Digital Foundry Retro Discussion [2018 - 2020]

these DF Retro videos lead me to a few questions..

Does John have ALL the original machines at home? Is he the guy playing -for instance- the DOS version with a 4 button gamepad? (back then in the late 90s from what I remember, playing with controllers meant using the MIDI port and calibration was a hit and a miss)

When does he use emulators and when he does not? I am sure he uses emulators for the most obscure ports, but when the gameplay stops during the morphing of the final boss, is it perfect emulation or the original machine? I am curious....
 
these DF Retro videos lead me to a few questions..

Does John have ALL the original machines at home? Is he the guy playing -for instance- the DOS version with a 4 button gamepad? (back then in the late 90s from what I remember, playing with controllers meant using the MIDI port and calibration was a hit and a miss)

When does he use emulators and when he does not? I am sure he uses emulators for the most obscure ports, but when the gameplay stops during the morphing of the final boss, is it perfect emulation or the original machine? I am curious....

For Sega CD I'm 99% sure he's playing on original hardware. He has a pretty big collection, but really obscure stuff is probably emulated (like he mentioned for the lynx homebrew port).

And it's actually a fun experiment to go back on compare these ports. I did it a few years ago, albeit emulated. The snes version looks a bit better better and has more sound effects, but the music is pretty muffled and he's not exaggerating about the input lag either. The genesis version is way more responsive.
 
wow so there is a homebrew lynx version, i still have my Lynx, i tried the rom on the pocket go V2, at the time i was dreaming of a lynx version, had bought the gamegear version, that homebrew lynx one is definitly superior.
 
Actually cyan, I just got to the part with dos footage. That's definitely him, he was talking about that exact CRT in other recent videos.
 
I believe from earlier videos he will be on real hardware unless he says otherwise.

He does have a huge collection, and I suspect many friends who can loan him a game for these videos, also as he is selecting the titles it's probably thoes he has an interest in and therefore owns.

Also remember many systems have flash carts or similar, so it would be possible to play on real hardware with a rom for homebrew, John specifically mentions this on the lynx portion.
 
these DF Retro videos lead me to a few questions..

Does John have ALL the original machines at home? Is he the guy playing -for instance- the DOS version with a 4 button gamepad? (back then in the late 90s from what I remember, playing with controllers meant using the MIDI port and calibration was a hit and a miss)

When does he use emulators and when he does not? I am sure he uses emulators for the most obscure ports, but when the gameplay stops during the morphing of the final boss, is it perfect emulation or the original machine? I am curious....
John is really open in the vids when he uses emulation or not. And having been to his place rather often (and if you honestly just look at the background in his videos), yeah he has tons of original hardware and carts. Much more than he even knows what to do with I imagine.
 
And it's actually a fun experiment to go back on compare these ports. I did it a few years ago, albeit emulated. The snes version looks a bit better better and has more sound effects, but the music is pretty muffled and he's not exaggerating about the input lag either. The genesis version is way more responsive.
The thing with the SNES version isn't just input lag, there are a bunch of gameplay quirks that don't play right. Not the least of which are how ranged attacks are handled when 2 are fired at the same time. In Street Fighter games, most ranged attacks will cancel another ranged attack, so 2 fireballs thrown at each other won't hit the players. In MK, this is not true, so if Kano throws his knife when Sub Zero throws his ice, they pass through each other and strike the players. In this case, Sub Zero would take some damage from the knife but Kano would be frozen, maybe long enough to eat an uppercut or combo. In the SNES version, ranged attacks pass through each other but whatever attack lands first cancels the other one, so if Kano's knife lands before Sub Zero's ice, the ice disappears and Kano is never frozen.

When I was younger I only had a SNES and I thought that version was great. I played the Genesis version a little at a friends house and I wasn't immediately sold on it being better, probably because I was definitely a Nintendo kid, obsessed with graphics, and he only had 3 button controllers. A little while after that I bought a Sega CD (and a genesis) and picked up MK on Sega CD because it was on clearance. My immediate thought was that it was just the Genesis version with better music and FMV. It wasn't until I played them side by side that I realized how much better the CD version was, and I think most magazine reviews missed it as well. I'll second John's opinion that it's the best console port of the original game, at least up until the emulated versions on more modern hardware. I've always been curious how a Sega CD version of MK2 would have turned out. The sprite animation on the Genesis version was already better than SNES, so the CD version could have added some better backgrounds with more elements, better music and a better pit fatality with proper scaling.
 
John is really open in the vids when he uses emulation or not. And having been to his place rather often (and if you honestly just look at the background in his videos), yeah he has tons of original hardware and carts. Much more than he even knows what to do with I imagine.
ah okay. I thought some of the material was taken from other sources -which could be fine-, you very rarely get to see John's face in the videos.

This game also was superior on the Megadrive btw.

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I would assume the arcade version is emulated, of does Linneman has an actual arcade unit?
he mentioned MAME in the video so I think it is.
 
John is really open in the vids when he uses emulation or not. And having been to his place rather often (and if you honestly just look at the background in his videos), yeah he has tons of original hardware and carts. Much more than he even knows what to do with I imagine.
yup, he keeps up with the times so I think he doesnt have much time to replay those games. Emulation is your friend. It can be more pure having the originals, but the companies and developers who made those games aren't going to get a dime from them anymore, so you aren't doing anything bad for downloading a rom of an old game you paid for in the past.
 
Has DF ever took the time to analyse the capabilities of the 3DO and the unreleased M2?
The 3D0 was never exploited fully and we never got a proper comparison with the PS and the Saturn.
The M2 promised to be a next gen console with CG like capabilities but nothing shown that was from the actual hardware demonstrated anything next gen.
The PS1 had better and more impressive games and tech demos years before.
 
There were some M2 games released in the arcades and they looked much better than PS1 games. From my recollection* they looked on par with Sega Model 2 games.

*My memory is a bit hazy and I could be wrong about the hardware on games I saw.
 
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