Awesome stuff you've just bought (+pics please)

[BIL]

I consider Undeadline the unholy bastard spawn of Gun.Smoke and Elemental Master. :3 All three are utterly rad groundbased verts.

[Skykid]

My Elemental Master JP was a Christmas gift from my little brother. IIRC it has no manual, but it's still got a place in my heart. I had great fun getting the 1CC on Boxing Day.

[chempop]

Some early B-day gifts to myself

[CIT]

Got some Compile/Puyo stuff.



Madou Monogatari is one of those titles that's quite pricey in Japan, but way cheaper in the West. ^^

[evil_ash_xero]

Finally got this installed.

[CIT]

If you don't mind the movie license, you get a pretty sweet Sega of Japan developed Rolling Thunder/NAM-1975 mashup for €10!

[BIL]

Beautiful copy. I've been meaning to revisit that one - liked what it was doing with the sidescrolling/gallery hybrid, but (rather foolishly in retrospect) back-burnered it in favour of Shadow Dancer. Even suits my affinity for Western licenses in JP format, haha. There's quite a few less prominent MD action games I need to go back and re-evaluate... Alien Storm and Dynamite Duke come to mind, too.

[soprano1]

Got Dragon Quest VII for 3DS, the wait is over.

[CIT]

Beautiful copy. I've been meaning to revisit that one - liked what it was doing with the sidescrolling/gallery hybrid, but (rather foolishly in retrospect) back-burnered it in favour of Shadow Dancer. Even suits my affinity for Western licenses in JP format, haha. There's quite a few less prominent MD action games I need to go back and re-evaluate... Alien Storm and Dynamite Duke come to mind, too.

If my memory from about 12 years back serves me well, Dynamite Duke wasn't too hot, which is a real shame, since the Dolph Lundgren cover art is of course brilliant.

Another one of those early Japanese licensed games on MD that's actually pretty good is Ghostbusters.

[Xyga]

Got Dragon Quest VII for 3DS, the wait is over.

Apparently this is another tweaked~rebalanced version, don't know exactly how but as long as it's not horribly tedious like the original then the changes are very welcome.
I just hope they've allowed faster leveling up, especially in regards to jobs, because I remember that was hopeless; your characters literally crawled the entire game and any attempt at powering up was quickly put to shame. Changing jobs came much too late in the game and defintely required ridiculous, painful grinding to make it worth. I've cleared VII a few times and bother with jobs and optional stuff only once, because - at least in the original - all of that was a pure waste of time.
Don't even mention the monster village *facepalm*

[FinalBaton]

but (rather foolishly in retrospect) back-burnered it in favour of Shadow Dancer.

No, no, that was a good move. The wisest of moves, even

[soprano1]

Got Dragon Quest VII for 3DS, the wait is over.

Apparently this is another tweaked~rebalanced version, don't know exactly how but as long as it's not horribly tedious like the original then the changes are very welcome.
I just hope they've allowed faster leveling up, especially in regards to jobs, because I remember that was hopeless; your characters literally crawled the entire game and any attempt at powering up was quickly put to shame. Changing jobs came much too late in the game and defintely required ridiculous, painful grinding to make it worth. I've cleared VII a few times and bother with jobs and optional stuff only once, because - at least in the original - all of that was a pure waste of time.
Don't even mention the monster village *facepalm*

It's very different from the original version, in a good way.

[BIL]

but (rather foolishly in retrospect) back-burnered it in favour of Shadow Dancer.

No, no, that was a good move. The wisest of moves, even

Yeah, I should've phrased a bit differently - Shadow Dancer was getting picked up no matter what! Now that my FC/SFC/MD "short list" is safely bagged, I like to go back and try stuff that didn't quite make the budget initially. ^_~

Oi wait a minute, is that a biased avatar?!

[FinalBaton]

Oi wait a minute, is that a biased avatar?!

huh, no.. I mean, NO! I mean...

[MintyTheCat]

Oi wait a minute, is that a biased avatar?!

huh, no.. I mean, NO! I mean...

[caincan]

Skykid, it's home made as we said. but feels the good looks, only time & ideas.. (global of ~130hours for the 4 units, and ~250€ stuff, from the delirium of japanese tiny cabs.. that would be sum up to a global of ~8000€ for these..)

and..at least, the last from our batch for the Dagashiya ambience ...

[Skykid]

Not sure I understand all you're saying there, but I do follow that you made these, which is really awesome. They definitely resemble classic Japanese arcade cabs and the finish is very authentic.

Beautiful work!

[Leandro]

HORI Real Arcade Pro.V Kai Fighting Stick, my first arcade stick.

Impressions: being a pad player all my life, I'm finding tough getting used to it, specially the shoryuken motion on the emulated Street Fighter games. Oddly enough, KOF 98 on Steam plays like a dream with it, every special motion comes out everytime, but I'm still slow with the dashes/backdashes.
Besides still getting used to it, I'm loving this new toy

[Shoryukev]

HORI Real Arcade Pro.V Kai Fighting Stick, my first arcade stick.

Impressions: being a pad player all my life, I'm finding tough getting used to it, specially the shoryuken motion on the emulated Street Fighter games. Oddly enough, KOF 98 on Steam plays like a dream with it, every special motion comes out everytime, but I'm still slow with the dashes/backdashes.
Besides still getting used to it, I'm loving this new toy

Awesome stick! You'll get used to it, but if you're a gamepad user there is a definite learning curve when you make the switch. I absolutely sucked when I started using an arcade stick for fighters....but after a solid 2 weeks I was better than I ever was with a d-pad. Eventually you'll get used to using the stick and you'll get faster and more accurate, but it can be very frustrating at first.

I'd suggest sticking with the "meat and potatoes" with your inputs for awhile, and just get used to the mechanics of how it works. Learn where the diagonal inputs are, and how/when the direction inputs engage and disengage....some people like to ride the gate, others don't, etc. Don't worry yourself with the flashy stuff. It will all come in due time, but it takes some getting used to.

Bonus tip: I rotate the square gate in my JLF for playing old arcade games that require a 4-way stick (aka no-diagonals)...this basically changes it from a square to a diamond shape. This allows me to quickly change back and forth without having to have a dedicated 4-way or compromise what stick I'm using....of course I have that stick in a mame cabinet where I can lift up the panel and swap out the gate in less than 15 seconds (my PS3 fightstick is too much of a pain to swap back and forth). Swapping the gate out is also an easy mod if you still haven't gotten used to it after about a month. A lot of us like octagon or circle shaped gates...but for 2D fighters I personally LOVE the square gate.

[BrianC]

Avengers, Monster Hunter, Battle Kid, and Batman 60s are birthday gifts (my birthday was the 12th) and the rest is stuff I got with gift cards. Mega Everdrive I bought on my own. I'm still waiting on the FC Everdrive.

[Stevens]

Stuff about sticks

Share much of the same feelings: The sucking in the beginning, the where are my diagonals when you first realize it has a square gate, and the payoff of it making you a better player.

Now it's square gate or GTFO.

Enjoy your new toy Leandro.

[Kiken]

Recent pick-ups:
Battle Zeque Den and Thunder Spirits



Now all I need is a Super Famicom copy of Gradius III to complete the trifecta of hella-slowdown-infused SFC shmups.

[BIL]

I'm very vaguely allured by Thunder Spirits... it being the only Tecno Soft-related console STG I'm without at this point. Of course there's a few reasons for that state of affairs. Not least being TFIII MD and TFGP2. With Spirits having been licensed out rather than handled in-house, the compulsion's not that strong, but it is neat seeing such an iconic MD production go to the arcades and then the SFC of all places.

Shoulda handed the job to Compile, they knew how to get the SFC shifting those shot sprites! If it'd kept up to speed with the MD version, I'd be a lot more interested.

If I remember Perikles right, the original SFC version of Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius has truly apocalyptic slowdown levels. Another big name skulking about the outskirts of my shortlist.

I was once kinda hot on getting Super R-Type to complete another trilogy, iconic STG appearances from the SFC's early days (had just acquired Gradius III and Darius Twin, after finding both surprisingly likable). Those annoying full-stage restarts in conjunction with Irem's typically unforgiving difficulty really put me off, though. I'd rather struggle from the midpoint than go all the way back, even if the latter's ostensibly fairer. That, and some of the janky bullshit Perikles and pegboy reported in their (truly selfless!) runs.

[Kiken]

I'm very vaguely allured by Thunder Spirits... it being the only Tecno Soft-related console STG I'm without at this point. Of course there's a few reasons for that state of affairs. Not least being TFIII MD and TFGP2. With Spirits having been licensed out rather than handled in-house, the compulsion's not that strong, but it is neat seeing such an iconic MD production go to the arcades and then the SFC of all places.

Shoulda handed the job to Compile, they knew how to get the SFC shifting those shot sprites! If it'd kept up to speed with the MD version, I'd be a lot more interested.

Yeah, Thunder Spirits was definitely a "morbid curiosity" purchase. The thing is, it's not just the game speed that's at fault here... it's also the resolution difference causing issues. Instead of redrawing or resizing the sprites to accommodate the SFC's lower horizontal res, they simply took everything direct from the MD/ArcadePCB, so everything appears stretched out horizontally. Plus, they didn't really reconfigure the enemy patterns to account for the smaller field of view, so several patterns have enemies sitting in the overscan and firing at you (this can be seen several times in the first damn stage)!

[BrianC]

I read that Thunder Force AC is on the same MD based hardware as Puyo Puyo 1 and 2. Not surprising here.

[wgogh]

Finally got a HORI for the Playstation, with adaptor for the PC.
I thought that I would take longer to get used to it, but it feels natural already.
My keyboard shmuping days may be over.

[BrianC]

[FinalBaton]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This a thing of beauty

[CIT]

Hard to believe, but a shop in my hood still had brand new Master System games in stock!



Just like the first 8-Bit Sonic the Hedgehog part 2 is a unique game, different from the Mega Drive version, and with music by Yuzo Koshiro.

Tom & Jerry was developed by Sanritsu, a major Sega 2nd party dev.

[Heavy Viper]

Nice finds! That T&J game has little to do with the movie, but it's an interesting platformer, if a bit stiff.