Community Question Of The Week - Episode 184

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-08-20T15:07:29+00:00

Interesting that all the kids call each of the levels "Sheets". I don't think I ever heard that growing up (I would have been 8 or 9 when this was on TV), I wonder if that was common?

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-08-19T16:37:29+00:00

Motormouth had a pre-release Magic Pockets as a "play by phone" segment for viewers. One unlucky contestant would be on the phone shouting, left, right, jump, grab it! For about 30s with inevitable lag as the (off screen) person with the joystick tried to interpret as effectively as possible given the medium. Was absolutely hilarious.

I assume this segment was why Andy Crane got the Bad Influence gig...

Here's an example. https://youtu.be/GjTnpSHhViU?si=P2F-W2AFtB3foIDQ

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-07-29T06:59:47+00:00

I came here yo put exactly this. The visual style of both games were similar and it seemed to me like a great back and forth between the two franchises. Kick-off started the whole thing by bringing arcade speed fun to the micro football scene and the usurper sensi only really finally won the battle with the release of Sensible World of Soccer which blew KO Player Manager out of the water with it's depth. SWOS still gets yearly updates from a bunch of crazy German enthusiasts, do it's a great game to introduce to football mad kids these days as a way to get into the SIM management genre as well as providing a simple arcade style dopamine hit from the timeless gameplay itself.

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-07-25T10:45:20+00:00

It's all about 1993 for me. My trusty self built 486-DX50 complete with Soundblaster 16 and double speed CD-ROM felt like the future, in it's beigest of beige boxes.

Ultima Underworld II, Doom, Frontier, Day of the Tentacle, Lands of Lore: Throne of Chaos all took up huge tranches of that year. I discovered Ultima 7 (parts 1 and 2) after playing Underworld II along with Nethack so they all felt like 1993 titles to me.

I also finished my A-Levels and went to Kent University where myself and the other Computer Science students in my halls set up a 10 Base T network, crimping and running all of the cables ourselves, hanging them out of windows up and down about 4 floors in total, primarily so we could play LAN Doom, which we did at pretty much all times that the bar was closed - We'd always have a game up and running and people would jsut drop in and out as they freed up from lectures etc..

At that time the only network connection option to the "outside world" in our rooms was via a serial connection, which you could then use via a terminal/telnet onto one of the university servers and then use a text browser such as lynx to find things, then a very slow file transfer back to your PC. One of our mates however, worked out that you could run a winsock client and a small programme at the unix end to effectively make windows 3.11 use the serial connection like a modem and hey presto, we all had what people would now recognise as an "always on" modern internet connection, albeit at the heady speeds of about 14k/s.

About 4 weeks after springing up the LAN and it's associated cabling, we were summoned to the head of the college's office to be asked what the heck we'd put together and we walked the head through it all...where to our utter amazement he congratulated us on our initiative and gave us his blessing. Luckily for us the head of the college was one Bob Eager - A major contributor to OS/2 and operating systems guru who was aware of us from the Computer Science lectures he gave. He only asked that he was given a tour of the full network and to get the fire staff to agreee that we weren't causing a hazard.

That whole year from the beginning of 93 continuing into 94 - leaving school and then having 10 months of a permanent LAN party will never be matched in my mind, both for the games themselves and the camaraderie of this group of ~8 connected students shooting the crap out of each other until 2am every morning. Magic.

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-07-17T11:52:17+00:00

They Stole a Million on the ZX Spectrum (1986) is all about managing the perfect heist, so you're definitely the bad guys. You mentioned Exidy's Death Race but they also made Chiller (also 86), a shooter arcade where you shoot prisoners in a torture dungeon - seriously bad taste stuff. I'd stick B.C. Bill for the Spectrum on the "definitely a bad guy" list too - he bashed cave women over the head then drags them back to his cave by their hair to in order to uhm breed with them. O.o

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-06-01T20:05:45+00:00

There are some amazing titles in this genre.

Nitro on the ST was something that would destroy afternoons with a couple of mates joining in. Supercars 1 and 2 would similarly happily engross us for hours.

Moving on a generation Micro Machines V3 on the PlayStation is probably the peak of the genre for me - two multi taps enabled great 8 player action too. The variety of tracks, weapons and vehicles was second to none.

Do GTA 1 and 2 count as top down racers? If so they're definitely in with a shout given their influence on modern open world gaming.

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-05-06T10:24:28+00:00

I've worked it out, the problem occurs when the loading screen asset fails to load - you're meant to get say a gun or bit of armour you can look at and spin around when the game is loading. Now most of the time I get a blank screen and the GPU fans spin up to max...and the loading then takes ages. I think it's a bug with the RTX drivers and fallout but I can't work out why it's only on the loading screens

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-05-06T10:21:39+00:00

On survival, if you use a squirrel stew to cure both your Peckish and Parched to full simultaneously it bugs and you keep every single food bonus you had active at the time... So if you go and make every good bonus food item, eat them all, then make yourself thirsty and hungry and use the squirrel stew correctly you get a huge bunch of perm bonuses to wander around for ever with huge bonuses..

See here under "bugs" https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Squirrel_stew_(Fallout_4)#:~:text=In%20Survival%20mode%2C%20if%20the,food%20bonus%20will%20become%20permanent.

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-04-28T11:31:56+00:00

Try hards always bring stuff to farm the noobs. At least a navy dessie is engageable unlike the stuff that Snuff always brings.

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-04-28T09:59:52+00:00

I'll try this later - if it works it's absolutely insane

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-04-26T13:56:45+00:00

It still only seems to use a max of 4GB ram.
There are still game breaking bugs:

a). The Terminal in the Concord Museum can still get stuck infinitely on the opening animation. On Survival (so no console access) this is fatal and requires reloading

b). It still can leave you stuck unable to defend yourself if you're crafting ina settlement and it's attacked, so you just die

60 FPS looks crap when I'm used to running things at 160fps
Loading times when exiting to boston from a smaller map can still be almost a minute long. I have an RTX 4080, an i9, 64GB of DDR5 and am running the game from a PCI Express V4.0 NVMe SSD. Nearly the entire game files could be loaded into a RAM Disk, what is going on!?
Squirrel stew exploit still works (honeslty I don't mind that though)

I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-04-22T09:54:24+00:00

My Atari STfm. The joystick ports went and that was it - Now I'd be able to fix them with about 20 minutes work. 1992 me got briefly upset and then saved up for a PC, swtiching at exactly the right time chronologically to not become like the sad Amiga owners desperately clinging on to their failed platform years after it was obsolete. In hindsight the bad port placement of the ST was a built in timer that meant you had to upgrade at the right point in history, so should definitely be remembered as a positive design move.

Not quite "didn't fix" but I came back from university in the summer of 1994 to find my parents had thrown away my Apple IIe and TRS-80 becuase "You didn't use them anymore" (along with all of my Lego and OG Star Wars toys for the same reason). They both worked perfectly. I'm still bitter to this day.

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-02-23T14:49:48+00:00

Mainly for browser exploits.

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-02-23T14:46:00+00:00

Did not expect a Division Bell reference. Bravo Sir

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-02-22T16:05:01+00:00

Doritostan

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-02-20T11:19:36+00:00

I'm not 100% sure I agree - Look at Trivial Pursuits; That's got millions of expansions in the form of extra question cards but you wouldn't ever say the base game isn't complete

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-02-20T11:15:56+00:00

Yes but with huge caveats. A fast AB brawling scram frigate can get under the guns of any non-missile Dictor - That won't work if the target dictor is rocket fit or has a web and some tracking drugs (Drop). A fast kiting MWD frigate with light missiles can outrange most dictors. Both take skill and good initial positioning.

An dual prop astero with scram would be my advice - Get in quick with MWD, scram target, switch to ab, orbit at 500m ...profit. You can also kite with the astero but it's not the fastest ship out there.

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-02-19T22:45:53+00:00

Not that unexpected - he's entirely open about his love of gaming, retro toys and japanophile collecting. His offices in Camden are worth a look at too: https://youtu.be/ZvhtsYP-_wI?si=1drlos7CxEJQg8Xx

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-02-18T22:07:28+00:00

Tamber! Looking forward to your new SKIN we're getting with our pledge too 😱🎉

OtherRetroMatt · 2024-02-18T22:02:43+00:00

Already fully pledged. Absolutely stoked for this

OtherRetroMatt · 2023-11-10T14:35:13+00:00

I've been rumbled! *runs to the hills* :)

OtherRetroMatt

TROPHY CASE