Random Gaming Thoughts

[isiolia]

It got me to thinking... what if this is just testing the waters? What if we saw more first party Microsoft games follow suit? I mean it was already stated that Sea Of Thieves could run on pretty weak hardware, right? I'd love to play some portable Halo Wars! And I could totally see stuff like Super Lucky's Tale or Recore on Switch. Just a thought.

While they likely could, it's probably more specific to Minecraft. Making it available on pretty much everything is continuing what Mojang was doing prior to Microsoft acquiring them, and the unified login was something they started doing last year (except for the PS4 version). It's less something unique to Nintendo, and more akin to, say, replicating the cross platform-ness that Fortnite offers.

New IPs or ports seem less likely to focus on that, unless they're designed to be that same sort of product. At least from the longer-term internal teams or subsidiaries. Where it might be more possible is with the recently acquired ones, such as Ninja Theory, inXile, and Obsidian, as they've got established multiplatform titles out there currently.

[noiseredux]

I don't disagree. But I do also feel like Microsoft is moving in a direction that is... I'm not sure the word I'm looking for. I don't know if they are so concerned with platform as they are with brand. Which is to say I think they want "Xbox" to be a games service that you can play on your Xbox console, or on a streaming set top box, or on a PC. So I don't know. I guess I wouldn't be exactly shocked if they even just dipped their toes into experimenting with other MS games on other consoles.

I could be totally wrong. I did call original Xbox backwards compatibility months before it happened, though.

[pierrot]

Bumped into what I figure is probably the only GBA repro in my collection .

I am confused by this. The sticker is actually in Japanese. It reads:

'Tenka Getter
Hideyoshi P1
Sanyou Bussan ["Sanyo Industries"]'

There seems to be a series of "CR Tenka Getter Hideyoshi M#" digital pachinko games by Sanyo, but I don't see anything for the GBA. Have you tested it? Does it actually play Disney Party?

EDIT: Oh, all right. It is a Programmable-Erasable ROM. Still weird that it likely came from some Japanese PachiSlot machine.

[Xeogred]

I don't disagree. But I do also feel like Microsoft is moving in a direction that is... I'm not sure the word I'm looking for. I don't know if they are so concerned with platform as they are with brand. Which is to say I think they want "Xbox" to be a games service that you can play on your Xbox console, or on a streaming set top box, or on a PC. So I don't know. I guess I wouldn't be exactly shocked if they even just dipped their toes into experimenting with other MS games on other consoles.

I could be totally wrong. I did call original Xbox backwards compatibility months before it happened, though.

Wish I had a direct quote, but from a podcast I heard the other day MS themselves are apparently now saying they don't consider themselves competing directly with Sony anymore. So I think they're trying to position themselves a bit more in their own mold like Nintendo has for awhile, but they'll always be the closest to Sony.

Haven't cared for Xbox at all this gen and don't regret not picking up an Xbox One, when I usually get all consoles. But it'll be interesting to see what happens next gen. I'm not super burned by them buying Obsidian and think that's what Obsidian could use right now, money and security... but then you remind yourself of how awful Crackdown 3's development has been (and nobody wants it), Scalebound, etc... MS is picking up a bunch of studios to prepare for the future, but they definitely need to earn a lot of goodwill and trust too.

I look back and kind of wish MS could have bought Bioware instead of EA. I think Mass Effect would still be something great this gen if that happened. Guess you can say that about all the IP's EA has buried alive.

[Nemoide]

Last night I finally met my goal of no-bar clearing MAX 300 on Expert in DDR!
I used to be able to do this when I was at my peak, around 2010, but years of not playing (or exercising at all) took a toll on my dance-skills. I originally hoped to do it by the end of the summer, but I did it and that's what counts!

Now I'm going to start learning how to use the bar (which is the most accepted playstyle these days) and aim to play even harder songs! I'm still slightly horrified that there are now MANY songs that are *MUCH* harder...

[MrPopo]

Last night I finally met my goal of no-bar clearing MAX 300 on Expert in DDR!
I used to be able to do this when I was at my peak, around 2010, but years of not playing (or exercising at all) took a toll on my dance-skills. I originally hoped to do it by the end of the summer, but I did it and that's what counts!

Nice! At my peak I was able to do that, Paranoia Survivor, and Max 300 doubles on heavy. Then I switched to Pump it Up, and then I graduated college and didn't have ready access. These days I'm at the level of being able to consistently do songs around the difficulty of 7 on heavy on the DDR Extreme scale (I know they've recalibrated since then).

[pierrot]

Man, that's nuts, Nemoide. Congratulations!
Not too long ago I was poking around in DDR 2nd Mix on the Dreamcast, and going through a bunch of Extreme/SuperNova stuff of songs I used to love to play on Heavy--sync, Look to the Sky, Healing Vision, un deux trois, Can Be Real, air, Daikenkai, Tsugaru, I need you, Saturday Night Love, Injection of Love, Kind Lady, Absolute, 1998, era, Irresistiblement, Dynamite Rave, Burnin' the Floor, Break Down, etc, etc--to see if I could just mime the footwork still, and I found that I was way below my baseline. Where did you work up from? Kind Lady was the first song I ever beat on Heavy, and it was the first song I would play if I hadn't played in a while, but I sincerely doubt that I could clear it in one try, now.

I never really liked the MAX, Paranoia, Hysteria, Trip Machine tracks very much, so I only ever rarely attempted them. Not sure if I ever cleared any of them at all. The very end of MAX 300 seems really familiar, but maybe just from "Difficult/Standard" difficulty. I know I cleared most of the tracks in DDR Extreme 2 on Heavy, and a few on Challenge. I was pretty sure I had cleared Sakura on Heavy before, but watching some of the DDR circuit players play that one, I'm not so sure anymore. I realized that most people play with very different settings than I used to, though. I couldn't do anything in DDR until I found out about solo arrows, and it seems like people move the speed up to x3, which I don't really understand.

[Nemoide]

Pierrot, I think you should really take a trip to Round 1 in MA and get yourself an eAmusement card! (And Popo, I assume you know you know CA has a very large number of DDR machines at Round 1s and Dave & Busters.) I love the older versions, but DDR A blows all the old versions out of the water. Even though I have a Cobalt Flux pad which is generally considered one of the best home-pads, I've been completely spoiled by arcade hardware.

Being 15 minutes from a DDR A machine has been an amazing thing, but I know people who regularly drive an hour or more to visit my Round 1. Using an eAmusement card, I can easily keep track of what songs I have/haven't played, keep track of scores, and see what I would fail at. I've learned how to use speed mods because they've become easier to use (ie more options, so you can set the speed to something like 2.25x or 2.5x instead of jumping from 2x to 3x - I read at around 450 bpm, which is slower than most "regulars"). I feel like my core strategy is basically "keep pushing yourself as hard as possible until you can do it" which really isn't much of a strategy. I tried to play at least one song at or beyond my highest level every time I went to the arcade: I can't tell you how many times I *failed* Max 300 before clearing it, but I knew my stamina increased with every attempt!
The first month or two was the worst because I had trouble with even clearing level 10 songs on the new scale (maybe level 7s on the old scale, my old "easy warmup" level) and a lot of other regular players seem to warmup with 15s (the same level as Max 300) and move onto level 18s, which are all comparatively new and go way beyond anything I've ever known to exist in the game. But everyone's been really friendly and supportive! I've made friends (including someone with their own DDR machine I occasionally get to play on) and with the eAmusement service I've added some rivals at around my skill level I can compare my scores with, which is a source of great motivation.

I've also been playing doubles recently, since at my arcade it costs the same amount as single-play, though I'm not close to Popo's peak level on that front. I can play up to 11s in the new-scale, but while I might get an A at some songs, I'll fail others in no-time. But it's SUPER FUN being able to move my body back and forth across the panels! Maybe I'll be able to clear doubles Max 300 by the end of 2019!

[pierrot]

The first month or two was the worst because I had trouble with even clearing level 10 songs on the new scale (maybe level 7s on the old scale, my old "easy warmup" level)[...]

That sounds like about where I'd be at. Man, that Round 1 in Taunton is basically two hours from me. Why couldn't it be on the north shore, or something? I was at Fun Spot a couple weekends ago, and I couldn't really remember if they had had a DDR machine there, but if they ever did, it's not there now. (The original TMNT Arcade game was gone, though, and I was pretty distraught about that.)

Have you always had a Cobalt Flux, or was that something you got on this DDR kick? I was looking at those newer custom mats that sort of resemble Cobalt Fluxes, but it would be really tough for me to rationalize that investment in terms of money, or space.

So, is there any reason, other than just an additional challenge, that the goal is 3x speed? Why not higher? It seems a little arbitrary, but personally, even just a minor increase in speed has always made the game practically unplayable for me.

[Nemoide]

I also know some folks who drive a full two hours to my Round 1 (maybe once a month or so), so you wouldn't be the ONLY crazy person driving long distances for dance-games! I don't think Funspot ever had DDR but I made a Funspot trip with a friend earlier this year and Weir's Beach Half-Moon Arcade has both a beat-up DDR Extreme cab and a pretty nice DDR Supernova machine! This site has a pretty good arcade locater which might turn up something closer to you! I'm not on Facebook, but I've heard there's a "DDR players" group where you might be able to meet some other NH folks!

I've always had that Cobalt Flux; I'm pretty sure the good pads nowadays are StepManiaX and the upcoming Impulse Dance Platform, but neither of those are console-compatible.

The biggest advantage to speed mods is that it gives you a bigger visual window. So let's say you get a Marvelous (better than perfect) rating JUST as the arrow reaches the middle-pixel of the upper-arrow-row (this is way more exact than the actual game BTW). If you set the speed to 2x, you've doubled that to get a 2-pixel leeway. If you could read at 10x, you'd have 10 pixels of accuracy. So most folks try to read as fast as they possibly can to get that edge. In the older games, there was a BIG JUMP from 3x to 5x, so a lot of folks would stick to 3x unless they were playing Bag or something because if a 150 bpm song is at 450-bpm, that's doable, but reading at 750-bpm is TOUGH. While some folks actually do read that fast, I've only seen that on the big HD monitor used now!
Speed mods also space notes out more, encouraging the player to react to each arrow individually and paying strict attention to what's on screen, rather than recognizing patterns. The disadvantage was, when I was playing an old pre-DDRMAX version without speed mod options, it was SUPER TOUGH to read dense songs that I know I could do otherwise!

I'm pretty sure my no-bar playing has been holding me back in terms of read-speed because it takes me longer to react without losing balance. I use even slower speed mods when playing doubles.