davidwhangchoi
Member
i wonder if they still have green monochrome monitors around...
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Retro-GAF unite!
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InfiniteNine
Rolling Girl
There are still compatibility issues with newer versions of Windows (Outlaw to name one even the GOG version) and Soundblaster hi-jinks so I opted for a cheap tiny laptop that could do everything relatively well. I don't actually plan to play directly off the screen either it has a VGA out, but it just happens to suit my needs considering I don't have room for a huge old PC around considering all the old consoles I have around my desk already taking up all the space.
Size comparison from the webs:
Size comparison from the webs:
PumpkinSpice
Banned
That's adorable.
davidwhangchoi
Member
that does look cool... i wonder if it can run a genesis emulator.
InfiniteNine
Rolling Girl
Has a line in the middle of the screen but messing around with it a bit it seems like it's just a loose connection because I can make it disappear just moving the hinge around, but too inexperienced dealing with this kind of stuff to fix it up myself.
Got this for some older Windows/DOS titles looking forward into jumping into that world clean since besides The Oregon Trail I don't think I've played any PC game from that era.
A relevant video by grown up McLovin. For those interested in DOS gaming on a laptop.
There are still compatibility issues with newer versions of Windows (Outlaw to name one even the GOG version) and Soundblaster hi-jinks so I opted for a cheap tiny laptop that could do everything relatively well. I don't actually plan to play directly off the screen either it has a VGA out, but it just happens to suit my needs considering I don't have room for a huge old PC around considering all the old consoles I have around my desk already taking up all the space.
Size comparison from the webs:
I miss my libretto, co-worker at the time said he could work on it, he could not....I was so pissed.
Would love to grab another one someday.
Got this for some older Windows/DOS titles looking forward into jumping into that world clean since besides The Oregon Trail I don't think I've played any PC game from that era.
There are still compatibility issues with newer versions of Windows (Outlaw to name one even the GOG version) and Soundblaster hi-jinks so I opted for a cheap tiny laptop that could do everything relatively well. I don't actually plan to play directly off the screen either it has a VGA out, but it just happens to suit my needs considering I don't have room for a huge old PC around considering all the old consoles I have around my desk already taking up all the space.
Size comparison from the webs:
This makes me really nostalgic for Windows 95/98!
D.Lo
Member
Lol old laptops.
Retro IBM/Wintel PC is kind of weird, since there was never a set spec for games, just a range. Like if I was going to recreate my childhood game of Quake 2, I'd have no hardware accelerated video.
So I guess I'm getting all these now.
It's the most 70s looking thing possible, and is very fun to play!
Retro IBM/Wintel PC is kind of weird, since there was never a set spec for games, just a range. Like if I was going to recreate my childhood game of Quake 2, I'd have no hardware accelerated video.
So I guess I'm getting all these now.
It ended up being brand new!
It's the most 70s looking thing possible, and is very fun to play!
I recently did a video on a retro device I think you folks might get a kick out of.
It's about the Super Nintendo Bike. I hate the fact that I'm old enough to now call the Super Nintendo retro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6qtGq-vqds
Plus, also did a little video on the Donkey Kong Jr. Mini Arcade. We worked hard to captured the highest quality we could of the screen. I wanted people who had never seen one in person before to witness all the tiny little details that went into this system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V2Xc9c1ZGQ
It's about the Super Nintendo Bike. I hate the fact that I'm old enough to now call the Super Nintendo retro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6qtGq-vqds
Plus, also did a little video on the Donkey Kong Jr. Mini Arcade. We worked hard to captured the highest quality we could of the screen. I wanted people who had never seen one in person before to witness all the tiny little details that went into this system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V2Xc9c1ZGQ
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I recently did a video on a retro device I think you folks might get a kick out of.
It's about the Super Nintendo Bike. I hate the fact that I'm old enough to now call the Super Nintendo retro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6qtGq-vqds
My gym had this in the 90s. Used it a bunch. Even back then I was in awe of it and wished I owned it and knew it would be a future collectors oddity.
Also... you hate that you're old enough to call the Super Nintendo retro? What was your previous connotation of a retro game... Spacewar? Because the Super Nintendo is over a quarter of a century old!
Xbox 360 which came out in 2005 is retro now. Real talk. We called NES retro in the late 90s when it was just over a decade old.
Cool videos. I'll sub
It's the most 70s looking thing possible, and is very fun to play!
D.Lo I love it. So 70s indeed.
Can it be RGB modded? lololol
My gym had this in the 90s. Used it a bunch. Even back then I was in awe of it and wished I owned it and knew it would be a future collectors oddity.
Also... you hate that you're old enough to call the Super Nintendo retro? What was your previous connotation of a retro game... Spacewar? Because the Super Nintendo is a quarter of a century old!
Xbox 360 which came out in 2005 is retro now. Real talk. We called NES retro in the late 90s when it was just over a decade old.
Cool videos. I'll sub
I just called NES retro for years until someone pointed out to me that Xbox and PS2 are retro and I cried a little inside.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Time is a cruel mistress.
I recently did a video on a retro device I think you folks might get a kick out of.
It's about the Super Nintendo Bike. I hate the fact that I'm old enough to now call the Super Nintendo retro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6qtGq-vqds
Plus, also did a little video on the Donkey Kong Jr. Mini Arcade. We worked hard to captured the highest quality we could of the screen. I wanted people who had never seen one in person before to witness all the tiny little details that went into this system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V2Xc9c1ZGQ
Nice work, subbed. Love the capture footage of DK!
D.Lo
Member
I have the panorama version:Plus, also did a little video on the Donkey Kong Jr. Mini Arcade. We worked hard to captured the highest quality we could of the screen. I wanted people who had never seen one in person before to witness all the tiny little details that went into this system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V2Xc9c1ZGQ
I was thinking about grabbing the original NIntendo branded version of the tabletop too
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
By the way... didn't Miyamoto design the physical shell for some of those Nintendo TV Games? I believe I heard that somewhere.
D.Lo
Member
Yep one of Miyamoto's first jobs was the casing of this one and the racing one. I assume Yokoi did the previous ones.
Block Breaker is also the first 100% Nintendo console, CTV6 and 15 were co-developed with MItsubishi.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
That's cool. Suddenly I feel bad because I don't actually own the "original Nintendo" anymore
D.Lo
Member
I think CTVG6 is the most genuine 'first Nintendo home video game'.That's cool. Suddenly I feel bad because I don't actually own the "original Nintendo" anymore
Shin Johnpv
Member
Went to Digital Press today with a bunch of empty boxes for SNES, Genesis, GBA, NES, plus some strategy guides and a few other things. Walked out with some awesome games.
davidwhangchoi
Member
i was just there and grabbed a zelda gamecube wind waker for 25 bucks.
Shin Johnpv
Member
You know I thought I recognized you from your picture on here. I didn't want to walk up to someone and be like Yo are you a guy on NeoGaf though. Small world!
sixteen-bit
Member
Cool vid on the NEC PC-98
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HDGJE80DWY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HDGJE80DWY
Amazing! I assume this is RF - only?
Despite the risk of advertising something that sounds TGTBT: Someone on eBay is selling brand new copies of Sub-Terrania for $6 shipped (along with some Genesis sports games).
Very interesting. I actually just got this game last month, but tempted to pick up a back up for that price. Hope more stuff like this surfaces so that prices can finally crash.
If someone could grab me one, I'll Paypal F&F em, I don't have ebay, and I would love to have this...
There is an awesome version of Policenauts with really cool graphics on the PC-98 that to my knowledge only exists on that system. Unfortunately my inability to read Japanese and lack of a PC-98 prevents me from playing it.
Says it was from a container that wasn't opened for 20 years. Perhaps there were other games in there? Maybe that seller will post other games they found in there... I hope.
Stopped by the local flea market to see if anything had much changed since the last time I was there about a year ago. One of the retro sellers was gone but a few worse ones had setup in his place. Not much of interest except for one guy that had multiple shrink wrapped new in box original Gameboys for ~C$450. How on earth had he held onto these this long? It was the small box, late model packaging though, not the cool cyberpunk looking initial packaging.
Yeah. I jut recently heard about a collector that had a ton of stuff like that, a box of unopened Stadium Event-boxes and who knows what more. Really hope some guys like that appears and decides to pull the trigger soon.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
Old PCs scare me.
On the one hand, looking thoroughly at both old 8-bit US and Euopean computers, DOS and Windows computers, and Japanese 8-bit and forward systems, there are nearly zero games I want to play on any of them.
On the other hand... god I want to buy so many old PCs. Especially 8-bit ones cause they're so cool.
davidwhangchoi
Member
i couldn't recognize you without the varia suit =) were you wearing zero suit that day?
i haven't taken NJ transit there but i overheard someone there took mass-transit to get there and was planning to go to the city. but i could be wrong and misheard and maybe he was talking about from his house.
i think he said it was 11 bucks roundtrip but i can't confirm.
Well, there goes 5.54.
The PC-98 is quite foreign to me but as a 16 then 32bit computer, it's quite similar to an IBM compatible PC from the west. Completely incompatible, but I believe the experience is quite similar overall.
The 8bit computers on the other hand are quite different, philosophically speaking. While MS-DOS and its ancestor/rival CP/M were command-line OS designed to manage files and start programs, the command-line you got when booting was a fully fleshed BASIC programming environment. You could literally start coding at boot-up, and often you would, as many computer magazines of the time used to distribute software in listing form. Here is a long example with the MSX, end result at 21'. The first couple of instructions are for screen management, but aren't needed per se, and you just run the program by typing run. In itself, this feature made for a great educational tool, as the computer would literally say "code me" every time you started it. I started learning BASIC out of boredom on Sunday afternoons like that, reading a magazine and trying one of their listing, then tweaking it. Here is an example of what you could learn to do in a few minutes on a CPC. It's also demonstrating how to do easy editing and copypasting without a clicky mouse.
Of course you could run more traditional programs, like games or productivity software. Did you know that OpenOffice, now LibreOffice, started its life as a text editor for the Amstrad CPC? The CPC was a big success in my country, where IBM PCs were only used in big professional environments where mainframes were needed, but most homes, as well as many small businesses, used the much cheaper CPC.
As for games, I have a mixed opinion. the ZX Spectrum, Commodore64, and Amstrad CPC got a massive amount of games, but the overall quality is quite rubbish. There are a bunch of good games, but even then it's still an acquired taste, as they can be very rough for the modern player. It goes down to two factors. The first one being that they are computers, they weren't primarily designed for gaming: only the C64 had hardware sprites, but a terrible colour palette, the Spectrum has a really funny way of doing colours resulting in a psychedelic display, the CPC needs to half its horizontal resolution to 160x200 (instead of 320x200) to display 16 simultaneous colours instead of four. None can do hardware scrolling, the default scrolling is per 8pixel block. Smooth scrolling and sprites can be done with tricky programming, but its always taxing for the CPU. Also most early software were released on tape, and you had to wait between 5 and 20 minutes to load a game. The C64 and Spectrum only had a floppy add-on near the end of their life, and only a few software were released for it.The CPC however had a whole range with floppies only so most of its games were (re)released as floppies with much faster loading times. Being computers, there is a lot to do with the hardware itself: adding RAM/ROM, using various expansion boards, connecting hardware, general tinkering, etc.
The other problem is that all the games were Europeans. And unlike the Japanese, who figured it out pretty quickly, Europeans have no clue about game design. They knew how to make fancy graphics, and code amazing demos with scrolling, deformations, etc. But making a good game they did not know how to. Most games out there are crap because they controlled extremely badly, with a very stiff or very slippery, generally unresponsive player character. Most games were also extremely tough. Tough because of the controls, but also because they did not know how to manage the difficulty, ease the player into the game, make them learn the mechanics, give a fair challenge, etc. Don't get me wrong, there are also quite a few great games, but they are outliers (and often modern homebrews). And once you get accustomed to the roughness, you can start enjoying many of them too: it's like a cold shower, you don't really want to get under it, but after you can feel how it's beneficial for your body. But it's still damn cold. I may list a bunch of them tomorrow.
There are a bunch of Japanese 8bit computers but I don't know much about them. The MSX was a blip in Europe, and the SC-3000 was a blip everywhere. But they both got a great library of games, with early Konami titles for the former and early SEGA titles for the latter. Great games that ought to be played, but the experience is much closer to a traditional console. The MSX2 is a great computer, probably the best 8bit system, but it really suffered from its small market share in Europe.
[edit] wow. That's a long text.
tl; dr: games are mostly shit, but you can learn to love them. A very different kind of challenge than Japanese games.
The hardware is great to play with, to learn computing and tinker with addon boards.
Shadow Hog
Member
Y'know what, sure, I'll gamble $6 on that.
D.Lo
Member
Of course lol. With graphics this simple it's fine though.
Great post, totally agree with all that.
I grew up playing C64 but it is so rough now. Back in the day everyone pretended it was as good as an NES or Master System (British magazines especially did) but it's just nowhere near as good an experience. I feel like it's more in line with the Atari VCS experience, as a good way to explain it to people: some gems, appreciation of the engineering and history and what was done with limited hardware. But not anywhere near the depth.
I have an MSX2 and yeah it's probably the best 8-bit PC but is still a big step below the Famicom when it comes to games and gameplay. Even from the same developers like Konami etc, it simply runs at a lower framerate most of the time, it plays choppier.
Off the top of my head:
James Bond 007 - Gameboy. A Zelda-ish action/adventure game. Some of the late-era GB games are still impressive to me.
Blood Stone - 360/PS3/PC. Daniel Craig starring in a game designed to be like a Bond movie, complete with opening song/credits, bond girls, etc. Made by Bizarre Creations, most well known for the Project Gotham Racing series (So you know it has good vehicle sections).
Most of the PS2/Xbox/GCN games were decent, but Everything or Nothing I remember being particularly good.
blast processed
Member
Nightfire was real good and the newer Goldeneye/COD game was enjoyable.
I don't like COD but I thought this game was good.
potatohead
Member
Nightfire is awesome. Great multiplayer also.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
I spent a good long while staring at an MSX2 a month ago before I just decided it was too big & heavy to bring home. Not to mention the games are way more rare than anything else I was buying, almost PC Engine level of hard to find and expensive! 超高いね！
I can handle programming from boot, bootsy tapes, even everything being in Japanese, but when it's all expensive and either not very good or just not stuff I'm into (scrolling shooters and porn games? no thanks!), it's just really hard to justify it. On the MSX2 itself the Metal Gear games have great ports to MGS3 Subsistence and other than that it's like Vampire Killer and worse ports of Famicom games.
DOS games are a bit more interesting in some sense but it's still not really in the realm of stuff I want to play. Strategy Games, Doom Clones, and Adventure games are really not my thing either.
What is your thing, if I may ask?
If you care only about platformers, you should stick to consoles. Computers, even 16bit ones, are not very good at them. Either they lack hardware scrolling, or have terrible controls (only one button => Jump is UP.)
PumpkinSpice
Banned
Mostly platformers, puzzle games, RPGs. Occasionally action games like Zelda or Monster Hunter that don't really fall into those genres.
I didn't know
you didn't like COD.=O
moltonasty
Member
Went to Digital Press today with a bunch of empty boxes for SNES, Genesis, GBA, NES, plus some strategy guides and a few other things. Walked out with some awesome games.
Nice haul! Still need to pick myself up a TG16/PC engine one of these before they get too pricey. I've been holding off/playing them on Wii VC for too long..
Does anyone know if Digital Press sells NeoGeo MVS carts by the way? Looking for a good spot to pick these up in the tristate area, not too many options that I know of unfortunately.
D.Lo
Member
I have one that's about console sized.
But hey I'm not exactly someone that holds back on obscure consoles lol.