The Semi-Official Retro Gaming Thread

This is a haven for fans of old-school games because they don't have the cash for new game systems (or they do, but still love that special something that new games just don't have). This should also make for a nice place to have "retro news" (yes, it does exist). I don't want to detract from Justin Clark's excellent "Lost Treasures of Gaming" thread, as not all old games are forgotten.

As a nice refresher course, I'm going to point out two retro gaming podcasts that may or may not be worth a listen.

1UP's Retronauts: Truly one of the best gaming podcasts out there. Jeremy Parish, Scott Sharkey, and Chris Kohler discuss pretty much anything that's ten years or older such as Neo Geo, Doom, Sega Master System, survival horror games, and an entire podcast dedicated to Chrono Trigger. A must-listen.

Destructoid's RetroforceGo!: This one is a bit tougher to recommend. If you like podcasts where the words "yeah," "like," and "awesome" are frequently used, then you are a retard. You'll spend a good chunk of time screaming at them for their factual errors, and some of the "debates" are legendary. Has anyone else listened to this? If so, let me know. I'd like to think I'm not the only one who think these guys kinda suck.

Anyway, let's get an actual discussion going. What system do you find yourself going back to play the most?

For me, it's the NES. I have a *ahem*Dreamcast disc*ahem* filled with NES games and I love it. The d-pad sucks, but I can make my way through Mega Man 2 pretty easily with it. I also give Ninja Gaiden a shot every once in a while just to see if I still suck ass at it (I do). The emulation is perfect and worth the price of admission for a Dreamcast (you should own one of these babies anyway).

I have a SNES disc, but it's way too slow and is really only good for simple games like Turtles in Time. As for the Genesis disc, it's pretty comprehensive and the emulation is good, but the sound manages to be worse than the actual sound chip on the Genesis (remembers those low-pitch noises that made it sound like your TV was farting and practically made up the entire soundtrack for Sonic Spinball? I do.).

So there you go. Reminisce away.

Hm. Thought this thread would have actually went over well. Boo hoo.

Blame Nintendo, but be sure you're blaming them for the right reasons. The only way that console gaming could make a comeback after the crash was to be toys. That's why you had the R.O.B. packaged in with the NES as a trojan horse to get units in toy stores and ultimately in the homes of kids. Fast forward to the SNES and Genesis and they still look like toys. Of course there wasn't anything adult on these consoles.

Fast forward even further and look at the PS1. Say what you want about the slow-reading lens of those early 1001 models, aesthetically, the console is very nice looking. Finally, a home console doesn't look like a toy. Now gamers who played the NES as a kid and are now in high school feel less embarrassed about gaming.

Still, there were loads of mature games, but how many of them are actually good? There were loads of RPGs that weren't M-rated, but did take itself seriously and was for adults. As for the survival horror boom, it isn't all that pretty retrospectively. The first three Resident Evil games are now unplayable, and shit like Dino Crisis was poop compared to stuff like System Shock (which I don't think was on PS1, but I could be wrong) and D.

And Singer, are you saying you could give a rat's ass about Super Mario Bros. 3/Mega Man 2? If so, ouch.

As for adventure games, there wasn't and still isn't anything like it on consoles. I think the closest thing to it I can think of is Goonies II for the NES. Personally, I never really got into adventure games, though I would dabble in Hugo or the Journeyman Project games (brownie points if you remember those).

While on the topic of PC, did anyone play any Mechwarrior/Metaltech games? I only had Mechwarrior 2 and Earthsiege, but I played the shit out of both of them (Mechwarrior 2 is the better of the two).

Yeah, Maniac Mansion was pretty awesome, especially if you had the Nintendo Power issue that gave you an idea of what the fuck you were supposed to do. Never played Snatcher, as I never had a Sega CD. Wasn't there a PS1 version of it?

That's a shame. Gametap doesn't have any Sega CD games either. There's definitely a chance, as they have a handful of Saturn games, a console that is very difficult to emulate.

And one of the few good things about the 32X is that it had a half-decent port of Virtua Fighter. Well, better than the Saturn version, anyway.

Check out the Video Game Nerd's videos of the Sega CD and 32X. Hard to believe between the SNES port of Doom and the 32X port, the SNES version is the better one.

I don't remember each piece of Voltron requiring its own AC adapter, though.

Seriously, the 32X was the catalyst to Sega's eventual hardware demise. Wasn't the Saturn announced before the 32X? I think that brought about a lot of mistrust with Sega's fans. If only the Dreamcast was released two years earlier...

I think I knew that. Didn't bother me, I had a sheltered youth.

Final Fight Streetwise came out a year or two ago and it was a piece of shit. I wouldn't expect beat-em-ups as you know them to return.

Resurrecting this thread because I need a place to gush over my recent $20 score of Final Fantasy Anthology for Playstation, which contains V and VI. For the record, the only FF game I've played through is VII (Kingdom Hearts and Chrono Trigger are honorable mentions), so I'm very much a FF novice (my sister is the expert).

I started with VI last night and holy fuck what a game. I was up until 1:30 in the morning just appreciating the fuck out of the awesome Mode 7 opening credits, the great 16-bit character design, and awesome battle system. Also, the game's pretty damn funny, and not really that fucking weird, awkward sense of humor that VII has.

There haven't been many intrusive 32-bit influences (yet), though I am pleased to hear that this is an uncensored and re-localized version of the game.

Has anyone played FF V? That one seems to be fighting with IX as the least talked-about FF game. Also, I keep seeing VIII at the store and I'm considering picking it up. Is it worth it?