Thread:Velt211/@comment-2003:D6:4722:2E2A:DD17:3F8A:F36C:2C58-20190924042015/@comment-40164738-20190926195659

Hope you have two screens or a lot of graphing paper, frankly I peeked a few times at pre-made maps after going through a few of them (mostly spinner hell). There's apparently an  automapping tool for Might & Magic 1-5, Wizardry 1-5 and Bard's Tale 1-3. You'd probably have to get the GOG dos versions though. I didn't use it, played the Apple II versions. It'd save you on paper atleast, it's called "Where Are We?". From the screenshots it does look like you need to flag events yourself. I probably should, from the screenshots it looks like it's structured with game art and some a small amount of text? I've been planning on playing more CRPGs and it might make for some good inspiration. I've never lived in a village quite that small, but my town of 20K sure feels that way, except we have a small town center and more than one supermarket. Surrounded by polder all around and what used to be sea on one side. Surprisingly clean air for a 20K city as well, but most people using cars go towards the big city and anything else is walking or cycling.

You'd be surprised. They picked up the pace around the mid 90's, though quite a few of them got ported to consoles as well. You had the screamer (Bleifuss) series, plenty of rally games on most systems, NFS like you said, Test Drive and carmageddon were some big series. Then you have the technologically interesting. Car & Driver (92) was doing some pretty stable 3d racing, even had banked turns. Test drive 3 was doing 3D driving (it's not really racing) in 1990 and Hard Drivin' II (1990) also doing very smooth 3D. Then you'd also have the weirder stuff like racing managers and Ford showroom disks (they made quite a few, even had a test drive feature). I grew up on Gran Turismo 2 (and later 4) as my racing game of "choice" (only one I had), so I guess I built up a tolerance for track driving games. Rally with good stage design is always more enjoyable, I'd also like to see more Dakar type games. It could make for some nice extreme sim racing. I generally go for just the career as well, it gives you plenty of the experience. It's also why TOCA/DTM Race driver 3 were nice, they had a career which allowed you to compete in different harder competition types as you progressed (rally, open wheel, Touring). Shame, I guess softmodding your system is the only other "easy" option left so you can use homebrew ram editors. They are always a hassle to use though, had one for the vita and it made me decrypt and export my save to storage and then scan and edit it with cheat engine and then encrypt and back to storage. Might as well play the game fairly then, just find an exploit to skip the grind. I played it way back when. I don't remember it being really hard, I guess the modern term for it would be "Kaizo-lite". The Kaizo shit is what ruins Mario Maker for me an endless stream of kaizo and troll levels just to get attention from streamers. You have to browse forums or lists of levels to find anything good, put me off the game entirely. Difficulty from mechanics is best, not artificially inflating it by putting you into near unwinnable situations constantly. It's fine as a one-off scenario or some sort, but every level being insurmountable due to pixel perfect tricks bothers me.

Fair enough, I prefer what "my people" (so "the west" or just PAL region) would've experienced, I guess that's my version of only original censored or not. No problem with that, time is limited like you said. Yeah, that all seems about right. Can't image many the small devs of the time wanting to bother with 5 languages for all their titles. I guess we mostly had IBM PCs, MSXs, Amigas and some C64s? I've never really heard someone say they owned a C64 here, but I see them in Dutch ads from time to time. The LaserActive was a weird one. A laserdisc player (for video/music/games), CD player, Console game player (expansion modules for MD+CD, LD-rom, PC engine+CD+Hucard and even some laserdisc arcade games) and even as a karaoke device. I'm sure if the CD-I was more like it might've been a success. I know they exist, but I've never bothered with 'em. Plenty better options out there. Games on it are probably early PC-88/FM-7 tier if not worse.

I think it's more due to lacking European control over their releases, I'm sure people over here wouldn't freak due to a titty. Heard about the Sony stuff which is just insane. Imagine you going to some monthly job evaluation and suddenly having to speak to a Chinese boss in Chinese. I assume you mean the MIDI controversy (unless it's genuine thanks)? Either sounds fine to me, having played them all in original releases. It's not like the game is beautiful either, so it does fit well enough. I would've preferred the DQ 8 approach though. It's fine by me, but I wonder what their in-depth hobby is? I can't imagine them not having any. Man, I played online using a phone-line, much to the chagrin of my family and my parent's wallets (I was young and didn't know the costs). Online games were quite chill back then. I played Age of Mythology back then and sucked at regular competitive play, but most people seemed to enjoy the "interesting" strats I pulled off instead of rage-quitting or berating. Fun times.

Yeah, they marketed like that. Most games made by them were bad or mediocre, but cheap and playable. I guess people just didn't mind it as much? If I remember right, they were one of the big purveyor of browser and old pre-smartphone games, now they probably just do apps. Most smaller to mid companies died like that, the giants came and gobbled them all up or forced them out. A good example would be Origin (Ultima, EA came), Their most hated games all came when EA took over. It's a shame, I know quite a few good games were made by german devs. I particularly enjoyed The Settlers. Now most I hear coming from Germany are the working sim games, though I'm not even sure if they are made over there. Maybe you get to see a revival of atleast the esports section, it's gaining traction and I actually see stuff about it in national news (probably just because some dutchman died well). And again console and mobile is just a trend of the bigger entertainment market, accessible for all and all that. It's good that there's more retro stuff popping up, broadens people's taste (and hopefully the market).

Yeah, was looking for old emulators and general Alicesoft related stuff. Went through quite a lot of linked pages, you find some weird things at times though (90's Alicesoft fan's art page, all dead images though). Probably not much in the way of backups either knowing the Japanese, it's a shame. I still stumble on many old pages and see that dreaded "we're dead" page.