The dam has broken. The PS2 is now an all powerful and omniscient instrument of Bomberman.
Hello friends. Some of you ran across or were tagged in my last PS2 note, in which I chronicled dissecting our reliable and quite ordinary PlayStation 2 game console. Now I continue that and add to the amazing impression you may have of the system once the restrictions placed on its use by Sony are removed. It can do a lot more than you think it can, and soon mayhaps it will make me some curry fries. Doubtful though. I spent the weekend fiddling with games, sleeping little and actually falling asleep with the controller in my hand.
Here is Bomberman Hardball from that note, but with an ISO made from my disc patched to convert both the PAL video signal to NTSC and shift the Y center up so more can be seen. It is much easier to play now. Photos of modes of the game follow. There is battle mode, baseball, tennis, golf, and life mode.
Here is Bomberman Kart from that note, same patching applied. I had to make a copy of my own game to get it patched properly. Thanks, Sony. Region locking is lame, mmm'ok? Anyways, racing with Bomberman is pretty fun. The race courses visually look like some hybrid cross between Mario Kart, Diddy Kong Racing, the color schemes of misc Rare platformers, and SNES Street Racers. That won't make sense to anyone, but trust me. Or, see for yourself: staying on the road while driving onehanded to take photos, getting thrown in the air, arming myself with vending machine goodies, getting knocked around while driving backwards, and sulking in an empty warehouse when I failed the race.
You can play Sega Genesis games on your PS2 with PGEN (and other emulators I have not tried yet I wager), and have a lot of fun memories brought back, such as punching your brother in the shoulder years ago for whipping out the cheese moves rather than real moves over and over in Street Fighter: Special Championship Edition. :) I tried out two Bomberman games on the Genesis emu, and they played well, well one did. The other one ran but has issues either in the coding or in the way the emulator (everyone I've tried on the PC) loads it. The latter one is a demo anyways, so the trippy graphic glitches are normal.
Where is the SNES love, that Super Nintendo satisfaction, that Super Famicom serendipity, you may be asking? Well, here you go. SNES Station was my first grab SNES wise, and it seems to work well. Very little stutter in the audio or video, and it plays all of the SNES and SFC Bomberman games. I also played SFC Yoshi's Cookie for the hell of it, though I was growing weary and fell asleep with the controller firmly in my hands.
There are similar builds for Atari, Sega Master System, NeoGeo, and other consoles, so I reckon I will be exploring that a bit. I need to make a custom image of the SNES disc to include some roms it somehow left out, removing ones I could care less about. Laura plays this one Japanese SFC title she loads on the PC emulators that is a Sailor Moon adventure game, much like an RPG. We found a patch for English subtitles but the game does weird things on the Nintendo DS emulators. :( That is another weekend's adventure I reckon, sorting out games they missed or making my own custom discs of old game content. The thing is, once you get the basic loader of one disc, you can sometimes edit the files and put it anything you want to run if it's in the right format. I am learning so much from forums, trial and error, and comment posts around the Intertubes.
Before I officially crashed at 6 something Sunday morning, I also tried out a couple other games, including:
* DreamMix TV World Fighters where Bomberman, Optimus Prime, Simon Belmont and others combat in a fighting brawl scenario very similar to Smash Bros. The colors in this game are as insane as the Kart racer, see what I mean? The MCs of the game, a villain named Mujoe from Bomberman, and some crazy gal really made the menus and content between matches interesting.
* Bomberman Kart DX where most of my time was spent flying off the track, getting ready to drive off the course, and watching Laura miss the ramp jumps when I gave her the controller. It was hard taking photos with one hand and trying to stay on the road with the other, you see.
* Battle Stadium DON, another Smash Bros clone of sorts with a twist where I really just sat and took a beating, laughed at the over the top animated cut scenes, and wondered if any unlockable characters waited for me after seeing my initial choices. Max got me into the DS versions of this a bit, but they have more characters and customizations so it's fun to collect pieces and evolve your character card set. Not played it in a couple months though. lol
Now that I have I have tried these other games, I really am looking forward to owning the original discs. Yes, I still want to buy them. I like having the box and manuals, even though I can play them now. Call me old fashioned. The artwork on both will probably be awesome anyways, cannot miss that. :) Now, I will wait to buy them until I see an amazing price. That is the trick of these things. You wait long enough and it sometimes gets cheaper.
That was my weekend, friends. Slacking about with my new power. Bwahahahaha. Ye shall all rue the day! *disappears into a puff of smoke*
Here is Bomberman Hardball from that note, but with an ISO made from my disc patched to convert both the PAL video signal to NTSC and shift the Y center up so more can be seen. It is much easier to play now. Photos of modes of the game follow. There is battle mode, baseball, tennis, golf, and life mode.
Here is Bomberman Kart from that note, same patching applied. I had to make a copy of my own game to get it patched properly. Thanks, Sony. Region locking is lame, mmm'ok? Anyways, racing with Bomberman is pretty fun. The race courses visually look like some hybrid cross between Mario Kart, Diddy Kong Racing, the color schemes of misc Rare platformers, and SNES Street Racers. That won't make sense to anyone, but trust me. Or, see for yourself: staying on the road while driving onehanded to take photos, getting thrown in the air, arming myself with vending machine goodies, getting knocked around while driving backwards, and sulking in an empty warehouse when I failed the race.
You can play Sega Genesis games on your PS2 with PGEN (and other emulators I have not tried yet I wager), and have a lot of fun memories brought back, such as punching your brother in the shoulder years ago for whipping out the cheese moves rather than real moves over and over in Street Fighter: Special Championship Edition. :) I tried out two Bomberman games on the Genesis emu, and they played well, well one did. The other one ran but has issues either in the coding or in the way the emulator (everyone I've tried on the PC) loads it. The latter one is a demo anyways, so the trippy graphic glitches are normal.
Where is the SNES love, that Super Nintendo satisfaction, that Super Famicom serendipity, you may be asking? Well, here you go. SNES Station was my first grab SNES wise, and it seems to work well. Very little stutter in the audio or video, and it plays all of the SNES and SFC Bomberman games. I also played SFC Yoshi's Cookie for the hell of it, though I was growing weary and fell asleep with the controller firmly in my hands.
There are similar builds for Atari, Sega Master System, NeoGeo, and other consoles, so I reckon I will be exploring that a bit. I need to make a custom image of the SNES disc to include some roms it somehow left out, removing ones I could care less about. Laura plays this one Japanese SFC title she loads on the PC emulators that is a Sailor Moon adventure game, much like an RPG. We found a patch for English subtitles but the game does weird things on the Nintendo DS emulators. :( That is another weekend's adventure I reckon, sorting out games they missed or making my own custom discs of old game content. The thing is, once you get the basic loader of one disc, you can sometimes edit the files and put it anything you want to run if it's in the right format. I am learning so much from forums, trial and error, and comment posts around the Intertubes.
Before I officially crashed at 6 something Sunday morning, I also tried out a couple other games, including:
* DreamMix TV World Fighters where Bomberman, Optimus Prime, Simon Belmont and others combat in a fighting brawl scenario very similar to Smash Bros. The colors in this game are as insane as the Kart racer, see what I mean? The MCs of the game, a villain named Mujoe from Bomberman, and some crazy gal really made the menus and content between matches interesting.
* Bomberman Kart DX where most of my time was spent flying off the track, getting ready to drive off the course, and watching Laura miss the ramp jumps when I gave her the controller. It was hard taking photos with one hand and trying to stay on the road with the other, you see.
* Battle Stadium DON, another Smash Bros clone of sorts with a twist where I really just sat and took a beating, laughed at the over the top animated cut scenes, and wondered if any unlockable characters waited for me after seeing my initial choices. Max got me into the DS versions of this a bit, but they have more characters and customizations so it's fun to collect pieces and evolve your character card set. Not played it in a couple months though. lol
Now that I have I have tried these other games, I really am looking forward to owning the original discs. Yes, I still want to buy them. I like having the box and manuals, even though I can play them now. Call me old fashioned. The artwork on both will probably be awesome anyways, cannot miss that. :) Now, I will wait to buy them until I see an amazing price. That is the trick of these things. You wait long enough and it sometimes gets cheaper.
That was my weekend, friends. Slacking about with my new power. Bwahahahaha. Ye shall all rue the day! *disappears into a puff of smoke*