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from memory, this came out of Playmore 2002/3 rather than SNK, so i wonder how much dev was outsourced and how many of the old SNK staff were around to work on it. I still think the character artists did a fantastic job, the game is OK - a bit 'mid', but at least we got some great Capcom games out of the deal.

could be the smart move TBH!

true:)

hey fella - yeah i'm having a bit of a revamp and tidy up, potentially going to do all future talky stuff as live streams. The first part is going through reviews to see which ones to keep public (some have really poor AV quality). I haven't deleted anything - nothing is lost, i just made it private and i'll be putting them back live a few at a time as i review them.

​@@retrospiritsgaiden Oh, cool! So glad your witticisms are not lost forever! 😂

@@VideoJamesNZ cheers mate:)

yeah its like a game that's come through a multiverse portal, a version of reality where Taito is staffed by peeps from US Gold perhaps.

@retrospiritsgaiden . I guessed that they must have sent it to a western developer so you may in fact be right 🤔

A western developer who never bothered to play, look at or listen too the original game perhaps!

absolutely! it's not actual car physics, but who cares when it's really fun - and that's the most important thing!

Agreed! it's very nice:)

hey thanks for shout out, and yes it does get difficult:)

i like all the parallax / extra backgrounds they added, but i'm not sure i'm sold on the actual pixel art (in this one at least) i think i'm too used to looking at Super Mario World TBH. I like the music updates even if it is all SNES reverby!

MVC 2 is awesome!

Haha yeah, and its one hell of a title!

it is my friend! i'll spend a bit more time with it, but at the moment it seems it's well worth a purchase. I got the physical cart version that was just released in Japan, but I think its been available as a download for a while now.

only just got the collection, it's definitely a collection of top notch games. I was really surprised to see the Punisher on here, played that loads back in the day!

I have not mastered this!

the original definitely had the cool factor, the sound and graphical design did set it apart from all the other stuff around at the time (at least in the arcades i went too!)

it is very nice:)

I'll see what I can do on Gradius V, technical guy may be around but he's contractually obliged to be up at Intel HQ telling them how to design all their new chips.

@@retrospiritsgaiden Maybe he can chip in via an ISDN line on his tea break?

@@MrDirkles i'll email him on his AltaVista email account, see what he can do.

Technical guy is in demand on multiple continents, you've heard his insights... i'm lucky to get him as much as i do TBH:) Parodius is very cool on PC Engine, worth a download at least.

the first one is tough!

cheers, yep a cool game:)

hmmm. I've not played the arcade version of RT2, only this one (which is the PAL version) so yeah PAL would probably account for the slowness you're seeing. In a break from tradition for me i've never played the japanese version of this one either, so don't know if that ones any faster on the old MD.

lol at wood pigeon - nice shout! Thrush is another possibility.

Rolling Thunder was always a must play in the arcade even though it used to kick my ass. Loved the way the enemies dissolve into the floor when dead:)

it is pretty neat, i missed out on that gen of consoles but would've played the heck out of this if i had it back in the day.

Yes! Oddly i also played the Arcade version of this 2 days ago on the Astro City mini...i'd forgotten it was on there (I haven't booted it up for ages..) I wonder what the reason for changing the main sprite was? Maybe they thought their audience was all boys and wouldn't like a female character? Dunno, but bit of an odd change to make TBH.

@@retrospiritsgaiden " Maybe they thought their audience was all boys and wouldn't like a female character? " I think you've answered your own question :D It would be a decision by Sega of America i think .

@@MrDirkles grrrr sega of america *shakes fist in general direction of SOA,,,

Didn't know there was an arcade version. Need to give that a try.

the arcade version has better presentation (arcadey-ness, graphics wise etc), but the master system version is no slouch and a pretty decent approximation of it as far as i can tell, totally worth firing up in Mame.

its a fun run and gun:)

you'd think there was at least one, potentiality a multi-format series TBH!

​@@retrospiritsgaiden also could easily be a movie made by the Troma production house

Would it be a game like this or more like Ninja Gaiden? 🤔 As someone who makes 2D games, I could totally make this happen! 😂

​@@hotcoffeebreath Haha! A movie would be great! 😂 No CGI, just oldschool grindhouse special effects. Paper machè limbs being severed from the bad guys and loads of fake blood.

@@VideoJamesNZ if someone could reskin/rom-hack Ninja to include Wolfenstein sprites flattened to 2D to replace the enemy ninjas, that would be amazing in itself. But yeah I don't think anyone would refuse a 2D Nazi-Apocalypse Gaiden! Even a simpler mechanic game like Data East's Kung Fu Master could be great. Your ninja character could make your way, staircase by staircase, up through the levels till you reach the top floor, and go up against you-know-who as the end game boss!

i totally agree:) Master System box art is legendarily low effort, thus making it awesome!

haha nice!

from memory only arcade Zero Wing and Hellfire have the extra gameplay options. I'll dig the cart out and make sure:)

confirmed it is just Hellfire and Zerowing with the modes and difficulty options

@retrospiritsgaiden excellent service! 👍

@@MrDirkles ;)

the de-interlacing, upscaling / sharpening does help make Gradius 4 look sort of acceptable now. My overriding memory of it from back then was of a blurry mess, even through RGB into a lovely Sony crt TV (which i still have and is awesome) I didn't realise it had borders on PAL, that's never a good look, very lazy of Konami - you'd think companies would have more respect for their own games.

Gradius 4 isn't horrendous, just kinda meh. As you say V is glorious! I remember back in the day, it may have been Super Play or Mean Machines magazine gushing over Snes Gradius 3, it was something along the lines of 'finally we have a console with the power to bring the arcade into the home...' or something along those lines fuelling the 16BIT wars for all the fanboys, because if you read it printed in a magazine...its fact! great days.

@retrospiritsgaiden that they were. Only now do I understand the phrase " ignorance is bliss"

Haha - yes he's getting increasingly rude though, possibly as a cover for his lack of actual technical nous?

Have always though that to be honest. The first game starts off great but it's been downhill ever since.

@VideoJamesNZ yes i completely agree. Unfortunately the Sonic games still sell shed loads so it is a bit of a cash cow for Sega.

Nah, even though adventure 1 & 2 + heroes didn't aged the best, they're still really fun! and generations Is just masterpiece.

it's kinda ok apart from the odd snipe from offscreen enemies, which seems to be a staple of vertical shooters annoyingly.

Hmm that is strange! I haven't got around to testing my actual PC engine core graphics console with this game yet. I'm thinking it might be an analogue duo glitch though.

​@@retrospiritsgaiden I gave the hu-card a whirl on my analogue pocket and I was getting the same frame glitch that you noticed. that was just in handheld mode, so no external controls hooked up to my AP via docking station or anything like that. playing it on the actual pc engine did not recreate the frame glitch. Just out of sheer curiosity I will try playing on the pc engine with a 2 button pad to investigate what VideoJamesNZ mentioned in their reply. from memory I don't recall that happening with the 2 button pad, but it has been a while, and normally I would be plugging the 6 button pad in anyway. Will report back my findings 🤓🥼🔬😆

@@hotcoffeebreath ahh cool so it doesn't really happen on actual hardware with the 'right' pad plugged in. what an odd thing!

@@retrospiritsgaiden affirmative. furthermore, i have just tried playing it using an official o.g. pc engine 2 button pad, and the glitch did not arise. so it looks like you were onto something regarding the source of the bug being analogue. I'll keep an eye out for bugs in other games, but I haven't noticed it happening on any of the hu-cards I've played on the analogue pocket recently, namely splatterhouse, paranoia and (the awful) chase hq 😆. I wonder if the analogue fpga has not yet been optimised for the larger memory hu-card used for SF2 CE on the PCE. It's not a biggie but hopefully something that can be resolved at any rate. I wonder if there were any other chunky high memory hu-card games released on NEC's lil beauty 🤔.

@@hotcoffeebreath Impressive detective work there thank you for taking the time:) i just now had a quick look at analogues Duo firmware update release notes, i'm not sure the bug with SF2 has been fixed (theres a lot of fixes for other Hu cards with similar issues) but updating my firmware may help, i'll have to see what the latest jailbreak version is. i'm not sure if there are any other chunky Hu cards with SF2 capacity, if there are i bet it'll be some obscure hex based war game, or a slightly / heavily creepy dating sim!

it is a very impressive port, i bet they were all high fiving when they pulled this one off!

​@@retrospiritsgaiden ...and imagine being a kid at the time when this hu-card hit the scene in summer of 1993! oof!

@@hotcoffeebreath blown minds all round!

i might've added REZ as well as or instead of sonic shuffle. but yeah, there's not enough games on this disc!

Yeah plus also the name Dreamcast collection made me wonder why there wasn't a Saturn collection

@@enderblazer479 i seem to remember being told that the Saturn is harder to emulate than a Dreamcast, even though the DC is orders of magnitude more powerful than the Saturn, so that's maybe why?

True because I played Sonic R in Sonic Gems Collection and it was basically what I'd call a remake or something because it had an updated copyright screen

@@enderblazer479 that reminds me! i think the games on this Disc are ported from the PC - not emulated Dreamcast games. Sonic R is also possibly a ported PC version to the Gamecube.

agreed - it is superb:)

its pretty neat and cheap to buy:)

not played that one, but if it's similar to this version it's going to be pretty nice... although it looks like it's quite expensive in comparison if you want an original cart.

yes - hard agree! give me something I can spend 20 mins with to test the reflexes and I'm happy:)

In my hatred of modern gaming I Purchased a Bitkit 2 jammed PCB. It plays about 100 ( mostly obscure) arcade games from the early eighties. It also has online score boards. I have more fun playing these simple games trying to get the high scores than I've had for a very long time.

@@MrDirkles nice! arcade games of the mid to late 80's and early 90's are the sweet spot for me :) I'd love to get a full size arcade cab at some point. However, I'm sort of getting into more 8 bit stuff recently, a bit of NES but mainly Master System, I missed out on these consoles the first time around so there's loads of games I've just never played.

I agree that the graphics are pretty well drawn, nicely colourful and they move really fast in game. It definitely looks cool in screenshots... but the gameplay is pretty broken. I too love the arcade version it's just a shame none of the home ports get all the elements correct (although i heard the Amstrad CPC version is a pretty good game). Even the version you can get on the Sega Saturn isn't the same as the arcade version unfortunately. Hopefully Taito will bring it out on the Egret 2 at some point.

wow i didn't realise the Amiga version was that bad! I remember it being ok, just checked a video out....my memory was very wrong:(

Usually i give up on hard games, don't know why i stuck with this one back in the day (probably the schlock horror visual theme and tunes TBH) but i have played this game a hell of a lot, and still can't 1CC it on normal difficulty on MD. the arcade version is harder! the USA release is actually far far easier though, as the checkpointing has been changed.

haha - that's pretty good!

​@@retrospiritsgaidentoilet humour definitely seems appropriate for this title, hey.

@@hotcoffeebreath very much so:)

​@@retrospiritsgaiden morbid curiosity got the better of me and I whacked in the hu-card and took it for a spin ...really wish I hadn't 😅. everything feels so shaky and jerky! collision detection is off the chart, but very much not in a good way. what the fricking frick?!! 😫 I'm so curious as to how such a terrible port was made, I'm off in search of some documentaries/history of's, just to try to heal my shattered dreams, and try to find some semblance of an understanding as to how one of the coolest arcade games of its time, on one of the coolest systems of the time, could end up so timelessly uncool! the only consolation I have is that I didn't intentionally pay good money for it, as it arrived as part of a job lot many many years ago. I'll actually feel a bit guilty about selling it on! might have to put a health warning in the description 😬

haha yeah i agree hard! this game is comically broken, the collision detection is awful, but the main problem with that is that it bounces your car outwards and the road always has stuff at the side, and the road itself is more twisty than than something really really twisty, and it's lightning fast,so you have no room to recover. The music also sounds like someone humming the tunes through a kazoo, possibly under a box in a shed. It is absolutely dangerous to human health! i'm not glad i paid about a tenner for it, but it could've been worse as prices have gone up these days.

hey cheers:)