I'd avoid importing from anywhere at the minute while the Covid19 is affecting things. I've received emails from JP ebay sellers about arrangements for items caught in mid delivery when lockdown hit. I was lucky as the few games I had ordered at the time had arrived.

I'd stick with UK sellers for the time being.

I fancy one myself but it's a bit of a minefield with a lot of cheap knock offs about.

Seems like a minefield that's going to require a fair amount of research, thanks.

Dumb question the Pandoras box is the two stick setup (erics video) with ROMs preloaded and they are arcade roms? Not home system roms?

Thought of having one is tempting...

Proper ones have the arcade ROMS.

I'd rather have 50 good ones done right than 1000 done with half baked emulation and wrong sounds.

Hopefully they're stocked to the gills with scrolling beat em ups.

The proper one (I think) has a usb output so you could simply ignore the internal emulation and use it as a controller for existing emu methods as well

Nice.

Eric wrote:

Cheers for that davy I'll take a look at 2.
If you have the time this guy goes through all 960 games:



Note they are ordered by game category so vs fighters first, scrolling beat em ups, shmps and puzzlers etc.

If you have less time this guy just flicks through the 96 pages of games so you can pause on the ones that interest you. This is also my actual system although I did upgrade to sanwa sticks:



Overall I'm pretty happy with it. The scan line generator and smoothing filter options are horrible so I turn those off and stick it through my OSSC scan line generator which gives a lovely effect. For less than £100 I'm pretty happy tbh.

Vs fighters dont interest me. Scrolling fighters however though. Plus the shooters and the various bobble bubble like games ala snow bros etc. I want one of these. Then i just need to have a friend to play these with

Didnt see Ninja Baseball Bat Man on the list. Thats a fun scrolling beat em up.

OK playing through davys recommendations and In The Hunt is glorious. It must have been a real head turner in 1993, can't believe I've never heard of it before. Has a 2 player mode too so will try and get my son involved and one I'll definitely revisit.

UN squadron plays nicely and seems decent although things get a bit busy and you can lose your ship in the explosions.

Surprise of the night went to a game called Esp Ra.De which I have never heard of before but noted it was made by Cave which is usually a good sign. Released in 98 it plays really nicely and probably the pick of the lot for me. Its bullet hell sort of stuff but with unlimited continues that doesn't phase me. Don't think I'll be 1ccing it though.

In the Hunt is the sort of game you could never use magazines of the day to accurately get a bead on in terms of quality.   Pretty sure the Saturn version received scores in the region of 55%, but I presume it was a decent port (of a decent game).

Retroking playing Streetfighter: The Movie recently made me think of this - perception of possibly decent or half-decent games that were skewed by generation jumps, because simplistic experiences weren't in demand vs pushing things forward.  Flicky on MD, Gunner's Heaven on Playstation, something like Keio Flying Squadron 2 on Saturn perhaps, or even late-gen efforts on older consoles like, I dunno, Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel not offering the bells and whistles required to make a splash in 1994.  Golden Axe: The Duel was probably a better game than Toshinden, but most of us played the 3D fighter instead, right? 

Story of Thor 2 on Saturn is a near-forgotten Sega sequel, I had it and it was good, but it barely made a ripple at the time, presumably because it wasn't chucking polygons around.

It's a really good point Moot. I was randomly interviewed once at Meadowhall arcade by Arcade magazine probably in 1998 and I bemoaned that 2D fighter reviews were getting slighted however good they were because they weren't in 3D.

They printed it in the mag (and my question does come across as completely random) but responded with a dismissive one word answer and moved on to the next question.

Eric wrote:

It's a really good point Moot. I was randomly interviewed once at Meadowhall arcade by Arcade magazine probably in 1998 and I bemoaned that 2D fighter reviews were getting slighted however good they were because they weren't in 3D. They printed it in the mag (and my question does come across as completely random) but responded with a dismissive one word answer and moved on to the next question.

Neil West was so eager to steer the ship north the magazine went south.

What was the one word answer btw?

Esp.Ra.De is great, played it a fair bit on Mame at Uni, that and Total Carnage were my go to's for a fun blast.

Eric wrote:

I'll dig it out but sure it was 'ok'

The Maximum lads wouldn't have mugged you off like that.