Retro Gaming - The Bear and Badger

Moot_Geeza

Wild Guns would be good for the collection but would also be ripe for an eventual culling due to the current gen spruce up. Great game though.

davyK

Splendid collection. Re Streetfighter I'd keep Turbo and ditch the rest.

mk64

Tiny rooms and rock n roll racing are staple SNES games. Surprised you sold them!

ChopperByrne

Alpha 2 on SNES is valuable. Don't do what I did. Keep it.

retroking1981

mk64 wrote:

Tiny rooms and rock n roll racing are staple SNES games. Surprised you sold them!

Yeah, I get what your saying, but tbh I just don't like them enough to keep them. If my Tiny Toons box was in good condition it might have been a different story though. The tattyness made it easier to sell.

ChopperByrne wrote:

Alpha 2 on SNES is valuable. Don't do what I did. Keep it.

Yep, that along with Demon's Crest are valuable ones in the collection that make them harder to sell. Then again I'd swap Demon's Crest for Wild Guns all day long.

hunk

Keep the streetfighters!
Alpha 2 is probably worth a small fortune due to rarity.

Blue Swirl

Eric wrote:

I know we all love the Dreamcast in here, this guy has made me reasonably jealous: http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=43479 One to add to your console curio list Swirl The Dreamcast Control Unit. Never heard of one before but basically one that was made for internet cafés.

That is indeed a collection for the ages. I had a quick dig around online for information about the Dreamcast Control Unit, and it is indeed a machine produced for internet cafes. Apparently only one game ever got released for it, called Hundred Swords.

Dreamcast Junkyard article.

What blows my mind about his collection is the shit I'd never even heard of, beyond the Control Unit. Official cases for the Dreamcast? Wut? Official see-through keyboard? Double wut. DC Gamermate stick that works with the Saturn as well? 3*wut.

I love the Guilty Gear disc that's bizarrely shaped. A great collectible but I'd be afraid to play it for fear of borking the DC's disc drive.

There's one area that I know of that he could look into next, seeing as he has the magazines/homebrew releases/Japanese releases thing locked down: white label releases. You can pick up the review copies sent out to magazines on ebay for not unreasonable sums. The only problem AFAIK is that it's potentially a rabbit hole, as I don't think it's known how many games got white label versions and how many copies of each were made.

davyK wrote:

That copy might have had Pajitniov's autograph on it.

Entirely possible.

hunk

Gunstar Heroes (Megadrive)

Treasure's '93 megadrive debut and what a debut it is. The best side scrolling action shooter on the system and arguably the best of the 16-bit era. Yes, that includes the likes of Super Contra and Metal Slug which is no mean feat.

While the audio is a bit generic, the visuals are wonderful. The pixel art stands the test of time even if the animations aren't as lavish as those found in something as say, Metal Slug. Good use of colour too, everything pops of the screen in a delightful manner. And explosions, many explosions and things that go boom. Treasure also did some wonderful scaling fx, an ability the md shouldn't be capable of but somehow pulls off effortlessly.

But the best thing about GH is it's weapons system. You can pick up 2 types of weapon at any one time and combine them for an even more powerful one. My personal preference was the homing laser, a bit overpowered but definitely the most entertaining one. I also like how there's a healthbar now instead of the traditional 'you die after 1 hit'. Being hit doesn't take you out of the game like it does with Super Contra or Metal Slug which makes the gameplay flow that much better.

Variety in levels and design of bosses is also very well done. You'll have plenty of opportunity to hone your skills and master the different weapon combinations. Game is short if you play on normal tho: you can breeze through it in less than 2 hours. The weapons system and experimenting with it should keep things from getting stale in the long run.

Great little shooter.

8 swirly homing lazers out of 10

Eric

Hunk, my man. My favourite ever game, partly nostalgia based but mainly as it still plays so well today.

Moot_Geeza

I prefer Rocket Knight Adventures myself, if that squeezes into the side scrolling action shooter category, but I played through Gunstar a couple of years ago on 3DS and it holds up well. Very good game, extra points for a co-op mode that works (if both players know what they're doing).

hunk

Gunstar Heroes is a great game, credit where credit's due. Rocket Knight's another good title. Might be the next retro game to put my teeth into.

Moot_Geeza

Ever played through Adventures of Batman & Robin on MD? I mention it every year or so, but it's pretty good to run through with save states and probably outstrips Gunstar for pushing-the-limits gwaffix. Was one of those exclusives the mags overrated at the time because there was a great game tucked behind the preposterous (and ruinous) difficulty level. Also one of those rare 'they wanted to give it 91% but knew people would only swallow an 87%, when the game only really deserved a 78% but played as a retro title leniently reviewed as one might in 1994 it's a solid 83%' games.

Paul the sparky

Just checking on a rewire this morning and found this thing. Might give someone here a nostalgia twinge.

The game was Harvey Headbanger or something.

ChopperByrne

Love it.

My first computer.

Only ever used for gaming, naturally.

Eric

You would have thought it would have been a nightmare carpeting over that chunk!

My nextdoor neighbour had one with a disk drive and a green screen. Used to love Gryzor on it which I think was a variant of Contra.

ChopperByrne

Yeah Gryzor was a Contra port.

I had the green screen.

davyK

I had the green screen version too.

Got a 464 after my Oric-1 died.

I wrote quite a few simple games in BASIC on it - submitted a Poker Machine sim that I thought was quite good to a magazine but they never used it

I even borrowed a mate's colour screen to make sure it looked good in colour.

Leaderboard, JSW2, Gauntlet, Bubble Bobble, Chuckie Egg, Cybernator 2, Stormlord, Bombjack and Thrust are among my best memories.

poprock

Were there any big Amstrad exclusives? I’m struggling to think of anything that wasn’t a Spectrum/C64 port.

Unlikely

CPC 464 was also my first computer. I had the colour monitor because I am better than you. Also had the DMP4000 printer, or "Dumpy" as my mum called it.

davyK

Some of the 464 versions were superior when the graphics were redone for the 464 instead of just ported but can't think of any exclusives.

Eric

Didn't they have their own software range called amsoft or did they just do ports? I can visualise their white string like logo now.

ChopperByrne

Amstrad had Roland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_(game_character)

davyK

They were all a bit shit though.

Unlikely

I liked Roland on the Ropes. Had Roland in the Caves too but I don't remember what it was like to play.

davyK

Roland in the Caves was a remake of a thing called Bug-a-boo on the C64. Was cripplingly tough - you had to jump from level to level to escape an underground cave while being chased by a pteradactyl.

Never played On The Ropes much as the flickery graphics put me off.

poprock

Bugaboo The Flea was a Spectrum game originally. Bit of a classic, with rave reviews across the board.

davyK

Ah - thought it was c64 originally. It was poor on the 464 but I kept playing it. Escaped the cave a few times but it was just the same cave over and over in that version.

There was a battle flight game I had on 464 called ATF (advanced tactical fighter) that was rather good. You had a world map and you picked targets a la Desert Strike. Looked and played quite well but it was probably multi-plat.

Also liked a game called Infiltrator that was a 2 stage thing - you had a 1st person helicopter flight and then a 3rd person search-em-up in a camp once you landed. Think that was multi-plat too.

Also played Knightlore on the 464.

regmcfly

Elm has just handed me a mega drive and sonic 1-2 for my birthday. This is incredible but it's opened the floodgates. I need streets of rage but is there anything else that is essential?

Unlikely

!!!!!!!

ChopperByrne

My Mega Drive Essentials

Streets of Rage II
Golden Axe
Sonic 3 and Knuckles
Road Rash II
Rocket Knight Adventures
Revenge of Shinobi
Gunstar Heroes
Micro Machines 2: Turbo Tournament
Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition
Desert Strike
NBA Jam
Contra Hard Corps
Castlevania Bloodlines
Phantasy Star IV
Story of Thor
Rambo III
Super Hang-On

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories