Zombeaver

Most of that stuff was just a dream for me at the time - stuff like the MT-32 retailed for something like $600 so that was never gonna happen. It's been pretty interesting to revisit some of my childhood favorites with such a dramatic change in sound. It's kindof a weird experience because on the one hand my nostalgia says "This doesn't sound the way it's 'supposed' to." but on the other it really is like playing a whole new, objectively better game. For people that are interested in this stuff and don't have access to the real thing, I do highly recommend checking out Munt for MT-32 and VirtualMIDISynth (with FluidR3 or equivalent) for GM. Both of them hook right into DOSBox no problem. I've never been able to compare the real thing vs the emulators side by side but they sound pretty darn good regardless. If you're a DOS junkie like me, it'll be a pretty eye-opening experience!

Dude, sweet! I'm super jelly. I've used Munt for years, which is actually pretty darn good, but I'd love to get the real thing. For games that really take advantage of it, it's like a completely different game. A lot of the early Sierra stuff is pretty mindblowing. A lot of them were specifically composed for MT-32 since they had a vested interest in them selling - they had the distribution rights to it in the US. 0:00 - 2:02 Adlib / 2:03 - 4:05 MT-32

There are just certain things you have to accept - the voice acting and dialogue are... unique. I actually love it, but a lot of people hated it; and while I disagree, I understand why they hate it. I think you have to go in with the mindset that you know the dialogue and voice acting will be like some kind of cheesy fantasy movie, and you'll have a better time. The game's very open-ended, and while it has a central story in the same sense that an Elder Scrolls game has a story, by and large you're just kindof set free in this giant fantasy world to do as you wish. It doesn't make a very good first impression, and things kindof start slow in the sortof typical "Oh, you're a dude fighting wolves in ye olde forest." but as you progress, build up your character with better equipment (it has a really neat equipment combination system where you can basically power up gear with lesser gear, so "trash" equipment can actually be useful), and learn new skills and spells, things open up more and more. And like I said, there are some actually really interesting quests that went in directions I did not expect (the video has an example). There's one quest where you come to this isolated village, and when you talk to the people, all of them are terrified. They won't tell you much, but you're able to gather that some nearby giants have been harassing them and they're afraid they'll destroy the village. They beg you not to fight them, saying that it'll only make things worse. They just want you to leave. "But... I'm the hero. I have to save the day," is what every game ever has pounded into my brain. So, of course, I find their cave nearby, and kill all the giants. Hurray! I'm the hero! ...when you get back to the village, there are several more giants that have killed all the villagers. You can kill them, of course, but everyone in the town is now dead. Most games like this just kindof train you to "Do the right thing!" which usually entails killing some big bad. Doing what I'd come to interpret as "the right thing" didn't have the outcome I expected. That's just a random one-off event that has nothing whatsoever to do with the main story at all. I wouldn't compare it to Dragon's Dogma beyond the fact that it's a fantasy setting in a pretty open world. I love the hell out of Dragon's Dogma though - played the shit out of that game (multiple times).

Honestly, I didn't play it until several years after it came out specifically because it got so thoroughly shit on in reviews. I saw it on sale for cheap on GOG one day, saw a lot of reviews that said something to the effect of "It's flawed but you should still check it out," and just kinda figured "Eh, what the hell... let's give it a go," and then found myself completely surprised by it. I wasn't hyped at all (and maybe therein lies the difference), because I went in expecting it to be pretty awful based on what I'd read and heard, but was very pleasantly surprised. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it gets a lot of things right. I mentioned it because when the concept of "games you loved that critics hated" comes up it's probably the first thing that comes to mind for me. Some of my favorite games ever are deeply flawed - games like Anachronox, Arx Fatalis, the Gothic series, and Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines have plenty of problems (VTM:B was literally a broken mess at launch) - but they get a whole lot of things right, and have a ton of charm, and you can tell a lot of passion went into them. I certainly wouldn't put Two Worlds on quite the same pedestal, but its good points definitely outweighed the bad for me.

No it's not! It lacks some polish for sure, but it's actually pretty great. The voice acting is turbo-cheesy, but it adds way more charm than it detracts (it's actually pretty funny). It was marketed very poorly with an awful slogan of something like "Oblivion on steroids", which started a lot of people off on the wrong foot, but I'm not going to hold that against it. It's got a huge open world, a Diablo loot system which, admittedly, I'm a sucker for, and some genuinely interesting quests that have ramifications. It also has an awesome magic system where you can create your own (overpowered) spells. I had a genuine, non-ironic blast with it. I honestly don't think people gave it a fair chance. Cringey, 7-year-old video I made that should (sortof) get my point across at least [language warning]:

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything, honestly. It's true for every generation. There are a lot of bad games for every platform ever. Bad games outnumber good ones, full stop. It's the reason people gravitate so strongly to the same exceptions - because they're surrounded by a sea of shit. People still talk about how much they love the N64 today, and gloss over the fact that what they love isn't, in fact, the N64 itself - it's about a dozen specific games for the N64. Those same dozen games come up over and over and are lauded, justifiably, as good games; but the library overall is pretty much garbage. PSX is my favorite console of all time, but there's a metric ton of garbage games on it. If you had every single game for it that was even debatably good, you'd probably be looking at about 500 games - that's about 25% of the total library and I'd say that's actually a pretty good ratio comparatively speaking. I take it you haven't taken a gander at Steam any time recently then? There's more shovelware garbage now than ever before. More games were released on Steam in 2017 alone than were released between 2006 and 2014 combined. I think you're conflating "games now" with what's typically referred to as "AAA" games, which probably represents less than 1% of games released each year. This is also beside the point that budget absolutely does not equal quality. This is absolutely understandable. There's nothing that says you need to seek out hidden gems if you don't want to; it's most definitely a time sink that requires a certain amount of dedication that's not for everyone. You'll be missing out on some stuff for sure, but like you said, there's a much better chance that you don't boot up complete trash this way. And I think any pruning at all is better than none.

thatsthejoke.jpg I'd say all of those are better than their scores suggest. That's my point. There are plenty of games that weren't well-received critically (overall) that are good (and vice versa). Now if you have a specific reviewer that you've followed for a long time that you've come to trust, I think that's a little bit different. Getting their opinion on it, when you've established that it's one that you're generally in sync with, is a much better indicator than an aggregate made up of a bunch of people that you don't know. I really like ACG on Youtube, for example. If he says something's great or that it's shit, I'm usually on the same page with him; not always, but it's a good starting point. Meanwhile you have sites factoring into the aggregate score that could be made up primarily of asshats - IGN gave God Hand a 3/10...

Also, I'm no match for Cid, but I've got 900+ on Steam and 400+ on GOG The backlog never ends.

To each their own, but personally I would never use this as a deciding factor for anything. There are plenty of good games that weren't well-received critically (and shit games that were rated highly). If you played (or even watched) the game and made the decision that "Nope, this does not look like something I'd be interested in," fair enough (this is why I really like Quick Looks on Giantbomb, because just playing through some of the game, unedited, pretty much always tells me the vast majority of what I need to know), but I'd never use an arbitrary number handed out by a bunch of strangers as some kind of metric for whether or not I'd check out a game.

If you're feeling adventurous, you can actually setup an instance of Windows 3.1 within DOSBox (I recommend DOSBox Daum for this; I use regular old DOSBox for standard DOS games, but Daum handles the 3.1 environment better than normal DOSBox). I've done this to setup quite a few 3.5 era games (including Darkseed 2): Burn:Cycle Cosmology of Kyoto Crusader: Adventure Out Of Time Darkseed 2 Four-Sight Frankenstein: Through The Eyes of the Monster Gadget: Invention, Travel, Adventure In The 1st Degree Jewels of the Oracle The Journeyman Project Turbo! Karma: Curse of the 12 Caves Logical Journey of the Zoombinis Majestic Part 1: Alien Encounter The Martian Chronicles Adventure Game Math Blaster: In Search of Spot Mirage Noir: A Shadowy Thriller Panic In The Park The Residents: Bad Day on the Midway Shivers Spaceship Warlock There are quite a few guides out there on how to do this. The way I've done it is to setup my instance of 3.1 as a base with no games installed, then I duplicate that folder and rename it after the game title whenever I want to setup a new game. I add disc images to the .conf file, boot up 3.1, use the 3.1 file explorer to install the game, exit, then edit the "Load=" line in the WIN.INI to direct it to the game exe; this way as soon as I start that copy of DOSBox, it boots 3.1 and then immediately boots the game. Then I add that copy of DOSBox to LB like you would any other game .exe. It starts DOSBox, boots 3.1, then boots the game.

Cue @Lordmonkus's shifty-eyed cat gif stat

Very nice! It's definitely working well here. I think this is really begging to have a controller automation function added for "Display manual for currently loaded game" though. As good as it is to be able to navigate with the controller, I think this needs to be accessible while you're actually playing the game.

One other thing I forgot to mention - the game data has to be located in a folder named "PSYCHO", and the "root folder" in the "folder" tab needs to be set to the folder one level up from that. That's really important because if the folder is set to the "PSYCHO" folder itself, it won't work. I keep all my DOS games in a path of X:\Emulation\DOS\[game title] so in this case I've got a path of X:\Emulation\DOS\Psycho Pinball\PSYCHO. Normally the folder named after the game title (Psycho Pinball) would contain the game files, as most DOS games don't care one way or the other, but this one seems to specifically want to be in a folder named PSYCHO so I just made it a subfolder within the game title folder. I have the disc image (PSYCHO.iso) in a folder just named "Disc Image". Make sure this is set in the "mounts" tab as drive D and a type of CD-ROM/ISO.

New configs: Drakan: The Ancients' Gates Forever Kingdom RLH: Run Like Hell Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly Star Wars: Bounty Hunter Summoner 2 Urban Chaos: Riot Response I've also made an update to the Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land config. It's now using Bob tff interlacing instead of Auto, and is using D3D instead of GL. It's a nice improvement to the visuals.

I'm a complete C64 nut. It was my first experience with video games as a 4-year-old kid. My Dad had boxes and boxes just packed with pirated disks with homemade labels on them, so that was kindof a giant treasure trove to mess around with. Bruce Lee was the first game I ever beat These are some of my favorites: Alien Syndrome Aliens: The Computer Game (this one - there are a couple games for C64 with this same name) Armalyte Artillery Duel Ballblazer Beach-Head Beyond the Ice Palace Blagger Goes To Hollywood Blue Max Boulderdash Bruce Lee Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom Burger Time Catalypse Choplifter Cohen's Towers Cosmic Causeway Crystal Castles The Detective Game Dig Dug Dino Eggs Dominator Donald Ducks' Playground Driller Ducks Ahoy! Elite Extreme First Samurai A Fistfull of Bucks Fort Apocalypse Frogger II: Threeedeep! H.E.R.O. Hacker Hover Bovver Hunchback II: Quasimodo's Revenge Impossible Mission Jumpman Koronis Rift The Last Ninja Lazy Jones LED Storm Little Computer People Lode Runner Main Frame Mancopter Master of the Lamps Montezuma's Revenge The Move Monster Game Nebulus Project Firestart Psi-5 Trading Company Raid on Bungeling Bay Raid Over Moscow Rescue on Fractalus! Save New York Shadowfire Space Taxi Spare Change Spelunker Spy Hunter Strangeloop Suicide Express Suicide Strike Summer Games Super Pipeline 2 Supremacy Tapper Times of Lore The Train: Escape to Normandy Uridium The Way of the Exploding Fist Winter Games Zorro

Happy to help! We do have a Patreon available here: https://www.patreon.com/launchbox

Okay, check one thing for me - go to your library entry for Psycho Pinball and right-click on it and select Edit (or press CTRL+E). What is the .exe that you're using for the game in the Launcher tab? It should be _P_.exe. If it's something else, click the browse button and choose _P_.exe.

Sorry I missed this. I don't have Psycho Pinball in my library currently so I'll check it out and get back to you.

This is interesting. I've got some alternate versions of some games like VGA + FM Towns versions of Loom and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in my library, but I wasn't aware that non-computer versions like NES or Sega CD were supported as well. The site does seem to confirm this though. Neato! http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/SCUMM/NES https://www.scummvm.org/compatibility/0.6.1/game/

I prefer feudalism in my front-ends, personally.

Yes, thank you for explaining democracy to me. I think "Sorry my English" got it across pretty well though.

Personally, I'm not for a separate ScummVM platform in the DB either as I think it's redundant, but as far as this question specifically, it seems pretty simple - the version that ScummVM uses. For most games, that'll be the DOS version, in some it might be a Windows version. There are a few cases where there are multiple versions that are covered under ScummVM, like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis or Loom, where both the DOS and FM Towns versions can be used - for those I'd just say upload boxes for both versions. You could do the DOS one as "World" or "US" and the FM Towns as "Japan". That's fairly few and far between though. I'm glad somebody understands something, because I don't understand this statement lol

Err wait, you were asking about Intellivision not Colecovision. You might be able to do that with the MAME core, haven't tried it though. MAME can be kindof hit or miss for some systems like that. I don't think there's a dedicated Intellivision core in RA.

Yes. You can basically replace one button with another or a combination of buttons. You should be able to do this directly in RA as well. I've never messed with Colecovision in RA, but the blueMSX core supports it; and I've used it for MSX/MSX2.

If you're using Hyperspin and RocketLauncher I'd suggest asking your questions on the Hyperspin or possibly the RocketLauncher forums. http://hyperspin-fe.com/forums/ http://www.rlauncher.com/forum/forum.php