d-pad buttons turn you at a slow, steady rotation. Doom wasn't made for this, it was made for fast mouse rotation, there are times when you'll need to strafe and turn back around very quickly in a very tight radius. With L and R shoulder buttons, all you can do is turn in a large circular area as you slowly rotate. It's still not great with a stick, but it's better than shoulder buttons and a d-pad because you can vary your turning speed. In early levels in Doom 1 you can kinda get by like this, but by the end of Doom 1 and especially Doom 2 when they start throwing crazy level designs on thin rails and lots of hoard of enemies that spill out of the walls from all over and especially behind you, playing with a d-pad and shoulder buttons becomes a nightmare. The game just wasn't made for that kind of slow rotation and stiff control, it's the progenitor to quake and things like rocket jumping and speed arena fps gaming. Doom is *fast*. Actually play the games and this will make sense. John Romero has said many times before that Doom was made with mouse-look (horizontal, not vertical) in mind and watching the game demos is supposed to make it obvious with how fast you can turn.
Today's box art mistake: Dragon: The Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V Story, a 1 OR 2 PLAYER Game Gear game, claims in its description that three players can play simultaneously with a "Multi Tap". The Master System and Mega Drive name-check this peripheral too, but only the Game Gear version goes so far as to credit Hudson Soft for it. What they're describing is the SNES version, which is a very different game to the 8-bit editions. Whoops.
Could you expand on this? Particularly the part about Sega stopping licensing out their games by a certain date. I'm curious and wanna add this to the wiki somewhere
It's mostly circumstantial, the last licensed home computer games released in 1992 in Europe, and the same was true in Japan (along with the console licensed ports to PC-Engine etc). US Gold infamously announced Sonic the Hedgehog for home computers in 1991, but were told to "hang on in it's bid" in September 1991. That's just after Sega Europe was formed, so maybe that was something they requested, but that's just speculation on my part. The few licensed 1992 releases were older arcade games which had quite possibly been licensed out some time earlier. Unfortunately I don't have the issue of CTW with the original article, but later issues have a retro "x years ago" section where they summarise the news from older issues.
There is one last historical bit of licensing Sega did, but no games came out of it: Sega let Atari use several Sega properties and licenses in 1995 for the Atari Jaguar as part of a settlement agreement over their controller ports. Sega offered Atari Alex Kidd, Altered Beast, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Shinobi, Wonder Boy and ESWAT, and Atari ultimately secured licenses for OutRunners, Phantasy Star II, Alien Storm, Shinobi and Zaxxon 3D. Internal Atari documents released from this time show the acquisition of the licenses and the early search for developers to port those games, but the death of Jack Tramiel-era Atari lead to all this being lost and cancelled.
Did you know that no website has a definitive list of all VMU games? I thought we did, but nope. Sega's official term for downloadable software was "(VM/VMU/VMS) mini-games"... even though quite a few of these weren't "games" (including the download from Sega Rally 2, which was published by Sega right at the beginning of the console's lifespan in 1998). I've got the wiki putting pages in Category:Dreamcast games containing VMU mini-games - right now it's listing "most" of them. But there are gaps, and that's because if you look at current online lists, e.g. https://www.sega-dreamcast.com/specials/Dreamcast_VMU-MiniGames-Apps.htm Sites have difficulty distinguishing between "games you download from a Dreamcast disc", "games you download from the internet" and "games you can play on a Dreamcast controller". We're kind-of only interested in the former here, e.g. Chao Adventure (2) from Sonic Adventure (2). But there are cases like Evil Twin where the mini-games weren't ready for launch, so they were put online as free downloads later. Because they weren't commercial releases, to me this isn't any different from VMU homebrew applications, so wouldn't be counted on the wiki. You also have Virtua Tennis, where the VMU displays the same action you see on a TV screen, but in a 2-colour pixelated form - you can theoretically play the game without looking at the television (thus the game is "on a VMU") but as you still need a Dreamcast to run it, I don't think that counts. Some games forced you to use this second screen at times, like Quake III. Some games will need verifying - we don't have a full set of manual scans, and some were kept as secret unlockables. And of course, any game missing from the internet full stop would be a bonus.
I think official Visual Memory games that you had to download from the internet should still be included in a master list of released VM games. They're official releases, even if they didn't make their way to a disc.
RE: "Not really compliance" things that we ought to track: I made a "DC Extras" template for miscellaneous Dreamcast items. These aren't "hidden content", but as they weren't mandated, aren't compliance items either. They're literally just "nice things to have". e.g. Planet Ring/Technical information I could only think of the CD audio disc image and the "don't play this disc in a CD player" warning message (but maybe there's more?). Both have to be extracted from the high density "GD-ROM" portion of a Dreamcast disc and converted into something wiki-friendly - there are tools out there for that, although you need GDI dumps, not BIN/CUE or CHD. (which is annoying because the GDI format just calls its tracks "TRACK", which means you can't have multiple dumps in the same place). Incidentally the first converter for PVRs I found was this one which neatly handles transparency. The warning message may end up being a standard thing - there seems to be default messages for Japanese, US and PAL games, but I haven't compared dumps to say for sure. I know some games provided their own, which is why we ought to bother tracking them. I can't imagine a full set will be amassed quickly - even before you take into account regional variants, there's 700+ Dreamcast games, but if you want a job, there's always this.
A quick Google search has led me to a ZIP archive containing all the 0GDTEXs for the entire NTSC-J, NTSC-U and PAL libraries, both in their original PVR formats and converted to PNG. With this, we won't need to scour through over 700 disc images and convert things ourselves: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ePRRoWj-1DjzJRcgKP2yXC6AZo3CehI2/view?usp=sharing I started things off with just uploading the Sonic ones from that archive, as many of them will need checking for any regional differences. All of the ones for both Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 are identical across the board, with only Sonic Shuffle having a minor difference between the US version and the Japanese and European ones (particularly, the lack of a ™ symbol on the US one):
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/156201148102 $8400?!?! Tell him, he's dreamin' I think this is a new one, not yet documented on sega retro. Is there an easy way to scrape all of the images from an ebay listing? I can manually right-click, save as, rename, convert from webp to jpg, but it is a bit of a hassle.
I can't use my computer as of now, so I can't know if the process can be automated, though I can tell you that it's possible to obtain jpg images rather than webp: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/aioAAOSwjcBmzZKB/s-l1200.jpg for example. edit: I went ahead and retrieved the URLs of all the 24 jpegs, though I cba to put them in URL tags since I'm using my phone right now, I'll just put them into a code block. Code (Text): https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/aioAAOSwjcBmzZKB/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/oMAAAOSwAgdmzZK4/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/eWQAAOSw~jZmzZLh/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/RzUAAOSwB8FmzZMY/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/hNgAAOSwdsRmzZNf/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/CVoAAOSwbd9mzZOE/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/-KsAAOSwKMlmzZRe/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/pB8AAOSw8IJmzZX4/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/HCQAAOSwTuZmzZYB/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/HFcAAOSwjVdmzZPk/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/YeQAAOSwgR5mzZQh/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/EDQAAOSwrKJmzZOp/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/rukAAOSwlMBmzZSM/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/z5oAAOSw3iFmzZSq/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/pXEAAOSwaqZmzZTO/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/YA8AAOSwU0VmzZUR/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/sgwAAOSwig9mzZU1/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/N~0AAOSwSylmzZTz/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/y4sAAOSwmJxmzZVU/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/lYkAAOSwUtNmzZWH/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/RYoAAOSw0-JmzZXG/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/CVMAAOSw2PJmzZVs/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/dzQAAOSwb3JmzZWm/s-l1200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ApMAAOSwrvdmzZXq/s-l1200.jpg I hope this helps at least a little. Bonus: it looks like you can manually change the 1200 part to a higher value to increase the resolution a bit, 2400 seems to work, but 2500 doesn't. Besides, it looks like it's not really enforced, it's probably treated as a upper limit, because the first image only becomes 1310×1211 even with a 2400 parameter. Still, it's something. I can't do much else from here.
Thanks nineko. If anyone else has this problem. I turned this into a very basic bash script. I'm sure there are more efficient ways to script it, but this works. Spoiler Code (Text): #!/bin/bash wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/aioAAOSwjcBmzZKB/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_01.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/oMAAAOSwAgdmzZK4/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_02.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/eWQAAOSw~jZmzZLh/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_03.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/RzUAAOSwB8FmzZMY/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_04.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/hNgAAOSwdsRmzZNf/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_05.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/CVoAAOSwbd9mzZOE/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_06.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/-KsAAOSwKMlmzZRe/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_07.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/pB8AAOSw8IJmzZX4/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_08.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/HCQAAOSwTuZmzZYB/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_09.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/HFcAAOSwjVdmzZPk/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_10.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/YeQAAOSwgR5mzZQh/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_11.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/EDQAAOSwrKJmzZOp/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_12.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/rukAAOSwlMBmzZSM/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_13.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/z5oAAOSw3iFmzZSq/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_14.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/pXEAAOSwaqZmzZTO/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_15.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/YA8AAOSwU0VmzZUR/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_16.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/sgwAAOSwig9mzZU1/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_17.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/N~0AAOSwSylmzZTz/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_18.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/y4sAAOSwmJxmzZVU/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_19.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/lYkAAOSwUtNmzZWH/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_20.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/RYoAAOSw0-JmzZXG/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_21.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/CVMAAOSw2PJmzZVs/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_22.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/dzQAAOSwb3JmzZWm/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_23.jpg wget https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ApMAAOSwrvdmzZXq/s-l2400.jpg mv s-l2400.jpg Pyramids_of_Mars_24.jpg Done: Pyramids of Mars Tomb of Doom
I find it easier to use one of the many flavours of Picclick rather than ebay directly: https://picclick.com.au/RARE-Pyramids-Of-Mars-Tomb-Of-Doom-156201148102.html
This is odd, I saved images from this game on 2024-02-10, it had already been up for a few months at a ridiculous price. The images used here are exactly the same, but with the background photoshopped out and replaced with that blue background. Searching google images the original images show up, and they link through to the same listing, but now with the photoshopped images. So I guess it's the same seller, but they decided to photoshop all of their listings. I also have a different scan of the cover for this game. I was slowly updating the SC-3000 game pages with covers etc, but took a break, will get back to it soon.
I don't know how many people use DPL when editing wikis but if you want a shortcut: Code (Text): {|class="prettytable sortable" !name !something !something |- {{#dpl: | category=Dreamcast games | notnamespace=Category | nottitlematch=List % | include={releases}:md_rrp_uk | ordermethod=title | mode=userformat | secseparators=\n¦''[[%PAGE%]]''¦¦''[[%PAGE%/Technical information]]''¦¦''[[%PAGE%/Compliance]]'',\n¦- }} |} Turn the red links blue. If you're like me and can't be bothered to fill in details, that's absolutely fine - most of the pages I've made recently are placeholders. e.g. 4 Wheel Thunder/Technical information and 4 Wheel Thunder/Compliance. We're picking up missing things: Category:Missing ROM hashes Category:Missing ROM header Category:Missing CD-ROM identifier Category:Untested compliance item
Quick addendum to this post; some of the pre-ripped PNGs in the archive don't have proper transparency. Fortunately the ZIP also has all the original PVRs, so the tool Black Squirrel linked can be used on them to convert them to PNGs with proper transparency.
I now have a capture card. Could you please get into more detail as to what exactly I need to capture? Do I just take screenshots of all DLC entries for the game?
Over the last few days I've stubbed most of the technical information pages for Japanese-exclusive titles. So many dating simulators. Most of what's left is pretty mainstream, but there's a long-standing question that should probably be answered: Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation Because we followed the naming schemes that were already there, games like Tomb Raider IV have a "EU" dump, as well as FR, DE, ES and IT. I think "EU" in this case is "UK", but it's not always as clear cut - some of these dumps may need to be double checked to make sure they're labeled correctly... so we don't mislabel them for a second or third time. That and there's a few revisions that might have official names, but we'd have to check the discs and I can't be bothered with 324890032049823904 downloads right now. But again, mainstream, so you can get stuck in without having to feel weird dealing with anime schoolgirls and mahjong simulators.
On top of this, just about every 0GDTEX from that archive has been sorted out (unless there's a couple more I missed). Turns out it's only missing a small handful of licensed games, and of course it doesn't include demo discs. Those ones will need to be looked into.
