The UKFF Retro Gaming Thread

[TibBo]

He went for Jake, I went for Warrior and spent most the match trying to flying clothesline anyone that came near him.  Got a bit worried when Animal gorilla pressed him, as sometimes he launches you straight out the ring, but we were lucky.
Best 40p I’ve spent in years! It cost 30p to have a piss in Brixham the day before! 

[FLips]

Final Fantasy VIII

Some people will tell you this is their favourite Final Fantasy but if you do hear that, assume it's because it's the only one they've played. Two people have told me this in person, one of them was a misery who acted like a Kevin Smith character and made coffee his personality, to the point he brought his own Cafetiere to the office, and the other said with absolute confidence he saw Owen Hart die in the ring live when it was on telly.
This isn't a good game really in any aspect outside of it's music and graphics. The characters are bland, the story is boring and overcomplicated and the gameplay is completely bogged down by a mechanic that makes the game only really playable if you play lots of a crap card game and deliberately ignore every RPG rule you've ever known by trying not to defeat enemies and level up.
The enemies level with you, so there is no benefit to levelling up at all. The game expects you to fuck around with it's Junction system, which sees you equip summons like armor, level them up and equip magic you draw from enemies to power up your stats. All the good magic importantly can be exchanged from Tetra Master cards. There is a huge overreliance on summoning as your main attack as well because they're unlimited and significantly more powerful than your base attacks, and because your magic is all tied to your stats, unless you can draw it and use it from the enemy your fighting you don't want to use the magic you've stocked. Some of the summon animations take minutes. 3X speed on the Xbox version is a god send.

It does this really annoying thing too where you have your main 6 character party from almost the start, and it constantly splits you up, forces you into combinations and removes characters from the party. This means half your game time is spent in menus moving all of the equipped summons back and forth, re-equipping abilities (You can only pick 4 and it makes things like Steal, Defend and Item choices, so not every character can do the most basic of things) and moving all your magic across. They tried to make it easy by having menu options to move things en-masse but you have to do it so often it becomes a chore. 

This playthrough marks my wife's 1st and my 3rd attempt. We're nearing the end of disc 2 of 4 and already we're losing interest. We've opened up the world with access to a vehicle so we're at the point where we can go explore, find hidden weapons and items and do side missions and we just can't be bothered cos half of them are playing Triple Triad and there's no traditional level grinding, instead we can sit and spam Draw to absorb 100 magic from every enemy to boost our stats.

It's just crap. The biggest lie any Final Fantasy fan will tell you is that this game is underrated or good. It is not, it's a total misfire I can only assume they made by trying to be everything Final Fantasy VII wasn't. Aside from the nice character models and some nice bits of music, it's just a bad game.

Edited June 6 by FLips

[Scratch]

Streets of Rage 2 WWF Edition looks awesome. Never knew this was a thing until it randomly showed up on YouTube just now.

 

[Jazzy G]

On 6/6/2026 at 8:40 PM, FLips said:

Final Fantasy VIII

Some people will tell you this is their favourite Final Fantasy but if you do hear that, assume it's because it's the only one they've played. Two people have told me this in person, one of them was a misery who acted like a Kevin Smith character and made coffee his personality, to the point he brought his own Cafetiere to the office, and the other said with absolute confidence he saw Owen Hart die in the ring live when it was on telly.
This isn't a good game really in any aspect outside of it's music and graphics. The characters are bland, the story is boring and overcomplicated and the gameplay is completely bogged down by a mechanic that makes the game only really playable if you play lots of a crap card game and deliberately ignore every RPG rule you've ever known by trying not to defeat enemies and level up.
The enemies level with you, so there is no benefit to levelling up at all. The game expects you to fuck around with it's Junction system, which sees you equip summons like armor, level them up and equip magic you draw from enemies to power up your stats. All the good magic importantly can be exchanged from Tetra Master cards. There is a huge overreliance on summoning as your main attack as well because they're unlimited and significantly more powerful than your base attacks, and because your magic is all tied to your stats, unless you can draw it and use it from the enemy your fighting you don't want to use the magic you've stocked. Some of the summon animations take minutes. 3X speed on the Xbox version is a god send.

It does this really annoying thing too where you have your main 6 character party from almost the start, and it constantly splits you up, forces you into combinations and removes characters from the party. This means half your game time is spent in menus moving all of the equipped summons back and forth, re-equipping abilities (You can only pick 4 and it makes things like Steal, Defend and Item choices, so not every character can do the most basic of things) and moving all your magic across. They tried to make it easy by having menu options to move things en-masse but you have to do it so often it becomes a chore. 

This playthrough marks my wife's 1st and my 3rd attempt. We're nearing the end of disc 2 of 4 and already we're losing interest. We've opened up the world with access to a vehicle so we're at the point where we can go explore, find hidden weapons and items and do side missions and we just can't be bothered cos half of them are playing Triple Triad and there's no traditional level grinding, instead we can sit and spam Draw to absorb 100 magic from every enemy to boost our stats.

It's just crap. The biggest lie any Final Fantasy fan will tell you is that this game is underrated or good. It is not, it's a total misfire I can only assume they made by trying to be everything Final Fantasy VII wasn't. Aside from the nice character models and some nice bits of music, it's just a bad game.

I hear 9 is supposed to be good? I tried 10, stayed up all night playing it but I'm shit at Blitzball. The only things even approaching a JRPG I'm any good at is Pokémon, and even then it's a push. 

Anyway, there's a Rainbow Islands compilation coming out on Switch with loads of ports on it, including some unreleased ones. It looks like they're also doing it with Parasol Stars. Weird that they haven't done a Bubble Bobble one, unless I've missed it somewhere. I do have a Bubble Bobble game on my Switch which lets you play the arcade original as well. 

 

Edited June 22 by Jazzy G

[BomberPat]

Final Fantasy 9 is fantastic, though a lot of it feels like a love letter to earlier Final Fantasy games, so how much it holds up without that connection I couldn't say. I'd generally say 7 is my favourite, but could easily be convinced that 9 is better. 10 I never really cared for, 8 I actively dislike, 6 I think is probably top three, 4 is great, 5 I could never get  into but I could tell there's something there. Post-X, I only really played 12, and I remember enjoying the combat but I couldn't tell you a single thing about the storyline.

I think FLips absolutely nailed 8, though. They attempted to reinvent the wheel and made it square. The gameplay mechanics are simultaneously frustratingly fiddly and so incredibly easy to game and max out your stats early, the story is absolute bollocks that even by JRPG standards doesn't make any sense, feels made up as they go along with some of the most insane daft reveals imaginable, and it has to introduce an amnesia angle halfway through to explain away how people didn't just figure everything out - and then that never comes up again, and the thing theorised as causing your amnesia is a summon spell that you keep on using without incident for the rest of the game anyway. Bollocks for simpletons

[TibBo]

I can't remember if I have ever posted this, but I've just stumbled across the files on an old hard drive so I thought I'd upload it.

Years ago I was on a forum called WLF and a guy there wanted to mod Wrestlefest to add-in more characters.
Each of the characters have a sprite sheet showing all of their movements/gestures, so we used the originals as a template to build the new wrestlers.

I designed a few new additions to the roster, but over time people kept adding more suggestions on how to tweak/improve the gameplay, and the project got bloated.
Eventually it moved away from becoming an extension of Wrestlefest and became a whole new game called RetroMania Wrestling.

Anyway, I just found the Ricky Steamboat I created, so I thought I'd post it here as I don't know anyone else who would appreciate it lol

[DavidB6937]

Most places calling GTA VI the game release of the year. Well that's an absolute lie.

 

 

[Jazzy G]

The problem I see with it is the lack of a trackball. It certainly made the Golden Tee collection a bit tricky to play. 

[Jazzy G]

@FLips is this up near your neck of the woods? 

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/26408249.arcade-time-machine-opened-stockton-high-street/

[FLips]

2 hours ago, Jazzy G said:

@FLips is this up near your neck of the woods? 

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/26408249.arcade-time-machine-opened-stockton-high-street/

It is but I doubt I’ll ever go there. I’m not sure what the market for an arcade with just emulated machines hooked up to flatscreen tellies is, but it’s not me. It’s a 5 minute drive from my house but I’d rather drive the extra 80 mins to Leeds for the proper Arcade Club and play original machines.

[Merzbow]

I don't really understand that place, I've seen a few other emulation "arcades" but they at least have proper looking cabinets and an overall aesthetic. This is a few TVs in someone's living room. Fair play if it gets in kids and families still, just can't see us old retro farts going in often.

[FLips]

43 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

I don't really understand that place, I've seen a few other emulation "arcades" but they at least have proper looking cabinets and an overall aesthetic. This is a few TVs in someone's living room. Fair play if it gets in kids and families still, just can't see us old retro farts going in often.

I’m not sure how much I believe the authenticity of the owner either. Someone who wanted a real arcade experience probably wouldn’t set something this shoddy looking up. They’ve basically looked up what the cheapest way to set up an “arcade” is and made this in some dark room. I can’t see it being around long when it’s a stone’s throw from two or three actual seasides with proper arcades.

All the kids that probably don’t want to play old games which is likely most of them will want Minecraft or Fortnite ones set up. It’s actually pretty unappealing to everyone. The target audience is the people who don’t want a true arcade experience and kids who aren’t interested in these games whether it’s emulated or not.  
 

EDIT: Not to cross contaminate threads but their posters and socials are all just AI as well. That’s the kind of slop you’d expect I guess from someone who has hooked up a Logitech steering wheel to a TV and called it Outrun 2.

Edited July 28 by FLips

[westlondonmist]

I think I'd have fun at that but the look is a bit weak. I actually don't mind some of the set ups but I feel they could have either bought a few cabinets or built their own around the screens. 

[Jazzy G]

@FLipsJames Pond collection on Switch? Hopefully it's the proper version of Robocod and not that dreadful remake that's been coming out recently. 

https://nintendoeverything.com/the-james-pond-legacy-the-pond-is-not-enough-announced-for-nintendo-switch-2/

[FLips]

6 hours ago, Jazzy G said:

@FLipsJames Pond collection on Switch? Hopefully it's the proper version of Robocod and not that dreadful remake that's been coming out recently. 

https://nintendoeverything.com/the-james-pond-legacy-the-pond-is-not-enough-announced-for-nintendo-switch-2/

Just saw the “trailer” for this. Dogshit AI slop and the publishers are already doubling down that it has no AI when we can all see and hear it. Won’t get a penny from me.