I haven't played through Ultimate Body Blows in forever
Totally need to get me a CD32 sometime
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I haven't played through Ultimate Body Blows in forever
Totally need to get me a CD32 sometime
I've actually wound up with two flawless consoles. I picked up one about 8 or so months ago, and it stopped working for a while - it would boot and I could boot floppies through the SX-32, but the discs wouldn't spin and no CD game would thusly boot. After tinkering with it for a bit, I bought another one when I figured I couldn't make it work. When my new one arrived, I noticed its power supply looked very different than my old one (it was about half as big), and when I plugged the new CD32 into the old power supply, I got the exact same results. Came to realize my old power supply was a cheapo model commodore made to reduce costs, and it was going out. It could pump enough juice to power the CD32 and the SX-32, but not the disc drive. Tried the new PSU with the old CD32, and it worked like a charm. It's all very strange, because about a year ago, I knew very, very little about the Amiga format as a whole, and would have never expected to own a CD32, let alone two.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gogogadget
Seeing as the CD32 is prone to having drives go out, I'm keeping one boxed in case the other dies, so I can keep it up while I fix the other. You can find them quite commonly if you look around on English Amiga or Amibay.
Also, it's worth noting that everything Amiga I own is PAL, and I live in the US. I refused to get an NTSC model because I wanted access to the fully library. I run my Amiga 1200 and my CD32 through an Atlona CDM-660 which converts the PAL to NTSC, and I use a heavy-duty 500w-rated 220-110V power inverter along with a plug adapter to get it all running on my NTSC CRT:
http://i.imgur.com/qWhhK.jpg
My A1200 PSU connected to the inverter
http://i.imgur.com/w0ykd.jpg
My CDM-660. The CD32 is connected to it via SVideo, and the A1200 is connected to it via composite, and the unit itself if connected to my TV via SVideo. There's a switch on the back which can change its input from SVideo to Composite, letting me select between Amigas.
http://i.imgur.com/zo6MX.jpg
My CD32 playing a boxed copy of Shadow Fighters with a Competition Pro joypad.
I got me an A1200, machine is godly, but sadly, it's also large, and with the space I have i'd rather own a CD32, living in England I should be able to pick one up cheaply if i'm lucky.
Do they run CD-R's out of the box? I have a fair few HDD games i'd like to convert.
Yes actually. You sound like you're familiar with WHD32? I've actually created quite a few A1200->CD32 unofficial ports and I could certainly help you if you have any questions. I was taught how to do it by the guy from RGCD who had the same sort of vision as me. I don't like using the big 888-games-in-one compilations, I want my games to be displayed in my collection, and to give me a console-like experience. The A1200 feels way more like a console than a computer already, given how it boots directly into the floppy, but having to switch disks between games is annoying. When I get an A1200 game that had no CD32 port, I will go out and build one and give it a custom box and label. Since there was no official US release, I feel as though I've got my hands on some sort of hobbiest retro console. It's quite cool.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gogogadget
I even add a splash screen before the games start on my conversions. It's usually a black screen with the box art displayed, publisher and title information, and it holds there until you press the fire button. I've done conversions for games like BC Kid and Golden Axe.
Using CD-Rs however runs the laser out quicker, which is why I actually buy most of my amiga games. I only use CD-Rs for games which didn't come to the CD32. I have quite a large amiga library already - I'm currently at 52 games for both my A1200 and CD32 (not counting games for both consoles which I've bought, like the CD32 version of Beneath a Steel Sky and the A1200 version).
Amiga gaming is really fun, I'm glad I got into this recently. It's been a great way to distract myself. There's so much out there that you have to really hunt down to get a good experience out of it all, but if you do get everything you need, then the end result is awesome. I got myself an amiga gravis gamepad a few weeks ago, actually. Fully boxed, still sealed:
http://i.imgur.com/zs1ou.png
This is a special controller because it lets you map up and down to the yellow and green buttons with the flip of a switch. Normally, 2 buttons are rapid fire versions of the other 2 buttons, but if you flip that switch, they remap to up and down. This fixes the controls for SO many games for me. Turrican 2 is a lot more fun for me to play with a jump button, for example.
I also stopped using my official CD32 joypad. It's too big, uncomfortable, and feels cheap. Instead I picked up 2 competition pro joypads:
http://i.imgur.com/NIV9G.jpg
I like these controllers a lot. They feel worlds better than the CD32 pad, and they're one of the only controllers I know of that functions as a CD32 pad (i.e., every button actually works, instead of only B and C on a genesis pad). The controller itself feels a lot like someone took a Genesis controller, an SNES controller, and a TG16 controller, and mixed them all together. Awesome stuff.
Man i don't get all these crappy home ports on powerful machines.... The 8 bit ports, i can understand they are weak because of the hardware. Even the idea of porting a game like that there is bad. I can also accept the amiga and ST versions as the usual bad ports. I believe these machines have enough muscle to support a version that is nearly as good as the Genesis version (graphically) if they work hard on the ports. They just didn't and that's acceptable i guess...
But there is no excuse for ports like the ones for the Amiga CD 32 or the PC. These machines are much more powerful than both Genesis or SNES (or even the arcade) that got great ports. The stock Amiga CD 32 is basically a 1200... The CPU is much better than the one in Genesis or the CPS1 and the AGA chip can display more colors than the SNES in higher resolution. A 386 PC was even more powerful. A good port should be much easier in these machines, they could be arcade perfect. Instead they released ports so bad that they were basically broken (im talking about the SF2, more recent SF ports were better). And the 3DO port? Its a playable port but considering the capabilities (and price) of the console SF should have been even better than the arcade, with added backgrounds, added effects etc. They could at least make a 1:1 port. Instead they had to sacrifice parallax scrolling for some reason... I guess a Genesis/SNES have no trouble with parallax scrolling but a new generation 700$ 32 bit monster has difficulties.
I dunno about the 3DO, but the reason the Amiga/ST ports suck is pretty simple: Rushed development by untalented people with no access to source code or graphics. It could never end well. Specially when the Atari ST is a lot weaker than the Amiga (much more than it appears to be) and the Amiga version was usually just a straight port.
A proper Amiga version of SF2 could be made but only if the parallax was either sacrificed or simplified (a repeating background). A 386 version might be able to manage parallax however.
I played the official ports for "Street Fighter II: The World Warrior" for Amiga and IBM-PC DOS, and they were both godawful. The Amiga version was barely playable, incredibly jerky, and when you played as Blanka, his shock attack pretty much broke the entire game.
The PC-Version was slightly better, but also completely broken. Here, Dhalsim was the most unbalanced character, since his reach practically spanned almost the entire screen, and his hard kick couldn't be jumped over! So you just needed to stand still and spam the attack key, and you had an almost guaranteed victory every time. The AI was laughably easy to beat as well.
The C64-port was surprisably enjoyable in comparison, jumbled mess of pixles that it was!
The Sinclair Spectrum version, though, was rather... lacking...
You should practice pressing up for jump (6-button Mega Drive pads are very good for this), you'll be handicapping yourself using a jump button for Turrican 1 or 2, enemies will just run into you constantly as you jump.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheSonicRetard
If I do get a CD32, I plan on converting a few A1200 games to CD, I know that it's a difficult job converting floppy games, especially NDOS ones.
I did get Deluxe Galaga working on WinUAE in CD32 mode (have no real CD32 to test on), if you like Galaga, it's a great shareware title to own.
it's actually not a difficult process once you get it down. be aware though that several games will run fine under winuae but wont boot at all on a real cd32. there is a popular iso of mr nutz floating around the net that wont boot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gogogadget