Redkey

@Redkey@programming.dev

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The PS2 turns 25 years old today. Crazy, right? Perfect day for revisiting some classics. What are some of your favourite PS2 games?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Some of my favourite slow-burn adventures that no one’s mentioned yet:

  • Project Zero/Fatal Frame (1, 2, and 3)
  • Shadow of Memories/Shadow of Destiny
  • Echo Night: Beyond
  • Zettai Zetsumei Toshi 1 and 2 (a.k.a. S.O.S. The Final Escape/Disaster Report, and Raw Danger)
  • Killer7

  And some action-adventure-RPGs that have a place in my heart but aren’t generally considered to be anything special:

  • EverGrace (there’s also a sequel which I haven’t played yet)
  • Eternal Ring
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The MSXBOOK Is A New Laptop Based On The Japanese Home Computer Standard | Time Extension⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Very similar variants of the same CPU and VDU were used in the Colecovision, the MSX, and Sega’s early systems, among others.

  I’ve also read that there were several ports from the ZX Spectrum to the MSX, due to them sharing essentially the same CPU at the same clock speed, and the MSX VDU having a video mode that could operate similarly to the Spectrum’s display.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Interactive Fiction Games Could Make A Comeback With This E-reader Handheld Console⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re kind of arguing against yourself, here. If the point is to impose limitations in order to reduce choice exhaustion and foster creativity, then portable software like PICO-8 can do that just as well as a physical device, and creators will have a much larger potential audience.

  I’ve often daydreamed (I’m sure I’m not alone) of making various kinds of electronic entertainment devices with very low specs as a challenge/creativity booster to myself and other creators. But I always come back to the realization that it makes much more sense, in a world where almost everyone has a powerful computing device with plenty of storage and a responsive colour display in their pocket, and constant Internet access, to implement them as software rather than hardware.

  A handful of people may be excited enough by the physicality of a device like this that they’ll buy it, but many more people will pass it by. Look at the proliferation of games for software-based formats like PICO-8, Bitsy, Inform, and Twine, compared to development on purely physical “low spec” devices like the PlayDate. Even real vintage systems are starting to become software-based formats; new games developed for them these days will often include an “emulator-friendly” version if they do anything particularly tricky with the original hardware.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Streets Of Rage Composer Yuzo Koshiro Worked On SNES RPG Terranigma, He Just Forgot About It Until 28 Years Later | Time Extension⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  One of my favorites. I’m so glad that I played it without any guides, so I could find all the little touches on my own.

  Also, if you’ve got the time (or a cheat device), it’s mildly amusing to grind to the maximum level so you can virtually one-shot the final god-like boss after all its posturing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨005 is the most influential game you’ve never played.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I did jump through the hoops necessary play this, years ago, although I can’t remember why. It was probably due to reading an article much like this one.

  Honestly, while I think it’s important to make a note that this game existed, I also think some people overreach a bit on just how influential it was. I wouldn’t say that anyone needs to play it these days unless they really want to. Just look up a few screenshots; it plays almost exactly how it looks like it plays.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Incredibly Rare Game Boy Game ‘Spud’s Adventure’ Has Popped Up On Ebay Complete In Box | Retro Dodo⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We’d better keep an eye out for them in the future.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Run Your PS2 Library from a $50 Memory Card Effortlessly⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What ShinkanTrain said. The last a read about it, the PS2 only switches into PS1 mode on a trigger from the optical drive subsystem, and then most of the memory and other hardware used to run homebrew is deactivated. AFAIK no-one’s yet found a way to trigger the change in software and keep the connection to wherever you’re loading your game from.

  I believe that on certain revisions of the console, MechaPwn can overcome the protection, but you still need a “Playstation 1” CD in the drive to actually run something, as ShinkanTrain wrote.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Run Your PS2 Library from a $50 Memory Card Effortlessly⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Probably because it’s pretty slow, and the custom drive format used by the PS2 isn’t very flexible; game images have to be in one continuous block, and blocks can’t be moved. You can overwrite one game with another, but only if it’s the same size or smaller. So if you delete games off in the reverse of the order you put them on you’re fine, but otherwise you’re going to leave empty “holes” of wasted space.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Run Your PS2 Library from a $50 Memory Card Effortlessly⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Having tried both a USB3 drive adaptor and downloading over Ethernet, I’ll say that Ethernet was way slower for me.

  The average copy time on the adaptor was about 30 minutes, but over Ethernet it took 3-4 times as long.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Run Your PS2 Library from a $50 Memory Card Effortlessly⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a 2TB SATA HDD in my PS2 fat. AFAIK that’s still the maximum storage size possible with the FMCB/wLaunchELF software. I believe that an unmodded original network adapter should be able to take up to a 512MB IDE drive, but I’d have to double-check that.

  I used to use a third-party “network adapter” (they usually don’t have Ethernet, just an HDD connector) with SATA support, which still works fine (it seems like most brands stopped working properly after a certain homebrew software version), but later I bought an official adapter (IDE/PATA) and a SATA conversion kit (a kit specific to the PS2 network adapter, not a standard IDE-SATA converter, which sometimes work with the PS2 and sometimes don’t) so I could try network stuff.

  I don’t think it was worth it, but these days it’s probably the way to go since there no longer seems to be any way of telling the non-working aftermarket adaptors from the working ones; the companies making the bad ones just started putting the brand name of the one still working adapter on their products.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Run Your PS2 Library from a $50 Memory Card Effortlessly⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you have a relatively powerful computer or phone, and your library only contains games from the console’s top 100 or so, you’re probably right.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨MMCE Protocol Lets You Load PS2 Games Directly Off Its Memory Card⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You can run games directly over Ethernet, which I believe can run at close to full speed. Some people have made dedicated little server devices for this out of cheap single-board computers like a Raspberry Pi; I think one guy may even have been selling a finished product like this for a while.

  And to be really picky, the first version of the slim actually has IDE HDD support onboard like the original network adapter, just no physical connector (you have to solder one on yourself).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Citizen Sleeper: A Compact, Sci-Fi Exploration of Survival at the Fringes of Space and Humanity⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In communities for the Murderbot Diaries series of books, I sometimes see this game mentioned as a good fit for the feel of that universe. What I’ve seen in clips of playthroughs bears that out; I bought the game a while ago but haven’t gotten around to actually installing it yet.

  Anyway, I just wanted to shout out the Murderbot series as something that folks may be interested in if they enjoyed this game’s world and are looking for something to read.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Patient gamers, which games have you discovered/played this week?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you or anyone else is interested in playing more, I recommend:

  • Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams (aka Director’s Cut). Not a continuation of the story of the first game, but a separate story in the same universe. Generally agreed to take everything good from the first game and improve upon it. The “Restless Dreams” version has a substantial extra scenario which adds some backstory and lore, but should probably be played only after completing the main game.
  • Silent Hill 3. This one does continue the story of the first game, somewhat. To be honest I remember enjoying it but not much in terms of particulars.
  • Silent Hill 4: The Room. Started out as a separate game unrelated to the Silent Hill mythos, but was rewritten to become an SH game during development. This sounds like it might be a terrible cash-in, but it really is a perfect fit for the SH universe. IMO almost as strong as SH2.
  • Silent Hill: 0rigins. A PSP game set as a prequel to the first game. A little light on story, and with some odd combat mechanics, but I still found it very enjoyable. I played the later PS2 port.
  • Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. A “reimagining” of the story from the first game. It plays and feels very different to the previous games, but I still found it very engaging.
  • Silent Hill: Orphan. A series of point-and-click adventures for Java-enabled mobile phones from the 2000s. Totally different mechanics from the mainline games, but they do the atmosphere and story well if you don’t mind the slower pace of point-and-click. They run on some J2ME emulators.
  • Silent Hill: Alchemilla. A free fan-game centered on the Alchemilla Hospital, but also including several other locations. First-person view with many puzzles and no combat. Very polished and really nails the atmosphere.

  I played a little of Silent Hill: Homecoming but got tired of it about 1/3 of the way through (I guess). I also bought Silent Hill: Downpour but gave up on that even more quickly. I don’t recommend either of them. Things introduced in the earlier games for specific psychological reasons related to the plot - especially sexy monster nurses and Pyramid Head - tend to be regurgitated in the later games for no real reason other than “Silent Hill”, which removes their impact completely.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Game of the day - Return of the Obra Dinner - did you enjoy it?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think I was kinda in the same boat as you.

  In theory, I loved the fact that if you wanted to check, the game would tell you when you theoretically had enough information to identify one of the crew or passengers, so you knew where to focus your thinking. But I got stuck on some characters who seemed to me to be implied or hinted, but for whom I didn’t think I had positive proof.

  I eventually got tired of continuously reviewing the same scenes over and over, looking for some detail that I had overlooked, and read a walkthrough to find out what I was missing. It seems that I hadn’t missed anything, and “an educated guess” was the standard expected by the game, not “definitive proof”. But I was burnt out with the game by that point and stopped playing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gorogoa, video game equivalent of an LSD trip⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  LSD: Dream Emulator must also rank up there, surely? :)

  Gorogoa has been on my “pile of shame” for several years now. Perhaps today’s the day.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jade Empire, the prototype for Mass Effect⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The morality system was a huge disappointment for me. You said most of what I wanted to say, so I’ll be brief.

  Right near the start of the game, an NPC outlines the Way of the Open Palm vs. the Way of the Closed Fist, more or less the same way you described them. And I was so excited to see a morality system in which both sides were morally defensible positions. But from the very first Closed Fist follower you meet (just minutes later), they may as well all be monacle-wearing moustache-twirlers who punctuate every sentence with “mwah-ha-ha!”

  The worst example that I remember is a bootlegger who’s essentially holding a town hostage. Far from following either philosophy as described, he’s just plain evil, and in fact I easily came up with (IMO solid) arguments for actually swapping the game’s morality labels on the player’s options. But no, one option is clearly “evil”, so that’s Closed Palm, while the other is obviously “good”, hence Open Palm.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Help identifying my dreamcast⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re quite right! I didn’t notice that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Help identifying my dreamcast⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Many special editions of the Dreamcast were released over the years, in a variety of different colours. However, every special edition Dreamcast that I’ve seen has had some other visual change besides just the colour.

  Looking at the pictures, I suspect that your console has just been put into a replacement aftermarket shell. However, if the bottom half of the console is solid grey, and there’s a pale yellow limited edition number sticker on the back, then you have a quite rare Code: Veronica (Claire version) console. I’m guessing that if the sticker was there, though, you wouldn’t be here asking about it, as it’s a real giveaway.

  That being said, it still looks cool, but I don’t think it’s going to command an especially high price or anything.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Saudi man earns world record for 444 game consoles hooked to one TV⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder when he last sat down and really played a game for an afternoon. Now that everything is plugged in and ready to go at the push of a few (spreadsheet-tracked) buttons, he has finally overcome all the difficulty of switching consoles and can now play through all the games he’s been wanting to play. Right? Right?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What stick should I get?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In my experience, your request is unrealistic. Bluetooth shouldn’t be too much of a problem, either built-in or with a dongle, but a stick that can emulate much of anything from the PS2 library is going to be ridiculously expensive compared to other options. I’m not aware of any Fire Stick, however new, that could do it. The majority of sticks are good for up to 16-bit, and quite a few that are at the upper end of the sane price range will stretch to PS1, some N64 and Saturn, and maybe even some Dreamcast and PSP.

  If you have to have PS2, I’d really recommend going for a micro-pc or high-end Android box if it absolutely has to be as small as possible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ATOM Collectible Keychain Controller Is A New Miniature Marvel From CRKD | Retro Dodo⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Worse than companies that release doodads virtually identical to things that have been cranked out of Shenzen factories for years as “new and unique” products, are news sites that go along with them.

  I’ve tried a couple of things like this over the years and none of them has been very useable. They’re just too small to really hold comfortably, but also, what do you do with your phone while you’re holding this with two hands? Putting it on a stand on a table is possible in a cafe or library, but not on the train or standing in line.

  Most phone controllers seem to fall into one of two categories; either too small to really use (and with no way to attach them to a phone) like this, or huge, ergonomic things with clips or stretching middles that are too big and bulky to carry everywhere for unexpected gaming time. I have found two small-ish, square-ish controllers with clips and the full, standard range of buttons that work for me (not so small they cramp my hands, not so big and oddly-shaped that I can’t throw them in my bag and forget about them), but I think they’re both out of production now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anybody tried one of these RPi based N64 cart dumpers off Aliexpress?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a bit odd, but I don’t have more than a passing familiarity with the N64’s library and I still got it on the first guess. If you know the N64 library inside-out and you can’t place it, it’s the Japanese cartridge for a famous worldwide release.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Only ever played OOoT, MM, and WW. Just ordered an Analogue Pocket. Suggest an order.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Swap the positions of Minish Cap and Link to the Past, then play them from the bottom up.

  I’m not sure if that’s the actual release order, but it feels like the right “progression” to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gamecube, PS2 and Wii just chilling in the evening sun. This picture just kinda happened, I thought you would appreciate it too.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When the Wii launched, a few pundits called it “two GameCubes taped together”, which I thought was a bit rude and overly dismissive.

  Years later, I started really looking into the technical side of things, and oh my goodness it really is almost two GameCubes taped together. I mean, it works wonderfully and I’m not knocking it, but IIRC the majority of what’s under the hood is either an upgraded version of what was in the GCN, or a doubling of the capacity (in some cases literally two) of the same component.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨dues ex and disco elysium : and ps plus catalog discussion⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not a really big thing, but it is a pet peeve of mine (and some others); the name of the series isn’t “Dues Ex” but “Deus Ex” (day-us ex), as in “deus ex machina” (day-us ex mack-in-a).

  “Deus ex machina” literally translates as “God from (the) machine”, and originally referred to a type of stage prop used in ancient plays, then in more modern times the term came to refer more generally to the sort of plot device that used that prop, which is a previously unmentioned person or thing that suddenly appears to save the heroes from an otherwise inescapable threat. At some time in the 60s or 70s it started to become popular to use it in a more literal sense in sci-fi stories about machine intelligence or cyborgs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Banjo Kazooie Meets Zelda: Wind Waker in N64 Mod⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For anyone like me who doesn’t already know how this (apparently) works, the only place I eventually found the file was via a Mega link in the description of the matching video on the modder’s YouTube channel. The thumbnail has the word "DOWNLOAD’ written across it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's honestly good advice, but I much prefer original hardware when possible.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to stick to original hardware, if you already have it or can afford to buy it.

  Setting up a Pi or other single-board system as a dedicated retro game emulator is also an absolutely valid choice IMO. It’s a fun, generally affordable little project that you can tinker with forever, e.g. changing cases and controllers, UI tweaks, ROM file organization, per-game settings optimization. But I don’t think that it’s ever been the “best” emulation option for anyone who didn’t already have their heart set on “doing something fun and interesting with a Pi”.

  The smartphone you already have, dedicated retro gaming handhelds, Android TV boxes or sticks, and cheap/secondhand/already-owned PCs (desktop, notebook, or kiosk) all arguably match or exceed the performance and value-for-money of any Pi-based system.

  Yet in any thread where someone new to emulation is asking for advice, there’s always a flock of folks who suggest getting a Pi like it’s the only game in town. It honestly baffles me a little. Especially because almost all of them are just running a pretty frontend over Retroarch, and Retroarch is available for virtually every modern consumer computing platform (and so are a lot of pretty frontends, if that’s a selling point).

  For context, I’ve got a dozen or so retro systems, but I prefer to emulate as much as possible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hamster Will Release VS. Valkyrie’s Adventure: Legend of the Key of Time As The Newest Arcade Archives Game On Switch | Retro Gaming News 24/7⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  After watching some of a playthrough on YouTube, the PC Engine version looks fairly close to the original arcade game (also called Valkyrie no Densetsu/Legend of the Valkyrie). The Famicom game (called Valkyrie no Boken: Toki no Kagi no Densetsu/Valkyrie’s Adventure: Legend of the Key of Time) is very different. The two games really only share the title (sort of) and a little backstory.

  Legend of the Valkyrie is an on-rails multi-direction shooting game with light RPG elements. The most similar games I can think of are the D&D beat-em-up games Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara, which were also originally arcade games.

  But the Famicom’s Valkyrie’s Adventure is a ridiculously open world action RPG. The player is dropped in the middle of the wilderness with a sword and no idea of what to do first. You’re free to walk in any direction, like most home 2D action RPGs. There’s virtually no text, and many “puzzles” which involve using particular items in particular one-tile spaces (without any clues or hints). There’s a guide in the original Famicom manual that will get you part-way through the game, but from there you’re on your own.

  This is another very odd choice for a Switch re-release, but I guess that’s the point of this series. At least this game has a small fan following (in Japan, anyway).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Duke Nukem's Co-Creator Reveals Old Pitch For 'Big Trouble In Little China' Game⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That sounds similar to the actual game that was released for 8-bit home computers at the time.