There we go page turn karma as always

Blue Swirl wrote:

I got you, reg.

Super RType released on Switch SNES collection. I always forget how much I like that series.

I tried that out tonight. So far I think I prefer the PC Engine version; the SNES one is prettier, of course, but man there's some epic slow-down. Was it like that back in the day, or is it a Switch emulation thing?

Well known for its slowdown. It's why I didn't get it on cart in the day. Probably the main reason for the poor SNES reputation for shmups - despite it having games like Super Aleste which is sprite city with no slowdown. 

I have RType III boxed with manual which is an excellent game and worth a fair bit now even though the box isn't up to the usual standard I have in my collection.  It doesn't suffer from slowdown as far as I remember - maybe in a few places - depending on the force orb you pick but it isn't a problem with the game the way it is Super RType.

There might be a ROM hack that sorts it - Gradius III on SNES had a similar problem but there's a hack of that which fixes it.

NTSC-J copy of Burning Rangers arrived today.

Comes with a Gamecube game disc size CD with the soundtrack.

Never seen a music CD be that size.

How do non-top loader CD players even handle discs that size?

Actually the launch Wii can pay Gamecube games, and it's a self feeder, but maybe they had something in place for that, that other self feed CD players don't.

There was a brief trend for CD singles in that smaller size. Didn’t last long. Presumably because people tried to put them in self-feeding car stereos and fucked things up. The next idea was full-size discs that only had metal playable surface in the middle part. The outer half was just transparent, or held artwork. Eventually people realised it was more cost-effective to just make normal CDs all the time and stop fiddling around with different formats that made more work for the pressing plants.

I remember seeing these adaptor things at some point in my life.
Like Pop says its just making a problem really. CDs eventually became so cheap.

Not sure about the size - might be the case - but the GC drive ran backwards as well - making disc burning more problematic.

I remember I had some set up where I played it with the lid open. The inside of a biro pressed down the button that tells the console the lid was closed, with the pen end hooked into another part of the lid. But I can't remember if that was for yarring or just general troubleshooting because the laser was on the blink.

Disc swapping is a common trick with PS1. There's a disc called Breaker Pro that lets you disc swap without risking damaging the drive. It even comes with a widget that keeps the disc open button depressed.

It also has the added bonus of a hidden menu (activated by holding all 4 shoulder buttons down) that lets you force 50Hz games into 60Hz and adjust the size and position of the image on-screen.

davyK wrote:

Disc swapping is a common trick with PS1. There's a disc called Breaker Pro that lets you disc swap without risking damaging the drive. It even comes with a widget that keeps the disc open button depressed. It also has the added bonus of a hidden menu (activated by holding all 4 shoulder buttons down) that lets you force 50Hz games into 60Hz and adjust the size and position of the image on-screen.

monkey wrote:

Disc swapping is a common trick with PS1. There's a disc called Breaker Pro that lets you disc swap without risking damaging the drive. It even comes with a widget that keeps the disc open button depressed. It also has the added bonus of a hidden menu (activated by holding all 4 shoulder buttons down) that lets you force 50Hz games into 60Hz and adjust the size and position of the image on-screen.

Heh.

To be honest that or a piece of Blutac would be a better job - it's a metal cylinder with a spring attached - the cylinder goes over the sensor/button and the other end of the spring goes over a plastic leg in disc drive lid.

It also comes with a different version for the PSOne and a tool for working with fat PS2s.

PS1 piracy got very easy by around 1999/2000.

Was just a gadget you slot into the expansion port. Can't remember if it required a legit disc first to play. Probably did, but at least it didn't require soldering something to the board.

I ended up with a Boot dis for my GC to play imports too - was called Freeloader IIRC?

Time_on_my_hands wrote:

Was piracy really that much worse in the PS1 gen than in the days of floppy disks? It was actually the only gen where I didn't have pirate games, mainly because of the faff, perhaps also because pre-owned and trade ins were good value. Previously on the ST way more than half my game collection was pirated!

Same here, but I don’t think that’s comparing like for like. Home computers (from ZX80 through Speccy and C64 right up to the ST, Amiga and PC) enjoyed a lot of piracy - they used tapes and discs.

I think it’s more relevant to think of the PS1 in comparison to the older consoles - which were all cartridge based, and near-impossible to pirate at the time. In that context, the jump from carts to CDs … you can appreciate that the change boosted piracy.