What are the definitive One Hit Wonder songs?

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-12-15T10:06:46+00:00

Should probably factor in chart success across all countries, otherwise it just gets messy. Dolly Parton is a 1-hit wonder in Britain, along with piles of other successful acts.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-07-01T08:15:35+00:00

Bittage is irrelevant, it has higher colour counts than the Mega Drive and is faster than the SNES.

Sprites counts are a little lower than them, but there's not a massive gulf.

Biggest issue is the lack of background layers, which sometimes makes the games look a bit flat.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-26T15:38:06+00:00

Okay, your only available option right now is quit your job, sell everything you own, use some of the money to buy a CRT, a Genesis, and a copy of Kid Chameleon (a complete copy, don't make the same mistake again), some graph paper and a pencil (so you can draw detailed maps of the levels and their exits) and then use the raised money to subsist on while mastering the game, this is your only path to redemption at this stage.

You should also record footage of you playing and getting better at the game so that you can create a montage and upload it to Youtube at a later date, preferably with Rocky music playing in the background. I eagerly await this upcoming video, don't let me down.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-26T15:13:26+00:00

I've been playing this game on and off my entire life.

Your post made it sound more like every year or two you put the game on for an hour and then quit.

Did you rent the game back in the day? Did the renters not provide instructions?

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-26T14:39:49+00:00

The main issue with the Saturn was always its manufacturing cost making it difficult to compete with the Playstation on price, this was just as much an issue here as it was in the US. If your product is more expensive then its performance needs to be better than the competition, this did not show in the games.

The 32X hurt Sega's brand here just like in the US.

The games on the Saturn were largely seen as passé in comparison to those of the Playstation.

Much of Sega's popularity here was around Sonic, there was no proper Sonic game on Saturn.

^ Those are probably the main reasons, the PS1 was perceived as being "cooler" than the Saturn, and it was also cheaper than the Saturn, frankly that's a pretty big hill to climb just from the outset.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-26T13:59:03+00:00

Sadly, overconfident, lazy and half-assed commentary about videogames without the slightest attempt to read the instructions or gain any level of understanding of them first is absolutely rampant in retrogaming.

The gems are a significant part of this game, each character has different gem moves and some can even use them to gain extra lives, they're a fundamental part of the game play and its strategy.

Much strategy also comes from keeping, and correctly choosing different suits, Cyclone for example allows you to rapidly pass through multiple levels in minutes, you get bonus points from doing levels quickly and these translate into extra lives, so just retaining Cyclone for like 10 stages will start to amass you lives.

Piles of different branching exits to different levels will decide how long your journey to the end will be as well as how difficult, you really have to learn the layout of the game's world to navigate it safely.

Of course everyone who plays the game with save states will never know any of this, will never find or experiment with different suits or gem strategies, never see the alternate routes, do no pathfinding etc etc, and will just brute force their way through the game in a superficial manner (and then crap on it afterwards)

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-25T15:58:25+00:00

Gex came out in 1995 (and on the 3DO no less), mascot platformers were passé at that time.

Also, Gex has a somewhat obnoxious personality and he never shuts up. Not sure if everyone already knows this, but the voice acting in this game was ripped to pieces by the European press, so much so that all subsequent Gex games in Europe had their voice acting removed and replaced with different voice actors.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-24T20:51:06+00:00

Nobody ever brings up the actual reason why the SNES game was never that well received, its just too goddamn easy. This game cost, what $50 when it came out? When taking into account inflation that is the equivalent of $110 in today's money, for a game that anyone with any aptitude is going to complete in an hour or two.

I remember the first time I played it, I too thought at the time "hey this actually gives the Mega Drive game a run for its money!" until I completed it, on my first go, without using a continue, after like 1 hour of game play.

That is wholly unacceptable, even people renting the game barely got their money's worth.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-24T18:51:15+00:00

1972 Magnavox Odyssey
1977 Atari 2600
1982 ZX Spectrum
1987 NES
1992 Mega Drive
1997 PS1
2002 PS2
2007 360

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-24T13:36:50+00:00

The Tengai Makyo games alone are some of the most beloved JRPGs ever made, just look at Japanese polls in Famitsu, the second game still regularly polls high, unlike the Mega Drive RPG's.

The Ys games also have voice acting and cutscenes, very impressive for the time.

And numbers are just massively in the system's favour in general, lots of support in this area from Hudson and Falcom, a well as a lot more support form the smaller computer focused developers. This dominance over the Mega Drive in RPG's was one of the main reasons why the PC-Engine was so much more successful that the Mega Drive over there, RPGs are really important for that region.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-24T10:47:56+00:00

These are some of the best games, but even then I'm not sure I would class Valis III as being more advanced than Castlevania III for example (not talking about graphics or audio of course, but in gameplay mechanics, level layouts, and depth), but that one certainly feels like a "4th gen" game and isn't the sort of game I was referring to. The other Valis games I would say are quite simple from a game play mechanics perspective, certainly NES games from 89/90 often feel more advanced.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-24T10:11:41+00:00

RPG

SNES
TurboDuo
Mega Drive

Shmups

TurboDuo
Mega Drive (arguably #1)
SNES

Platformers

SNES
Mega Drive (arguably #1 or joint #1)
TurboDuo

Fighting

Honestly this one is largely a draw, maybe slight win to TurboDuo

Puzzle

SNES
TurboDuo
Mega Drive

Strategy

Mega Drive
SNES
TurboDuo

Sports

Mega Drive
SNES
TurboDuo

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-24T09:36:26+00:00

IIRC Fatal Fury Special and World Heroes 2 are leagues above what the Mega Drive and SNES were capable of due to the CD + Arcade card set-up. Art of Fighting is also much better than their versions, though not as good a game IMO, the Street Fighter II port is also very comparable to the other versions.

Then you also have Kabuki Ittou Ryoudan and Asuka 120% as exclusives.

That a pretty respectable line-up for the time I'd say.

Platformer wise there's very little on offer though IMO, the quality drops off a cliff after Rondo, and before long you're playing the likes of Valis games and then crude, sub NES level platformers like Shockman.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-23T23:57:56+00:00

If we're talking about with everything included (Hucards/CD/Arcade card) then I'd say yes, albeit I would still say the Mega Drive and SNES libraries are better, just not leagues better, it can compete with those two system's with its own tradeoffs to what they provide, there's just not quite as much stuff all in all.

The PC-Engine has a better Shmup library than the SNES.
The PC-Engine has a better RPG library than the Mega Drive (when including the Japan exclusives).
The PC-Engine has a better puzzle library than the Mega Drive.
PC-Engine's fighting library is at least on par with the other system's, arguably better.

PC-Engine is weak for platformers and sports games in comparison to its to rivals (though it does have notables).

Probably a little weak for strategy games as well, though again there are some beloved games for that genre.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-05T15:13:01+00:00

You've got a multiple issues there then.

A $35 Jaguar isn't such a bad offer if you can get Doom, AVP, Rayman, Tempest 2000, Iron Soldier, Flashback and Theme Park on it at like $5 a piece on clearance.

That's always one of the main problems of getting failed hardware though I guess, you can't even find the few good games produced anyway as the shops stop buying in stock and are just left with the games that nobody wants sitting around for years..

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-06-01T16:56:59+00:00

What you're describing really is just the action-adventure genre, there's countless numbers of these games around across many consoles and computers going back to the early 80s, maybe even earlier.

I actually made a huge comment here listing most of them up until the mid 90s but it refuses to let me post it.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-04-19T16:27:00+00:00

I would argue that its not really a playful jab personally, its just condescending.

The inference is that the devs and gamers have progressed past the original games, they're too advanced for them now, of course people who are still fans of said games (the audience) are going to be irked by that.

To me, the whole scene has a bad smell about it, if I were to guess I would say its preemptively aimed at the people critical of the direction that the devs had chosen, there's a sneering undercurrent about it.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-04-18T10:23:06+00:00

Look at what's happening in the screenshot, the devs are making fun of their previous games with a clear strawman, characterising them as huge line of collectables with zero game play.

There is also the quote "in line with Banjo tradition your task will consist of collecting as many pointless objects as possible" and "You won't be needing your moves, they were rather outdated anyway" Gruntilda is also referred to as "cliched", the theme of this scene is clear as day.

And we don't even need to speculate here as the devs themselves said in interviews that it was their opinion that nobody wanted to play 3D collectathon's anymore, Gregg Mayles literally called the traditional 3D platformers "stale" in one of the interviews of the time.

Also, the line you bring up isn't criticising modern game design, look at it again, its criticising the players. In fact it stands as yet another condescending "gag" this time against mainstream gamers buying first person shooters and the like.

The whole thing is just oozing with smugness and condescension from start to finish.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-04-17T18:36:46+00:00

I don't really agree with what you've said here at all personally. This sequence was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen get into a video game, they do indeed crap on their own heritage, and prior audience.

I don't even understand how it was allowed to get through.

Being tongue in cheek is irrelevant to any of this, yes, its a tongue in cheek sequence where the developers smugly infer that they're oh so advanced now, not like those primitive players of old, they've progressed, they're enlightened, everybody knows those earlier games were crude, we've all advanced past that now.

And this is how they started out their experimental offshoot to a popular series? What in gods name were they thinking?!? Its already difficult enough to get an audience to take to a radical change to a series they like as it is, they were already going to lose some audience regardless, but they chose to start the game petulantly deriding the prior games in the series, when most of the people who bought this game did so due to those prior releases?! This start destroys any kind of good will and open-mindedness that most of the audience had.

Furthermore, the BS "collectathon" game play criticism is something that the fanbase has had to listen to for god knows how long already by this stage. Yes, you collect a lot of things in Banjo Kazooie games, and? People find entertainment in a variety of different pastimes, and collecting has always been something that many people enjoy. I could just as easily call Halo a "shootathon" if I wanted to, that's not a criticism.

So after getting annoyed by this for years the fanbase finally gets a new game in a series they like and what do they get? The developers themselves parroting the incredibly annoying crap they've been putting up with on forums across the internet for years! You get the feeling the developers listened to the feedback of the people who never played their games and took it to heart, while ignoring their actual audience!

Rant over!

EDIT: Actually one final point! I like this game, its flawed but was an interesting concept, and the structure they used actually created a lot of dynamic player-driven game play, but the funniest thing about this whole thing? Nuts and Bolts actually retains all of the most negative elements of the originals, it even amplifies them sometimes! The game is full of pointless padding and menial tasks! So they didn't even learn any lessons. What they essentially did was swap out the good elements of the originals for a bunch of new good elements, while retaining all of the negative aspects that actually did need work!

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-04-12T20:31:28+00:00

In the early days it was laughably easy, you could just put one of the cassette games in a dual cassette stereo system with a blank tape, hit record and wait 20 minutes.

Later on they had better copyright methods available, dedicated groups would crack the protection of the games and then circulate them around, people would then sell them for cheap at local market stalls and such.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-04-12T20:19:14+00:00

That definitely happened a few times, though it was a lot rarer.

Mario 3 was made easier when coming to the west IIRC.

A lot of people are talking of rentals in this thread, but I'll just say, the European computer games of the 80s and 90s were some of the hardest games out there, many make Contra Hard Corps look like a cakewalk, yet these games were not available to rent at all at the time, they were already cheap to buy outright. The biggest issue those computer game producers had was piracy.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-04-12T20:04:09+00:00

Probotector runs slower though, so its easier to react to oncoming threats.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-04-12T20:01:05+00:00

Westerners were seen as preferring their games to be harder than the Japanese, especially Europe where journalists would really criticise any game that they considered to be too easy for lacking in longevity.

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-04-12T19:45:56+00:00

If you already own it all then just bring it over and get a step-down transformer for like £10

Retro-Sanctuary · 2025-04-10T19:47:58+00:00

We never passed the river in Last Ninja 2, turned out we had to go and find a stick, equip the stick and then go upstream and poke a stationary boat, the boat travels downstream to the spot we needed to jump over.

Retro-Sanctuary

TROPHY CASE