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Post by toei on Mar 1, 2018 15:10:08 GMT -5
Well, the one on the left looks suspiciously like Bebop from the Ninja Turtles, even if it's supposed to be a dinosaur.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 8, 2018 22:32:30 GMT -5
I stumbled across this site tonight, and it looks like some nice long-form writeups on some both obscure and popular titles. I might start digging through the back archives when I'm not too tired to read... retrovania-vgjunk.blogspot.com
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Post by anayo on Mar 12, 2018 14:15:34 GMT -5
I've been downloading and reading these over the past week or so. I'm on issue #8. Most of it is a retread of stuff I already read on old websites from around that time, but I'm still enjoying it. There's a monolithic inferiority complex toward the Playstation ("Don't worry, this will be as good as the Playstation version." "The Playstation got a head start, but the Saturn will catch up!" etc.) When I read the article about Sega World London theme park it caused old memories to flood back for me. My parents and I (all Americans) were living in England at that time. My mom bought me a Sega magazine from the newsstand containing an article about Sega World. I really wanted to go to London and see it. We never did, though. It inspired me to go look up this old 1996 promo video for the park. The writers of this magazine are snarky. I had about two years of Nintendo Power in the early 2000's. If memory serves, it was pretty wholesome and optimistic. In Saturn Magazine, on the other hand, if a reader sends them fan mail saying something stupid or rude, they'll publish it and reply, "You're stupid and rude." Overall I think I prefer Dave's Sega Saturn page because it was written for fans by fans, not people on Sega's payroll. So the fans were less inclined to portray things through rose tinted glasses. If something sucked, they'd say so. I get mixed vibes from Saturn Magazine. Some articles for upcoming games that were destined to be turds sound suspiciously like commercials to drum up hype. However, they did have a review for Battle Arena Toshinden where they acknowledge it's forgettable and shallow. On the other hand they gave Bug! a 5/5. Then again I remember it really did seem like a 5/5 until Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot came out. It's also worth bearing in mind not everyone had an Internet connection back then, so more people relied on magazines to get news about their hobbies.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 12, 2018 14:52:03 GMT -5
Right, I can see how those earlier platformers might have seemed amazing until Mario 64 in particular came out. That stuff was mind-blowing at the time. Surprisingly, I still think Mario 64 holds up quite well today. So do those early Crash games, too, even if I wasn't a big fan of the series. The simplicity actually helps them quite a bit in this case.
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Post by Ex on Mar 12, 2018 15:08:19 GMT -5
Surprisingly, I still think Mario 64 holds up quite well today. I agree, Nintendo really knocked it out of the park with that game's design. Blew my mind in 1996, still great today. I'm way overdue for a complete replay.
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Post by anayo on Mar 12, 2018 19:43:55 GMT -5
Yeah maybe it was analogous to how in 1993 a few FPS's came out on PC using the Wolf 3D engine, then Doom came out and flattened them all.
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Post by toei on Mar 16, 2018 12:34:50 GMT -5
I'm not so sure about Bugs ever being that impressive. It wasn't to me, anyway. The blockbuster near my friend's place had it hooked up around the time it came out, and even then I thought the 3D effect was pretty cool but you could tell it was limited to straight lines, so there wasn't any real 3D exploration. Besides, I thought the character itself was bland and charmless. The only part I really liked was the Sonic cameo.
SSM can definitely get over-the-top in their Sega shilling, but I liked their snarky tone at the time. They made fun of each other a lot, too. I didn't like it when it applied to RPGs, though. They tended to disparage the genre every chance they got, probably because it was so big on the PSX, up until about Panzer Dragoon Saga came out, then it was the most amazing game ever, etc. etc.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 18, 2018 14:08:41 GMT -5
So, I found another site that covers a lot of the PC Engine library in pretty significant detail. I've been having a hard time finding detailed looks at games that don't just cover the most well-known titles, so thumbing through this has been pretty neat. However, I do question some of their objectivity. Sure, I might be a bit biased towards a lot of Nintendo's offerings, but I have to wonder if some of the NES/PC Engine comparisons in this article are tongue-in-cheek, or if they're suffering some form of PC Engine Stockholm or something.
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Post by toei on Mar 18, 2018 15:03:42 GMT -5
So, I found another site that covers a lot of the PC Engine library in pretty significant detail. I've been having a hard time finding detailed looks at games that don't just cover the most well-known titles, so thumbing through this has been pretty neat. However, I do question some of their objectivity. Sure, I might be a bit biased towards a lot of Nintendo's offerings, but I have to wonder if some of the NES/PC Engine comparisons in this article are tongue-in-cheek, or if they're suffering some form of PC Engine Stockholm or something. I literally cannot sit through the first paragraph on that page. "More-bounteous wellspring of spine-tingling drama"? "Spinning-room-addled buddies"? "As entertainingly discombobulated as their Snerd progeny"? Talk about awful, pretentious writing. Besides, I grew up as a SEGA fanboy, and I like the PC Engine and all, but there's no way you can pretend it has more quality games than the SNES, as that opening paragraph implies. It does have a pretty good library (if you include CD games, and especially if you include all the untranslated RPGs), but come on. You need a lot of bad faith to put down Chrono Trigger (what's their alternative, Neutopia?), or to compare some NES Ultima port to a mid-90s CD-based RPG like AnEarth Fantasy Stories (which does look cool, but again, untranslated.)
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Post by Sarge on Mar 18, 2018 19:38:13 GMT -5
Well, I think it was just NES games they were comparing to, but regardless, Shape Shifter over Metroid? Seriously? I mean, I have played some of that game. It may be okay, but... oof. I also don't think The Legendary Axe holds a candle to Castlevania.
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