What game are you playing?

[Manurack]

Anybody wish they had a PlayStation 2 and played ATV Off Road Fury?

That was a classic that I would play for hours after school in the early 2000s.

 

[TedEH]

Anybody wish they had a PlayStation 2

These things are so abundant that there's not much need for wishing - you could probably grab one off kijiji for a pittance. And the games go for pretty cheap too.

 

[wankerness]

I still have my modded PS2 I bought from the singer of Novembers Doom back in like 2006. I have never gotten a burned DVD to read very well on it though. I remember trying to get a pirated FFXII disc to work for a few hours and never getting past the opening cutscene.

I think the only game I've ever actually played extensively on it was FFX, which I played so much I even did the awful stuff like dodging 200 lightning bolts for Lulu's ultimate weapon, or that hellish chocobo race for Tidus's weapon, etc. I wish I could open that saved game on the remaster!!

I have a few PS2 games, but only a few. MGS3, MGS2, FFX, FFX-2, God of War, I think that might be it. I've never played any of the sequels to MGS despite having them both on PS2 and Xbox 360. My main obstacle at this point is that I'm not sure what I did with the memory card. Secondary obstacle is I don't really know of any games I want to play on the platform that I couldn't just play on PC or a later console that I have. I guess maybe God of War 1/2, since I never got a PS3.

I have a really hard time with most old games made by anyone other than Nintendo that I try to play on console. They're just so damn user unfriendly compared to anything made in the last 10-15 years. Like, the intensely limited save points, the usually quite terrible controls on early 3D games, etc. Stuff like say, Castlevania Symphony of the Night REALLY holds up, but even the at the time lauded stuff like say Donkey Kong 64 is a miserable experience thanks to all the anti-quality-of-life "features." Old PC games that you can get to run at least typically have quicksave and also the 3D ones tended to have way better controls than console 3D games thanks to mouse/keyboard.

I sort of dread even trying to play some of the games I was wowed by at the time, but haven't revisited since. Ex the Star Wars Rogue Leader games on Gamecube that I remember thinking were like, photorealistic at the time.

 

[gabito]

Unless you're going for a 100% authentic experience, emulation is usually the best option.

Depending on the emulator you have options to save anywhere (save states), enhanced rendering resolutions, and some of the games are even moddable (HD textures, etc.).

 

[BlackMastodon]

(Used Prestige for scale.)

#JustSSOThings

 

[p0ke]

Unless you're going for a 100% authentic experience, emulation is usually the best option.

Yeah and emulation can be 99% authentic with the right settings too. I mean, you just turn off all the enhancements and it's basically done.

I also have a modded PS2 (actually just a memory card with the mcboot thing or whatever it's called on it) because PS2 emulation was too demanding for my PC back then, but I never really ended up playing anything on it. And these days I think my phone can pretty much run PS2 games

Also a lot of the old legendary games are available on the PS/Xbox stores to play on modern consoles, for example the Kotor games are directly playable on Xbox Series X. Unfortunately it's so authentic, it even has all the bugs (I couldn't be bothered finishing those games because they keep crashing and losing progress...).

 

[Crungy]

Anybody wish they had a PlayStation 2 and played ATV Off Road Fury?

That was a classic that I would play for hours after school in the early 2000s.

View attachment 145675

I think I have a copy of that here somewhere, and a ps2 slim lol

 

[gabito]

Yeah and emulation can be 99% authentic with the right settings too. I mean, you just turn off all the enhancements and it's basically done.

I also have a modded PS2 (actually just a memory card with the mcboot thing or whatever it's called on it) because PS2 emulation was too demanding for my PC back then, but I never really ended up playing anything on it. And these days I think my phone can pretty much run PS2 games

Also a lot of the old legendary games are available on the PS/Xbox stores to play on modern consoles, for example the Kotor games are directly playable on Xbox Series X. Unfortunately it's so authentic, it even has all the bugs (I couldn't be bothered finishing those games because they keep crashing and losing progress...).

Yeah, I'd say that you can run emulators up to the PS3's generation with any semi-decent computer. I mean, my ROG Ally can run all my PS3 games that are not available anywhere else (God of War saga, MGS IV, etc.) with no issues and the Steam Deck is pretty much the same.

Even better for older consoles and handhelds, obviously. There's a guy on Youtube that explains how to mod some PS2 games to make them look REALLY good.

Oh, and there's also that "new" thing they're doing now with the recompilation of N64 games (which I guess will eventually happen for other platforms too).

 

[TedEH]

I've played Majora's Mask 100 times already, but I'd play it again in this recomp way. I tried it out a while back when it was first hitting news sites and it's fantastic.

 

[gabito]

I never played any of those N64 games, but they look tempting.

 

[brector]

Trying to get through my backlog of games. Finished up Devil May Cry 5 and am about 1/3 of the way through Horizon Forbidden West

 

[p0ke]

I've played Majora's Mask 100 times already, but I'd play it again in this recomp way. I tried it out a while back when it was first hitting news sites and it's fantastic.

I never beat it myself. I had already sold my N64 to get a PS2 when Majora's Mask came out, so I've only played it using an emulator (which already ran almost 100% back in the early 00's). But anyway, for various reasons I never ended up finishing it.

So I would absolutely play a recomp version of it!

 

[wankerness]

I played the Wii U virtual console version of Majora's Mask a couple years ago and beat it (using a guide, that game is a nightmare compared to all other post-Zelda II entries in the series difficulty-wise). I then tried to play the 3DS remake and lost interest. I was split on their changes, it definitely looked better and had some nice QOL features, but some of the other changes were worse. A definitive version combining what's good about the two versions would be ideal. I don't get exactly what that "recompile" even is. Is it recompiling the code as an exe? Or is it recompiled as an N64 rom that somehow can be played in ultrawide resolution??

 

[TedEH]

Is it recompiling the code as an exe?

Yes - with some enhancements. It's re-compiled so that it's running natively, with, if I understand correctly, the graphics calls translated into the equivalent opengl or directx or whatever. So it's not emulated, it's running as if it was build for PC to begin with. Which makes it fast. And smooth. And able to be modded, played in widescreen, or in 4k, etc etc.

 

[gabito]

They somehow translate the original N64 machine code from the ROMs to C / C++ code they can modify, adapt, and recompile on pretty much any platform. It's not the original code and they don't share the assets, so I guess it's fine. The (translated / transpiled) source files are available for everyone in Github.

There's also other technical wizardry involved, they mention some of it in the videos, but that's more or less it.

 

[Heretick]

Was browsing through the developer of Fear & Hunger's twitter after my second F&H 2 playthrough and saw he had posted his (unsorted) top 100 games of all-time; got me wanting to do something similar. So here's my top 25 games of all-time (only vaguely sorted after FF7):



Used the Topsters 3 website to do it, I'd be interested to see other people's lists! You can rank Albums, books, movies, and TV on there, too.

 

[gabito]

Oh, I like those lists that nobody reads.

Mine is a very repetitive one. That's a nice list making tool, BTW.

 

[Heretick]

Oh, I like those lists that nobody reads.

Same, haha. I've always liked succinct lists like this, even if we have nothing (or very little, in our case!) in common!

 

[wankerness]

Yes - with some enhancements. It's re-compiled so that it's running natively, with, if I understand correctly, the graphics calls translated into the equivalent opengl or directx or whatever. So it's not emulated, it's running as if it was build for PC to begin with. Which makes it fast. And smooth. And able to be modded, played in widescreen, or in 4k, etc etc.

So, basically, this is going to be #2974093048 in the list of "awesome things that Nintendo completely obliterates through savage legal threats." I just don't get why anyone ever even tries to do this with Nintendo games given the entire history of people working on any kind of project like this. I hope it comes out before it happens so we can get it, but the creators had better be preparing to rinse their hands of this when Nintendo comes knocking.

 

[p0ke]

Here's mine:



Probably missed many that I played the crap out of, I just picked the ones that came to mind first. I also tried not to pick too many from the same series, as I could've pretty much filled it up with all the Crash Bandicoot games, all the Final Fantasies, all the GTA's and so on. For Zelda and Mario I had to pick two though, because the two entries were so far from each other.