yeah i mean, i’ve had a Sega CD since the 90s, so i’m not anti Sega CD, i just think that it didn’t have enough games, but also, i feel like the PC-E games really took advantage of that storage space - they felt like truly-enhanced 16-bit(ish) games. a few Sega CD titles achieve this, but not all. still fun to play them!
4 Likes
That’s so cool!
5 Likes
Another aspect to this whole discussion is that there are actually 2 CD formats for the PC Engine: CD ROM ROM in 1988 and Super CD ROM ROM at the end of 1991*. CD ROM had 64 kb of RAM, Super had 256 kb. A lot of the most memorable games like Rondo and Legend of Heroes are from the Super format.
*Actually, I think the Arcade card counts as a third format.
6 Likes
iirc, the arcade card has more ram than the ps1, ehich is insane for an 8-bit console
8 Likes
I first found Shanghai too limited, simple, and tedious. Tell that to me now who played it for 90 minutes tonight while listening to 90s ska-punk. And kept hitting new game so I could continue to do so. Great Job Shanghai!
7 Likes
Now you’ve got Shanghai II to look forward to.
3 Likes
8 Likes
Pro Yakyuu World Stadium and World Class Baseball
I thought I’d check out the two baseball games from the year. Y’know, play a game in each and see how well I do.
I like how the players in Pro Yakyuu have a healthy chubbiness to them. It’s great for representation in video games. My problem with this game is fielding. The outfield has no hustle, so the computer kept getting extra runs on me. It’s like they don’t even want to earn Subway after the game. They called the game in the second inning, 2-12. Ouch.
World Class Baseball is much better. This time, fielding is a breeze. I was tapping people before they could steal a base, catching pop flys and scooping extra outs from overzealous runners. Batting is difficult though. It’s possible to curve a ball after pitching it, which leads to some nasty throws. The computer got a single home run on me and I was never able to make up the balance. It ended at the top of the ninth inning.
My metric for a good baseball game is “can I win?” Based on that, neither of these are as good as Bases Loaded for the GAME BOY.
14 Likes
Haven’t tried the PCE yet but did a round of one of the Famicom Pro Yakyuus and yeah it was just brutal and I couldn’t figure out how to put any spin on my pitches.
3 Likes
No-Ri-Ko
So this is sort of an adventure game. The pretext is that I found Noriko Ogawa’s metro card or something and returned it to her. Naturally this leads to being invited to a concert and a private outing. It’s funny that every action I do, I am given the choice to just say no. “Accept the invitation?” “Go inside the concert?” “Meet her in the dressing room?” I can say no to all of these, but why would I? I just bought a game called Noriko.
When I meet up with her, she gives me a choice of where I want to go in Tokyo. We eat lunch in Shibuya. I get to spin a roulette and it’s possible to lose.
I also take her to Harajuku to pick out a new outfit. Last, we go dancing and I can actually control her on this screen while a tune plays. Pressing a button makes her change into a different pose. I may have spent a full 3 minutes doing this.
We were going to go our separate ways, but then it rained. So of course we went back to my apartment where she quizzed me about how much I knew about her. Then we did a compatibility test, which I aced, and we played rock-paper-scissors. It was everything one could hope for on a first date and it really helped me believe that I could have a popstar girlfriend if I wanted to.
26 Likes
Sengoku Mahjong
I have never played mahjong before, not Riichi nor old Hong Kong. Last night, I decided I was going to try. I used this site A Beginner’s Guide to Riichi Mahjong and actually learned a lot. The main choice in the game is choosing what to discard. But making that choice can be really difficult since there are several conditions that I need to meet in order to win a hand.
At first, I was playing all wrong. I thought I just needed to make four sets and a pair, and naturally things would go well. I was taking tiles from competitors left and right. The trouble is, I could never get a yaku. Yaku are special conditions that need to be fulfilled for your entire hand. For example, “no 1s, 9s, dragons, or winds.” In trying to make whatever set I could find, I totally ignored these conditions and never got one right. It’s hard! There’s a whole set of internalized probability I would need to be able to win this. I should have tried to learn it with three aunties. I’m sure they would have been able to help me win and there’d probably be tea and sweets involved, too.
I think I’m starting to like mahjong, but playing against computers feels wrong the same way playing computer Texas hold 'em does. Just wait until the next meetup. I’m sure I’ll be a total fanatic by then.
13 Likes
The number of possibilities you have to keep in your head in mahjong is baffling. I played a bunch of different mahjong games for SNEX and you see the special secret hands and start panicing “what if I have the perfect hand and the twitch chat is telling me I’m throwing it away!”
7 Likes
Right? It feels like something you have to spend years memorizing. I think I could get my foot in the door if I restricted my strategizing to the most likely yakus first, then incorporating more into my memory after a few rounds.
3 Likes
I had the same issue with yakus in riichi mahjong. It is very confusing what the conditions are, especially if you take any discarded tiles. When playing riichi, I basically never take tiles for this reason.
I think that some Chinese flavors of mahjong don’t have these silly stipulations, but it has been a while since I’ve played any games with Chinese rules. Mahjong is complicated enough as it is, dang it!
5 Likes
It’s wild just how many variants of mahjong there are. I kind of want to learn more. I also want to learn more card games. Like, what is euchre even about? I’m going to refuse all board games and become a card and tile man.
7 Likes
i really, really tried learning mahjong (riichi) via FFXIV, but in a game that is generally always holding the player’s hand through every little thing, they decided you should learn to play mahjong completely on your own through huge text documents.
i got to a point where i could at least begin predicting some kind of outcome i wanted for myself each game, but every time i played, i felt like maybe i understood the game even less than i thought i did.
game is cool but i feel like you need to play with people 40 years older than you to start getting the ropes
8 Likes
I have like four books on mahjong. At least one covers the Cantonese game, which is pretty wild but I don’t think I’ve ever played a video game version. There is a psp game called Dongfang Queshen (I think) by a Taiwanese developer which I liked for non-riichi mahjong. Taiwanese is yet another variant, but I don’t remember which versions exactly Dongfang Queshen has.
Mahjong is something I’d like to devote more time to. Last I really tried was >5 years ago, so my memory is fuzzy.
6 Likes
I tried to learn mahjong during my NGPC obsession, in order to play Super Real Mahjong Premium Collection. ]_] There was something about “not being able to win with a tile that is vaguely related to one you discarded” that I never quite figured out. While I found that “it can be sort of fun even against the computer and there’s a pleasant sort of logic in forming a winning hand,” I also noted to myself 19 years ago that “mahjong against the computer inevitably gets repetitive and loses most of its luster.” I haven’t tried mahjong since then so probably I would find a different take now, I dunno.
Oh and then I played the four-player (3 CPU) Dokodemo Mahjong Color on NGPC, and I had more fun–not only are there more little computer personalities to enjoy, but also more strategy in that there are more people to steal tiles from, and “it isn’t always just winner/loser, you earn or lose points depending on your relation to whoever at the table declared mahjong first” (although I never figured the scoring out very thoroughly).
3 Likes
If you actually want to enjoy mahjong, I would recommend either jumping into Mahjong Soul or Riichi City’s ranked ladders as both are F2P and bottom heavy so you can play the game against other people trying to figure it out. I’ve been getting back into mahjong recently on Riichi City and having a good old time.
7 Likes