seriously wonder why some chinese company hasnt made cheap shells. seems like there would be a market for them. not paying 100+ tho
Got the cheap 6 button pads from aliexpress. The start button is a little smaller in width, so it wouldn't look good if I transplant them to my sega pads. But I found the 6 button pads for the Japanese mega drive mini. So I will just swap the shell completely with them. Watched a lot of videos and pictures and the PCB and holes are exactly the same, even though the Japanese controllers are a tad smaller. But the cheap pads from aliexpress are surprisingly great quality. If I were not so keen on having sega written on my pads, I could just use these instead. Maybe if I sell my multi mega, I will bundle them with it.
The KOs are surprisingly good sometimes, especially with older controller designs. Sometimes the 3P parts are also better than the OG ones, as the materials have improved, like the silicon pads for the NES controllers.
I was on the fence for awhile, and I really didn't want to pay that much, but my original shell was in such bad shape and still deteriorating.
i hear ya. i fell into 2 extra primo snes'es and gave my original to my nephew. but i just enjoy the modding and customization aspect, and especially with 3d printers existing you would think custom shells for old systems would be a no brainer at this point.
Someone sold a local Half Price Books near me a whole bunch of old issues of Nintendo Power. I have a good amount of the NES/SNES era issues, but still missing a number of them, which I picked up some of, including the Final Fantasy strategy guide issue. Flipping through these old issues is so surreal as I remember owning a lot of the issues as a kid. Especially amusing when you read about something that was then still not out yet at the time and knowing how it all turned out. Of course, I get those same feelings with the old issues of Wizard magazine and Toyfare I have in storage. I honestly hate myself for throwing out all my old issues of Gamepro, Gamefan, Electronic Gaming Monthly, and Tips & Tricks. They were recycled in the great "I need to free up space and these aren't going to be worth anything." purge years ago. I had a HUGE box of them from their entire runs in the 1990's.
Most of us probably did also. I had boxes full of egms and gamepros but tossed most. I only kept all my game players / gamefan / megafan issues because they were always my favorite mag til the end. Still have a lot of odds and ends strategy guides, we used to chuck these when I worked at blockbuster in high school so I would just save them from the landfill.
That's another thing I used to have a lot of...strategy guides. I remember having Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, Parasite Eve 1 and 2, Disgaea, Lunar 1 and 2, Suikoden 1 and 2 (which is pricey now), Wild Arms 1 and 2...pretty much every PSX JRPG game guide just about. And I see in your collection some of the old Nintendo Power guides. I had most of those as well. Game Boy, Mario Mania, Final Fantasy III, Game Atlas, Donkey Kong Country...
yeah just a few, those were mine as a kid when I was playing those games daily. the ones I really liked were the versus books guides to A2 and FF7. they had one for pso as well but it kinda sucked because they released it before the launch of the game with no data on any of the rare weapons. still was pretty useful for mags but that was about it.
Do you know what killed each of the systems? Depending on what killed them, you may be able to do something with them. Something like the RROD for the XBs is a kiss of death. I think you can mod the PS2 to boot from the memory cards, and use it basically as a solid state device, but I'm not 100% sure on this. The PS3s if they can boot can be made to be digital only devices if the drive is an issue. A common reason why the GC wouldn't start is if the power switch gets stuck If you can get it open and clean off the contacts, you might be able to bring it back to life If the GC internals are in decent enough shape you can use the GC Loader to have it run off of an SD card with ROMs. You can pull the drives and wipe them, with the XBO and PS3s, I guess? They're all going to be less than 500 GB in size, and at best, they may have a year or two left in them before they die. However, even using them as "cheap" USB storage isn't really worth the cost/risk.
I got the Quake rerelease like I said I would earlier in this thread and I am absolutely loving the uncluttered simplicity and purity of this game as the gameplay has none of the awful gimmicks that have aged badly in subsequent gaming generations of shooting games. I like how it is hard in all of the satisfying ways that I was hoping it was going to be and so far I haven’t encountered anything too cheap or infuriating to get through as even some of most standard underlings can potentially be a scary and credible threat if they are located in an awkward positions (which they frequently are). There is an instant save and plenty of health around so making a single mistake doesn’t ruin several hours worth of play and so far I haven’t found myself having to repeat areas too many times because I was trapped on a difficulty spike. The guns are suitably satisfying and standard for this genre of game and all of the enemies so far have been fun to fight against. There could probably do with there being slightly more variety to the enemies as there are not too many different ones but as this game came a long time before nearly every genre shoehorned in a RPG levelling up system so you don’t get tired of fighting these enemies as a chainsaw guy never stops being a fun and credible threat to fight against regardless of how long you play the game for. I currently just got the first rune and when you encounter the boss to get it there is certainly an epic drop the controller moment of spectacle as when he first emerges it looks surprisingly impressive even viewed through modern eyes. How you kill the first boss is less impressive though as it was a fun boss to actually fight against with your weapons but all you need to do is kill it with hitting switches and once you know how to do this it becomes stupidly easy to kill as you can do it without being hit at all and without using any skill. Perhaps they could have made it so you have to spend a few seconds actually turning the switches on where you are vulnerable or after you had hit it a few times it starts hitting you faster, more accurately or starts putting barriers up for you to shoot through to get to the switches. Hopefully the future bosses actually allow you to properly fight against them in a challenging but fair and not infuriating way. The amount of content contained within this package is fantastic as even if you get stuck you can take a diversion on the expansion levels. These actually feel like proper levels rather than the linear glossy corridors that are punctuated by cut scenes and staged set-pieces of action that litter many modern shooters. I don’t why the sequel to Doom eternal can’t learn from this approach to levels as the gun-play was perfect and an evolution of these retro shooters but how linear it was was undermined its level design as I wanted to explore the levels for secrets rather than being dragged along its glossy corridor. The only thing Quake lacks though is a map to help with the exploration side of things as it doesn’t appear to have one unless I have missed it. My only gripe is it’s pretty dark which can lead to stumbling about lost and this can especially look a bit confusing when underwater. Of course this can be easily remedied from a gameplay point of view by turning the brightness up to max but the game looks loads better when a little darker so I may have to find a happy middle ground that keeps at least some of the games gothic atmosphere. If Quakes 2, 3, 4 and wars are getting the same treatment next who here is getting them? I’m personally more into getting the second one as I like single player games and I would likely get skinned alive on Quake 3 with all of those experienced types using mouse and keyboard for more precision. Quake 4 and wars I might get out of curiosity but I haven’t got fond memories of them back on my old Xbox 360 so it might be interesting to reassess them now. Overall this Quake package gets a 9/10 from me and should work as a perfect example to other developers of how to do a reissue of a great game that gives you the original authentic game experience whilst also adding some modern elements and bonus content that doesn’t feel too intrusive.
I'm in for Quake 2 if it gets the Nightdive treatment, but I don't really have the time or will to get back into online arena shooters when it comes to Quake 3 and have zero interest in playing Quake 4 again as I didn't like it the first time round. Dark Forces and Jedi Knight are at the top of the list for 90s FPS games that I want new ports for. Force Engine seems to be making promising progress for the former, but I doubt we'll see the latter unless it's done commercially. I wouldn't say no to Klingon Honour Guard either. People still talk about Elite force occasionally, but that seems to have been largely forgotten and shouldn't be that hard technically since it's a UE1 game.
Ooooh, Dark Forces and Jedi Knight were a ton of fun, back in the day. That first Force jump experience was awesome.
I’m no expert on the specifics of what criteria and circumstances lead to a game getting a rerelease or not but I imagine it having the interest of an audience willing to spend money on it is a large factor in this decision. Public interest in Star Wars and nostalgia for 90’s shooting games have neither wavered much over the years so it’s surprising how these have not already had rereleases now that Disney is a little calmer and confident in its Star Wars licence so feel able to make references to the extended universe stuff like what happened in the Mandolorian. Games from a similar era have got rereleases like super Star Wars and slightly later but pre-Disney games like bounty hunter are available on different systems like the PS4 so perhaps these could one day get the rerelease you crave
I'm still waiting for another re-release of Super Star Wars, and that era nearly a decade ago never did get a re-release of Super Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi. My dream release would be if Disney would commission a retro game creation team to do "Super" style games of the Prequel and Sequel movies too. Could you imagine 16 bit era sprite versions of little Anakin or Padawan Obi-Wan fighting a Nute Gunray in some silly mech suit or Rey VS imaginary Dark-Side Rey?
Cliffy B says he's frustrated that there hasn't been an updated release of Unreal 1. I could go for that.
Gosh that is a great idea and 16 bit platform games were so adaptable and fun as license games. Mickey Mouse, Lion King, Aladdin, Toy Story and tinny toons all got made into great little platform games back then. As for first person shooters that deserve a rerelease I think a timesplitters trilogy could make excellent rerelease.
