I recently restored my old GameCube. Back in the day I installed a ViperGC (the first modchip for the GameCube) to play "backups", but the optical drive has died.
But thanks to the community, after reflashing it with Gekkoboot it can load Swiss from a SP2SD2, and from there load ROMs from the SD card! Reflashing the modchip was a pain in the ass though, the programmer required a parallel port and the software only runs on Windows XP, but in the end it worked and I am pretty happy with the results.
The fan is a bit loud, but it seems to work correctly, so I don't plan to touch it.
However, the GC has a CR2032 battery to save the time and a few settings, and that battery was dead. But in Nintendo's infinite wisdom, the battery is soldered, not socketed, and the space around it is quite tight so a normal socket will not fit. Removing it and soldering a battery socket was quite a chore, I needed to try different models until I found one that fits, but in the end I managed to do it. When the new battery dies in 10~20 years it will be much easier to replace it.
Yes, that list is quite old and lists some games that are not available anymore, while missing some others like the retro floor of Gigo 3 in Akihabara.
Anyway, Mikado in Ikebukuro has the standard F-Zero AX cabinet, and it is great. I have never visited their game center in Takadanobaba though, it is still in my TODO list...
Is there anything worthwhile in moving games at Gigo 3? Even back in the Sega era it felt like it was mostly those generic Taito cabinets running most things.
IMHO, if you want to play Half-Life today, you can also just play the original, I've played it recently and still an amazing game, and several aspects I like it more than Half-life 2.
Some might not like the graphics for being dated, but after a while you get used to it.
Black Mesa is an almost exact copy of Half Life at the start, and where that's true it's incredibly well done. Feels very much like a remaster.
Unfortunately, by the end of the earth levels and certainly on Xen, the levels switch over to original designs. They become massive and sprawling, boring and confusing. They really should have stuck to doing a like for like reimplementation.
I grew up on Half Life, so playing the first half of Black Mesa a few years ago was one of my favorite adult gaming experiences. But I gave up who knows how close to finish line after Xen was insufferable.
There is one Xen episode close to the end that is indeed way too big for its own good and quite boring, I will give you that, but otherwise I found the new Xen levels very well made and fleshed out. Lets be honest, the original Xen was quite lackluster...
Well, even if the levels are well made and I've just got poor taste, Half Life was such a tightly designed package, introducing new weapons, things to play with (like the trains), enemies, environment modifiers at a steady pace.
Replacing a 5 minute level with a 20 minute level, even if it's better, ruins that pacing. There's just not enough content in the game to support it.
I agree Xen was by far the weakest of the original levels, but I don't think it's a coincidence that it was also pretty short. I think they knew it had novelty but no staying power and probably cut it to the bone.
I strongly disagree here. I was so hyped for the GBA that I bought it on release day, only to be disappointed later. One of reasons is the lackluster sound; seriously, Nintendo had already built an impressive sound system for the SNES, and then the GBA just had a software-driven DAC? Why did the cheapened out so much?
Same as for the PS1, I always found the wobbly polygons and warping textures painful to watch.
Sony made the SNES sound chip, and the GBA was power-constrained by AA batteries. Those are the two biggest reasons I can think of just off the top of my head.
You think that is bad? Some of the major promoters of 8k TV are Japanese broadcasters like the NHK. If you have ever watched Japanese TV, you will notice how they love covering half the screen in bright text. So what do they need 8k for, so the kanji look sharper?
The article doesn't mention what games they are actually running on the arcade machine. They mentioned the 18-bit DAC being a limitation, but most 2D arcade games only output 15-bit color.
I don't know, as impressive as this is, I think using a MiSTeR would be much easier.
Nintendo's strategy isn't the absolute worst. They mostly just give new names to new console designs, with modifiers to specify next-gen-without-major-changes. So the SNES was a next-gen NES, the N64 was its own thing, the GameCube was its own thing, the Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advanced were iterations on the same thing, DS, DSi, 3DS were all generation steps. WiiU was a next-gen Wii, Switch 2 is a next-gen Switch.
They probably should have called the WiiU the Super Wii or Wii 2 or something, but on the whole they've got a mostly coherent naming convention.
As a regular human who plays games and doesn't know about chip architectures, one woud probably lump the wii and the switch closer together than the game cube based on the modes in which one can interact with the systems.
Wii is a game cube with a funny controller. Or, wii is a tv-only olde switch.
I appreciate that it has its own name due to being a transitional experience.
I don’t think Nintendo’s scheme was ever that great as it blurred the difference between variant form factors (Game Boy Pocket vs Game Boy, Game Boy Micro/SP vs Game Boy Advance, DS Lite, 2/3DS XL, Wii Mini), pro models with limited exclusives (Game Boy Color, DSi, New 2/3DS), and full on new generations (Game Boy Advance, 3DS, Wii U).
That is exactly what IBM thought too when they allowed Bill Gates to license the new OS they were supposed to be making for IBM. They had no competition, who are these kids going to sell their OS to?
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