Christmas Mini Marathon

Well it's December and once again I've been snowed under with things like a new job, social stuff and all sorts of other nonsense that stop me blogging as much I'd like.

However I'm going to have one day on the 28th where I'm going to have a little bit of time to do a long stream, so since it's just after Christmas day I'm planning  to do a bunch of Christmas themed games.  Right now I'm thinking such Christmas classics such as

Christmas Nights
Die Hard Arcade
Bible Adventures
Daze Before Christmas
and more!

So tune into the stream on the 28th and let's enjoy some post Christmas Day festivities!

I Miss Quirky Peripherals

My post yesterday evening about rail shooters got me thinking about video game console peripherals and just how boring they have become in the modern age.  We have stuff like the Kinect, the PS4s pad thing but I only seem to ever come across people complaining about those.

I mean what the fuck happened to every console having a gun.  Back in the day, every motherfucker and it's dog had a goddamn gun in order to play all those arcade rail shooter ports.  The Wii kinda had a gun thing going on but that was nothing more than slotting your remote into a hunk of plastic.  I want shit like the Sega Saturn Predator back.  It was fucking heavy as shit, lit up when you fired it and it was fucking big.  You knew that when you got that motherfucker out the draw, shit was going to go down.

Back then, developers were always trying to do interesting shit with their systems and giving you interesting ways to play.  NiGHTS on the Saturn saw the release of a "3D" controller which looked kind of like an arcade stick and was designed to make playing that game a bit easier or something.  The Dreamcast had a fishing rod for use with Sega Bass Fishing but also worked with Soul Calibre so you could swing it around like a sword.  This resulted in getting smashed by someone with a controller but it was fun nonetheless.  Nintendo were famous for their weird fucking peripherals such as ROB the Robot for the NES and the Game Boy Transfer Pack back when Pokemon Stadium came out which blew peoples fucking minds back then

Sure, they were gimmicky and the number of compatible games was kind of low but the point is that a lot of the time they were fun to use.  I spent HOURS playing ports of rail shooters and HOURS with the fucking DC fishing rod just because it was a novel way to play.

With modern systems, a lot of the shit is built in or has been done before a long time ago and it worked better (Kinect and Eye Toy for example).  Things like touch screens were novel back when the DS was new but in 2014, a touch screen on a modern device is fucking standard.  The closest thing we have to a proper interesting peripheral is the Occulus Rift or any other VR headset thing.  That thing is pushing boundaries and giving people a chance to experience games in a way they never have before which is awesome.

It also makes the console a bit more interesting I think.  I'm constantly finding weird bits and bobs in the retro stores around Japan and sometimes I have no idea what the fuck they would ever be used for.  40 years from now when people are going around retro stores for PS3s or whatever, there isn't going to be anything all that interesting to find in a junk box because aside from the standard console/controller/cables/games there wasn't really much else to fuck about with.

I know it's mainly a problem with technology being what it is and the need for all this quirky bullshit being reduced to basically zero but I'm sure the creative minds in the games industry could come up with SOMETHING that would make me want to play their game based on the method of input alone like they did back then. 

Maybe one day.

Saturn Month: Nights: Into Dreams showcase

Another video for Saturn Month has been uploaded!  I was having a lot of problems with this one, it really didn't want to behave when being run by my emulator while recording.  Still, I made it work in the end and here you go!

I'm hoping to do some games with a bit more depth to them in the future, I find the reason that these games are so hard to talk about is because despite being awesome, they are really quite simple, and considering I'm trying to be informative about these games, I need to play something that has more to say about it than "get the things and put them in the round thing"

Still, hope you enjoy the video!

Saturn Month: NiGHTS Into Dreams

Well here we are people, we are finally getting into the meat of Saturn month, the greats of the system, and we're starting out with NiGHTS Into Dreams!

If you're the kind of person who never played this one, but you played the one on the Wii, good lord you are missing out.  The Wii NiGHTS game isn't exactly awful but it's missing a lot of the original charm I think.

There is a plot that I bet most people don't give a shit about, but for those that do....there are two kids who are basically crap at life, and because they are crap at life they have nightmares.  There is also some evil prick who resides in the dream world, stealing dream energy to take it over.  He creates Nights who then decides "fuck this" and rebels.  The kids, who end up in the dream world hold dream energy that cannot be captured by the evil prick, so it is up to you as nights, to harness this and go ruin the evil pricks shit.....I think

It's been a LOOOONG time since I played NiGHTS, and even then the story isn't a big part of it.  It's more about acrobatics and showing off how good the Saturn was at pulling off busy, colourful 3D environments.  Aside from the awesome gameplay which I'll show you in the upcoming video, the game just oozes charm and personality.  The design, the music, the little details in each stage all come together to create something really unique, so I'm hoping to get the video out on this one ASAP.

If you have not seen this version, I think you're in for something special, watch this space!

Sega Saturn Peripherals

Like every console, the Sega Saturn had a number of extra bits and bobs that you could buy to enhance your gaming experience.  So for those that didn't own a Saturn, I thought I'd give a bit of a mention to the ones that stood out.

Well the first one I never actually owned back when you could still buy Saturn games in the store.  It was known as the 3D controller, and as far as I know its main purpose was for playing Nights: Into Dreams.  The differences between this pad and the regular pad as the addition of an analogue stick and some changes to the shoulder buttons.  The reason it was made is because if you've ever played Nights on a regular pad, it can wear on the palms after a while, so it was made to make playing that game more comfortable.

The next peripheral I want to talk about is the Super Cobra light gun.  Light Guns are not exactly uncommon for consoles, even the NES had a light gun, but this thing was an absolute beast of a weapon.  It was heavier than any other light gun I had used up to that point, and constantly shooting outside of the screen in House of the Dead felt more like lifting weights than playing an arcade rail shooter.   Also it was cool as fuck, whenever you pulled the trigger, the lights down the side would light up, back when I was a kid, that was the coolest shit.  Also it was compatible with the Sony Playstation so I think you could play Resident Evil: Gun Survivor with it.

The final thing I'll be talking about is another peripheral that I didn't own at the time, and this little thing is known as the Sega NetLink.  A lot of people give credit to the Dreamcast for being the first console with online features, but they would be really wrong.  If we're just talking about Sega, the Mega Drive had an online feature that didn't really take off, and then the Saturn the the NetLink, and while it only worked for a few games at ran at a whopping 28.8kb/s, it still worked to get you playing games online before the Dreamcast and its fancy 56k turned up.  It also came with a browser and auto connected you to an IRC channel as far as I understand the information I found on the internet.  After giving the wikipedia entry a quick read as well, the reason I probably never owned the damn thing is because it cost a massive $200, something I or my family would not have been willing to buy at the time.

The Saturn had some other cool bits of kit, but these are the ones that stood out in my memory, a quick google search can get you a complete list of all the peripherals available if you care that much.