Comments 642

Re: Vote For Your Favourite Game Boy Games!

SepticLemon

@Quarth Yes, Baby T-Rex and Agro Soar had characters on Skateboards. Well, at least they do on the Box art. The character sprites though don't have a skateboard, but they do act like they have wheels.

Honestly though, I believe they were trying to copy the Sonic games with those titles.

Re: Vote For Your Favourite Game Boy Games!

SepticLemon

@Heavyarms55 The specs for the Pocket and Light are no different to the original GB. They all used a Sharp modified Zilog 4.1Mhz processor, 8KB of (on-system) RAM and 8KB of Video RAM. Whilst the GameBoy Color is beefier, as it uses a newer Sharp Modified Zilog processor at 8Mhz, 32KB of (on-system) RAM and 16KB of video RAM. Simply put the GameBoy is a real generation change, whilst the Pocket and Light were just revisions of the same hardware. The main reason to why you can play the original grey carts on the new hardware is because the architecture of the systems didn't change until the GBA came out; and even then, the GBA and SP both had two processors. The newer 32bit ARM processor at 16.8MHz with the same 8MHz modified Zilog, found on the GameBoy Color, as a co-processor to enable backward compatibility. Which was then removed in the GameBoy Micro and DS(Lite).

Simply put, Game Boy, Super GameBoy, GameBoy Pocket and GameBoy Light are a part of one generation due to no real hardware changes.

The GameBoy Color was the next generation with beefier hardware with backward compatibility. Even if the architecture was the same.

The GameBoy Advance, and GBASP, introduced a 32-bit ARM processor for new games, but had older hardware in it along with the new architecture to be consumer friendly. Because the ARM processor has a totally different architecture compared to the 4.1MHz and 8MHz Zilog processor, it was the reason why you never saw any GBA games that could work on the GameBoy, Pocket, Light and Color. Not just because of the shape of the smaller GBA cartridges, but because the 32Bit ARM was a totally different chip compared to the 8Bit Zilog; it wasn't just about the bits either, the instruction set is quite different too, and calculation-wise, the ARM wasn't just faster, it was much more efficient too. After all, the Zilog chip at this point had existed for over 30 years as it was original made for mainframe machines in the 70s.

The GameBoy Micro, even though was a revision, had the older architecture removed to make the system much smaller. Hardware wise, the GameBoy Micro is most different of the Advance family due to the removal of the Zilog co-processor, but still possessed the same main ARM chip that the GBA has.

...then after that the GameBoy was discontinued due the success of the DS. But there were 3 main generations of the GameBoy, and this is all about the first generation, which is GB, Pocket and Light.

Re: Vote For Your Favourite Game Boy Games!

SepticLemon

@Heavyarms55 That would be like saying that we would have to add SNES games to this too due to the Super GameBoy allowing you to play GameBoy games on the SNES.

The point of this is that these are western grey cartridge releases. With Pokemon Red and Blue being the exception as they are B&W titles. They were released on grey cartridges in Japan.

This is all about the original black and white games from 1989 to 1998. The original GameBoy generation, the GameBoy Color was clearly a new generation; yes black carts can work on the (Super) GameBoy (Pocket/Light), they were designed primarily for the new hardware. After all, this is the anniversary of the grey brick, not the GameBoy Color

Re: Vote For Your Favourite Game Boy Games!

SepticLemon

@Incognito_D Not really, they're based on the Black cartridge range which was released after the GameBoy color. Technically, yes, they work on the older systems, but they were made with the GameBoy Color in mind first before the older systems. Simply put, the list of games you see in that list were released between 1989 to 1998, a whole generation's worth of titles. The GameBoy Color was clearly the next generation, even if it had backward compatibility and games that worked on the black and white machines.

Re: Vote For Your Favourite Game Boy Games!

SepticLemon

@Quarth Did you know that Bamse was actually a part of a ridiculous series of games that Laser-beam games cheaply produced!?

Depending on location, it had different names and different sprites. In the US it was called We're Back, based on the Don Bluth movie of the same name. In Germany it's called Baby T-Rex, and in Australia it's called Agro Soar, based on a Kids TV show that had a puppet that looks a lot like Animal from the Muppets.

Re: Vote For Your Favourite Game Boy Games!

SepticLemon

@Trajan Yup, Wave Race was originally a GameBoy game that was released in Japan before the N64. Hence why Wave Race 64 was called "64" because there was a game before it. Thing is, it was released quite late the west; after the release of the N64 game, and a couple of years before the release of the GameBoy Color.

Re: Vote For Your Favourite Game Boy Games!

SepticLemon

@IKAY Volley Fire didn't get a western release. These are all games that were released in the US and Europe.

@Reverandjames These are original black and white GameBoy games. Not GameBoy Color titles.

@Franklin It's in there, I've put my score to the game.

@Heavyarms55 But gold and silver were made for the GameBoy Color with backward compatibility, seeing as it began development before the release the GBC. BUt it was released as a GameBoy Color title though. These games are all GameBoy titles before the release the GameBoy Color.

Re: Guide: Where To Pre-Order Sega Genesis / Mega Drive Mini

SepticLemon

I just preordered mine. But I'm annoyed that the west isn't going to be getting the 6 button controller. But after a conversation with a few Sega heads on Twitter, the Mega Drive Mini might not really need the 6 button pad. There are only a few 6 button compatible games, and those games had support for 3 buttons too. There was no 6 button only titles on the MegaDrive.

Re: Soapbox: It's Time To Admit That F-Zero X Is The Best F-Zero

SepticLemon

Simply put, X is better than GX for 3 major things...

Firstly, the controls were better. In X, you use Z and R to strafe left and right, Side attack by tapping said button twice quickly, and spin attack by tapping one button, with the other in quick succession; and it made complete sense. Bizarrely in GX, they assigned the attacks to separate buttons, which to me was pointless and unnecessary. At least strafing was still the L and R triggers, but the attacks should've stayed the same.

Secondly, near the end of the story mode turns into a rage fest that isn't fun in the slightest. No, it's not Dark Souls of racing games, at least in Dark Souls you'll masochistically return to the game, whilst GX's story mode makes you not want to play it ever again and just play the regular Grand Prix modes.

Third, the music. X out beats GX's sound track hands down, and is one of the main reasons why I fell in love with FZero X back in 1998!

Re: Reminder: Zelda II And Blaster Master Hit Switch Today, Plus Two New Special Edition NES Games

SepticLemon

It's a huge shame that nintendo didn't release Mecha Joy Fight for the western NES Online Service. It would've totally got more attention over the games that we have played a thousand times over...

Yes, we could just download the Famicom Service, but there's a plot that's written in Japanese, and I'm not so versed in Japanese!

Come on Treehouse, you could've translated it, and made the service more interesting for us by releasing a title us westerners haven't seen before!

Re: Random: The Famous Basketball From The Front Cover Of NBA Jam Is Actually Real

SepticLemon

@Bunkerneath Hah... Interesting, I see, I wonder why some parts are red and some parts are blue. The box art now looks really inconsistent in the design. Then again, I found the marque art for the Arcade game, and you're onto something, the left hand side of the embossed font has a red hue, whilst the right is in blue. So yeah, maybe this was promotional item then? http://arcademarquee.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/nba-jam_marquee.jpg

Re: Review: Windjammers - One Of The World's Greatest Two-Player Games Finally Comes To Switch

SepticLemon

@Pazuzu666 It's because DotEmu bought the rights and IP of WindJammers from DataEast. Yes, the game was originally built on NeoGeo hardware, and yes, the game could've become a part of Hamster's ACA NeoGeo series, but the purchase of the IP prevents Hamster from making a port. Besides, if Hamster did make an ACANeoGeo version of this game, it wouldn't have the online modes that the DotEmu game has.

Re: Steins;Gate Elite Is Getting A Western Limited Edition On Switch With Bonus Game Included

SepticLemon

As much as I like the Steins Gate franchise, I'm not too sure if it'll get good review scores due to the fact that for a visual novel, it's quite long; and if you do make a mistake in the game, the bad decision route get padded out a bit too much. There's an option in the PS3 version that allows you to fast forward the game, but I found that it's quite hard to read in the forward mode. If they streamline the game, it might be beneficial to new players.

Re: Visual Novel Steins;Gate Elite Is Heading To The West On Switch In February 2019

SepticLemon

@Rhaoulos Interestly, I found out that Spike Chunsoft were the publishers of the Steam, and now the upcoming Switch, Elite, version. Spike Chunsoft are in fact the same company that developed Portopia Murder Cases, the very first Visual novel game. I now get why there's a retro mode in the game, not to mention it must be an honour for 5pb, the developers, to get their visual novel published by the company that made the first visual novel.

Re: Visual Novel Steins;Gate Elite Is Heading To The West On Switch In February 2019

SepticLemon

@Rhaoulos You pretty much answered it. It's a mainly text with with series of decisions to make. But the idea with Steins Gate is that there's a time travel mechanic where you can send an object into the past to change the present that can change outcomes and even undo bad decisions you make. From what I understand though, Steins Gate Elite adds a whole bunch of new stuff that wasn't in the original, such as animated scenes from the anime, and a retro mode that makes the game look like The Portopia Serial Murder Case, one of the very first visual novels made for the Famicom and MSX.

Re: Shmup Twin Pack R-Type Dimensions Coming To Switch This Winter

SepticLemon

Very cool, but...

I kinda wanted this on Arcade Archives.

Since Irem was announced to have agreements with Hamster for the Arcade Archive games. I was salivating for the original R-Type game. But I guess we'll be getting R-Type (and r-Type 2) in this package instead. Just hope that Hamster nabs R-Type Leo for Arcade Archives!