Video game thread

@EverfreeEmergencies  
By dual slot, do you mean a GBA cart slotted in at the same time as a DS card?

@Barhandar  
If you know anything about soldering, I suppose. I don’t, myself.

@Azure Fang  
Yes. From what I remember they would read the ROM, but not the save for whatever reason.

@EverfreeEmergencies  
That’s because the saves are stored as a separate file, often in a separate folder. DeSmuME’s standalone release supports dual-slot with save reading and has for a while (literally years). You just need to make sure the save is in .sav format (the de facto standard) and named exactly the same as the GBA ROM’s filename (and stored in the same folder as the GBA ROM), set the ROM in the emu’s config, then load the desired DS ROM like normal.
 
Unfortunately, DeSmuME-libretro (used by frontends like RetroArch) does not support dual-slotting, so you need to keep a standalone handy for that feature (nothing new, I keep DeSmuME DS, PPSSPP, Dolphin, and PCSX2 standalones handy for especially finicky games even though I use RetroArch/libretro cores for everything else), but once the content is loaded into the DS game’s save you’re free to swap back to the libretro core if preferred.

Man, all this talk’s got me missing my gameboys. I used to play the shit out of those things. The Advance SP’s backlight was the greatest thing that ever happened at one point.

@Officer Hotpants  
Indeed. Though I hated the design of the GBA SP. I have large hands, so I always cramped up with the smaller design. Plus, the port being on the bottom edge made it difficult to get enough sunlight on the solar sensor on the Boktai cartridges; I was absolutely addicted to those games. During the spring and fall on sunny days, I’d literally climb onto my rooftop and play until the sensor overheated; was always entertaining waving at passing vehicles and greeting people walking by and seeing their bewildered expressions.

@Azure Fang  
Oh, it was absolute god damn dog shit for Boktai. I gave up trying to play that game on it and just returned it to my friend halfway through; I wasn’t going to sit out in the fucking 106 degree mid-drought Florida sun just to play a gimmicky game.

@Officer Hotpants  
106°C? man thats not even texas hot, ya weakling  
jk
 
i have never heard of boktai or the whole sun sensory thing, but then again we barely even got the gameboy over here, what was it all about?

@TeamBlueplant  
You’re a vampire hunter. Your weapon is fueled and the environment influenced by sunlight.
 

 
@Humble Oriathan  
Steam’s what?

@Officer Hotpants  
Every summer for the past 2 years so far, Steam has been doing a thing where they allow several game devs to provide a free playable demo of their latest upcoming games for 1 week. Basically a prelude to the summer sale to help attract more interest, and thus, boost sales.

@Officer Hotpants  
sounds like something a modern parent or company would make to “make dem kids go outside again”, but its a cool concept, specially considering its age

@TeamBlueplant  
It’s a Hideo Kojima game. It was one of his experiments. He was really interested in playing around with the vampire concept, if I remember right.

@ANoobis  
Did a good job on it, too. The interplay between solar levels and character strength verses expedited item decay, alteration of weather patterns, changes in hazards and enemy spawns… it could have had a lot of potential for “gimmick gaming” if it hadn’t been hampered by Nintendo exclusivity agreements. It also lead to a temporary truce between Capcom and Konami during some of their most heated competitive years, leading to crossovers between Boktai and Mega Man: Battle Network.
 
Too bad the DS game in the series was so horrible. At least the GBA games can be played on emulators now; more feature-complete projects include solar sensor emulation. As much as I’d love to climb back on my roof, California has gotten a little too hot anymore.

@Humble Oriathan  
Oh. Guess I just managed to miss it all this time.
 
@TeamBlueplant  
It was a pretty neat idea. As Noob said, it was a Kojima game. Weirdness and experimentation are to be expected. It was actually a really cool idea and even executed well. I just couldn’t make proper use of it due to my environment.
 
Ironically after giving up on it I moved on to fucking Golden Sun: The Lost Age. There was a bit of a theme to that year’s handheld gaming for me.

@Officer Hotpants  
did you also want to get a tan during said year as well by any chance?
 
i dont think i ever played a kojima game, me childhood was mostly RTS, and obscure ones, like close combat: cross of iron or imperium

@TeamBlueplant  
I only got to play a demo of the original Close Combat. It was a pretty decent demo, though. Good game. Blew my mind back then to be able to play as the Germans in WW2. And I’m assuming that other game you’re referring to is Imperium Galactica.
 
That was the greatest demo disc. Close Combat, Diablo, The Neverhood, Hellbender, Road Rash, Time Commando, You Don’t Know Jack, Monster Truck Madness and some flight sim & Olympics games that I can’t remember the names of but played fairly often. I played those demos more than I played some of my full games.

@Officer Hotpants  
nah, imperium 3: the great battles of rome (or something among those lines), wich is an RTS and a unique one at that, apparently it wasnt released in the US, it also had a city builder game called imperium civitas
 
i do remember playing a demo for dawn of war dark crusade that came with a copy of company of heroes
 
also close combat had some really interesting mechanics like morality, range, accuracy terrain or objects blocks vision as well as if it blocks shots, and infantry actually refusing to atack or even get near a tank if they dont have any AT tool

@TeamBlueplant  
Or getting tired of holding position and moving out on their own.

I didn’t know you could catch Onix in the Oreburgh mine. Huh.

@Officer Hotpants  
other rts from around that era that i remember where blitzkrieg 2, and panzers, former had some nice looking graphics and fast paced combat, while the latter had interesting armor durability mechanics

@TeamBlueplant  
There is–well, was, in the 90s–a Mac and Windows 3.1 military simulation created called “TacOps” written by a Marine officer named Holdridge. It was written for training purposes. It was extremely detailed and had an above-average AI, especially for the time. One of the features of the AI was that units wouldn’t reveal their positions by carrying out direct fire they knew would be ineffective. This meant things like infantry units with short-range antiarmor weapons like the old 66mm LAAWS would, when faced with modern MBTs that they couldn’t affect from the front, would behave intelligently and hold their fire and remain hidden and not shoot until they could get a shot at the flanks or rear.
 
I don’t think the Windows 3.1 version is still distributed or supported. It was published by Arsenal Publishing, a company now defunct. I don’t know whether it is legal to download as “abandonware,” but anyone contemplating such a thing would first need a 32-bit Windows version old enough to emulate Windows 3.1 compatibility to play it. Or Classic Mac OS 7, if you can find the old Mac version and something to run it on.
 

 

 
The graphics are, perhaps, unimpressive, but the gameplay still manages to impress even now. It had a really good UI that allowed you to concentrate on playing the game instead of fighting the interface. It also had a wealth of extremely detailed information about common vehicles abd weapons in US, Canadian, and Russian service at the time, and there used to be downloadable patches that could take you back as far as around 1965, with M60A1 and T55 tanks, though your air support missions would still be listed onscreen as being F16s, Harriers, or MiG-27s.
 
Nothing is nerfed. A full battalion volley from MRLS with DPICM will fuck shit up in a most thorough and satisfactory manner in an area a grid square across, killing 40% or more of AFVs, even modern MBTs, outright, and at least as many dismounted infantry, raising a wall of dust that blocks line of sight for at least a turn for anything that doesn’t have thermals, and everything that survives will be suppressed and thrown into confusion for several turns. Some of the Russian heavy MRLS are comparable but the really heavy stuff doesn’t show up much on the OPFOR side, which is realistic if you are thinking of it in terms of a stand-in for 1990s Iraq or 1980s North Korea and not just a stand-in for Russia. Artillery delivered mines are available too, and they are deadly, but not as deadly as antiarmor teams with modern fire-and-forget antitank missiles and thermal sights.

 
For playing Windows 3.x games, one of the easiest methods is to get a hold of an actual copy of the Windows 3.x flavor of choice, then “install” it through DOSBox. Takes a little fiddling with the DOSBox config to hit the “sweet spot” for resources, and configuring the folder mountings can be… interesting, but once you get it going it’s about the best way to play Windows 3.x games that doesn’t include browser-based emulators.
 
Unfortunately, all old Microsoft operating systems are still sold, via MSDN subscription, for personal use. It’s unlikely Microsoft would pursue someone using an unlicensed copy of any Windows 3.x flavor, but the legal precedent of continued distribution still holds.

@TeamBlueplant  
Does the name Muzzle Velocity ring any bells? At one point I thought I was the only person on the planet to play it. It was the coolest shit back then. A WW2 game that you played on two levels: the top-down RTS level where you directed your forces at large around the map and a first person perspective mode where you took control of individual units. A nice touch was that if you died, you just got immediately bunced to another vehicle/soldier in the unit. A touch disorienting at times but far preferable to getting knocked out to the RTS map. I did mean that an infantry unit that came under heavy fire would see you popping between soldiers every second or two, though. Still, it was cool to run around with your rifle and maybe a bazooka or a few grenades and try to take out armor units that your forces couldn’t hope to kill under AI control.
 
@Anonymous #0A6B  
Too bad it’s effectively lost because it sounds pretty cool.

@Anonymous #0A6B  
now that sounds highly interesting, though i personally barely know much about post vietnam war tactis equipement or armaments in comparison to ww2 and a bit of vietnam (because i find the concept of AK-wielding rice farmers making the US pissed over said farms and jungle to make them burn them all, just like katana wielding rice farmers made the US pissed off over some islands to the point of dropping a nuke on them)
 
 
@Officer Hotpants  
i recall seeing that game at some point, but never actually played it, tho it does sound neat
 
thing is that since im in south south america, we barely got much in the way of games and pcs in those early years, since they had to be translated into latin spanish because spain spanish might as well be english hillbilly languaje to us, or just straight up play in english that we didnt understand. hell, i remember having to blindly figure out how to play kharkov (turn based rts) because i didnt understand english at the time.  
atleast the imperium series (rome era) did have spanish translations since it was released in europe and not in gringoland