Retro-GAF unite!

Yes Boss! said:
I seem to be all nostalgic for recent retro games. A few hours into Zero Mission in anticipation of the big sequel on 3DS...now starting another file on Galaxy, which will be a decade old as Odyssey releases. Still the single best Mario and wanna give it another 100% before retiring it. I've played the shit outta Galaxy 2 and 3D Land and 3D World. But generally leave the first Galaxy for special times.

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This might be my favorite game of all time, such a great experience from start to finish. Think im going to start playing through it again soon, this time with my son. Should be fun!
 
Yes Boss! said:
Yeah, always been a Dreamcast game for me. Never got around to playing the GC version...though I'm pretty positive we owned it at some point. And always read the original was better.
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There was a bad batch of the DC version being sold with the contents of disc 2 being on disc 1, but with the disc 2 label on it. I never finished Skies because my copy fell victim to this mix up. (I think Sega offered to make it right at the time, but I bought my copy on clearance at the end of the DC's retail lifespan.)
 
Shin Johnpv said:
Got some decent deals on some retro goodness recently.



Awhile back my original PS2 component cables went on me, official ones were too damn expensive online, so I grabbed some 3rd party ones. They're alright but happy to grab some first party ones again for just 10 bucks.
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PS3 component cables work, too, and are easier to find.
 
Laevateinn said:
heresy alert

I didn't like Mario Galaxy that much.
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Yeah I didn't either. The dialog / story crap was way too long and boring, levels didn't feel as tight as Galaxy 2 or 3D Land/World, overall just felt average. I even liked Sunshine better and I'm not even into the open-level-replay-it-8-times style 3D Mario.
 
SheepyGuy said:
Yeah I didn't either. The dialog / story crap was way too long and boring, levels didn't feel as tight as Galaxy 2 or 3D Land/World, overall just felt average. I even liked Sunshine better and I'm not even into the open-level-replay-it-8-times style 3D Mario.
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You sort of had to be there at the time. It was an amazing experience that Nintendo has subsequently topped.

It's sort of the Super Mario Bros. 3 of the 3D games. It was a huge jump in quality and craziness at the time. The variety was constant and it showed that there was still a lot of innovation left in the platforning genre. Plus, it was a big-budget game that stressed pure joy in a era that was punctuated with death match style gaming and AAA cinematics.

For me, it was the most important game of that entire decade (2000-2009). It also sold me a Wii and made me understand more fully what Nintendo brought to the table compared to other developers.
 
Peltz said:
For me, it was the most important game of that entire decade (2000-2009). It also sold me a Wii and made me understand more fully what Nintendo brought to the table compared to other developers.
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Damn dude! That's some hardcore love.

I owned Galaxy, but I never completed it. A+ original score, though!
 
SheepyGuy said:
Yeah I didn't either. The dialog / story crap was way too long and boring, levels didn't feel as tight as Galaxy 2 or 3D Land/World, overall just felt average. I even liked Sunshine better and I'm not even into the open-level-replay-it-8-times style 3D Mario.
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I loved it, thought it was magic. Loved the story, loved being blown away by the graphics being so sharp and the gameplay being so fresh and varied. Loved the hub, the story elements, the epicness of the ending (Final Fantasy level nonsense coming to Mario). And it introduced the world to the #1 Nintendo waifu Rosalina!

I found Galaxy 2 underwhelming after it. Yeah it was still fun and had more crazy levels, but the boring plain vanilla overworld, less coherent theming, and general lack of freshness, it really was a straight iteration of a concept I had already done.

Same with 3D World actually. 3D Land was a really cool little distillation of 3D Mario into a digestible portable NSMB style format. 3DW was just a console sized iteration of that and is the only Mario platformer in history I have never bothered to finish (I have 100% on every other one).

Peltz said:
You sort of had to be there at the time. It was an amazing experience that Nintendo has subsequently topped.

It's sort of the Super Mario Bros. 3 of the 3D games. It was a huge jump in quality and craziness at the time. The variety was constant and it showed that there was still a lot of innovation left in the platforning genre. Plus, it was a big-budget game that stressed pure joy in a era that was punctuated with death match style gaming and AAA cinematics.

For me, it was the most important game of that entire decade (2000-2009). It also sold me a Wii and made me understand more fully what Nintendo brought to the table compared to other developers.
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And the reviews agreed, it was the highest ranking game of the generation by far. I was an editor of a games site at the time and called a meeting because the reviewer wanted to give it our site's first ever 10/10. I allowed it with extreme hesitation, but after playing it myself ended up wholeheartedly agreeing.
 
Peltz said:
You sort of had to be there at the time. It was an amazing experience that Nintendo has subsequently topped.
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I came to it a couple years late but I don't think I was that far off it's release date.

Honestly the biggest thing for me with the Galaxy games is bouncing back and forth between them and NSMB Wii and just comparing the feel of jumping. In 2D Mario it's fantastic, every hop just has a joy to it, I can land exactly where I want, I feel in control. In the Galaxy games it's just floaty and it's really hard to go where you want. It's a fundamental flaw in 3D Mario, made a lot better in 3D Land + where you're locked to 8-way movement with a better camera, but still never as good as 2D.

D.Lo said:
I found Galaxy 2 underwhelming after it. Yeah it was still fun and had more crazy levels, but the boring plain vanilla overworld, less coherent theming, and general lack of freshness, it really was a straight iteration of a concept I had already done.
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The basic level structure of Galaxy 2 was my favorite improvement in that game. Everything about going back to that stupid hub was so annoying (and slow), and having unskippable cutscenes for the Rosalina parts in Galaxy 1 was just dumb.

The levels not being "fresh" is valid but they're just much more to the point. The whole game is pretty much a remix version of Galaxy 1, one which if it had come out instead in 2007 I would have much more favorable opinions of that game. But the levels just being way more to-the-point made the whole game feel much tighter, made me want to keep going in a way that Galaxy 1 didn't. Galaxy 1 often felt like a slog trying to get to the finish, whereas Galaxy 2 I didn't want to put it down. You could really see what they were moving towards with 3D Land in just getting rid of the illusion of open exploration and moving towards the 2D style of point to point levels.
 
Yeah, I passed on the NES classic, probably have to spring for this one though, my wife loves SNES and the inclusion of StarFox 2 makes it pretty much must have.
 
BTails said:
Yeah, I passed on the NES classic, probably have to spring for this one though, my wife loves SNES and the inclusion of StarFox 2 makes it pretty much must have.
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Totally awesome to see an official release. I wonder if the ROM can be extracted for use on a regular SNES console. Isn't the Star Fox 2 repro version based on fan hacks?
 
I beat the first game and couldn't get into the second. For me, I just didn't like the mini-planets or running around upside down. It's been a long time since I've played these games but I feel like I had problems with the controls a lot.

I'm looking forward to Odyssey but in general I have liked but not loved 3D Mario.
 
Laevateinn said:
heresy alert

I didn't like Mario Galaxy that much.
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Damn.

I'm definitely in the camp that prefers Galaxy to Galaxy 2. Only really prefer Mario 64 over it really.

I'm very armed in how I rank the 3D marios. And very curious how Odyssey will slot in:

1) Mario 64
2) Mario Galaxy
3) Mario 3D World
4) Mario Galaxy 2
5) Mario 3D Land
6) Mario Sunshine
 
Personally, it's

  1. Mario 3D World
  2. Mario 3D Land
  3. Galaxy 2
  4. Sunshine
  5. Galaxy 1
  6. Mario 64
I'd probably even put 3D World above every 2D Mario game, which is saying a lot cause I really prefer the 2D games overall.
 
3D World is tops for me by a pretty big margin. I replayed Galaxy 1 a couple years back, and got all the stars that time... it's a great game, but I like how precise and focused 3D World feels.
 
socksfelloff said:
Mario 64 is one of those few games that will forever stand the test of time. I will never forget playing it for the first time at a toys r us
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So I never played Mario 64 back in the day. I lived in a weird bubble as someone who didn't have a 64 at all that only played friends' 64 and none of them had Mario 64. Everyone had Zelda, though, among other stuff, so we got way more used to 3D movement in that game. I think that probably made 64 just seem a lot less impressive when I got around to trying it years later.

Living outside the wow factor maybe just really changed my experience with the game. I really don't like exploring in that game, I don't like the movement or the way Mario controls (hearing diehard Mario 64 fans defending some the stuff you need to do to pull off some moves in that game really bothers me, even the first time I played this game in 2004), I don't like the repetition, and I don't like the goal of stars whether by finding them, beating a boss to get one, or doing a mundane task to get one. Yeah so not to shit on it too much but I expected a lot better given how highly people praise it.
 
Peltz said:
I hope hackers will be able to extract that completed Star Fox 2 rom. I'd love to play the official release on a real SNES.
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given it'll probably just be a bunch of roms and some 3rd party emulators again, put together with android or linux, I would say that is almost guaranteed.
 
sixteen-bit said:
Totally awesome to see an official release. I wonder if the ROM can be extracted for use on a regular SNES console. Isn't the Star Fox 2 repro version based on fan hacks?
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It's an almost finished beta version. Hopefully the finished rom can be extracted from this thing.
 
SheepyGuy said:
So I never played Mario 64 back in the day. I lived in a weird bubble as someone who didn't have a 64 at all that only played friends' 64 and none of them had Mario 64. Everyone had Zelda, though, among other stuff, so we got way more used to 3D movement in that game. I think that probably made 64 just seem a lot less impressive when I got around to trying it years later.

Living outside the wow factor maybe just really changed my experience with the game. I really don't like exploring in that game, I don't like the movement or the way Mario controls (hearing diehard Mario 64 fans defending some the stuff you need to do to pull off some moves in that game really bothers me, even the first time I played this game in 2004), I don't like the repetition, and I don't like the goal of stars whether by finding them, beating a boss to get one, or doing a mundane task to get one. Yeah so not to shit on it too much but I expected a lot better given how highly people praise it.
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I mean... the controls in that game and the variety on display are fucking amazing. Not sure what to tell you:

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Controlling Mario in this game feels like driving a sports car.
 
Peltz said:
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If you've played the game a LOT you can pull off shit like this. Tap Z just before you jump and then make sure you're perfectly lined up and take out a goomba like that. Otherwise it's jump (slowly) and hope you have it lined up right (which is much more difficult in 3D space), miss, try again, wonder why jumping on goombas feel so much worse than in the 2D games, punch him instead? Oh and this is just the first level, nevermind later on where enemies are conveniently located on small platforms next to pits.

If it's the only game you have and it's 1996 and you have all the time in the world and you're playing it to death I'm sure you get so used to it to the point that it feels like second nature but I don't really think that's acceptable for a Mario game. Even playing all the way through I never got to the point where I really felt in control of Mario's movements the way I did in any previous Mario game.
 
SheepyGuy said:
If you've played the game a LOT you can pull off shit like this. Tap Z just before you jump and then make sure you're perfectly lined up and take out a goomba like that. Otherwise it's jump (slowly) and hope you have it lined up right (which is much more difficult in 3D space), miss, try again, wonder why jumping on goombas feel so much worse than in the 2D games, punch him instead? Oh and this is just the first level, nevermind later on where enemies are conveniently located on small platforms next to pits.

If it's the only game you have and it's 1996 and you have all the time in the world and you're playing it to death I'm sure you get so used to it to the point that it feels like second nature but I don't really think that's acceptable for a Mario game. Even playing all the way through I never got to the point where I really felt in control of Mario's movements the way I did in any previous Mario game.
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Were you playing with an actual N64 controller on N64 hardware and on a CRT?

Edit: I'm kind of shocked at all the indifference to 3D Mario games in this thread. They're some of my absolute favorite games.
 
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Mario 64 speed runs are a beautiful thing to watch and I guess a hint at what you could do with some serious practice. Personally, I find Mario a complete joy to control but I do agree that there's some inherent difficulty with precisely landing in 3d space compared to the 2d Mario games and the camera isn't exactly the greatest either.
 
Peltz said:
Were you playing with an actual N64 controller on N64 hardware and on a CRT?
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A bunch of times yeah, but played through the whole way on Wii Virtual Console about 7 years ago (K now I feel old) on a CRT. There's some lag there but I don't think it was a significant drawback to the controls.

It's not even just Mario 64, it's a problem with 3D Mario in general, I'd argue all 3D platformers by extension. Sunshine added Fludd to compensate for this problem and it helped a lot (and it was cute that they designed the whole game around the water stuff). Galaxy 1+2 compensate by having the levels wrap around with the gravity mechanic.

Mario 3D Land and 3D World compensate with the 8-way gate, more restricted moveset, a pulled out camera perspective, and more carefully designed levels. Oh and the tanuki suit. It's really funny in hindsight how everyone thought it was the 3D effect that made platforming feel much more natural in 3D Land, and not all the other stuff they did.
 
I just don't really like the controls in 3D mario specifically. Platforming in Jak or Ratchet, for example, is really fun and engaging. I think it's something about the momentum/acceleration.
 
NormalFish said:
I just don't really like the controls in 3D mario specifically. Platforming in Jak or Ratchet, for example, is really fun and engaging. I think it's something about the momentum/acceleration.
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Both those game series have double jump, among other mechanics, to compensate for the 3D platforming precision problem. Even then Jak 1 can be pretty annoying to jump around in.
 
Chacranajxy said:
I just think platformers are inherently better in 2D. Yeah, I love the 3D Mario games, but 2D platforming is zen.
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SheepyGuy said:
Both those game series have double jump, among other mechanics, to compensate for the 3D platforming precision problem. Even then Jak 1 can be pretty annoying to jump around in.
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Yeah I can get behind that. 2D platformers are tons of fun. Favourite mario game is still 3

I find the movement options in jak perfectly fine even without lots of double jumping. The long roll and high jump and spin and such all feel good. Like I said, I think it's something about the physics.
 
I'll never forget going to Blockbuster and playing their demo of Mario 64 before I got mine. I kept pressing the dpad and nothing happened. I thought the controller was broken. Then I noticed that tapping B got you to move which I thought was interesting. Eventually after initial fumbling with one of gaming's worst controllers, I realized what the middle of the controller was for and had a blast moving around the field outside the castle.

Mario 64 is a good game but it's hard for me to go back to. At the time it was pure magic though. Hopefully Odyssey is the same.
 
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