What games are you playing this week? 2017-07-03

Omnija

Snes - Alien 3 , but sort of been dipping through random rpgs (gbc - zelda,azure dreams, bomberman blue and some other ones).
Spent the last few days playing around with border layouts, the blank spacing on the sides and every emulator having a different resolution was annoying.
I wanted to make every emulator have it's own border layout but found it also annoying and my gf hated it. So we subsided for a generic label.

RumblinBuffalo

Non-Retropie related - for the last couple months or so I've been playing Thimbleweed Park. I was hooked on Maniac Mansion back in the Commodore 64 days, and Thimbleweed Park is a really cool throwback style game made by the same developers. It's really awesome.

It's been really fun to play that style of game again. Makes me want to go back and try out Day of The Tentacle and Monkey Island etc. which I have never played.

lilbud

@lilbud Working on Crash Bandicoot: Warped (PS1) The motorcycle stages can go straight to hell without passing go.

spruce_m00se

I have an ongoing game of Dune 2 on the megadrive, being a diehard C&C fan I wish I had seen this game when it was new. I only just found out about it.

lilbud

@lilbud Finally beat Crash Bandicoot: Warped. I would like to add something to my above statement. All of the vehicle stages can go to hell without passing go.

pjft

I've been going through random arcade games.

In particular, enjoying playing single credit attempts at Shinobi on MAME, as well as Special Criminal Investigation (a sequel to Chase HQ, one of my favorite games), which I'm only learning more about at the moment. Also playing a bit of Outrun on MAME.

These are the 3 games I'm having fun with this week.

kisu2012

Alien Triology using DosBox emulator, it's a maze !!

tashman

The Great Escape on the Spectrum. It's still a very atmospheric game today. I haven't played it for 25 years but managed to complete it within an hour. The kids were almost impressed.

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lilbud

And now I jump into another PS1 game, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile

Sano

I've done some mame sessions the past few days, playing essentially shmups and beat'em up.
2 facts that hit me hard :

I now have TMNT : Turtles in time music looping into my head for like 2 days
My, my, I'm so bad at this. I probably would have led to my parent's bankruptcy if I ever wanted to finish one of this games at the time... Well, I lost skills, sure, but god ! Wasn't able to finish a game in less than 10 credits (sometimes 20), it's a shame.

What is your way to do :

do you put as many credits as needed in order to finish the game at least one, the, increase difficulty by reducing the credits you put in
or do you start raw with only one credit, and do it again and again, progressing little by little, without continues ?

I must say I don't play a lot those times (not easy with a toddler), and only for a short time range, but relying on infinite credits in order to end a game is quite a shame :(

AndersHP

@spruce_m00se How do you like the iPac so far?

sirhenrythe5th

@Sano since i use MAME (or FBA, Neorage, Kawaks, Viva Nonno,...) to play Arcade-Games the golden rule is: one credit only!
That is because me and my friends play for highscores.
I also use to disable the continues in the DIP-Switches when possible (it is mostly).

It's a greater experience when you finish a game by practicing some weeks than just insert 1000 coins imo. Who did this in real arcades and there are still unbeaten highscores from the 80s and 90s ☺

pjft

@Sano We should have a "Toddler club" around here, that's what I'm seeing :)

In the beginning I would also credit-load a game until I finished and then move on to the next, but not only did I not finish that many games, I ended up noticing that I didn't get that much enjoyment from it - at least not as much as I expected to.

I empathize with all of these pains - so much that at one point I was considering trying to include a "credit limit" thing across RetroPie, to add some sort of limits to the arcade games. Obviously that is never going to happen.

Still, in my debates and readings, I ran into this article which I posted a few months ago, which game me a new appreciation and strong enjoyment of arcade games in MAME:

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/arcade_culture/

What I do these days is to restrict myself to 1 credit, and try to get the furthest I can. Then if I lose, I restart and try again.

For me, at least, this has made playing these games a lot more fun, and truth be told takes me back to the old days of the Spectrum which, other than finding some POKEs listing in games magazines for cheats and stuff, were usually the same mindset: try, learn, improve, enjoy.

These days I may put an extra credit on the odd occasion, just out of curiosity, in case I "really want to see what was going to happen next", but really casually.

If I think about this in the long run, especially as my kids grow old enough to play with me, I don't think they'd derive much enjoyment from credit-loading games, so I'd rather start with a set limit (i.e. 2-3-5 credits each or something, if needed) and see how far we go, and just have fun with it. I am not an especially good player either - I'm competent, but I can't claim to have "finished" many games of this kind without continuing.

This became quite apparent a few months back when I was playing "Snow Bros" with an old friend I hadn't seen a long time ago, and in the end we were just credit loading things but no longer deriving a lot of enjoyment as clearly we were not "good enough" for the stage of the game we were in, and we were losing several lives in each level.

That's no longer fun, as we're not getting the message: we should first master things before reaching that stage.

That being said, I see myself perhaps using infinite credits if there's a particular game I'm curious about seeing the ending for, but it no longer is the norm.

@tashman well done - great game! What are you off to next?

AndersHP

@pjft This is an interesting subject. I actually started a topic here a while ago, but it didn't get much attention.

pjft

@AndersHP Hah, nice. I must have missed it!

It is an interesting topic indeed, but I'm kind of happy for the moment about where I am with it.

I imagine I'll stick to 1 credit for the majority of 1 player games.

If I'm playing something co-op with someone, I may be more flexible but I think I'll still try to set a limit, as we want it to still be fun and not frustrating with a single credit, unless it's someone who's also quite experienced in videogames. So I can certainly see me suggesting a 5-credit limit, or maybe a shared pool of 10 credits before starting, so that if someone dies more often they won't be left out.

But it depends on the occasion as well. :)

dankcushions

i try and do 1 credit, especially for shoot-em-ups, or any game where the focus is the score (especially as they normally reset or become uncomparable after a continue). i don't mind doing the opening levels over and over because they really hone your strategies for 'perfecting' those levels, so you can get that little bit further each time. the MAME ROW is so good for this :)

however some games, especially brawlers, are kind of impossible to 1 cc, but at the same time you want to have some kind of element of risk, rather than just pumping in virtual money. it's a fine line!

Sano

The point is, unlike home console games, arcade was meant to take away your money :)
Sure you may master it with lot of dedication and training, but clearly some games just want you to die homeless after selling your house to master them.
Raiden, Metal Slug, Black Tiger, Toki, G&G... so many fun games, but far from easy at beginning, with a difficulty level increasing exponentially.

Maybe I've been quite tainted by recent videogames, where everything is so simple (long time I hadn't a real challenge since, say PS3), with some rare exceptions.

Anyway, the one credit policy seems fun, and gives a real goal, as well as maybe short playing time compatible with family. I'll definitely try to cope with this.
Nonetheless, I think @pjft idea of "pocket money" equivalent is very good too, especially when playing coop :)

AndersHP

I've not really gotten started with MAME yet, but my arcade will be finished within this month, and then I'll be gaming away.

The DIP Switches settings are funny, I wasn't aware that these could be altered in MAME.
I found these Twin Galaxies Tournament settings which are pretty interesting. You using these?

Or will they reset every time you restart the game?

pjft

@AndersHP I think DIP switch settings are stored between sessions, but maybe others can confirm it.

dankcushions

@pjft said in What games are you playing this week? 2017-07-03:

@AndersHP I think DIP switch settings are stored between sessions, but maybe others can confirm it.

it depend on the mame core, but certainly lr-mame2003 will save them:
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/lr-mame2003#service-menu