the_wizard_666

Thanks! I'm just having a quiet night with the family. Not like there's much else to do mid pandemic on a Tuesday night

Well, according to the FAQ for the game, the Vegas level awards points differently based on the slot machine in the background. So with good luck, the same number of baskets on a 60 point game could potentially put you at a 200 point game. Just a matter of luck. A big tip I found is to basically just beat the piss out of the other team with your player and let the computer do the work. Each of the various settings pre-game are essentially saying what your commands to the AI are with and without the ball. Hit right twice and the A button with the ball is to tell him to shoot high. The top basket is worth more points. Hit B to tell him to shoot if the enemies are near him, but if he's clear, aim high as much as possible. If the CPU player is set to either Kunio or the other good one (can't remember offhand), then he'll make the shot more often than not, and with some slot luck the points will rack up. It's definitely possible to get a good score with minimal effort, just gotta be lucky.

On the plus side, I know it's entirely doable on this stage. It's just a matter of luck really.

Well, now I have something to shoot for...

64 Well, that was easy...

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUCKKKKKK!!! So you gotta be pretty damn quick with the camera...just won 60-44, and didn't get the camera in time

Agreed. Dude's one of the forefathers of modern gaming. Of course, the Sinclair was more of a European thing, whereas most of the site is Americans, but come on people!

Pretty much this. Games may not LOOK much different, or FEEL much different, but under the hood is where all the real advances are. A game on PS5 may look similar to what could've come out on PS4, but it can do a whole lot more. The real comparison would have to happen at the END of a generation though, not at the start. Comparing a late PS4 game to an early PS5 game may not look like much difference, but an early PS4 game compared to a PS5 game yields a hell of a lot more variation. As developers learn the ins and outs of the new hardware, they can push it to the limits of what the tech is capable of. At that point, they release a new generation, which does what the current one does, but has more room to build on in the future.

Spawn and Dynamite Cop were probably my favourites. WWF Royal Rumble may not have been as good as it could've been, but it was a fun one every now and then, especially in groups. If you're into RPGs, Grandia II is amazing. I've heard good things about Skies of Arcadia as well, but I have no firsthand experience with that one. Honestly, I can't think of any outright stinkers on the DC, so just pick something and have a blast!

I hope so. If nobody wants the shit, it's that much cheaper for me to get it

Ah, you're looking for it cuz you want the variants That's different. Usually people want the -1 for play reasons, which never made sense to me for the aforementioned reasons. And don't worry, my brain is broken too...I don't go for variants, I just go for every game I can get my hands on, don't matter the console

Never thought of that...it's really easy to show the innards of a cart without it being the right cart. In fact, that's almost guaranteed to be what it is...they're showing a TLROM-02, but Samson is a TLROM-03 board. TLROM-02 was only used between '89 and '90, per Bootgod's page, meaning that either they made a repro with mask ROMs to avoid rewiring, they manually cut and rewired traces under the board to make it seem legit, or they took a picture with the wrong board. Looking closely though, I can see a few wires where pins should be, looks like they run under the chips, so option 2 is probably the one they used. Anyway, I've reported it twice - once as "Bootleg Media" and once as "Counterfeit Goods" (or whatever those options are). Not that it's gonna help get it taken down, as they've probably had a ton of reports already.

Oddly, I've never had a compatibility issue with the old models. The slims, however...

I'm more curious where they got the chips that didn't need to be rewired...it's obviously faked, but that's got me curious nonetheless.

I gave it an 8. It's lost it's luster solo, but it's still unmatched as a party game. Making off the cuff lyrics to insult the rest of the "band" while singing bumps it to an 8 from an otherwise 7

I've never understood why people hunt down the -1 version. Allegedly it's for save retention, but I've had my copy since launch, it's not -1 but the save is still holding to this day. One of these days I'll unlock the Ho...

It's the second last week of my semester. Not gonna be playing much of anything

Wonder if anyone ever chose option C when they beat the game back in the day...

If by playing something "inferior" I mean playing something that is the way it was intended, then yes. The new patch fixes bugs that were introduced by the mapper patch. There are also slowdown issues that aren't present in the original game. The reason a translation patch wouldn't affect the game is because it doesn't change the gameplay. It doesn't modify anything other than the text. Sometimes that entails ROM expansion, but rarely does that affect the way the rest of the game plays. A mapper patch is essentially modifying the way the game runs, in order to run with a different chipset. That sucks with this one as there is no other game that uses the same logic setup, meaning that you'd either have to make your own board from scratch to utilize the logic chips as intended, or use the actual legit cart. The differences introduced by the mapper patch are probably irrelevant for regular gameplay, but since this is a competition, we need to ensure people are on the same page. With this game there is no functional difference between emulation and the cart, but by introducing a mapper patch it fundamentally changes the way the game runs, and whether those subtle differences are an advantage or a disadvantage is entirely irrelevant - it puts someone using that version of the game on a different footing than the rest of the competitors. If you really don't wanna drop the money on the cart (don't blame you there), Mesen is free, a USB controller is reasonably cheap, or you could buy a USB port for an NES controller from RetroUSB, and the ROM will run as intended on your PC. Sadly, this is just a case of a unique board configuration - most of the weird mappers can be reproed using other games using that configuration, but no other board I am aware of will support Holy Diver without the mapper hack. As such, it should be disqualified from the competition. And again, I'm pointing this out now for the exact reason that you're emphasizing - to give people enough time to find an alternative. Ultimately it's not my call, but in this specific instance, because there is documentation that the game does NOT run 100% accurately with the mapper hack, it should simply not be used. Those abilities work fine on the Famicom cart. The patch originally killed the ability to use them, and the creator has since updated the patch to fix that. All those modifications listed on the page relate to the actual patch, not patching the game. All the patch does is change the iNES mapper from 78 to 4. But because that involves changing how the code is addressed, it can introduce all sorts of unintended problems.

So I came across something in my travels. Basically, there may be some underlying issues with the MMC1 conversion of Holy Diver, per the patch page on Romhacking. Even though the current version has fixed some things and enhanced performance, the fact that it doesn't function like the actual cart using the original mapper, coupled with the only compatible donor board without the MMC1 patch being the original cart, I would suggest banning any repro that doesn't use the original board from being used in the tournament. Note that this is only with regard to the mapper change - a translated original cart lacks these issues - as the issues are only present due to the mapper conversion. Just thought that I'd mention it well in advance of Holy Diver being in the competition so people have a chance to find an alternative to using their repros

My score was achieved with no knowledge of the scoring system and without hacking the code to find out. It was also only my third attempt...had I tried one or two more, I would've taken your score down no problem. Face it, if this was a game you could've dug into the code to find out how to score big, you would've put in more effort than a mere participation score.

/fixed

When I hear "strategic suicide" I think of Hitler. Just saying