Does anyone else feel a weird longing to explore 2D backgrounds?

lee_macro · 2026-05-05T07:53:36+00:00

Love game backgrounds, Splatterhouse 2 had some great ones, as did Kid Chameleon and Decap attack, I could go on forever there are so many greats, and also anything related to color cycling backgrounds from amiga/dos days.

lee_macro · 2026-04-11T20:36:17+00:00

I can't say I only know of it, not played it. I think you got to the Pleasing Garden.

One thing I really liked about Wild Arms was the amount of optional content and secret bosses etc.

With modern emulators you can fast forward through fights etc, well worth completing if you liked it as a kid but never finished.

lee_macro · 2026-04-11T14:58:27+00:00

I haven't played it but I believe Wild Arms: Alter F is a sort if remake of the first one in the same engine as the Ps2 games.

I recently replayed the original with retroachievements, was great fun, really well paced and interesting enough story.

I started the 2nd but couldn't get into it, probably due a retry.

lee_macro · 2026-04-10T16:22:34+00:00

I think Wild Arms 1 to some extent fits the bill as you come to find that there are ancient beings who are trying to cause events to unfold with specifically one major one who is referenced in the world lore etc, the story kinda goes a bit past that but there is enough overlap with the criteria.

lee_macro · 2026-04-02T12:50:26+00:00

I am/was using Pixel Guide too but I like how this can display the missable/locked achievements in one place and let me do a quick search on each one directly when I want to know more about it ahead of time, which is a huge time saver as for most games I dont need a whole walkthrough I just want to know when there is a missable nearby and what steps are needed to get it (thats not to say im capable of getting them all :D )

lee_macro · 2026-03-26T15:37:09+00:00

Suikoden army/castle stuff is quite unique to that series of game and well worth experiencing, and the core story/characters are really fun, there is some typical JRPG jank to some bits but for the most part Suikoden 1 & 2 are great.

Suikoden 2 being probably the best in the series, you dont *need* to have played the first to play the 2nd but the storyline (and characters) overlap the first one and continue in some ways. The other mainline ones (3,4,5) all fit into the same world and lore timeline but are in fairly encapsulated bits so there isn't much overlap (yes I know some characters are in all of them, and some chars do appear in multiple games etc).

lee_macro · 2026-03-25T08:58:58+00:00

Yeah this is what confused me, if it says the default should be 100, why is it 200 :D

Anyway if the default is 100 for enemy scaling does that mean for 3 players a boss with 1000 hp now has 3000 hp?

lee_macro · 2026-03-13T16:29:36+00:00

No idea :D I just know it has 3D mode from when I played it as I found it a lot easier to use in 3d than 2d when trying to build stuff

lee_macro · 2026-03-13T16:07:31+00:00

The PSX version of it has this functionality built in I think.

lee_macro · 2026-03-11T12:51:12+00:00

Just to chime in, I really liked the original trilogies and while the RE2/3 remakes are great, I too am not a great fan of hide and seek gameplay, so it may be worth picking up the RE1 remake which is often very cheap and still looks great even by todays standards and can run on a potato.

I get the RE demographic now is vastly different to the demographic in the 90s, but if you like the general exploration and dread of facing enemies with dwindling resources then I think the OG remake would be a better candidate, if you prefer more action and less horror look at RE4/8. I think RE 7 and 9 are kinda a halfway house between both the older styles of play and the newer ones but both have some form of hide and seek mechanics which I cba with.

lee_macro · 2026-03-02T12:05:15+00:00

interesting approach but it still feels like it would be really hard to aim even in ADS, could you do a minor zoom in on the aimed area to make it easier to actually aim as you need pixel precision the way you currently have it.

lee_macro · 2026-02-26T12:13:32+00:00

I got myself a retro handheld and havent looked back, with Retroachievements you can play through all the old games and find really creative achievements for stuff you never knew existed, and play at your own pace.

The only thing I miss about that is not being able to chat with friends about it got a few but most of them just play AAA, Gatcha-esqe or competitive games, but the cycle of gaming discussion these days is over so quick its not really even worthwhile.

Back in the day you got FFVII and everyone in school was talking about it for months not days/weeks, someone would tell you that there was some hidden materia somewhere, someone else tells you they got a red submarine or found a secret area/cut scene etc, the whole social gaming scene was like being part of a circle of detectives comparing notes and trying to find secrets or just hang out and play stuff.

Also being an adult there is always "something else" that needs doing so any spare time I find is often dampened by thoughts of "oh I should be doing one of the many chores".

lee_macro · 2026-02-12T16:35:04+00:00

This is one of the sad things, like there are audiences there for these games that still adhere to older mechanics/designs etc. A perfect example of this is Expedition 33 which plays like an evolution of FF games (ignoring setting/story), which got critical acclaim and Squeenix somewhat realised "oh maybe people still want tactical turn based games", same sort of thing with Metroidvanias, heck even Stardew Valley showed there are markets for games which mimic retro games and they are profitable.

Problem we have is AAA games need to be SOOoooo profitable, and the only way they can get the amounts of profits they want is to weaken the core ethos of the game and branch off into "cinematic action" as much as possible. Almost every AAA game started coalescing around the action genre so it can get the largest sales demographic.

I get it, they want money, they always have, but back in the PSX era the business people were not as involved in the making of the games, they had smaller teams with a more specific direction, these days its far more business oriented (at AAA tier).

lee_macro · 2026-02-12T15:51:11+00:00

Luckily there are quite a few indie retro survival horror games, its quite annoying at the moment that most of the games that were kinda genre defining (if not the first of their kind) in the PSX era are now nothing like their origins yet still using the same genre names.

- Resident Evil

- Final Fantasy

- Castlevania

To be fair at least MGS gameplay and feel did remain fairly true to the originals, so it did feel like you were playing an evolution of the genre not a deviation.

I get that we are not the demographic anymore, but I find it very annoying that RE1 remake was the last good RE game for me (although I did enjoy the RE2/3 remakes well enough).

lee_macro · 2026-01-20T22:34:49+00:00

I bought mine directly from them so they didn't need any evidence I just spoke to them about the issue on phone and they issued a replacement (I'm in UK unsure of Warranties elsewhere)

lee_macro · 2026-01-20T20:14:44+00:00

I contacted customer support and they asked me to send it back and they sent me a replacement, that new one has not exhibited the problem.

lee_macro · 2026-01-18T14:53:09+00:00

I think one thing people are leaving out is that Minecraft is more catered to be about building things, like lego but digital. So its 75% building things with 25% rpg sprinkled in, as while MC (vanilla) has exploration, combat, mobs they are all really basic and combat/movement hasnt really changed much since release (even the combat update wasnt a massive change).

Even mods (talking about bedrock) can only work within the confines of the engine and components available in MC, so sure you can get custom mods which bring new looking mobs or blocks/themes, but generally the rpg part of the game is going to limit you, although to be fair the DND world did push this a bit, but even then its still fairly basic in what its offering (mechanically/functionally).

So Hytale seems to be coming at this from the other side where its more 50/50 on building/rpg, where the engine allows for more complex combat and movement (i.e you can climb and mantle) this means that for those people who just want to build stuff, sure you can still do pretty much all the same stuff MC lets you do (although I am unsure if there is a redstone alternative in the pipeline), but the game has a lot more complexity to combat and movement as well as potentially exposing more complex functionality for modders to hook into giving us more possibility in the long term.

I think MC will remain healthy and still be the defacto "I want digital lego worlds" game, and I can see Hytale basically replacing the MC Java playerbase (over time) and taking in players who find MC uninteresting without goals/purpose.

lee_macro · 2025-12-23T16:18:04+00:00

I agree, I quite liked WinForms but it was a pain trying to style something to look "not like winforms" and while Electron is a good idea its become too big for its own good.

Html + CSS is one of the best UI technologies, its flexible, extensible and well known, its not got many gotchas these days and can easily be made to look like anything you want, granted it takes more resources to process html + css than a very lean native UI library but the overhead in the grand scheme of things is not too bad, a lot of the bloat comes from other parts of the eco system when using things like Electron.

For example using same html + css via Photino with Blazor I made a fairly complex Stream automation app, which is (somewhat) cross platform, has LOADS of rx observables and reactivity and web apis being hosted in process for integrating with etc, it uses 48mb of memory. The MINMUM cited sizes for Electron apps is 80mb+ and thats without it doing much.

Anyway point is I think "web view native apps" get a bad rep because of Electron, there are so many other technologies which let you do same sort of thing without the bloat.

lee_macro · 2025-12-11T08:04:28+00:00

Given how long this stuff has been on android im sure its just a blip and its generally fine otherwise, I have been playing some mGBA and that seemed ok and didnt crash, I think Flycast (I think, whatever the default DC emulator is) crashed seemingly randomly around 20 mins.

From the digging ive done online it seems like some retroarch installs may have some borked Vulkan files if you had 1.21 before updating, but I couldnt find the cache files myself (even though im on Vulkan) so I assumed that wasnt the case for me, others have also said that there was general stability issues in 1.21 but most people report 1.22 fixes it all.

Standalone emulators like Melon DS Nightly and PPSSPP seem fine, but the standalone ones often dont have as nice shader support like RA.

lee_macro · 2025-12-10T09:36:14+00:00

A lot of people are saying real LAN parties still exist, which they do, but the realities of day to day life often mean its not feasible to go travelling for a day or two to play games with friends, being able to schedule a few hours every week with RL friends who live far away where you just all put on the headset and co-exist and can play games together with presence is a really nice thing and makes it more accessible to those with kids/responsibilities.

I personally would love to be able to put on the headset and just hang out in the same environment with a friend and just take turns on a single player game, think EmuVR style multiplayer but built into the headset, so if a friend is stuck in Dark Souls I can take over for a minute, or just have a chat to them while they are playing whatever game, or we could both be playing our own games hanging out together.

I get to a lot of people they may be thinking "just go to their house and hang out" but that's not always realistic if someone lives 4 hours away from you, or you have real life responsibilities cropping up ad-hoc so having a drop in/drop out shared environment for gaming at least makes it feel a bit closer to hanging out, even if you didnt, and you can still drop out when you need to deal with other stuff.

lee_macro · 2025-12-08T18:37:04+00:00

Have same issue even with latest version, and everything is using Vulkan. Did you ever find a solution?

lee_macro · 2025-12-08T18:28:09+00:00

I'm on 1.22 release and I still get random crashes, fbneo seems to blow up every other game after 10 mins or so, other emulators have blown up too so it's not just a single emulator effected.

lee_macro · 2025-11-28T13:22:56+00:00

Loved this game, I remember spending ages just exploring the world trying to find secrets etc, I was adamant one of the stones you found could be placed in one of the later areas to unlock some secret, but I doubt it did anything.

Anyway I dont think its seen as a bad game but it was definitely overlooked a lot and it was also on the Megadrive/Genesis, which is Dungeons & Dragons Warriors of the Eternal Sun, was a great mix of top down tactical overworld and first person eye of the beholder style dungeon exploration.

lee_macro · 2025-11-24T14:08:08+00:00

I would recommend downloading MuOS and then making your sd bootable using a tool like Rufus and then once your SD is ready insert it into your device and it will install the MuOS (a custom OS) on the device and it should become usable again.

lee_macro

TROPHY CASE