Retro games and emulation - Discuss retro shit in case you're stuck in the past or a hipster

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foam rolla said:
I remember Shadows of the Empire was suppose to be a big title but I don't think it lived up to the hype.
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SotE was the thing to play right after you got done with Super Mario 64 in 1997. You don’t really wanna play it any time past then. It aged like milk.

The Ultimate Ramotith said:
Is anyone here interested in reading abou the development of emulators, even if th emulators are far from ready?
I feel that way about Switch 2 emulators.
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Yeah, I enjoyed reading Byuu’s “Near’s Respite” blog and the posts on mgba.io. Interesting stuff to read about all the edge cases and inner workings. If you know of any more blogs, post them.
 
Green Kitbash said:
The Akla Arrr episode was great, there are like a handful of old arcade collectors that sit on hardware like that with no intention of releasing the rims. Crazy shit

Another great story is the Crack House Sundance. Shit there are a handful of doozies, Ram Controls, Steve and the Oregon Mafia. If you want autism arcade collectors is a great place because you have very rich, very smart and very angry autistic people involved
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The Panel de Pon 64 situation gave me a visceral, burning hatred for prototype horders. Some guy on YouTube had the unreleased* N64 sequel to Panel de Pon for years and just… didn’t do anything with it aside from post a couple gameplay videos. Despite the countless comments asking him to dump it, he kept saying “I’ll get around to it someday” and then never did. If comment sections are to be believed, he sold it to some other shitfuck hoarder to also do absolutely nothing with.

* It released on the GameCube as part of the Japan-only Nintendo Puzzle Collection, but the N64 version is still lost.
Pissmaster said:
Yeah, I enjoyed reading Byuu’s “Near’s Respite” blog and the posts on mgba.io. Interesting stuff to read about all the edge cases and inner workings. If you know of any more blogs, post them.
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Dolphin’s progress reports are always a good read, like the most recent one being a deep dive into Triforce, or the one from a few years ago breaking down the misconception that Wii games are more difficult to emulate than GameCube.
 
Two Dollars said:
The Panel de Pon 64 situation gave me a visceral, burning hatred for prototype horders. Some guy on YouTube had the unreleased* N64 sequel to Panel de Pon for years and just… didn’t do anything with it aside from post a couple gameplay videos. Despite the countless comments asking him to dump it, he kept saying “I’ll get around to it someday” and then never did. If comment sections are to be believed, he sold it to some other shitfuck hoarder to also do absolutely nothing with.

* It released on the GameCube as part of the Japan-only Nintendo Puzzle Collection, but the N64 version is still lost.
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I didn't even know that was a thing. I figured Panel de Pon on Nintendo Puzzle Collection was just the SNES version.

So if that's literally it, could it be reconstructed? Is Pokemon Puzzle League just a reskin of it?
 
Pissmaster said:
I didn't even know that was a thing. I figured Panel de Pon on Nintendo Puzzle Collection was just the SNES version.

So if that's literally it, could it be reconstructed? Is Pokemon Puzzle League just a reskin of it?
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All signs point to yes. In the hex for the emulator for Zelda Collector's Edition (The sometimes packin sometimes reward gamecube disc with zelda 1/2/oot/mm) it references the then indev nintendo puzzle collection when you examine the Emulation suite for N64 used for OoT/MM, specifically panel de pon 64, as well as dr mario 64. The actual Panel De Pon executable/elf on the collection is the lion's share of the disc data because it's FILLED with a bunch of bullshit from the transition to pokemon puzzle league and other dummy data,
As of a few years ago when that youtuber made a video about the prototype there was renewed vigor in cracking the gcn version to try and extract it to a playable n64 state, but it doesn't seem they made much progress. A decomp would be more likely anyhow since nintendo doesn't usually just re-use encrypted roms, they make their own emulation tools and customize the games (for better or worse, if you've ever played that zelda collector's edition disc lmao)
 
Pissmaster said:
I didn't even know that was a thing. I figured Panel de Pon on Nintendo Puzzle Collection was just the SNES version.
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Nintendo Puzzle Collection is weird. Dr. Mario is a straight port of 64 with the 64 removed from the logo, except not really since DM64 was never released in Japan, making this a new localization? Panel de Pon is the unreleased N64 game, and Yoshi’s Cookie appears to be a completely new version made for this collection. Or maybe the whole thing was an excuse to find some way to release three cancelled N64 projects?

And then it comes with scaled-down versions of all three games that you can transfer to your GBA, except the “scaled down” versions of DM and YC are just the NES versions, while PDP is a new version that was probably used as the basis for actual GBA release that came two years later.
 
Green Kitbash said:
The Akla Arrr episode was great, there are like a handful of old arcade collectors that sit on hardware like that with no intention of releasing the rims. Crazy shit

Another great story is the Crack House Sundance. Shit there are a handful of doozies, Ram Controls, Steve and the Oregon Mafia. If you want autism arcade collectors is a great place because you have very rich, very smart and very angry autistic people involved
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I remember that there was a case where Akka Arrh had some sort of goofy story about a repairman who somehow dumped the ROM, that was what the story was. I remember thinking that was probably wrong and one of the three collectors dumped it while accusing the two others of dumping it to throw off the scent.
 
Two Dollars said:
Nintendo Puzzle Collection is weird. Dr. Mario is a straight port of 64 with the 64 removed from the logo, except not really since DM64 was never released in Japan, making this a new localization? Panel de Pon is the unreleased N64 game, and Yoshi’s Cookie appears to be a completely new version made for this collection. Or maybe the whole thing was an excuse to find some way to release three cancelled N64 projects?

And then it comes with scaled-down versions of all three games that you can transfer to your GBA, except the “scaled down” versions of DM and YC are just the NES versions, while PDP is a new version that was probably used as the basis for actual GBA release that came two years later.
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Desperate Nintendo probably needed something to fill a calendar gap. Same logic led Wii U era desperate Nintendo to make a fuss about games like Dr. Luigi or Game & Wario.
 
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Pissmaster said:
Yeah, I enjoyed reading Byuu’s “Near’s Respite” blog and the posts on mgba.io. Interesting stuff to read about all the edge cases and inner workings. If you know of any more blogs, post them.
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I used to follow melonDS really closely before they overtook DeSmuME. There's also this guy who's been attempting to support a bunch of obscure peripheral for GameBoy and GameBoy Advance: https://shonumi.github.io/articles.html
 
Guys, one question regarding 2000s GPUs: How exactly is the S-Video output meant to be used? I can imagine connecting it to an SD TV, but wouldn't that make text pretty much unreadable?
 
Nice Stick said:
I think that's for a monitor, not a TV.
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Honestly, I have no idea, but one GPU has a 4-pin out, and two others have 7-pin outs. All NVidia. I do not have anything I could plug this into, and no cable, either, just being curious. I've always used VGA or DVI with such cards.
 
Curry Teafag said:
Guys, one question regarding 2000s GPUs: How exactly is the S-Video output meant to be used? I can imagine connecting it to an SD TV, but wouldn't that make text pretty much unreadable?
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analrapist said:
You just plug and play. 480p isn't that bad, especially given how CRTs work. You'll be surprised how readable text is. Just don't use eg. 1080p and you'll be fine.
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S-video is interlaced and it looks pretty bad when outputting 640x480 as 480i, which is the max you'd want to use, but it's hardly unreadable. There was a time where it was common for early home theatre PCs.

People put up with it because the alternative was a multi-thousand dollar HDTV with VGA input or a complicated projector setup.
 
I mean, I get that, I understand the technical details of analog TV. What I don't get is the practical use case here. A GPU for a PC—how would I use that with an old TV?

VGA text mode is 400p70, 31.5 kHz. An SD TV is 480i60 or 576i50, 15.7 kHz. Obviously, the GPU would output a 15.7 kHz signal here, but what games would use that, and would it work with DOS, Windows, Linux?
 
Curry Teafag said:
I mean, I get that, I understand the technical details of analog TV. What I don't get is the practical use case here. A GPU for a PC—how would I use that with an old TV?

VGA text mode is 400p70, 31.5 kHz. An SD TV is 480i60 or 576i50, 15.7 kHz. Obviously, the GPU would output a 15.7 kHz signal here, but what games would use that, and would it work with DOS, Windows, Linux?
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S-Video ports on PCs were usually used to hook up to a big TV for gaming, since monitors over 15 inches were insanely expensive back in the day.
 
Curry Teafag said:
Guys, one question regarding 2000s GPUs: How exactly is the S-Video output meant to be used? I can imagine connecting it to an SD TV, but wouldn't that make text pretty much unreadable?
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I've used that and composite before on a Windows XP computer. It does mess up the text as XP isnt designed for fonts to make that but its ok with DOS. Games look fine too si while desktop icons and font can look smudged its doable. S video is sharper for sure but nowhere near RGB
 
Green Kitbash said:
I've used that and composite before on a Windows XP computer. It does mess up the text as XP isnt designed for fonts to make that but its ok with DOS. Games look fine too si while desktop icons and font can look smudged its doable. S video is sharper for sure but nowhere near RGB
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I once somehow managed to use XP at 512x384 on a portable color TV that very much couldn't display 512x384 cleanly. I'm amazed XP even allowed a resolution that low over a composite cable shitrigged into the s-video port.
 
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