Digital Foundry Retro Discussion [2016 - 2017]

[Deleted member 11852]

I am speechless again

Apparently not!

 

[Cyan]

Apparently not!

on a different note, the NFS3 background music of the video is a nice touch. DF Retro mentions NFS2 and I wanted Need for Speed 2 so badly but can't remember why I didn't get it, I waited for NFS3 Hot Pursuit instead and it is along with F-Zero games my favourite racing game to date.

 

[Cyan]

Something I quite enjoyed in the original The Need for Speed was causing huge crashes with the incoming traffic. I crashed my car intentionally just to see how the physics of the game were. iirc, the game had ok physics overall.

 

[Karamazov]

popping was a huge problem on playstation/saturn at the time, i was very impressed by the draw distance in need for speed, but the drawback was the point of view was fixed, you could not turn over, or rotate the view.

 

[Cyan]

popping was a huge problem on playstation/saturn at the time, i was very impressed by the draw distance in need for speed, but the drawback was the point of view was fixed, you could not turn over, or rotate the view.

those issues were non existent on the PC version for the most part -taking into account the technology of the time-, there was some popping, but draw distance was higher overall it wasn't an issue. I turned all settings to the max.

Technically wise what impressed me the most was the draw distance in the track with the hot air balloons, there was a cliff there and when you topped it, you could see a vast portion of the track in the distance, plus the part where there was like a german Black Forest (which is shown in the video), with a dense amount of trees.

That gave me the goosebumps.

 

[eloic]

I am speechless again, the new DF Retro video brings back amazing memories!! The Need for Speed was my first game -along with Microsoft Golf-. I had a PPC back then which I purchased in September 1995 (a Pentium 100 with 32MB of RAM) and felt very fortunate to have at the day.

That game was soooooo good, I couldn't stop playing it. The cars were a pleasure to drive, the tracks were beautifully designed, all of them looked very realistic, very natural, and the traffic just added to the feeling of awareness and the overall fun.

The game had it all. Videos were so professional I was amazed when I watched those FMV videos, it didn't matter how many times they were shown -plus they tended to be short-, and the music accompanying them. Some of those videos are still quite vivid in my memory (a video which ended with a car taking a bend, other showing several skids and stuff).

The menus were very smart, as the author of the video says, and very well presented. When I watched them again in the video is was like "wow,.., I quite remember that!".

It was one of those games that made you feel you had a machine that was at a different level, and very proud to own a capable PC.

I spent countless hours playing it, it was just a pleasure to drive and play, the point to point tracks were my favourite.

The graphics and art style were so great that I loved the autumn valley, the city graphics of the first track by default, the hot air balloons of the coastal track and the long distance drawing of the tracks, the alpine feel of certain track...etc etc

I knew every bed and how to approach them, especially with my favourite cars, the Toyota Supra and the Dodge Viper RT-10, which I always loved as a car I dreamt to have irl ever since --it never happened, but that car was so beautiful in my eyes..

All in all, it is a game that I felt so proud and fortunate to have played. My Pentium 100 and its 32MB of RAM PC at the time handled the game really well. Save for the secret track, which had some extra lights and it was a nocturnal track, where my PC seemed to crawl a little -framerate wise,but playable- the rest of them ran smoothly.

Didn't know the game had a Japanese port. Versions wise, I am with the author of the video, the PC version was superior -save the limited palette of colours-, like a back to the future, and I was pretty happy to experience this game to the max.

Haha! I knew it!! I knew that you would go woo-woo with that article/video (and that you would post something about it here).

 

[Arwin]

MT-32 should have been amazing for its time - it cost the equivalent of $1500!

If you bought it at launch ... I think I bought one second hand together with a friend. Still wasn't exactly cheap of course. I probably still owe him money for it seeing as I am the one who's had it these last ... 25 years or so?

Much later I bought an XV-5050. Also liked it a lot. But today, GarageBand on an iPad beats all of them in terms of being a fantastic package. Man that software is sooo nice, and for the value you get for 5 euros, you basically get an iPad for free and it still feels like a crazy good deal. If the iPad became the worst supported platform ever and it only had GarageBand, I'd still own one (unless of course something as good came out on the other platforms, but so far I don't think so). The touch interfaced digital instruments it has, all the amps etc. it's just amazing.

 

[Cyan]

If you bought it at launch ... I think I bought one second hand together with a friend. Still wasn't exactly cheap of course. I probably still owe him money for it seeing as I am the one who's had it these last ... 25 years or so?

Much later I bought an XV-5050. Also liked it a lot. But today, GarageBand on an iPad beats all of them in terms of being a fantastic package. Man that software is sooo nice, and for the value you get for 5 euros, you basically get an iPad for free and it still feels like a crazy good deal. If the iPad became the worst supported platform ever and it only had GarageBand, I'd still own one (unless of course something as good came out on the other platforms, but so far I don't think so). The touch interfaced digital instruments it has, all the amps etc. it's just amazing.

The current Roland Integra has been my dream in that regard since 3-4 years ago. But I don't have the money to buy it without going bankrupt. Additionally, it features General MIDI 2 sounds, which is really cool.

Neo Geo classics come to the Xbox One. World Heroes and Neo Turf Masters for now.

https://www.neowin.net/news/neo-geo-classics-arrive-to-the-xbox-one

 

[Nesh]

Neo Geo was such an awesome console. It is a shame that some extremely talented developers like SNK as well as Sega went down the drain for reasons other than the quality of their games and talent.
These guys should have been as big as Capcom today

 

[Cyan]

Neo Geo was such an awesome console. It is a shame that some extremely talented developers like SNK as well as Sega went down the drain for reasons other than the quality of their games and talent.
These guys should have been as big as Capcom today

I have a feeling there will never be another Neo Geo, power wise. It was ahead of its time. Heck, probably there will never be another X360, which was also ahead of its time. As for SNK, maybe it was a matter of decisions, they were a cult and while things have changed, they aren't forgotten because of their rich history.

I wonder how the Neo Geo can run a game like this (look at the Stage 2 background at the 1:53 mark):

On another note, I recently discovered that the largest Megadrive cartridges ever were 4MB (32Mb) in size, and the largest SNES cartridge ever was Tengai Makyou, 9MB (72Mb).

 

[bunge]

On another note, I recently discovered that the largest Megadrive cartridges ever were 4MB (32Mb) in size, and the largest SNES cartridge ever was Tengai Makyou, 9MB (72Mb).

I think Pier Solar might be the biggest.

 

[TheWretched]

I have a feeling there will never be another Neo Geo, power wise. It was ahead of its time. Heck, probably there will never be another X360, which was also ahead of its time. As for SNK, maybe it was a matter of decisions, they were a cult and while things have changed, they aren't forgotten because of their rich history.

I wonder how the Neo Geo can run a game like this (look at the Stage 2 background at the 1:53 mark):

On another note, I recently discovered that the largest Megadrive cartridges ever were 4MB (32Mb) in size, and the largest SNES cartridge ever was Tengai Makyou, 9MB (72Mb).

Unsure about the SNES, but the biggest licenced retail MD game was Super Street Fighter 2 at 5MB. It used bank switching, though.
But theoretically, all MDs had the ability to address 16MB without it (if no SCD vor 32x were connected, AS they were mapped into the same address space). There are romhacks with up to 12MB available (Ultimate Mortal Kombat Trilogy) that can run in actual Hardware.

 

[Cyan]

I think Pier Solar might be the biggest.

do you mean on the Megadrive? never heard of Pier Solar for SNES

Unsure about the SNES, but the biggest licenced retail MD game was Super Street Fighter 2 at 5MB. It used bank switching, though.
But theoretically, all MDs had the ability to address 16MB without it (if no SCD vor 32x were connected, AS they were mapped into the same address space). There are romhacks with up to 12MB available (Ultimate Mortal Kombat Trilogy) that can run in actual Hardware.

I might look into them. I recently found some impressive games that came out for the Game Gear that can be run on the Megadrive or Master System, which used much less colours than the Game Gear so the roms were updated to run on less capable hardware, like the MD and MS -compared to the Game Gear.

And I mean games like Samurai Shodown and Fatal Fury Special, which I didn't know that came out for the Game Gear. The Game Gear received games that the other two didn't, so the games were compatible with Master System if you changed the colour palette of the roms:

http://www.smspower.org/Hacks/GameGearToMasterSystem

 

[Cyan]

Was this sarcasm?

actually no. You mentioned Pier Solar and I wasn't sure whether you pointed that out in relation to which was the SNES or the Megadrive largest cartridge yet. I can recall the name of that game from recent times but wasn't sure if it came out for the Megadrive or the SNES, although I remember it described as a Megadrive game.

I don't really see anything the Xbox can do that the gamecube can't, while the gamecube can do things Xbox can't ; anything Xbox can do with programmable shaders gamecube can do through the tev system, and GC just had a better cpu and more memory bandwidth. Its gpu was also better at polygons. Xbox's biggest on paper advantage is the memory amount, but because of the gamecube's eDRAM in practice both consoles are *very* close in terms of usable memory. Plus those mini discs allowed for blazing fast loading, faster than Xbox even with its HDD.

They are fairly close. In terms of which console it was easier to extract performance from, the Xbox definitely wins that category.

The biggest reason GC impresses me the most is because it does all that at a fraction of the size and power usage of the Xbox. I wonder how Nintendo could've done against the 360 if they went all out power wise, not that I don't think it was the right move to drop out of the technical arms race, though the Wii could've been a bit stronger.

yes, GameCube has a great CPU, and fast memory. Tha's a plus compared to the Xbox. From its 32 megs of memory, 8 of them werre in "auxillary" memory which is not as fast (traditionally used for disc-caching and audio iirc), so memory wise the Xbox had the advantage. The GCN also had the spectacular TEV unit which can do some incredible multi-texture effects.

I had both the Xbox (2004, Halo 2 launch date) and the GC (months later) and couldn't be happier at the time, playing F-Zero on the GC and other great Nintendo games, and some Xbox exclusive games that are amongst my favourite on any console to date, like PGR2.

The additional memory though and the GPU, made the Xbox slightly more capable in my eyes.

When Doom3 and HalfLife2 showed up on the Xbox people did see people really flexing its power.

 

[Cyan]

popping was a huge problem on playstation/saturn at the time, i was very impressed by the draw distance in need for speed, but the drawback was the point of view was fixed, you could not turn over, or rotate the view.

back into the original The Need for Speed discussion, dunno about the PS and Saturn ports, but the 3DO version, the original, could be easily fixed with a faster CPU as demonstrated by current emulators.

The problem of the 3DO is that the processor was very slow. With the emulators you can see how much better things are with a slightly higher clock speed, only upclock it from 12MHz to about 20 MHz and NFS goes from choppy to smooth as silk, even infamous ports like the one of Doom, that can perfectly run at less than 10 fps on any moment that gets a little loaded, run perfect with a little more frequency.

 

[function]

On another note, I recently discovered that the largest Megadrive cartridges ever were 4MB (32Mb) in size, and the largest SNES cartridge ever was Tengai Makyou, 9MB (72Mb).

Super Street Fighter 2 on MD was 40 mb iirc, Pier Solar was 64 mb. MD development dwindled after 1994, while SNES development continued for a couple more years in earnest, allowing ROM chips sizes to increase.

 

[milk]

back into the original The Need for Speed discussion, dunno about the PS and Saturn ports, but the 3DO version, the original, could be easily fixed with a faster CPU as demonstrated by current emulators.

The problem of the 3DO is that the processor was very slow. With the emulators you can see how much better things are with a slightly higher clock speed, only upclock it from 12MHz to about 20 MHz and NFS goes from choppy to smooth as silk, even infamous ports like the one of Doom, that can perfectly run at less than 10 fps on any moment that gets a little loaded, run perfect with a little more frequency.

So you could say that, the 3DO's processor was in... *puts on sunglasses* ...in need for speed.

 

[function]

So you could say that, the 3DO's processor was in... *puts on sunglasses* ...in need for speed.

Yeeeaaaaaaaahhhh!

 

[Cyan]

yet another Neo Geo classic on the ps and xobx store. Metal Slug this time.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/ACA-NEOGEO-METAL-SLUG/C5DB629HCWPK#
xbox version is 226 "megs"

 

[Cyan]

Analogue Nt Mini, new retro console starting at 449$. Quite an unforeseen, unexpected article tbh, it's the first time I read about this device.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-analogue-nt-mini-review