The UKFF Retro Gaming Thread

[RedTwoster]

I home-brewed my 3DS and Wii U, and while I'd been absolutely terrified that I'd brick one or both of them (particularly the 3DS, which has the ambassador programme games on it), it ended up being surprisingly easy. 

The Wii U now has access to most of its online features again courtesy of Pretendo, which is great. I've not had issues as of yet finding players in online games - it seems to be relatively well used. Although with it being a more hardcore audience of gamers, prepare to get trounced in any game you try. 

The 3DS is even better as you can mod it to play Virtual Boy games in full 3D. I actually own a Virtual Boy, and I have to say, it's the inferior way of playing these titles. 

You can also mod the new 3DS so that its control stick has full 360 control in DS games - this is particularly good for Super Mario 64 DS, and makes it play much, much better. For me, it was already the superior version of the game - although the controls held it back slightly. With this mod, that barrier is completely gone, and it becomes an absolute delight to play, I love it. 

[FLips]

My AliExpress copies of Final Fantasy VI and Mega Man & Bass arrived to a mixed reaction.

The cartridges are the real deal, they feel legit in shape and weight. The labels are that fake glossy look you always get which I expected. Final Fantasy VI's label is fine, looks legit design wise. Mega Man's is poor and not what was advertised on the listing ,though it does say the label may change without notice it was still disappointing. The issue is the image they used is crap. A zoomed in picture of the main characters, and doesn't even have the name of the game on the label. I know I can't complain too much for £7 but still.

The main issues with them both are that they never got PAL releases on SNES, so the roms used are a bit iffy. Mega Man uses a partly translated version of the Japanese ROM. After using Google Translate to figure out the menus it was fine as they were still in Japanese, but the in-game text was translated English and it was maybe not as accurate as you'd hope.

The actual game runs, saves and loads fine though. It's a very interesting outlier in the Mega Man series. It came out exclusively in Japan in 1998, after the release of Mega Man 8 on the PS1 and Sega Saturn. It's a sequel to that, reusing assets like common enemies and some bosses, but the level design, other bosses and music is all original. Someone will correct me but I'm not sure I know any other sequels that only came out on the previous generation of consoles.
It looks like 8, sounds like 8 but with a SNES soundfont and plays like 8. Considering that's one of my favourite entries I'm pretty pleased with it, even if I can't beat the first level I tried.

Final Fantasy VI has somewhat disappointed me. It got a NA release back in the day so my expectation was an NTSC copy formatted for PAL but instead it's the Japanese version with the RPGOne Patch on it, so basically a fan translated version which by the accounts I read up on is good but with iffy translation here and there. The main bugbear is that they kept the Japanese tradition of not showing the name of who's talking in the text boxes, and all the font has been changed to a smaller neater text box and font. It looks nice, almost like a HD version, but it's not what I wanted or expected.
That being said the in-game sprites, gameplay and music has been left untouched and it looks beautiful running on original hardware on the little CRT.

Still to come are Chrono Trigger and Earthbound, which might suffer some of the same fates as these two with translated versions. Turtles in Time and Castlevania will just be the legit versions you would imagine though as they both got PAL releases.

Edited August 2 by FLips

[Jesse]

I don't know if this has come up before, but for the emulator-users among us https://retroachievements.org/ is a community-driven website that lets you hook up achievement sets to retro games. They have standard achievement sets for most games, and then subset ones for specific challenge runs (speedruns, low percent, etc.)

A neat way to re-experience some old games, and they support most of the major emulators so it's easy to get up and running.

[FLips]

My other 4 AliExpress SNES games arrived today. Castlevania Vampire's Kiss (otherwise known as Dracula X), Earthbound, Chrono Trigger and Turtles in Time. Much better outcome this time with my only flaw with any of them being the Castlevania cartridge is a little askew so there's a bit of a wonky lip on the top of it. Other than that, no complaints at all. They all have really nice labels and professional looking images.

I've had a quick go of them to make sure there's no weirdness like there was with Final Fantasy VI and doing so also made me realise what the issue with VI was. Firstly, all of them are spot on. Chrono and Earthbound look to be the NTSC versions formatted for PAL which is the best outcome for both. I probably don't need to tell you they both look stunning on the CRT as well.
Turtles and Castlevania both got PAL releases so they're just standard. Turtles is such fun, I couldn't help myself playing a couple of levels just trying it out and my mate is coming over tomorrow to have a go.

The issue with Final Fantasy VI is so obvious in hindsight. The game never got a PAL release but got released in the NTSC region but as Final Fantasy III. This means when I've ordered specifically a copy of Final Fantasy VI it was never going to be the NTSC version, it had to be the Japanese version which means fan patched or nothing.
So I've ordered a copy of Final Fantasy III as after a little look into it, that should guarantee me the NTSC version of VI. We'll see but I feel optimistic.

Edited August 3 by FLips

[Jazzy G]

Turtles In Time is heaps of fun. Usually one if my go to games when I head to Arcade Club in Bury. I have it on the Cowabunga Collection on Switch, but there's something about you and three mates stomping through one of those games in an arcade that's so good. Or finding 5 mates to trot through the Konami X-Men game with. 

[Scratch]

I was disappointed to learn there was no console Olympics game this year so did a bit of research around what is considered a good game from years gone by. Many write ups were praising Beijing 2008 so I downloaded it for the PS3 and it’s great. Loads of events, you can button mash or waggle the stick and there are some nice variations on setting the angle in events like the javelin. If you’re caught up in Paris 2024, I can recommend it.

[Jazzy G]

I think the most recent one was some weird Sega game for the Tokyo games? It went a bit off the rails in places. I have fond memories of playing International Track & Field on the original PlayStation. 

[TibBo]

@FLips I’m sure I can design you a 100% accurate version of the original label if you have got any way of getting it printed matey?

[FLips]

9 hours ago, TibBo said:

@FLips I’m sure I can design you a 100% accurate version of the original label if you have got any way of getting it printed matey?

That's very generous but I'd have no way to print it. Besides, it's not that big a deal.

Me and my mate finished Castlevania: Vampire's Kiss and Turtles in Time the other day.

Castlevania is a little harder than the other classic ones but mostly due to the levels nearly all containing pits and medusa heads. It has no chill at all. Richter also has a weird floaty jump with fixed momentum like in Super Ghouls n Ghosts. A little practice though and we made our way through fairly quickly. The final boss even has death pits which is a new one, but thankfully both phases have an easy pattern once you learn them.
It's not the nicest looking Castlevania due to it being a remade port, and the music is fairly decent but outside of Stage 1 and the remixes of classic songs there's not much to write home about. Plenty of replayability though due to two levels having alternate exits and being able to save two prisoners to get a different ending with different bosses.

Turtles in Time is loads of fun. Banging soundtrack, classic beat em up gameplay on par with other top names like Streets of Rage and The Simpsons. We breezed through it on Easy mode fairly unscathed until the last few levels and got met with the old "try it on Normal" ending and try it on normal we will. What a game.

My copy of Final Fantasy III/VI should be arriving in the next couple of days so will start that as my next big retro game. I haven't played it for over a decade and the first and only time I did play it I never finished it because my party got split up in the endgame and all my side characters were too weak.

I've also ordered a HDMI to Scart adapter so I can plug a firestick (and modern consoles if I never needed/wanted to do that) into my CRTs. My plan with the firestick is to use it to watch old wrestling/baseball/movies/tv shows on, in 480p if I can. It might be a success, it might not. The thing only cost me a tenner though so no harm no foul.

[hallicks]

23 hours ago, FLips said:

I've also ordered a HDMI to Scart adapter

I think this might be the pinnacle of human technological invention.

23 hours ago, FLips said:

My plan with the firestick is to use it to watch old wrestling/baseball/movies/tv shows on, in 480p if I can.

Your commitment to authenticity truly warms my heart. If I had a spare 35mm projector, I’d definitely be sending it to you. 

[FLips]

2 hours ago, hallicks said:

I think this might be the pinnacle of human technological invention.

Your commitment to authenticity truly warms my heart. If I had a spare 35mm projector, I’d definitely be sending it to you. 

You don't even know the half of it.

The converter came and it works absolutely spot on. Aside from using two USB plugs (one for the firestick, one for the converter) it's plug and play. Easy peasy.

The obvious issue I had was the 4K Firestick looks tiny on the CRT. I did have it on the 14" one but realised I'd want to be playing my SNES on that so moved it to the 24". In-app videos are absolutely fine, it's just the text on the menus and things, not a major issue at all now I have everything downloaded. The lowest the resolution went was 720p but it turns out Firesticks have a secret cheat menu where if you hold Up and Rewind for 10 seconds, it begins to auto-scroll through hidden resolutions so I did that and worked it down to 480p 60hz.

It's very unusual because the first thing I put on Youtube on it was the 5 hour Weather Channel music, which is all taped off VHS, possibly with some filters. Due to it now being on a CRT and displaying at 480p the filters and quality and everything sort of vanish so it just looks like it's modern. I called my wife in to see and she took one look and went "No I'm not doing this. No." and walked out and went downstairs.
Same thing happened when I put the World Series 2000 on which again looks to be from a VHS because while it didn't look like MLB Network quality or anything, was significantly upgraded from me downgrading it.

I'll tell you what looked amazing though...

Edited August 6 by FLips

[FLips]

My new copy of Final Fantasy III/VI came and it's exactly what I was after. The proper ROM file, no fan mods or hacks, everything in it's right place including proper text boxes and "Vicks" and Wedge rather than Biggs and Wedge.

The last time I played this game was to my knowledge around 2012 before I moved out of my parents' house for Uni. From my one playthrough of it all those years ago, I put it firmly in my Top 3 Final Fantasy games but with time and me playing/replaying other games in the series it's still in the Top 5 but behind IX, X, XII Zodiac and VII so I'm exciting to see what I think of it with a fresh playthrough on original hardware.

Cartridge is tidy too. I think I prefer the label to III over VI.

That being said if anyone wants my copy of VI for free then shoot me a message. As I've said in here it's perfectly playable and probably ideal for someone who wants to play a translated copy of the Japanese original over a fully localised version with all the censorship and changes that came with it.

 

It's somewhat cheating, but the reliability and affordability of the knock-off carts is too much to pass up now I'm in that stage of SNES collecting where I have all the big name legitimate games on proper cartridges. Zelda, Mario, Super Metroid, etc. So now I'm collecting rarities or games never released here, I really don't mind cramming my collection full of reproductions.

Next on the list to get from there are games that if I wanted to, I could probably get the real deal but they're ones I would rarely play and just want for nostalgia reasons or they're difficult and I know I can't even do them to begin with so I'm reluctant to lay down £30-60 on them.

I have my eyes on:

• Mega Man X (all SNES entries)
• Mega Man 7
• Clay Fighter 2: Judgement Clay
• Super Punch Out (might get this one legit)
• Super Street Fighter II (going to look to see if there's fan hacks of this with a complete roster and Hyper gameplay)
• ActRaiser
• Zombies Ate My Neighbours
• Final Fantasy IV

Some of them depending on price I might get legit but at this stage I'm not particularly bothered. My main aim is playing them on OG hardware. I'm also open to suggestions and recommendations, though sadly I can't get Super Mario RPG and a couple of other games that use special chips as there's no way to replicate them in physical formats.

Edited August 10 by FLips

[Jazzy G]

Super Street Fighter 2 does have the full roster, or do you mean seeing whether somebody has managed to make it into/homebrew a version of Super Turbo? Do you have the SNES version of Alpha 2? That's a really impressive port. I got it on my 3DS from the virtual console store. 

Can you not play the ROMs of games that need extra chips through a flashcart? 

[FLips]

3 hours ago, Jazzy G said:

Super Street Fighter 2 does have the full roster, or do you mean seeing whether somebody has managed to make it into/homebrew a version of Super Turbo? Do you have the SNES version of Alpha 2? That's a really impressive port. I got it on my 3DS from the virtual console store. 

Can you not play the ROMs of games that need extra chips through a flashcart? 

Yeah sorry there's so many SFIIs I confuse them. I basically want the full roster but with the speed of Turbo. For me, both updated console versions of SFII are disappointing. You either get the better gameplay and weaker roster or the better roster and duller gameplay. If there's a modded copy that gets me both I'll go for that.

I don't have the SNES version of Alpha 2 but I've played it before it and didn't blow me away. I remember long load times and it not being as good as it's next gen counterparts.

[Merzbow]

35 minutes ago, FLips said:

If there's a modded copy that gets me both I'll go for that.

Super Street fighter II' Reload is a SNES ROM hack that boosts the speeds to Turbo. I can't say how good it is myself but I hear it's pretty spot on.