Alexlotl

Nice! I'm still buying, probably more than ever at the moment, as lockdown means I'm not spending £5 a day on lunch. Buying a lot of classical at the moment, as it's good to work to. I've set up a stereo on my desk in the home office, after spending the first few months of lockdown using my usual monitoring headphones as though I was still in an open plan office. Ended up with my old Denon DM40 hooked up to some new Dali Spektor 1 speakers. Also picked up a second hand Asus Xonar U3 USB soundcard to let me hook my work laptop up to the stereo via optical - streaming the Streets of

Well, obviously. But there are plenty of unsavable games (with no passwords) which take longer to beat than the 30 minutes or so I usually have in the evenings for gaming. Instead I find myself going on GameFAQs to look for ancient level select cheatcodes.

I personally think the DKC games are pretty mediocre europlatformers and would barely be remembered if not for the shiny graphics. The problem is those once shiny graphics now look pretty bad on anything other than a CRT, which makes the emperor's comparative lack of clothes all the more apparent when playing via emulator, FPGA or upscaler. Starfox, on the other hand, is still really playable despite looking really primitive and running at ~15fps. Peel back the once-cutting-edge technology, and there's still a good game there.

Krikzz's Everdrives can only do what a cartridge can do, though. I would have thought that working at the system level like the Mega SG firmware does would give more options, but perhaps I'm being naive.

I wish the jailbreak firmware had Save State support - as it works at the system level, it could preserve both the 68000 and Z80 contents, and avoid the loss-of-music problems that other save state solutions have. Sounds like the people behind it aren't fans, though - I remember SmokeMonster pedalling tiresome Git Gud stuff on Twitter last year. It's not a question of "gitting gud", it's a question of actually having enough minutes in a row to play through something like Streets of Rage 2 in one sitting.

I have a Japanese MD2, unboxed, which I need to get shot of - I'll dig it out if you're interested. It has the common MD2 problem where the solder on the power connector needs reflowing, so the power can drop if it gets knocked, but other than that it works fine. I might have a matching UK MD2 PSU for it somewhere too. The JP MD2 was the single most handsome version of the Mega Drive too, for my money. Just look at those burgundy flaps.

Returns are pretty low stress from what I recall, though. I ordered a neon yellow joycon which turned out to be creaky (if perfectly functional), and they handled the return with no fuss.

Certainly on the mobile app you can pick a category, then use the filters to see what's in stock at your local store. I once went to buy some cheap Scooby Doo DVDs when one of my kids was off sick for a few days. The online stock check said they were in stock, but they weren't anywhere on the shelves. They checked behind the counter and did have the discs, so they sold them to me unboxed for 1p each.

Got this yesterday for the Switch. Holy shit, it's fantastic! It manages to capture the feel and vibe of the old games while massively elevating the mechanics, and has some of the most awesome set pieces I've seen in a game. Never had to use my brain so much in a brawler. Love the boss fight against Barbon, where each time you trash a bike another of the biker girls comes out to join in (and very handy projectiles they make too). The Roo cameo was a nice touch, too. Concentrating on Axel at the moment to get a feel for the game, then will try the other characters.

SoR3 is screwed, play the Bare Knuckle 3 translation instead. They absolutely banjaxed the difficulty for the western release so people couldn’t beat it on a rental, which manages to simultaneously make it harder and more boring.

Wasn't that one originally an Anime tie-in on the Mark III in Japan, but got turned into an Alex Kidd game for the west? I've never played it, the Alex Kidd series kind of passed me by (although I did play a few bits of built-in Miracle World on friend's SMSes).

Inspired by the current Retronauts podcast on Streets of Rage, I fired up the original game last night for a quick spin. Picked Axel, and did suprisingly well. Most of the bosses are quite straightforward, and even the tricky ones have sufficiently little energy that, with one police attack per life, you can get past them without too much trouble. Made it to Stage 5 on my first credit, then all the way to the second coming of the Blaze-Clone-Twins just before the final boss with my second... only to get my arse kicked repeatedly by them. I'd cheesed my way past them previously with

Before you know it, you'll be paying five hundred quid for a Smurfs game.

I haven’t tried the 12, but the Glendronach 15 Revival certainly used to be wonderful, a proper sherry bomb. Tastes like Christmas.

The Everdrive V2/X7 gives you Master System FM too. The MD isn't fully compatible with SG1000 games though, which to be fair is no great loss - most work, but with odd colours. F-16 Fighting Falcon on the SMS is also affected, as it weirdly uses the SG-1000 video mode. On a tangent, has anyone tried the new V2.0 SMS Power retranslation of Phantasy Star 1? Looks like a proper deluxe edition, with selectable soundtrack, font, sound text, quality-of-life improvements, sprite tweaks and all sorts. https://www.smspower.org/Translations/PhantasyStar-SM