Posted on February 28, 2022
Livestream 2/24/2022 – PSX on the MiSTer
There is no hiding how much I’ve grown to love the MiSTer project. For those not familiar it provides a very hardware-close emulation experience, resulting in something that feels like the real thing. Accurate emulation of many of your 8 and 16-bit systems, are all handled with easy these days. The cores used for these systems have been polished and are now great to use.
Looking to more “modern” systems, noone thought that consoles such as the Playstation or Saturn, would ever be possible. Seen to be just too complex to fit onto the DE-10 development board that underpins the whole MiSTer project they started out as a pipe dream. Give it enough time though and developers can work some wonders. And one of those wonders is a beta version of the PSX core developed by Robert Peip, aka FPGAzumSpass. While there are still plenty of things to implement and bugs to squash this version is very stable so far. I’ve played dozens and dozens of games all which have run with no problems.
So here we have the MiSTer yet again getting a huge boost in playable games (the US collection of PSX games is over 1700!). I didn’t own a Playstation myself at launch so I’m really excited to explore the library more in depth. And we played some well known games together with some people perhaps haven’t seen before during the livestream. Impressive and really fun so check out the replay below.
Posted on February 21, 2022
Livestream 2/17/2022 – RollerCoaster Tycoon
Continuing the journey of games I’ve heard a lot about but never played, up next we have RollerCoaster Tycoon. A theme park management sim much in the style of well… Theme Park! The focus is definitely more on building the namesake rollercoasters but also encompasses everything that comes with running a theme park.
Build rides, set prices, hire staff and keep your visitors happy. All things you get to do in this game and I’m not entirely sure why I let this one slip by me for so long. Designed by Chris Sawyer of Transport Tycoon (another favorite of mine), and running on the exact same engine, he stretches it way beyond that game which allows RollerCoaster to take it to the next level. Featuring a very robust track and rollercoaster design system, you can spend hours tweaking and fine-tuning every bend, loop and drop. Addictive doesn’t even begin to describe it!
So it was a great time exploring what this game was all about and especially getting all those great tips and tricks from the viewers. It helped me out a lot and got me off to a much better start than I would have managed on my own. Fun game and fun stream so check out the replay below!
Posted on February 11, 2022
Livestream 2/10/2022 – Duke Nukem 3D
Hail to the king baby! Duke Nukem 3D probably doesn’t need much of an introduction. It’s been covered, played and picked apart so much everyone is likely at least aware of it. Coming in at a time when full 3D FPS games like Quake were just around the corner, it sits at an interesting cross roads. The engine (Build) isn’t fully 3D and more like the projection style used by Doom and similar games. However it has some more tricks up its sleeve with having some pseudo 3D features allowing it to sort of bridge the gap.
This allows for some really creative level designs that I don’t recall seeing from other games at the time. The levels are often sprawling complexes with clever tricks allowing some wide interactivity and exploration. And that interactivity was, at least for me, key. Gone are the similar looking military installation style of Doom and instead we had near, real world environments. As a young one being able to actually flush a toilet and look at Duke in the mirror as he walked past was something entirely new.
So while the character of Duke is a bit tone deaf in the world of today back in 1996 this was the coolest thing ever. We won’t go into the later fate of Duke Nukem as that’d take… forever. Get it?
Duke Nukem 3D is definitely a land mark title and one that is still very fun to play. Did I fall off any ledges during the stream? Check the replay below. There was lava…
Posted on February 7, 2022
Extra Bit Video – Limited Run Games
Limited Run Games (LRG) is one of the few producers that still manufactures big box PC games. It’s not exactly a ripe market so it’s not hard to see why many manufactures stay away from this besides special setups such as Kickstarter and their backer rewards. Making a big box may be one of the more expensive things when it comes to gaming just from the lack of tooling and customers expect more pack in items than you might otherwise see for a game again making the price go up. Plus you know they are usually BIG!
LRG managed to secure some good licensing with Lucasfilms however to re-release many of their old PC games which gave them an opportunity to really go all out on the box design and the pack ins. Pulling deep from the nostalgia of the mid 90s to early 00s golden era of Star Wars games it has allowed us to see some really spectacular big boxes and they are still coming.
Between picking up those really nice Star Wars boxes I’ve built up a small collection of their other offerings over the years with some other highlights that include Command & Conquer: Remastered Edition and the pinnacle of gaming with Chex Quest. Either way I had a lot of them I wanted to open so I decided to make an Extra Bit video about it. As a reminder the Extra Bit videos are basically unscripted videos of mostly just me talking showing some things with minimal editing. An attempt to get some content out that doesn’t take weeks (or months!) to make. Enjoy!
Posted on February 4, 2022
Livestream 2/3/2022 – Anno 1602
For some inexplicable reason the Anno series of games has mostly passed me by. Of course I’ve seen them mentioned and I’ve been aware of them so they are not unknown but I never got into them or even have given them a fair shake. I felt that had to change so I decided for the stream this week I’d start with the first one which is Anno 1602. I should not have waited this long to check it out.
A game that is sort of a hybrid between the resource management from the Settlers games and the colony management from Colonization with some military pieces mixed in it has carved out its own niche. An ever addictive management loop where resource management and strategy is the end all, be all path to victory for each scenario. Considering we played the first game in the series it feels incredibly polished and appropriate for the era. However I should mention that we played the US version called 1602 AD which was in essence a re-release of the game with some extra polish based on the EU version released a year earlier.
It takes a little bit to get into the swing of the resource management (toward the end we even are making a profit with our colony!) but once you do boy it’s addictive. Expect to see more of these games on the streams and channel in the future because I want to check them all out now! Thanks to everyone in chat that coached me through my first experience with this one. Check out the replay below and get hooked!
