphics are abstract, the objects are sometimes difficult to distinguish, and figuring out what the game expects can be an exercise in frustration. The whole thing feels a little like a beta version of The Legend of Zelda, with considerably less polish.
Still, I can see why it matters. The idea of exploring a connected world, carrying objects between locations, and gradually understanding how everything fits together is clearly present.
I didn’t particularly enjoy playing it, but I appreciated seeing those ideas translated into a graphical console game.

Asteroids (1979)
Creators: Ed Logg and Lyle Rains (Atari)
Original platform: Arcade
My rating: 9/10
My favorite game of the semester.
I had a great time with Asteroids, and playing it after encountering Spacewar! in Semester 1 made the experience even better.
The connection is immediately recognizable. You’re piloting a little ship through space, managing momentum, rotating, thrusting, and shooting. But Asteroids takes those ideas and turns them into an exceptionally polished arcade game.
The vector graphics are gorgeous. There’s something about those bright, sharply defined lines against a black background that still looks fantastic.
I also love how the movement feels. You aren’t simply pointing the ship in a direction and moving. You’re managing velocity, and careless thrust can leave you drifting into trouble.
It’s simple, difficult, and immediately understandable. Unlike some of the other games this semester, I didn’t feel like I was playing it primarily for historical appreciation.
I was just having fun.

Lunar Lander (1979)
Creator: Howard Delman (Atari)
Original platform: Arcade
My rating: 5/10
An interesting early physics simulation, although it didn’t hold my attention for very long.
The idea is straightforward: manage your fuel, control your descent, and land without turning your spacecraft into a crater.
I didn’t find it particularly challenging, although that may have something to do with the control setup and how much experience I’ve had with physics-based games since.
What amused me most was the game’s fuel economy. You could insert additional money to purchase more fuel and extend your play.
The first pay-to-win game?
Probably not, but it’s funny to encounter such a familiar monetization idea in a 1979 arcade cabinet.

Star Raiders (1979)
Creator: Doug Neubauer (Atari)
Original platform: Atari 8-bit computers
My rating: 7/10
Dogfighting in 3D on an Atari 8-bit computer!
This was one of the more technically impressive games of the semester. The first-person combat, strategic map, navigation, and resource management are remarkably ambitious for the hardware.
It’s also nearly impossible to approach without reading the manual.
There are enough controls and interconnected systems that simply launching the game and experimenting doesn’t get you very far. Unlike the arcade games, which generally need to explain themselves in a few seconds, Star Raiders expects you to sit down and learn how to operate your spacecraft.
I couldn’t help thinking about Elite Dangerous while playing it. Obviously the later games are vastly more sophisticated, but it’s remarkable how much of the basic vocabulary of space combat and navigation was already established here.
This was another good reminder that the history of computer games and arcade games wasn’t progressing along the same lines. While arcades were refining simple, immediately accessible experiences, home computers were beginning to support much more complicated simulations.

Akalabeth: World of Doom (1979)
Creator: Richard Garriott
Original platform: Apple II
My rating: 6/10
Another difficult game that practically requires graph paper.
Akalabeth feels like a bridge between tabletop role-playing games and the computer RPGs that would follow. You create a character, explore a dungeon from a first-person perspective, fight monsters, and try to survive long enough to accomplish something.
It’s crude, but the underlying structure is recognizable.
Mapping the dungeon is essential, and the game doesn’t make much effort to accommodate a player who hasn’t figured out how everything works. There’s a lot of trial and error, and not all of it is particularly enjoyable.
Still, it’s fascinating to encounter Richard Garriott’s work before Ultima. You can see the beginnings of a much larger design tradition here.
I enjoyed it more as a historical artifact than as something I’d want to spend another twenty hours playing.

Looking Back
The biggest thing I took away from Semester 2 is how differently games were developing across platforms.
On institutional computers, you had games like Hunt the Wumpus and Colossal Cave Adventure, which could demand hours of exploration, note-taking, and experimentation. They were often shared as programs among people who already knew how to use computers.
In arcades, the economic model demanded something completely different. A game had to be immediately understandable, visually appealing, and difficult enough to keep players feeding it quarters. Breakout, Space Invaders, and Asteroids all accomplish that in different ways.
Meanwhile, home computers and consoles were beginning to establish their own identities. Adventure tried to bring exploration to the Atari 2600. Star Raiders demonstrated that a home computer could support a surprisingly sophisticated space simulation. Akalabeth was beginning to turn tabletop RPG conventions into computer game mechanics.
One thing I hadn’t fully appreciated before starting this project is how much the physical interface matters.
Playing Breakout without a paddle isn’t quite the same game. Asteroids feels different when you use buttons for rotation and thrust instead of treating it like a conventional joystick shooter. Even the text adventures are better understood when you consider the terminals and timesharing systems they originally ran on.
I also found myself spending more time with contemporary material than I expected. Reading Creative Computing and discovering other games printed alongside Hunt the Wumpus gave me a much better sense of the period than simply reading a modern history of the game would have.
The experience of discovering software in the 1970s is particularly fascinating to me. Before digital storefronts, before boxed games were commonplace, and before anyone had established a familiar language for interacting with these things, somebody could stumble across an unfamiliar program on a university computer and discover an entire fictional world.
That might be the thing from this semester I wish I could experience firsthand.
Semester highlights
Favorite game: Asteroids (9/10)
Most engrossing: Colossal Cave Adventure (9/10)
Biggest surprise: How well Space Invaders and Asteroids still hold up.
Most frustrating: Breakout, although the controls deserve some of the blame.
Most interesting historical rabbit hole: The early computer game culture surrounding Creative Computing and institutional timesharing systems.
Ten more games down. The industry is beginning to look recognizable, and I’m increasingly interested in what happens when these separate traditions start borrowing ideas from each other.

I figured I'd ask over here in this group, because if you dare question the purpose of Decomps in that group it's like you smacked someone's mother.

So, what a I missing here? What is the benefit of Decomps for say PS1, PS2, N64, Wii when emulation for these systems are basically pretty solid and been so for years? Hell, people are pumping out Decomps for SNES era systems like crazy. Just doesn't make sense.

I can maybe understand Decomps for newer systems like PS4/5, maybe some Switch games that just don't run well or at all in emulation. But other than that I don't get what all the excitement is. Also it seems to in order to just get a Decomp running is a hassle compared to emulation.

Is all this just because it's shiny and new?

Edit: So maybe the possibility for modding is the exciting part here. But the cumbersome part to me is you're now having to install all of these as individual games which just seems really inconvenient. But, perhaps in time there will be frontends that just take care of all this for you, sort of Gamenative for Decomps.

EDIT2: THANKS FOR ALL THE INPUT!! This is what I was looking for, all the reasons I wasn't thinking about. Obviously modding is the key here. I knew that was part of it of course, but hadn't really went down the path of all that it could do.

Again, much appreciated. Thanks!

I mean, there was something about the music and watching your dual screens. I remember always being nervous in the beginning, trying to watch my opponent booby-trapping an entire room. Then later, I became more confident and just ran my own race, setting traps as I went.

No better feeling than knowing that the other guy was after you, and you just kept throwing acid buckets and bombs in every room you left behind.

Sometimes it came down to a dagger/club fight. Man, chasing someone through several rooms with a knife! Man, what a crazy game. I loved every second of it!

Barry: S-Tier survival backup 👍, F-Tier PTSD emotional support 👎.

A quick one here lol: "OH HUNGRY? 🤤 OH BARRY! 🥪"

One of my all time favorite games and imo best game on the genesis is Aladdin: even if it was so fucking hard it took me forever to beat. Disney games on the NES ranged from horrible to good. Talespin was way too difficult with dogshit controls. Adventures in the magic kingdom had brutal platforming sections you had to get through.

Very fun level design

If you’re unaware, Tyrian 2000 is a classic vertical shoot-‘em-up from 1999, and it’s an update of Tyrian—made by Eclipse Productions and published by Epic MegaGames. Nowadays, it’s free on GOG.

I’ve wanted to make a physical version of this for awhile, and GOG provides an offline installer executable as well as a zip of the soundtrack. So I burned that on a FujiFilm CD-R.

But of course, the intent is to make this look like a vintage CD-ROM.

So I designed a label to put on the CD that covers the entirety of the disc except for the hole. This was mostly successful, though you’ll notice a slight hiccup that I had with the tab on the upper corner. Still mostly good, so I’m keeping it.

Next, I designed the front cover of the jewel case, the back cover with the blurb and screenshots, and the spines. This was printed on card stock, cut on a board, and the back cover was folded for the spine.

It fit nicely in the case, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think this was sold for $10 at my local Staples.

In hindsight, I could have put the system specs on here to make it period correct, but it will work on virtually all modern hardware. Nevertheless, it’s an oversight that only I will ever care about. Oh, well.

Of course, none of this was strictly necessary. I could just download Tyrian 2000 off GOG whenever I want to play it. But there’s something satisfying about having a game physically sitting on my shelf, complete with artwork, screenshots, and a disc I can actually put into a computer.

This is a small thing. But I guess that I feel games mean just a little bit more when they’re tactile.

Anyway, this is my first attempt at making a physical video game. A proof of concept, if you will.

It’s not for sale. It’s a one-of-a-kind thing. A personal momento.

We are developing a small hardware for real-time japanese text detection, OCR and translation for original consoles.

Sorry if this was asked here before recently on this forum because I just wanted to discuss infamous cases of when a gaming magazine from the 8 bit era tricked people into buying a game that was very questionable in design.

It’s a phenomenon I noticed in many gaming magazines published in the UK as sometimes games like Renegade 3 has received good reviews from some magazines that when players actually bought the game, they were in dismay because the game was incredibly clunky in gameplay aspects, but I just find that kind of practice fascinating with how magazines used to operate again back in the day.

Every time I play, I can’t help myself, my dude. 😂

The YouTuber Stop Skeletons From Fighting has a series called “punching weight” about games that went above and beyond for their consoles capability. (Whether they’re good games or not). So what games can you think of for the title of punching weight. The one that comes to my mind is Batman and Robin on the genesis. It looks insanely good for the genesis, even better than most early PlayStation platformers.

These were the most I've played lol good Ole days.

A while back, I was digging around behind my TV to plug something new in. I felt around back there and found that my OEM NES power supply was fairly hot, despite the NES not being on, and not having been on for years.

I plug all of my consoles (12 in total) into two large power strips, both of which are left active 24/7 because turning the strips off requires pulling forward my whole TV stand. Is this not how it should be done?