I haven’t yet but I love the look of obra dinn… is it a quick play through?
Side note anyone looking to relive phantasy star online there is a free download/fan server here https://ephinea.pioneer2.net the game has some jank but its still enjoyable
I’m beyond excited for this game. If you have time watch this entire gameplay trailer. It’s incredible. The camera animation is so brilliant.
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The Dreamcast is such an underrated system. It’s very powerful and has a library filled with amazing games. I got to borrow one from a friend when I was around 13 or so (I think?), which was a few years into the Dreamcast’s death more or less.
He had Shenmue and Jet Set Radio, two games that were mindblowing to me in very different ways. JSR bombarded me with great music and amazing aesthetics, had never seen cel shading before, and Shenmue was the first game I played where you could just wander around and do nothing. The latter might sound underwhelming, but in a medium where your typical action would be ‘go from point a to b and kill as many baddies as you can’ it was certainly different and exciting - a world that felt alive.
Actually, the VMU and Sony Pocketstation (a similar device for PS1) were big inspirations for the GUI in Model:Samples. I wanted it to feel like a video game sort of. And I’ve actually made a sequencer for Pocketstation, and thought about the VMU…
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The odd thing is that the system was in no way underrated by the media or those in the know. It was arguably too ahead of its time and suffered for it.
Playing Virtual Striker and House of the Dead at home with full arcade quality graphics made for one hell of a memorable Christmas that’s for sure!
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I have quite a few custom DMG’s, a few DS, a GBA all of which I use for sound/music mainly, a couple of Vectrex one of which I planned on modding for an audio scope but haven’t done yet.
I don’t game so much these days, I really used to enjoy the Xbox360 - Halo, HL2, Portal and so on, but once all the games started trying to out call of duty eachother I lost interest, bought an Xbox1 but after a couple of months it was gathering dust, mainly because of the sameyness and over reliance on gimmicks, DLC outfits etc. in Xbox1 games at the cost of storylines and playability.
Funny thing is that I see a lot of parallels between gaming consoles and music gear, maybe it is an age thing, but I often feel that in the name of progress a lot of what made older stuff great is overlooked - and I’m not just talking about dewy eyed nostalgia here - undoubtedly new tech offers many exciting possibilities, but just that sometimes it becomes a bit MOARR!
I guess that is why I really like the direction that companies like Elektron and Teenage Engineering take.
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Off topic here but the GBA actually has some really great games that still hold up. Advance Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics, Castlevania Aria of Sorrow, Kirby, Pokémon Emerald, Golden Sun, Harvest Moon, Mother 3…
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After games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man, God of War, Persona 5, Monster Hunter World and plenty of others, plus VR, I generally have no interest in playing them.
And if I did I’d emulate them with my RasPi, I especially have no interest in using a physical GameBoy (M:S) when I can play the same retro games plus thousands of others in 4K (OT, DT, Rytm). Which is the whole analogy I was making.
I concede however because to some a GameBoy will be more than enough as opposed to dropping money on a 4k VR ready setup.
Advance Wars was brillient!
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That’s funny, the only game I kind of enjoyed from your list was RDR2, and even that was a pain in the ass to play because of the awful controls. I think modern games have made a lot of progress in the graphics department but often to the expense of playability and storytelling. That’s why I still play loads of GBA, SNES and indie games despite having a PS4 and a nice TV.
The analogy is quite a good one actually. I think the M:S’s focus on playability, speed and fun will be appealing even to people who have tasted the modern 4k experience (Rytm, OT, DAWs), and will be used to create stuff that’s surprisingly complex despite the limitations.
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God of War won GOTY for a reason, and not because I’ve beaten it 3 times.
Storytelling? Woo boy. God of War lacking in story telling? I’m struggling not to drop mad spoilers due to my disagreement with this statement but I shall restrain myself. Same with Persona 5, arguably one of the best games created in the past… ever, and RDR2 lacking in cinematic storytelling? Spider-Man goes straight back to PS2 days if you want to argue nostalgia.
But I don’t have much more to say (besides I’d take a Switch (OP-1) any day over a GameBoy (M:S) but yes of course there is a market for the Volca Samples, M:S, and OP-Zs of the world. The secondary part of my analogy is that it’s a sampler, thus it provides nothing unique in terms of sound without some mangling. If I want to use that mangled sound instead of sampling what it itself has sampled, I’ll sample the M:S with my lovely inputs (emulation).
For any further comment re-see: my Dwight Schrute quote.
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GOW had a fine story but the gameplay loop was boring as hell for me. Just waves of the same re-skinned enemies punctuated by the same sort of dull puzzles we’ve seen since the PS1 era.
RDR2, a great exercise in world-building, immersion and non-traditional storytelling. Let down by piss-poor controls that I was still struggling with even after completing the game.
Persona 5 I admittedly haven’t made much progress on. For now it’s just a series of very monotonous time-management tasks with not much reward. A few friends have loved it though so I’ll persevere.
Re the M:S being just a sampler, you could say that about any sampler. The magic is in the sequencer and interface.
Not a fan of the US office either so I guess we just have different tastes.
I took my time with Obra Dinn and finished it in around 10 hours. Don’t look up hints if you get stuck!
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and those mini games were so addictiveShenmui 2 fab memories. Also Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi
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CELESTE OVER ALL THAT NONSENSE DONT AT ME (a complete sentence)
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Dang! I feel like a dreamcast copy of shenmue 2 is a rarity… at least in the states I am not sure if it came out at all. Cherish those disks. That said I am probably lazy enough that I will just play these on steam now that they are playable there… hopefully shenmue 3 will keep the magic alive.
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Word.
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Yeah I feel like sadly the PS4 has slowly made me play games less and less… actually maybe that is a good thing, more time for music and creative things! I will say the the new Tekken is pretty brilliant in my book, along with Ni No Kuni 2 and I think the whole Dark Souls and Blood Bourne series is just great. Obviously there is a boat load of brilliant indie games, which I now just play on PC for the most part. I have my backlite modded GB orignal and it gets played very often… a huge plethora of interesting games for it.
a couple of fan translated gb games to try are:
for the frog the bell tolls
and last bible
personal weird favorite is:
Sword of Hope is great and hilarious first person maze RPG
last shot is from my gb
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first game that sucked ME in was Ultima
this looks GREAT
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GBA SP was one of the greatest systems ever, IMO. I love my 3DS, but will always carry a flame for the SP.
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