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Post by spanky on Oct 6, 2022 19:36:23 GMT -5
I'm not the target audience for a Super Mario Movie but so far that seems pretty (overly) safe? And boring looking? The visuals remind me of those "SUPER MARIO 64 RENDERED IN THE UNREAL ENGINE" demos you see. People are going to see a Mario movie no matter what! Do something interesting looking!
Celebrity voice cast (Jack Black in particularly sounded really bad), dumb jokes, bleah bleah bleah! My kid is going to eat it up.
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Post by vnisanian2001 on Oct 6, 2022 19:42:29 GMT -5
Will be interesting to see how it fares. The 1993 movie was a bomb, but has a cult following that defends it.
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Post by 1upsuper on Oct 6, 2022 20:20:50 GMT -5
I've always been a big fan of Ys I (and the first half of Ys II) but I only recently played through Ys III (PC CD) and I just now finished Ys IV (PC CD). The first Ys has long been one of my favorite action RPGs. It's zippy, plays well, has cool bosses, and doesn't overstay its welcome. And I also really enjoyed my first play through of Ys III, though I was shocked by how short it is. Now, as for Ys IV -- what a terrific game! I had never really heard much about this one so I was totally blown away. It's my new favorite of the classic Ys games. A total delight, and the soundtrack is out of this world. I'll move onto Ys V next but from what I've heard, I don't expect it to dethrone Ys IV as my new favorite.
I'm wondering now, is it worth playing the Super Famicom version of Ys IV at some point just to see another developer's take on the game's premise?
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Post by mainpatr on Oct 6, 2022 20:25:55 GMT -5
I've always been a big fan of Ys I (and the first half of Ys II) but I only recently played through Ys III (PC CD) and I just now finished Ys IV (PC CD). The first Ys has long been one of my favorite action RPGs. It's zippy, plays well, has cool bosses, and doesn't overstay its welcome. And I also really enjoyed my first play through of Ys III, though I was shocked by how short it is. Now, as for Ys IV -- what a terrific game! I had never really heard much about this one so I was totally blown away. It's my new favorite of the classic Ys games. A total delight, and the soundtrack is out of this world. I'll move onto Ys V next but from what I've heard, I don't expect it to dethrone Ys IV as my new favorite. I'm wondering now, is it worth playing the Super Famicom version of Ys IV at some point just to see another developer's take on the game's premise?
Vita\PC version is better than Mask of The Sun.
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Post by lurker on Oct 6, 2022 21:53:12 GMT -5
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Post by excelsior on Oct 6, 2022 22:37:54 GMT -5
I'm wondering now, is it worth playing the Super Famicom version of Ys IV at some point just to see another developer's take on the game's premise?
I would say so, yes. Obviously, you're missing the soundtrack of the Hudson Soft version, but it is still entertaining enough to play and interesting as a comparator. ---- The Mario movie looks fine to me. It very much appears to be Mario characters in an Illumination film, but since there's not too much to draw from in the Mario games themselves as far as story and tone that makes sense. I can't say I'm personally interested in the idea of a Mario animated film, but I'd certainly watch this if it was in front of me quite happily. I could do without their usual fart jokes mind you (unless Wario shows up of course).
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Post by lurker on Oct 6, 2022 23:20:22 GMT -5
I'm not the target audience for a Super Mario Movie but so far that seems pretty (overly) safe? And boring looking? The visuals remind me of those "SUPER MARIO 64 RENDERED IN THE UNREAL ENGINE" demos you see. People are going to see a Mario movie no matter what! Do something interesting looking! Celebrity voice cast (Jack Black in particularly sounded really bad), dumb jokes, bleah bleah bleah! My kid is going to eat it up. I wonder if the “overly safe” part is Nintendo’s influence. Aside from that the character designs look alright, especially Bowser. I wish Chris Pratt’s Mario tried a bit more of an accent, although you can hear a little bit of one near the end.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 7, 2022 3:49:00 GMT -5
I'm wondering now, is it worth playing the Super Famicom version of Ys IV at some point just to see another developer's take on the game's premise?
Personally, I liked the story of the SFC game more. The beginning of the game is a lot harder, but it drops off after not too long and the bosses are generally easier. Memories of Celceta is good gameplay with a bland story. Honestly, it felt like the most skippable game in the series when I played through all of them a few years ago since VIII is just a better version of the core gameplay and premise. — I feel very ambivalent about the Mario movie. I really wish animated movies would stop casting big names that either distract from the character (Jack Black) or don't have much voice acting experience (Chris Pratt). I'm not surprised it's totally safe after what a fiasco the live action movie was, but that movie is at least interesting!
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Post by excelsior on Oct 7, 2022 5:28:42 GMT -5
So, I've had the Steam Deck for a week now so enough time to give some impressions now that I've spent a decent amount of time with it. I have only been using it for emulation so far and most of the time I've been spending with it has been dealing with the back end and adding all the software from my backlog. There's a piece of software called Emudeck which basically sets all your emulators up for you and then you just have to add games, which it scans and finds in its library, generally making things very easy. That said there's database gaps which mean some extra work adding posters and things when it mislabels your games, which happens regularly with more niche platforms such as PC Engine and MSX. Of course, you don't have to use this tool, and can either install and configure emulators for yourself, use Emulation Station or whatever, but Emu Deck adds the games into the library on your front end giving a nice and consistent presentation.
There is a lack of instructions for how to work various commands in the system, and I had too Google a number of things, but it was always a case of easy when you know how. Stuff like turning it on for the first time, accessing the Desktop mode, finding your SD Card were new to me, since I'm not familiar with Linux. That you have to format your SD for Steam Deck means the only real way to transfer files from your computer out of the box is wirelessly, and there's a piece of software for that that works nice and easy. Of course, you can directly download on the Deck, but I find it a bit cumbersome to use the trackpad like a mouse for anything more than the odd click here and there - I generally use the touchscreen if I need to.
As far as what I've been playing on it, I wanted to get a good spread of systems early, mostly to cover my backlog as mentioned before, but also to get to grips with how everything works including various modern emulators. I've gone up as far as Wii, but not managed to get original XBOX and 360 working yet, though admittedly I didn't try anything beyond initial uploading of the games. I know those work to some degree as well as PS3, Wii U and Switch, but I haven't tried those either and I'm not sure that I will.
I played a bit of Little Kings Story, just with the intent of a quick test, though I did get hooked on it because it is a lovely little game. There's the odd frame skip or drop here and there but for the most part it runs very nicely considering. I also tried New Super Mario Bros Wii on it which performed about the same, but I found skips more bothersome in that game due to the greater precision needed in the gameplay. These and any other impressions I've come to so far though involved no tweaking to attempt to correct issues. The games were upscaled by default on Dolphin and I haven't attempted to run them at standard resolution. The higher res does make the games look much nicer on the handheld.
I also did a couple of plays of Winds of Thunder and some Super Raiden. The screen is pretty much perfect in displaying the older software. I did struggle for a bit to figure out how to activate the PC Engines auto button presses but I got there in the end - that's RetroArch for you anyway. Of course, both games play lovely on it, especially since they only use a couple of buttons and the d-pad. I played all the way to the end in Winds of Thunder and ended up beating it twice. The first time I had some real trouble with the end boss and could only defeat him with save state swapping. I came back to it with a switch of weapons which made him an absolute pushover though.
After that I started with Street Fighter Alpha 3 on PS1. You might remember around a year ago I was having difficulty with the game. Seems that was mostly down to the PS1 controller, since with the Deck I had noticeably less trouble. Of course, the D-Pad isn't perfect for this kind of game, and I can't instinctively pull out my special moves every time as I can on SNES, but it's better than on the PS1 anyway. I picked up a USB-C to HDMI with it so I could play on the TV also and of course for Alpha 3, hooking it up wirelessly to my 8bitDo Pro2 was instant, and works even better for Alpha 3, so I've been going back and forth in how I play it for the sake of convenience. There are still some tough fights in the game I find, oddly having more trouble using Ryu than most anybody, although I couldn't get to grips with Rose or Cody at all and had to cheat with save states to see it through.
The first game I actually tried on the TV was Pokemon Heart Gold, which was a mistake because I'm now roped into playing through the whole thing. It looks surprisingly good upscaled on the TV, with the colours really popping. The game itself has a real design issue in the early goings. There's no wild Pokemon to be found above level 6 until after the second gym, where the boss has a level 17. It's nuts that the only way to grind at this point was to play the gym boss over and over until I eventually won. I have reached the third gym now and it's giving me up to level 11's to fight, so let's see how frustrating it gets this time around. Of course, this game controls well, since it doesn't utilise the touch screen really.
All in all, I'm finding the Deck a very positive experience. It controls nicely, feels nice in my hands for play sessions of an hour or so, before becoming uncomfortable due to the weight. That's perfect for me since that's usually how long I like to play for. I'm glad I picked up the device later though when there's more tools and advice around to make using it as easy as I've found, I'd imagine picking it up in those early months wouldn't have given the same glowing impression. Plugging into the TV uses the same slot as the charger so that's my only real issue so far, though I was always planning to pick up a dock down the line. Coincidentally Valve opened up orders for their official Dock just yesterday, but it carries a price of $90, which is a little steep. I'm considering a third-party option in its place, but I need to think about that. The benefits beyond charging really come down to support for USB controllers and Keyboards which would allow further versatility for the device. I have more to test, such as actual PC games, but those will come later, and I may or may not come back with further impressions. I have been called out for jilting my Switch, but it is the honeymoon period, I'm sure I'll find a reason to use both.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 7, 2022 6:28:13 GMT -5
Steam Deck uses ext4 for its filesystem, and you should be able to access the SD card directly if you install Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 although the two environments have a degree of separation so seems a little clunky. On a Mac, you need macFUSE and the ext4 plugin for it. Alternatively, you can set up a virtual machine, mount the SD card there and then shuffle files back and forth in a variety of ways.
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Post by excelsior on Oct 7, 2022 7:32:38 GMT -5
Steam Deck uses ext4 for its filesystem, and you should be able to access the SD card directly if you install Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 although the two environments have a degree of separation so seems a little clunky. On a Mac, you need macFUSE and the ext4 plugin for it. Alternatively, you can set up a virtual machine, mount the SD card there and then shuffle files back and forth in a variety of ways. Thanks. I'd read about the former option, though it seemed some people had trouble with it so I basically didn't try. Personally, wifi ended up being a really good option for me since we got super fast broadband installed a few months back and the transfer speed is really high*. Nice alternatives for other people though. * - I was going off on a tangent and thought I'd move it to the end. I've mentioned here in the past a few times having terrible internet. Basically, we were getting 0.5mb/s, but it would go down and we'd need to get someone in to get it working again once or twice a week. I couldn't even stream videos and digital content just wasn't an option for me. After we'd been logging calls for well over a year and getting different engineers out one of them eventually discovered that the cables for our area were covered in friction burns from a previous installation so basically useless. We were refunded for the whole periods internet and given the initial months of our upgrade for free. I think we were the only ones kicking up a fuss about the problems which seems odd to me, but it eventually worked out.
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Post by Snake on Oct 7, 2022 11:31:31 GMT -5
The Super Mario movie doesn't look half bad. Although, a bit of a shame his voice and personality is an alternate universe shift from the "its-a-me! Heerrrre we goooooo!" high pitch tone that's been the staple since Mario 64.
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Post by lurker on Oct 7, 2022 14:32:47 GMT -5
The Super Mario movie doesn't look half bad. Although, a bit of a shame his voice and personality is an alternate universe shift from the "its-a-me! Heerrrre we goooooo!" high pitch tone that's been the staple since Mario 64. In all fairness, that probably would have been hard to sustain over a feature length film.
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Post by personman on Oct 8, 2022 1:42:55 GMT -5
I got my Steam Deck recently too. Won't lie, its been a bit of a bear to deal with since this is my first time ever touching anything running off Linux. Like things look pretty close to Windows but theres a ton of little things sneaking up on me and biting me in the ass. I've pretty much spent a week googling a ton, seems like if I make one misstep I get screwed. Like after I uninstalled a flatpak for AM2R and tried to reinstall it I have to go into a labyrinth to find the files and get the right app to connect to Steam in gaming mode. Not sure what I did to have it stuck in a bunch of hidden directories in hidden directories. Oh well, figured it out though.
It was also just my luck that the game I wanted to test PS2 emulation on was Ace Combat 4 which I have recently learned is notoriously hard to run at 100 percent. Spent a couple days applying patches and work arounds and can't get rid of pretty distracting graphical bugs due to some weird ways they rendered things with interlacing or something. I was a bit scared but trying out Ace Combat Zero it worked perfectly so hopefully its just a freak case.
I really love what you can do with EMUDeck though. I still need to sit down and learn to configure it more (I can't stop it from installing emulators I don't want) but after spending so much time emulating on my 3DS and making it so nice and organized right on its home menu I am so happy I can do just about the same thing here and this will open up a lot of new option now. There are so many games in the PS2 library I want to revisit and finally try things I missed like some Saturn games.
And of course I haven't really had any issues with regular games and this will be great for how picky I am about what kind of games I play on certain platforms. Been eyeing Beard Blade for a while but it shows no sign of moving to Switch, same with Sophstar and other stuff. So this will be super worth the price. I'll probably hold off before going hog wild with emulation till I get a new SD card for it, probably need to spring for a full 1TB since I'm sure PS2 and Xbox stuff will fill up space fast. Maybe see if I can hold out till holiday sales go off.
Hell, I even got Guild Wars 2 to fully function on it lol. Bit cumbersome with radial menus but works for casual dinking around.
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Post by excelsior on Oct 8, 2022 4:27:40 GMT -5
personman - does it matter if you have unwanted emulators installed? Can you not just redirect the link in the Steam Rom Manager parsers? I need to find another N64 emulator. One of the two games I wanted to run on there doesn't load. Grr.
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