Redkey

@Redkey@programming.dev

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My Advanced Retro Simulation Environment brings all the boys to the yard⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  How do you think your A.R.S.E. compares to Microsoft’s planned Binary Universal Technology Translation System, and Sony’s upcoming Original Software Heuristic Inter-platform Real-time Interpreter?

  I like the big offering from MS, I cannot lie. Sony’s outline looks well-rounded, too. I searched online, but I haven’t seen any real details about your system. Even after I put down my phone and got on my desktop to type on a proper keyboard, I couldn’t find A.R.S.E. with both hands.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The NGage Has A New Boxed Game For The First Time In 20 Years⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I had an OG nGage when they were still (as close as they would ever be to) relevant; I won it as a prize in a competition. And while I really liked it, I wouldn’t have bought one with my own money unless the price had dropped by at least 50%, and even that’s only given my personal positive experience with using one. As a regular consumer paying full price, it would certainly have been a hard pass for me.

  The design seems to have been created by a group of mobile phone designers who once saw some pictures of a Gameboy Advance. I presume that the astounding decision to put the single game/SD card slot under the removable battery came from thinking that it would still be a phone first, and users would either install an SD card as a semi-permanent upgrade, or keep one game in the device until they finished it. I’ve only played one nGage game on mine (Tomb Raider), and the performance wasn’t awful but it definitely left something to be desired. They were probably leaning hard on realtime 3D as a way to differentiate it from the GBA, but I don’t think the CPU had quite enough power to make it responsive enough.

  That being said, I used it happily for years as my main phone, and it generally outperformed all of my friends’ phones by a wide margin. The only problem I ever had with “side talking” was having occasional random idiots on the street pointing and laughing. Now we all hold big, flat slices of bread up to our heads, but everyone does it so it’s OK I guess. The phone call quality itself was crystal clear both ways. The speaker call mode was also miles ahead of any other mobile phone I saw at the time (or even any phone I’ve had since). I did get used to using it from my pocket with a microphone headset, though.

  The nGage was a high-end Symbian Series 60 device with features much closer to modern smartphones than the more traditional, dedicated mobile phones that formed most of its competition. When it came out, BlackBerry was only just starting to expand beyond the enterprise space into the regular consumer market, and Apple’s original iPhone (which don’t forget was nowhere near as smooth and polished as they are now) was still 4 years away. Using the nGage with a headset actually worked out well since I often used it to listen to mp3s, a feature that many mobile phones still lacked at the time.

  I could (and frequently did) surf regular, unfiltered, uncompressed websites on my nGage at a time when very few portable devices had that capability. And while I didn’t play nGage games with it, it was fantastic for playing J2ME and Symbian games, many of which offered a GBA-like experience (albeit on a smaller screen) thanks to the relatively powerful CPU. That’s not hyperbole; I was often also carrying a (frontlight modded) GBA around during that period, and switched my on-the-go gaming between them depending on my mood and what games I’d got recently. It also had surprisingly good battery life, although this may have been shortened when playing nGage games.

  The nGage gets a lot of flak as a handheld gaming system going up against the GBA, and that definitely wasn’t any kind of fight at all. But it was an extremely capable phone for the time, and even as “just” a phone, it still had useful gaming leanings. I think that there was a lot of knee-jerk reaction about “side talking” at the time, and despite there also being some legitimate complaints (like the card slot placement), I feel that it’s doing a disservice to Nokia’s engineers to have it go down in history as a total, unmitigated disaster.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wouldn’t be surprised if book readers spend 92% of their time on older books. Or if music listeners spend 92% of their time on older pieces.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Playing Lupin III Treasure Of The Sorcerer King for PS2⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A great stealth/adventure game. It’s a pity that only one of the three was localized into English.

• ⁨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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨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.