What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Also...

OutRun is surprisingly decent, it plays fairly well and has an alternate track layout that goes 123454321.

Not surprisingly to me anymore. Didn't interest me much way back when. But then I got to play Battle Gear 2&3 that are some of the best (as well as ugliest) arcade racers on PS2. As well as TrackMania Wii (not quite ugly, but very "plain Jane" for a car game), which is almost indepletably engrossing to me played utterly singleplayer. Taught me to tolerate very barebones presentation in my car games. If it's called OutRun and it's by Sega, it's gotten my attention.
I've felt lately that any new console, even relatively low-tech, that would guarantee 60 fps in majority of its titles, and also - offer mostly games like those budget remakes/follow-ups (not only by Sega, but stuff like Space Raiders too) would be a console just for me. Remember how PS2 Virtual On remake offered video modes up to 1080i? On PS2, no less. And it was HARDLY ugly a game. Just a small console with durable controllers and a library's worth of such games would be very welcome under my telly.

[AGermanArtist]

Which of those Ages 2500 games are worth a look? I just grabbed Outrun, Galaxy Force and Dynamite Deka.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Which of those Ages 2500 games are worth a look? I just grabbed Outrun, Galaxy Force and Dynamite Deka.

Gunstar Heroes Treasure Box. I've fond memories of Fantasy Zone and Monster World collections too. Although if was to PLAY these on SDTV nowadays, I'd most likely do so emulated on Wii.
Panzer Dragoon is NOT a remake, it is just a port.
Virtual On is pretty sweet if you can dig Virtual On.

[AGermanArtist]

Thanks! I'm going to run them in PCSX2. I didn't realise the Outrun one was so good.

[Obiwanshinobi]

There's NIGHTS into Dreams PS2 remake, IF not quite released under Sega Ages flag.

[vol.2]

I'm finally getting around to playing Outlaws (1997).


There was a moment in the mid 90s where people (including myself) were rediscovering the Spaghetti Western genre; the Leone films appeared on VHS and there were finally high quality CD remasters of the Dollars film soundtracks. I can only imagine that Outlaws was somehow part of all that, although I didn't pick it up back then (I did watch a bunch of the films, including the James Coburn stuff).

The game itself looks and sounds awesome. The Clint Bajakian soundtrack is flawless, and the whole weird 1990s parallel universe Spaghetti vibe is immaculate. The game generally controls pretty well for a Dark Engine game too, but there is one huge and terrible problem. The hit detection is atrocious. Too many times you will be standing directly in front of an enemy, pumping bullets into them and nothing happens. This is a problem to varying degrees in all aspects of the game engine; close up, far away, in a building, on the street, it doesn't matter because the engine just decides arbitrarily if you hit or not. To make matters even worse, there are moments (many moments) where you can and will be one-shot killed by a guy with a rifle that you absolutely cannot see for multiple reasons. Sometimes they will be around a corner or in a building that is not in any way visible to you, and sometimes they will be ahead of you in the dark and there's no possible way to know where to aim. The game does have an "oil lamp" mechanic, that is essentially a flashlight, but it's range is so limited that it doesn't help locate enemies; it only helps you find your way through dark mazes. This wouldn't be as much of an issue if you had a chance to get close to them and see them, but they can one shot kill you in the head from the veil of complete darkness and there's zero way to prevent it. The only way to get past those places is to just restart and hope your luck holds out. The enemy AI is erratic enough that you will generally get through with repeat tries, but it does not feel good or fun to play a game that way. You should be able to get through it on skill and learning the enemy's behavior or positions for future attempts. The only somewhat reliable way to make it through the levels is to go extremely slowly and pick off enemies from a distance while they are barely sticking themselves out. Even this isn't perfect, because the hit detection is so bad that you can sometimes waste a whole round of ammo on an enemy that is directly in your crosshairs to absolutely no effect. Ammo is a limited resource in Outlaws, and if this ever happens, you really need to reload a save, because you can run out of bullets and not be able to finish a level if you aren't careful.

I'm pushing through it. Having to restart a lot more frequently than I would like, but it's still engaging when it's not frustrating me.

Has anyone here played this game? What are your thoughts on it?

[BIL]

Which of those Ages 2500 games are worth a look? I just grabbed Outrun, Galaxy Force and Dynamite Deka.

The Space Harrier II Complete Collection - which was really just an excuse for M2 to do a proper SH1 port - was AGES 2500's watershed. Everything before it is 3D remakes, everything after is more AC/console ports, with the odd outliers like Dynamite Deka's PS2 arranged mode (basically reskins the S-TV game, plus adds some costumes from Makoto Uchida's previous works Altered Beast and Golden Axe), and the genuinely special Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa arcade port. (translates the previously console-original FZII to arcade hardware)

Galaxy Force II has a really rad widescreen mode, hence its moniker "Special Extend Edition." Treasure Box is worth a look imo, you can disable the sprite limit and slowdown on Alien Soldier. The MD cart has vanishingly little of either, but it's still a cool detail.

This is going back a bit, might be off on some details. TLDR: the pre-SH2 discs are what you wanna check out for remakes. The post-SH2 are generally very disciplined ports. Not all of them were by M2, IIRC. I don't think Deka's was, for example. Still great to have around though.

[KAI]

I would like to add the Tetris Collection aside from those you mentioned. Its a great collection of the arcade branch of the tetris arcade games, and New Century, the original game developed by M2 for it, it was the best alternative to the TGM series we had on consoles back then.

[AGermanArtist]

Thanks lads, will have a look at all of those

[vol.2]

Finished Outlaws.

It's a fun game; really enjoyed it. Once I got used to it's quirks, it was easy enough that the problems weren't too difficult to put up with.

That being said, I will double down on the hit detection issue. Especially compared to Dark Forces, which this game shares the engine with, it is terrible. Having played hundreds of hours of Dark Forces, I'm intimately familiar with the implementation and there is nowhere near as many problems as there are in Outlaws. If I had to guess, it's because Outlaws has much more detailed 3D levels; the general level design is a lot more ambitious in terms of objects placed in the maps, and significantly more complex branching level designs. It feels to me like the hit detection is a result of this complexity, in which they have issues with object occlusion and NPC interaction. For example, when an enemy is close to the edge of a wall or floor, the engine completely fails to register a hit by line of sight, and it gets worse the farther away from the target you are. It's as though there is some kind of angular math error that is compounding with distance as it fans out away from the origin.

And the darkness mechanic is awful. While the western world aesthetic is in keeping with the story, it's not particularly varied or colorful to begin with. When you consider that the vast majority of the game is played in caves and basements, it ends up being oppressively dark. Using the oil lamp (flashlight) helps the appearance of the game a lot, as it makes the colors pop, but it actually ends up being much worse to use the lamp because it makes enemies more difficult to see; the throw distance of the lamp is so short that it creates a kind of bubble of bright light directly around you that, in turn, creates a much higher contrast between the area immediately around you and the area a bit further in the distance where enemies will be. This makes it a poor choice to ever use the lamp until you have completely cleared out an area of enemies and you just want to sweep for items and secrets, or to find the path forward.

I know that darkness makes sense with the way they created the levels, but I think they probably should have had more levels above ground in the wilderness or in well-lit structures like houses and such. The levels didn't really effect the overall story progress at all, they were just "the next place you had to fight through," and they could have literally been anything that makes sense in the old west. Choosing to make them overwhelmingly dark was a mistake.

[Sumez]

I played a ton of Outlaws back in the 90s - but it was always the deathmatch mode on a local network, which was a lot of fun. I don't think I've ever touched the singple player mode

[vol.2]

I played a ton of Outlaws back in the 90s - but it was always the deathmatch mode on a local network, which was a lot of fun. I don't think I've ever touched the singple player mode

Looking on the Steam forums, it seems that there is actually a Discord for Outlaws, and online multiplayer is part of that. You could probably relive your Outlaws glory days if you so wish.

[Steven]

Tales of Eternia is coming, yay~ I just bought this fucking (awesome) game a few months ago, yay~

Well, this isn't a surprise considering PEGI messed up and posted it on their website like 2 months ago. New version has no multiplayer, so I'm glad I picked up the PS1 version in any case. Now I wonder what will happen with the ending song that got cut from the PSP version, which I am sure this was based on. Wonder if this is running fully natively. They have at least part of the PS1 source code, so it would be nice. 60 FPS only, but I didn't expect that from a PS1/PSP game, especially if they don't have the source code. Thank god the weird and ugly new graphics can be disabled. They remind me of that nasty smear filter that some emulators have in case you want to make your games look super hideous for some reason, which is even weirder because the character sprites aren't affected by it, so they look out of place when they are mixed with the new graphics. The original graphics are extremely beautiful anyway, and I have no idea why anyone would want to replace them with whatever this crap was supposed to be. 100% cool with the new textboxes and high-resolution text, though. Those can both stay!

Hm... anyway, on the 3D remakes of 2D games, I was thinking primarily of games that were originally completely 2D and then became fully 3D beyond just using polygons, like... I don't know, going from Sonic 1 to Sonic Adventure, if Sonic Adventure was a remake of Sonic 1. So, basically, from 2D sidescrolling to having 360 degree movement obviously including the z-axis. That said,

I thought Gain Ground's was surprisingly decent, and worth having for its utterly killer S.T.T. arranged soundtrack.

Holy crap this makes me want to go play some Gain Ground! I like Gain Ground and I'd like to spend some more time with it, and maybe get the 1CC eventually. I might have to look into this PS2 remake; I tend to forget the PS2 Sega Ages 2500 games exist. Some might say that's fortunate since, like you said, some of them were not exactly well-received. M2 got involved later in the process, and Quartet and SDI got released as part of the lineup.

Never played SDI, but it looks cool and I want to play it, and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE Quartet. Something about the music in that game does very good things for me, but the gameplay is excellent too and the silly voice acting makes me laugh. I REALLY wish it had a nice modern rerelease. It was on the Astro City Mini, which is how I discovered it, but I sold mine a year ago. It was on the MiSTer for a while but got removed for some reason. I should go check to see if it ever got reimplemented...

Actually, even AB and SH's 32X ports are great.

Yes they are! They support the XE-1AP, too! Mine's broken and I have no idea how to fix it, but I do want to get it fixed somehow and someday. Anyway, the 32X versions are quite good, almost as good as the Saturn versions, and, in a hypothetical scenario in which the Saturn versions don't exist, I'd be satisfied with only the 32X versions, even though After Burner Complete is only 30 FPS. I don't actually have 32X Space Harrier, just After Burner Complete, but I do have the MegaSD, so I have played it using that. I have a late revision Saturn and I've never been able to find a bugfix copy of Saturn Space Harrier, so I can't play the Saturn version right now anyway lol

Trails in the Sky Remakes.

Yes, this was very much like what I had in mind! I did play the demo for the first one for a little bit, so I feel moderately bad about forgetting about it, but that's how it goes.