So, as a short recap of what's been going on, the Republican Party is a clown's kingdom from top to bottom, and yet it is the Democrats who end up wearing pie. You might be asking yourself, what year is it? Is it 2010 and we're talking about the Democrats letting the Tea Party curb stomp Hope and Change before it is able to even walk? Is it 2014, and we're talking about the Democrats learning, to their evident surprise, that Obama's re-election was no more a national mandate on Democratic politics than was his first win? Is it 2016, and we're talking about how the absolutely unstoppable Death Star managed to blow itself up just as it was about to wipe out those pesky rebels once and for all?
Haha no, nothing may have changed whatsoever about the ineptitude, arrogance, and blindness of the Democratic Party, or their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or their laser focus on squandering of whatever gains they actually do realize. However, it is, in fact, a different year on the calendar, and it is a new episode of let's be sad and argue about it.
On today's episode, Donald Trump, at his weakest, oldest, and most pressured, managed to win a clear, undeniable victory over the forces of good. It was the most decisive outcome of his three campaigns. We join each other, with a lot of questions to ask ourselves.
Is the United States dominated socially, economically, and politically by racist morons, and should we apply that label to everyone who ever voted for Trump until they see the error of their ways and learn to vote correctly?
Did the Democratic Party seriously torpedo its own credibility and lose 20 million voters, or did those 20 million voters owe their votes to the Democratic Party, and should we focus on blaming and shaming them until they vote correctly with more consistently?
Why did all those idiots vote for Trump because of the economy? Couldn't they see how good the economy is? Are they stupid?
Is it because Kamala Harris was a woman, or because she was a black woman?
Was it even really as bad as it looks, since we did make a few marginal gains here and there?
These debates, and more, on the 2024-28 episode of the traditional politics megathread
Just as a note, this is not a full review of Warcraft I or II, so if you know nothing about the game you probably will miss some of the context here. Sorry about that. The section about the missing multiplayer features should be clear enough to anyone, though.
Introduction
For many years now, the game I have most wanted was a remaster of Warcraft II. It's something I have often thought about... like, how amazing would it be if WCII got a remaster? It's one of the best games, it deserves it! And Blizzard has been making remasters of its classics for years now. First Starcraft got an amazing remaster, then Warcraft III a pretty bad one, then Diablo II got a great one, and they re-released their SNES games as well... but where was the re-release of Warcraft II, an exceptionally great game deserving of high praise? Warcraft II has a permanent place in my top 10 best PC games ever list, and I don't think that's just because of nostalgia; it really does have some of the best of everything. I would pick Warcraft II as having the best soundtrack ever in a game, the best voice work ever in a game, and some of the best gameplay as well. Oh, and its cartoony art still looks absolutely exceptional and barely needs anything more than a resolution boost to match the best sprite art out there today. Warcraft II is one of the best games ever and deserves an absolutely top-tier remaster, one that isn't just a nostalgia piece but that brings this top-tier classic to the prominence it deserves.
Well, the good news is, it just got a surprise remaster! The bad news is, that remaster, while fine for single player play, is very very badly lacking in online features, falling far behind the featureset of Warcraft II Battle.net Edition, a release from 25 years ago. Ouch. So let's begin.
Warcraft II versus Starcraft
First though, I would like to compare WCII to the game I have been most obsessed with again this year, the greatest game ever made. I should say right now, while I deeply love Warcraft II, Starcraft is the better game. Starcraft is a work of genius that the industry has never managed to match again. The game is still played professionally for a reason: the game is, while flawed in some ways as all games are, exceptionally special. And yes, unlike pretty much any other game from the 1990s, Starcraft 1 has a very lively pro scene in Korea, for any who don't know. The most prestigious tournament happens twice a year; look up SSL Autumn 2024 if you want to watch the most recent one. Starcraft balances a very high physical skill requirement and a high strategic requirement for what is, overall, one of the most challenging and intense competitive games ever made. There are plenty of games which require deeper strategy, and some which require faster inputs, but few to none that require more of both. It is as amazing a thing to watch as it is to play.
But what of Warcraft II? It is a truly amazing game, accessible and yet deep, fun and challenging. This remaster makes a few small tweaks to the game, such as increasing the unit selection count to 12 from the former 9, but otherwise it's Warcraft II as it ever was, just higher resolution. And there are reasons why Starcraft is the better game. WCII is simpler, with less strategic depth than SC; is less balanced, with two races one of which is clearly better than the other; doesn't have different terrain heights; has poor unit pathfinding so you will need to micromanage units to keep them from getting lost; doesn't have features like waypoints or unit queueing in buildings that build units; has a whole naval component to the game that you will only ever use in certain specific maps but more often will have to ignore; is more random because where in Starcraft a unit may do, say, 9 damage, in Warcraft II a unit will do a range of damage instead, such as perhaps 2-50 or somesuch; and more. Warcraft II is one of the greatest games ever, but it doesn't quite match Starcraft.
Regardless, Warcraft II IS one of the best games ever and it does have a whole lot of strengths. For one, since it is simpler than SC, WC3, or SC2, the game should have a bit lower barrier to entry. Yes, it's archaic in ways such as pathfinding and unit queueing, but the gameplay's perfect balance of simplicity and depth makes for something anyone can get into with a little practice. That is not to say that Warcraft II is easy, though; there is plenty of challenge to be found, both in the expansion campaign and in multiplayer. The game has significant strategic depth and is incredibly fun to play. I think that if the online is improved on and if the racial imbalance could be fixed to make Humans as good as Orc, WCII could have a great future as a popular online game.
Warcraft I Remastered (Originally, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans)
Before I continue with talking about the new features and problems of Warcraft II Remastered, however, I should talk about the other new part of this package, Warcraft I Remastered. This Battle Pack comes with a remaster of Warcraft I, also, remember! Warcraft I is a game I got for my birthday back in 1995, and it is the game that introduced me to the RTS, so I have a lot of nostalgia for it. Despite that, though, it isn't a game that I have revisited much at all. Going back to the original release now, I had forgotten how primitive it was features-wise in a lot of ways! Warcraft II still feels reasonably modern; yes, it's missing things like waypoints and unit queueing, but those things are minor compared to the gulf between Warcrafts 1 and 2. Warcraft 1 as originally released didn't have control-grouping units. You could save three map positions with Control + F1 to F3, oddly enough, but not save unit groups or buildings. Warcraft II does have control-grouping units. WC1 doesn't scroll when you push the mouse to the edge of the screen, either, only when you click the mouse button down while at the edge of the screen. You can center-click to center the view on your mouse cursor, though, or move the screen view around with the arrow keys. Given how awkward scrolling is otherwise these features are important. WC2 scrolls when you push the mouse to the edge of the screen, as you would expect. Warcraft 1 doesn't have right-click support for things like auto-harvest or auto-attack, either, so you need to either use the keyboard hotkey or click the interface button to have a worker mine or cut wood, for example. Units won't attack if you right-click on an enemy, either, use that hotkey. Warcraft 2 changes all of that with right-click commands. WC1 does have a way to bring up a box to select multiple units at once -- you hit a keyboard key to bring it up -- but it has a maximum unit selection count of four. WC2 increased that number to 9, SC to 12, WC3 to 16, and SC2 to infinite. WC1+2 remaster went with a limit of 12. But back to the original release of WC1, even if you have, say, only peasants selected, you can't give them all a group Mine command; you'll need to do that one at a time, with each of them. That is one fault that Warcraft II unfortunately did carry over, you still can't, say, tell two Paladins to heal one unit if you have both selected. Too bad.
But as for WC 1, that isn't even all of it. For a few things that are both positives and negatives, your basic workers in WC1 cannot fight, at all. Yeah, if all you have is Peasants or Peons, even one enemy is Game Over, you cannot fight back. That was something I had totally forgotten. WC1 is also a 1v1 game only; it's always one against one, Human against Orc, you against either the computer or another human. That's fine. The game doesn't have a map editor to make your own maps, unfortunately, though. It does have the somewhat interesting feature of a unit stats editor, however, so you can modify the game by changing unit stats and play around with that. It also does let you play single games against the computer on a variety of premade maps. And lastly, while Warcraft II was originally a high-res- for-the-time SVGA game designed to run in 640x480 or even 800x600, Warcraft 1 is a regular VGA game, running in 320x240 or so, and it has the very low-rez, blocky look typical to VGA games of this detail level. Visually, Warcraft 1 looks old in a way Warcraft II doesn't. WCII was a next-gen game for its time thanks to its SVGA graphics and it holds up much better than this game. It's hard to believe that they released only a year apart, it looks like so much more than that.
That may seem like a lot, but Warcraft I was a pioneering game at the time of its release! It was one of the early titles in the Real-Time Strategy genre and pushed things forward in quite a few ways. The interface and controls were more advanced than prior RTSes like Command & Conquer, for one thing. Another thing was the multiplayer, from this point on an areaa of Blizzard special focus. Having multiplayer at all in an RTS in 1994 was a somewhat big deal. The original game supported two player multiplayer by either LAN or modem. That was pretty cool. The 12 mission campaigns were reasonably challenging, too; I remember it taking me quite a while to finish. The single missions against the AI can be tough as well. The game is definitely not perfectly balanced -- archers are much stronger than melee troops and summons are overpowered -- but it was good enough for the time.
So, how is the remaster? On the one hand, it is single player only, shamefully. On the other hand, it modernizes the interface across the board, bringing things up to Warcraft II's level in terms of controls. Now you can have workers mine by just right-clicking on the mine, you can select up to 12 units just like the WCII Remaster, you can attack an enemy by right clicking on them instead of having to hit A or the Attack button on the interface and THEN clicking on them in order to attack the enemy, you can scroll around by just moving the mouse to the edge of the screen, and more. It's utterly fantastic, game-changing stuff that dramatically modernizes this title. I love the results of this. You can go back to WC1-style inputs if you want, as a menu option, but the WCII style is so much better that there isn't all that much reason to. I'm sure this will lead some to say, well, why couldn't both games have been further improved with features like the aforementioned unit queueing and waypoints? And yeah, that's a fair point, perhaps it should have been. I know that Age of Empires II has added some modern quality of life improvements, why not Warcraft II? I don't mind not having those features, but if most people would prefer them they should be added. I think that such additions should be limited, I don't want the game to become too automated, but features from Starcraft 1 like queueing and waypoints would fit well in these games.
But yes, the elephant in the room is that Warcraft I Remastered is single player only. Yeah. The multiplayer is entirely removed! Warcraft II Remastered's multiplayer may be shamefully bad features-wise, as I will soon explain, but at least it HAS it! Warcraft 1 Remastered doesn't have any multiplayer at all, for whatever reason. The graphical upgrade looks very nice, with sprite art that is true to the original designs but much higher resolution. I never thought I'd see HD Wolf Riders, WC1 Peasants, and the like! It's pretty cool.
Comparing Warcraft 1 to Warcraft II, Warcraft 1 has a more realistic art style than WC2 went for, with much more of a standard fantasy look, so it's really cool to see it in higher quality. At the time I liked some things about WC1's art design better than WC2's; it all depends on what you think of realism versus cartoon art design. It's also much easier to heal with WC1's dedicated healers, the Priests, than it is with WC2's knight/healer hybrid unit, the Paladin, who have to take time from their fighting to heal eachother and heal less per heal. Warcraft I also has a few interesting cave missions during each campaign where you don't build a base but instead have to explore and accomplish an objective with just the units you are given. I wouldn't want that in every mission, I love base-building, but having a few of these to mix things up is nice. WCII doesn't have them, unfortunately.
However, removing the multiplayer entirely is pretty unforgivable. Is the Warcraft Battlechest worth getting, yes, absolutely, but I very much hope that eventually they patch in the 1v1 multiplayer mode that this game should have had. Warcraft II is the better game, but it'd be pretty amusing to play WC1 multiplayer online sometime. Still, this remaster is a lot of fun. WC1 with WC2 controls was a fantastic idea and it's great.
Warcraft II Remastered: The Release and Single Player
But anyway, I should get back to the main point here, about Warcraft II. In terms of interface, WCII Remastered is very similar to the original, with almost no changes other than the aforementioned 9-to-12 selection limit increase.
To reprise, just a few weeks ago, Warcraft II Remastered shadow-dropped, in a Warcraft Battlechest collection including a patch for the very troubled Warcraft III remaster and a remaster of Warcraft I. Wow, what a deal, two brand new remasters of some of Blizzard's best games, and fixes for the WC3 remaster as well! How can it go wrong?
Well, this is modern Blizzard we're talking about here, a company that is sadly far from its 'clearly the best game developer in the world' status that they had from about '95 to '03, but hey, the Diablo II remaster from a few years ago was great, so this could be good, right?
Well, unfortunately, it's not. Oh, if you are only planning on playing in single player, the remaster is pretty solid. The interface for selecting custom maps is bad -- it shows everything in one list and there is no folder support -- but otherwise it's fine. The music is as amazing as ever, the graphics have a mostly great-looking high definition overhaul and are still beautiful sprite art, all four single player campaigns from the base game Tides of Darkness and its expansion Beyond the Dark Portal are here, and more! Hours of classic RTS single player fun are here for anyone to enjoy, and I'm sure plenty of people who have not played the originals will enjoy these campaigns. The new graphics look fantastic, everything is very true to the original designs and look amazing. I should say, though, that both Remasters call the CD audio soundtracks a "remaster" but they are not, that's a lie; it's the CD audio music from the original discs. The "Original" option is the optional MIDI songs that you could enable if you wanted. This is a bit unfortunate because an orchestral redo of WCII's exceptional, Baroque-style musical score is something which the world deserves. WCII's music is from a time before all fantasy game soundtracks went for a cinematic-style score and it is better for it. Warcraft III, for example, goes all-in on cinematic extravagance in its soundtrack and it's pretty great, but overall WCII's is better. And those voices... unchanged is perfect. They're the absolute best. I love how serious the Paladins are, particularly.
The game has some nice new features like a level select screen that lets you start from any level you have reached without needing to remember to save at the beginning of each mission, also. The mission briefing screens have been redrawn and look good. The menu fonts are pretty basic but work fine enough. I will not spoil the stories of any of the games, but they tell entertaining fantasy tales, full of tragedy, violence, and humor. They are certainly not the most complex plots ever and almost all characters and units are either white men or green orcs, something which bothers some I am sure, but I am fine with this; that's fantasy genre-accurate, and is pretty much how it would have been had a portal to an Orc world had opened in a medieval European-style kingdom. If you're thinking about buying this to play through the single player, either as someone who played it back then or as someone who has never played the game before, I highly recommend it. It's fantastic and a lot of fun. The base campaigns probably won't challenge a skilled gamer all that much until the later stages of each one, as the challenge doesn't really start until about the eighth mission of 14, I would say based on playing the game again now, but the expansion campaigns are indeed still pretty tough. I could never beat them back in the '90s, they were too hard. I haven't tried to play through them again yet but surely will. I am sure I will do better than I did as a teenager. It's unfortunate that the expansion adds no new units or game mechanics other than Heroes with higher stats than regular units, but oh well, at least it added new full campaigns and plenty of challenge. You will get your moneys' worth out of the single player.
Unfortunately, however, right now you probably will not be getting your moneys' worth out of the incredibly basic, nearly feature-free multiplayer. Despite being quite new Warcraft II Remastered's online is already sparsely populated. You will soon understand why.
Warcraft II Remastered: The Multiplayer
The multiplayer in Warcraft II Remastered... exists. There is a Multiplayer button on the main menu, and it opens a games list. There you can either join a game in progress, or create a game of your own. Okay, that's alright. The problem is that the list of missing features is insanely long.
WCIIR comes with 39 maps, all original Blizzard maps from 1995-1996. The three maps Blizzard published after the release of the Battle.net edition in 1999-2000 are not included, and nor are any new maps. So, there are no modern, balanced maps here, only mid '90s maps with their entertainingly imbalanced designs, where depending on your start point you surely will be at an advantage or disadvantage over some other players. This is map design that Starcraft's online map pool weeded out over a decade ago or more. Yes, I love Garden of War, it's one of the all-time-great RTS maps, but is every start point as close to equally fair as you can get? No, of course not. It isn't symmetrical, it is designed in a more 'realistic' manner without regard to equal balance for all. But the WCII map editor is included with this release. It's buried in a subfolder, is entirely unchanged from the WCII BNE version of the editor, and doesn't have an icon in the Battle.net Launcher, but it's there. So okay, you can solve the maps problem by just making new maps and letting other people download them in-game, right? Automatic map download has been a feature of all Blizzard RTSes with online play... except for this one. That's right, if you create an online game with anything other than one of the 39 built-in maps, nobody else will be able to download the map, so you will not be able to play the game. In my experience it's actually even worse than this, and I can't even stay in the game MYSELF! The game falsely gives a "map not found" error whenever I try this AS THE MULTIPLAYER GAME CREATOR. The map in question is in the maps folder on my hard drive, I put it there. It is not "not found". This is a missing feature that absolutely must be fixed as soon as possible, limiting people to only the under 40 maps from '95-'96 and nothing else is insanely awful. Of all the missing features this is by far the worst one. Obviously in custom games Starcraft Remastered has auto-map download, and lets you create custom games with your own maps.
WCIIR does not have any kind of replay-save feature. Of course, Warcraft II never has had a replay system, but Starcraft had one added back in 2001 and WC3 and SC2 have had them from day one. Putting replays into WCII should have been a no-brainer, it's a hugely useful feature for helping people to get better at the game by studying replays and for remembering great moments. I watch a lot of Youtube videos of casts of Starcraft replays, and it's fantastic fun to watch. There is one channel I know of that frequently posts WCII gameplay, but that channel needs to record from outside the game since, again, no replay system. It's just pathetic that BLizzard actually shipped this game without adding replays. It shows that they don't care about WCIIR's success like they should. Starcraft Remastered obviously has replays, and all SC:R replays can be played by anyone with the game since SC has not had a balance patch since 2001.
WCIIR does not have an Allies button or menu during games. In all other Blizzard RTSes, including WCII: BNE as well as SC, WC3, and SC2, there is a menu you can open that shows you a list of all players with their player color. This menu allows you to change alliances if the game mode allows for it and otherwise allows you to see who is who. There is also always an easy way with a button to enable Allies-only chat in team games, so you aren't talking to everyone, and the games distinguish between allied chat and chat to everyone. WCIIR, as you might be able to guess, doesn't have much of any of this. There is no in-game Allies tab, and no listing of who is which color. Pregame you know which race and which team each player was on, but not their color. There is no way to change alliances in-game. There is no button for Allied chat, either. There is a keyboard hotkey for it if you know it, but the game doesn't show it any differently from other chat so it's hard for anyone to know which chat is to everyone and which is only to your team. Again, it's just pathetic that the game actually shipped without such incredibly basic, fundamental features as this. Obviously Starcraft Remastered has all the missing features.
WCIIR does not have a ladder of any kind. There is only one multiplayer mode, which opens as soon as you open the Multiplayer menu: a list of games to enter. When a game finishes, you return to the main menu to play again if you want. That's all you get. There is no ladder, no ranked mode, no player rankings, nothing. Blizzard doesn't care and doesn't want anyone else to care about this game either, apparently, which is strange given how much effort went into the again great-looking graphical overhaul. Starcraft Remastered has a full ladder with player rankings, a map pool change every 6 months, and automatic matchmaking. The auto-matchmaking is a particularly fantastic feature addition given that the original Starcraft and Warcraft II: Battle.Net Edition, while they did have online play and a ranked ladder, did not have auto-matchmaking; instead you needed to join games for ladder matches like any other. This game should have had that too. Surely more people would be playing if it did.
WCIIR does not have a multiplayer chat lobby, unlike all other Blizzard RTSes. You can chat in the lobby when you join a game and in-game, but that's it. I know that open chat lobbies in online games are less common today so I get why it was left out, but it's a feature that many in the community expected, I've seen many complaints that there isn't one. Starcraft Remastered kept its chat lobbies, of course.
On a related note, WCIIR does not have LAN support. The multiplayer is online on Battle.net only. If you want to do an offline LAN tourney... well, go play the DOS version, you won't be playing this one. Starcraft Remastered does have LAN support, surely because of demand for it by the Korean pro leagues which do offline tourneys. Unfortunately there is no WCII pro scene to demand its inclusion here, too bad.
WCIIR doesn't let multiplayer game lobby creators kick people out of the game or limit access to the lobby with a password. Anyone can join any game, and the creator can't kick out an unwanted player. Now, given how often in many RTSes people would get kicked out constantly for, for instance, not having the map already and thus not knowing how to play the map yet, I can see a case for this as kicking people for reasons like that is quite frustrating, but ultimately there must be a way to kick someone out who isn't behaving. No such function exists here, so if one person is MIA or wants to be annoying and won't team up properly there's nothing the creator can do. Obviously no other Blizzard RTS has anything like this insane lack of a basic feature.
On a related note, WCIIR has very few game mode options. You can choose the map tileset between the four in the game, change the resource level of the mines on the map, and choose between starting with only a single worker or with a town hall and a worker, and that's it. There is no way to set a game for Top vs. Bottom play, or 2v2v2v2, or whatever. And lobby creators can't change any players' team, either, only players themselves can do that and only in the pre-game lobby, too; remember, no teams can be changed during the game, the Allies menu does not exist anymore for some insane reason. So if you want a team game you must ask people to team up correctly in the lobby before you start. It's bizarre and incredibly limiting when compared to any other Blizzard RTS, or probably much else in the genre either. And since there is no TvB mode, where your allies appear is completely random. Some maps were designed for TvB but too bad here the option doesn't exist. Absurd.
Conclusion
So yeah, that is a LOT of critical missing features. Warcraft II multiplayer games have always been mostly centered around Free-For-All or two to four player team games with four to eight players, and that is very much how WCIIR is today. In that way, it's a charming relic of a time when most online RTS games involved a bunch of random players of various skill levels either working together or against eachother on a map that may be decently well designed but certainly isn't equally fair for all. It's great that such things still exist! However, as much as I like group FFAs or team games, wouldn't it be better if there was also support for the kind of 1v1-focused ladder play that largely defines the RTS multiplayer experience in the current century, with WCII's gameplay, unaltered except hopefully for finally a fix for the racial imbalance caused by Orcs' Bloodlust ability being much easier to use than Humans' Heal, a problem which causes as much as 80% of players to play as Orc? I sure think that it would be better that way!
Even so, I mostly am thrilled that the Warcraft I and II Remasters exist. Yes, the online features are unacceptably limited, but... the game exists at all! It's Warcraft II, one of the best games ever, with nice 2d sprite-art upscales of its fantastic graphics. Warcraft II's oroginal graphics hold up so well that I have sometimes, while playing this, hit F5 to switch to the original graphics and then forgotten to switch back for quite some time because of how great the original looks, and how similar the remaster is, and I cannot think of higher praise than that. The audio is entirely unchanged from the original, too, so it's still the best game music and sound effects ever. The gameplay is a simple and yet deep classic real-time strategy game with some of the best and most fun design around. Building a base, building an army, perhaps also building a fleet if you are on a naval map, and fighting the enemy is one of the most fun and rewarding things in gaming, and this remaster is the best way to play one of the best games ever.
Overall, Warcraft II Remastered is a dream come true and I am thrilled that this collection was released. I only hope that Blizzard can be shamed into eventually fixing its online features so that it is worth playing against others a lot more than it is today.
Even so, though, despite its flaws, absolutely buy the Warcraft Battlechest. Even as it is this is a must-have collection, no question about it. The single player remaster is fantastic stuff, then maybe play a few multiplayer matches if you can find a game.
I'm trying to get a start on local community building, because I've become convinced that's where our efforts should be focused going forward. Fortunately, I've found some good advice I intend to put into practice, and so I'm linking this video for others to look at and as a reminder to myself.
Doom CD32X Fusion is a brand-new homebrew version of Doom for the Sega 32X CD. It's really amazing with fantastic performance, and makes use of all five CPUs in the Genesis with Sega CD and 32X in order to get the best performance and graphical output possible on the hardware. DJ, you've probably heard of it but have you tried it yet?
Features: 100 levels, 96 FM music tracks, a fully redone from scratch port that takes nothing from original 32X Doom, a game which makes full use of a complete Genesis with Sega CD and 32X setup.
In order to run the game, you either need to use the Ares emulator or have real hardware. For emulation, Ares is required because other emulators don't support cart+cd combo releases like this, only a CD-only or cart-only game. For real hardware, you must have a Genesis with a Sega CD and a 32X, a flash cart like an Everdrive, and a computer with a CD burner and a blank CD. Fortunately I have all of these things. I've never actually used my Genesis Everdrive Pro before this, for whatever reason I'd bought the thing a year or two ago but never used it, but now I have.
Yes, it requires both a flashcart and a real Sega CD drive with disc, since the game is a cart game with additional data on the CD so it requires both. The release is entirely legal because it doesn't come with the Doom or Doom 2 game files; instead, Doom CD32X Fusion is a pair of rom patches and a cuefile. You use a rom patcher to apply the two patches to your Doom and Doom 2 WADs, then prepare and burn the CD with the cue file. Then load up the game rom on the Everdrive while the disc is in the SCD's drive and the game will load. The game could have its own cartridge and CD, of course, instead of needing an Everdrive or similar and a disc you burn yourself, but I don't know if this will ever have an official release, I doubt it.
As for why the game requires a working real Sega CD and can't run through the Everdrive Pro like the cartridge does, that's a somewhat complex question. Part of this is because the cartridge port is using the cartridge with the main base game data, and I'm not sure if it would be possible to emulate both CD and cart at the same time... but this doesn't matter, because while the Everdrive can emulate a Sega CD (but not a 32X), you can't run CD images on an Everdrive with a 32X attached to your console. This is because the 32X locks out some Sega CD access from its cartridge port. The only way around this limitation would be a hardware device which plugs into the Genesis accessory port, and so far no such device exists. And so, as an aside, with an Everdrive Pro basically you have a choice: have your 32X attached to your full 'tower of power' setup and be able to play 32X game files, or remove the 32X and be able to play Sega CD images, play Sega Master System game roms, and to use the in-game menu to do things like quicksave. SMS games are disabled because the 32X disables SMS support, but I don't know why that last one is that way... but yes, for some reason the ingame menu is disabled with the 32X attached. So yeah you lose a lot with the 32X and an Everdrive, but I love the 32X so I don't know if I'd ever remove it.
And plus, with the 32X you can play this amazing homebrew release, Doom CD32X Fusion! Again this is basically a cartridge game which uses the CD for additional data, so the core Doom 1 files are mostly on the 'cartridge', while the Doom 2 files, the other levels on this collection, a lot of FM music tracks, and anything else you add -- CD audio music tracks if you want them, additional levels, and such -- go onto the CD. For the record this game has a 4MB (32 Megabit) cartridge and a 17MB CD. Could this have been done with a large bank-switched cartridge, instead of cart+CD? Maybe, I'm not sure, but either way on that but this way it's more like a real Genesis game -- the largest Genesis game ever was like 5MB, so a 20MB bank-switched game or something would not be realistic for a real Genesis game, but this setup certainly could have happened. By default there is no CD audio on the disc, but there is a CD audio option for if you add any wave files to the disc (and add in the files into the cuetable, of course). The 3DO Doom soundtrack would probably be an ideal addition. The FM music is good and there is a lot of it -- over 90 tracks I believe they said -- but not every track is equally good. When comparing this music to SNES Doom music some is better on each platform.
Before I begin, yes, because there is a CD there are load times. All loading is in between levels though, not during stages, and the loads aren't very long, five or ten seconds or so probably. The way it works is that the cart has the core Doom textures on it. Any level using anything beyond original Doom's textures puts them into the 32X's RAM from the CD during the pre-level load. This is ideal because you don't want to be having to load data from the CD during play, Doom would not be a good fit for live-streaming data I would think, a pre-load into RAM is the better choice. Obviously this uses up 32X RAM so the number of added textures is probably limited, I don't know the details. Level sizes are also more limited than PC Doom due to memory limitations or somesuch. This doesn't affect Doom 1, but does affect the other games.
Still, this release is pretty amazing stuff for multiple reasons, and one is the performance. You have some nice graphical options here, including whether to have full textures on the ground and ceiling or to remove them and what resolution to use. The game also has an on-screen framerate display. The framerate maxes out at 30fps, you can't go over 30. Sure. At the default 'one step below full screen so there is a decent-sized border but it's totally playable and is similar to the original SNES or 32X versions of Doom' screen size the game runs quite well, over 20fps almost all of the time and often close to 30. Turn it up to full screen with full textures though and it'll often be like 15fps, less in areas full of enemies. Turning off the ground textures bumps it over 20fps though. Comparing this to '90s console versions of Doom... seriously, this significantly outclasses most of the "more powerful" consoles! This really shows how much power the Sega Genesis's two processors, plus the Sega CD's processor, plus the two in the 32X, can do when all used together by modern programmers.
As for in-game features, you start out by choosing to either run Doom (original PC Doom), Doom 2 (straight from the PC!), Resurrection (this is based on Doom 32X Resurrection, which was an enhanced version of original 32X Doom, so it has the cut-down Jaguar level maps and such), run (Mini-)TNT, or go to a file browser to run something else if you put more levels on the disc. TNT is a selection of 5 levels from the TNT Evillution part of Final Doom. A full conversion of Final Doom was abandoned because a lot of its levels are too large to fit into this games' limited memory size, or something like that, so converting the levels to 32XCD took a huge amount of work. That any of Final Doom at all is here is really cool, though.
Once you choose a game, you can start a new game in either single or multi player. The game supports both two player split-screen and two player link play. I'm not sure how the link cable play works, you'd need quite the setup to try it, but it exists. It's probably designed to use the Zero Tolerance controller 2 to controller 2 male to male controller cord? I'm not sure.
As for the controls, obviously since this is the Genesis it can't use L and R for strafing as you could on SNES. Instead, you hold C to strafe. It works but you can't circle-strafe with just the gamepad, oh well. I don't care. The other two buttons are fire and use. With a 6-button pad Z opens the map and X and Y switch weapons, or you can hold Mode and press a button for instant access to each weapon. The game also has Mega Mouse support, but I don't have one so I don't know how well that works. Apparently with mouse you use the mouse and gamepad together to play like how you would with mouse+keyboard on the PC, so the mouse will turn you left or right. I presume that with that you can circle-strafe. (I really should have the light gun and mouse for the Genesis, but for some reason I don't...)
You also can "save", with two save slots, and load your save game. The two slots are universal and it doesn't tell you which game each file is from, only the level name. That's a little annoying, but oh well. Also, you can't save anywhere. Instead this game only saves from the beginning of the level, much like a classic console game. Ah well.
In terms of enemies, everything is here other than the Arch-Vile, Pain Elemental, and SS Soldier. I have heard of the Arch-Vile but don't know what it is offhand, and don't know what those other two are I presume they're from Doom II? Never played it. It does have reverse sides of enemies, unlike the original SNES or 32X versions of Doom, and does have the invisible demon.
Visually, this is extremely accurate to the PC game, except for areas where levels had to be reduced in detail in order to fit in memory. Some things did need to be changed, particularly in the few levels of Final Doom that are here but also some in Doom 2, but it's as accurate as possible. It has all of the little added graphical details of PC Doom that were missing from the '90s console releases.
To mention a few other issues with this game, the map is the same as on the PC, so you don't have the cool Mode 7 map of SNES Doom. It'd be a neat option but I understand sticking to the base design.
Also, while Doom's levels are here, some of the rest of Doom's presentation is not here. That is, the map screen between levels doesn't exist here. There is still some in-between-level text, though, but not really the original episodes given that the map is gone and levels are numbered 1 to 27, not within each episode. You pretty much just play the 27 levels of Doom one after another. That's pretty disappointing! The original 32X version of Doom was like this as well, and it's one of the reasons why it's worse than the PC (or SNES) versions. I hope that the map screens can be added back in at some point, I at least miss them.
Overall, I haven't played this a lot but I have played it and it's quite impressive. I've never played Doom II before, actually, despite owning it for PC. Maybe I'll play it now. With a lot of levels and fantastic performance considering -- with only minor sacrifices this game runs at a pretty stable 30fps -- Doom CD32X Fusion is just amazing stuff! This is the first and only game to make full use of the whole Genesis setup, with a cartridge 32X game with a CD for additional data, and making use of all the processors for the best performance possible. Yes, this release has a few limitations, with its limited level size keeping them from converting most of Final Doom, FM music that is pretty good but sometimes doesn't match SNES Doom's greatness, no map between levels in Doom 1 -- seriously, this is so unfortunate -- and no circle-strafing unless you have a Genesis mouse, but still this game looks incredible and plays fantastic. It's amazingly PC-accurate with only minor cuts. This is probably the best way to play Doom on a classic console, only the Playstation version compares and it's stuck with the cut-down Jaguar level maps in Doom 1.
There wasn't a review forum for other consoles so I just made one. For now I didn't make platform subforums but I could.
A Review of Tempest 2000, One of Gaming's Greatest Masterpieces, And its Arcade Forbear Tempest
Title: Tempest 2000 Platform: Atari Jaguar Release Date: 1994 Developer: Llamasoft Publisher: Atari Inc. (1984-1996) Format: Cartridge in cardboard box (A music CD of the soundtrack was also released later on) Ports: There are many ports of this game. Emulated ports are in the Atari 50 collection for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One/Series, and PS4/PS5. Older, more heavily altered ports were released back in the ’90s on PC, Saturn, and PlayStation (as Tempest X3). This review is of the game being played on real hardware on an actual Jaguar. I have discussed the PlayStation version of Tempest X3 and the Atari 5200 version of the original Tempest before, but not the Jaguar title or the arcade game itself.
Introduction
Tempest 2000 is Jeff Minter’s magnum opus. This exceptional masterpiece is is one of my favorite games ever. T2K is one of those ‘peak of the mountain’ games, one of those titles that shows how amazing gaming can be at its absolute best. And that’s the problem, for this review at least: praise is hard! It is, sadly, often easier to criticize than to praise, to write or say reams of reasons why something is bad than to write ones why something is great. I guess we’ll see how this goes, because there aren’t many things to criticize about T2K.
Tempest, the original arcade game, was released in 1981 in arcades by Atari, and was programmed by Dave Theurer, the same man who also designed the famous megahit Missile Command. It was a successful game, but not on Missile Command’s level of popularity. While Tempest 2000’s developer Jeff Minter was not involved at all with its development, Minter was an active game developer at the time.
However, at that point he was making smaller games for home computers, not arcade games. He may not have worked with Atari until the early ’90s, but Jeff Minter is probably gaming’s longest-termed programmer. He with an amazing record of consistency for spending the last 45 years almost exclusively making simple-looking, pre-crash-styled arcade-inspired score-focused games. If you look at a Jeff Minter game from the early ’80s such as Aggressor or Gridrunner and then his most recent releases such as Polybius or Akka Arrh, you will see the most consistent record in gaming. All four titles are easily recognizable as Jeff Minter productions. I have loved Minter’s games ever since I first played Llamatron 2112 back in the early ’90s.
A Review of the Original Arcade Game Tempest
At its core, Tempest 2000 is a remake of the 1981 vector-graphcis arcade game Tempest. So, I should discuss the arcade game first. Tempest is a space shooter, a popular genre at the time, except instead of shooting enemies on the top of the screen, you shoot from the edge of the screen at enemies coming at you from the center. It was inspired by Space Invaders turned vertical, crossed with a nightmare of Theurer’s about monsters crawling out of a hole. (Source: https://arcadeblogger.com/2018/01/19/ata...sterpiece/) Learning that makes sense, because I have long seen the nightmarish, horror-esque element of this game and Tempest 2000 as well. Tempest is kind of a horror game. It isn’t, but it is. This is a game designed to make you focus, but also to kind of creep you out and instill a sense of dread in the player, as the monsters just keep coming, and coming, out of the depths… until eventually, you get overrun. Tempest and T2K are maybe the best horror games ever.
Again, the central gameplay of both titles is the same: you control a little ship, and can move around the outer, and upper, edge of the play area, which is called the ‘web’. The web is made up of lines going from the middle of the screen to the upper edge where you are, connecting them in a vector shape. Your ship is pointing towards the center of the screen, aiming towards the middle where the enemies come from. If the enemies reach the top of the web, they move around the top and once either an enemy touches your ship or you run into one of their shots you die and lose a life.
When you move left or right you flip around the edge, moving between sectors of the top of the web. You can only move in two directions in this game, so while the game is three dimensional in that enemies move up a 3d angled route towards you, you only need to worry about moving horizontally to shoot them. For controls, the original arcade game used a spinner-style stick, giving you precise analog control of your movement. You shoot with one button and use the Superzapper, a superbomb which kills all enemies on screen. You can use the Superzapper once per level. Once all enemies in a stage are dead you clear it and move on to the next web. If you die, you restart the stage from the beginning.
The game has 16 stage layouts, and after you clear stage 16 the web color changes. There are six colors: blue, red, yellow, cyan, invisible, and lastly green. After level 99 the levels stop increasing and you just play at that difficulty until you run out of lives, if you were so lucky to get that far. One interesting feature, though, is that there is a continue function of sorts! When you get game over, you can continue from the last checkpoint level that you reached. You can select which level you want to start from from the checkpoint levels you have reached. The game doesn’t save these permanently, of course, so if powered off the checkpoints and scores will be lost, but still it’s a very interesting feature, as continuing in arcade games like that was not really a thing when this game released in 1981.
When enemies reach the top of the web, you have two options. One is to try to shoot them as they flip onto your section of web. Yes, you can do this, so letting enemies get to the top is not an instant loss, but timing that shot is tricky. You can also use the Superzapper of course, if you still have it. It’s much better to get rid of enemies before they reach the top, but sometimes it won’t be possible as you get farther in and enemy counts increase. Overall Tempest is a great game, with a creepy vibe and a great balance of challenge and the feeling that if you play well you can get far in the game.
As with most pre-crash games, Tempest has no music and simple presentation, but the graphics were groundbreaking at the time. The graphics are amazing looking with that color vector display, and the sound effects are fantastic and fit perfectly as well. The striking look of this game is extremely memorable. Color vector displays were a rarely seen, expensive technical feat, and this game uses that kind of display and it looks amazing! Still, as was common at the time there is no background other than black space except for some stars that appear while you fly from one level to the next. The result focuses you on the action.
It is of course an endless game you play for score . Tempest is intense, though. Where a game of Donkey Kong or Space Invaders can last many hours, the world record for Tempest at its hardest settings is a video about 20 minutes long. You will die. There are several different web designs, but the stage layouts repeat after a few stages and then you’re on the endless loop until Game Over. And while there are a handful of enemy types, there aren’t all that many of those either. There is no background either of course, just black space. Still, the wireframe 3d vector graphics look amazing, and the gameplay is a lot of fun.
However… however, I find it hard to play Tempest because as good as it is, I could be playing Tempest 2000, the game that takes Tempests’ model and improves on it in almost every way. And when I want to play a Tempest game, that is usually what I do: play Tempest 2000. Tempest 4000 (for modern consoles) is also quite good, but while Jeff Minter has made multiple Tempest-style games over the past three decades and all are great, none quite match the exceptional genius of his first effort.
Tempest 2000: The Fundamentals and Features
Tempest 2000 is a modernized update of Tempest. The main mode is called Tempest 2000 mode. The core gameplay is identical, with you moving around the top edge of weblike stages, shooting in at the enemies moving up the web at you. You again need to dodge their fire while taking them out before they reach the top. This time there are interesting varied backgrounds, though, as the game has trippy light synthesizer-style backgrounds and pounding techno music. There are also new powerups, new enemy types, a lot of new maps, an actual ending when you reach level 100, a harder difficulty unlocked after clearing the game, the ability to continue from every few levels so that you don’t need to start the game over every time you get Game Over, and more. Outside of the main Tempest 2000 mode the game has several other modes as well. There is a two player multiplayer versus mode; a port of the original Tempest game but of course with regular graphics instead of vector ones; Tempest Plus, a mode which is basically standard Tempest but with T2K’s visuals; and an options menu with some interesting options in it.
The game saves your settings, which levels you can start from, as you can start from the last odd-numbered level you have beaten if you wish — and the high score table. The game saves everything necessary. The Jaguar is the first console where almost every single game supports saving, and it’s a hugely important and wonderful change versus what you see on other classic consoles. Even in years after the Jag’s release a lot of console games didn’t have saving in some genres — no Sega CD shmup supports high score saving, for example, and even some PlayStation shooters don’t. But on Jaguar all official games save at least scores and settings. It hugely helps this kind of game for the game itself to keep track of your scores, no need to write down your best scores or take screenshots or something. And because all Jaguar saving is done to EEPROM flash memory chips and not batteries, the system has no problem with old batteries, unlike most of its contemporaries. I think that that everything saves is the number one most next-gen thing about the Jaguar as a console; even the games that otherwise look like last-gen ports almost always have saving added. Tempest 2000 takes advantage of it well.
In the single player modes Tempest 2000 plays almost exactly the same as the original Tempest, just improved in every way other than losing that amazing color vector display. T2K has the best graphics possible with its regular pixel-graphics display, but vectors do look amazing in a way no regular display can match. Ah well. So, as with the original Tempest, you move around the top of levels, shooting at enemies climbing up at you. All enemies from the original game return, with some new additions to the roster. New enemies get introduced once you get farther in the game, as well. As with the original the web colors change every 16 levels, but this time you don’t only see the same 16 levels over and over, new webs are introduced as you progress. It’s Tempest, but more.
The Controls and Powerups
The controls are, by default, a small step below the arcade game, because the standard Jaguar controller only has a d-pad on it for movement. I think the digital controls are just fine, as each press moves you to the next section of the web, but if you want analog controls the game does support them, which is pretty awesome — Jeff Minter made sure to include hidden support for a rotary-stick controller, even though no such controller existed for the system at the time other than a homebrew one hacked together. I do not have one right now, though I really should get one, but it’s just fantastic that the option exists. It means that controls are even with the arcade game. As for buttons, T2K uses three, the three regular Jaguar face buttons, for Shoot, Jump once you have it in a level, and Superzapper. On the last of those, yes the Superzapper bomb returns to help you out, as beofre usable once per stage. Also, once again, if you die you restart the current level from the beginning. Otherwise, Start pauses as you would expect. The keypad is used for muting the music as usual — a keypad music mute feature is common on Jag games with music — and for shifting the view around, adjusting how the web moves on stages that go slightly over one screen in size, adjusting the screen size, and such. It’s a good use of the keypad for something a game for a newer platform would put on a second stick or somesuch. You won’t need to touch it during play, thankfully. The Jaguar controller is surprisingly comfortable, I think; its bad reputation is hightly over-stated. Using the keypad during play is awkward and not great for anything fast-paced, but for games that only use the dpad and three main face buttons, or for games that just use it for options, I think the Jag controller is just fine. T2K controls well with the regular controller, I've never had any issues with it. I'm sure that the rotary controller controls are even better, but these are quite good.
On top of that, some other new powerups have been added. These powerups all only last for the current level, as everything resets to default no powerups once you get to the next stage. The way it works is that some enemies drop a powerup which then moves up the screen. Get in position to grab it as it flies upwards and you get one level of powerup. The first enemy you kill in a stage will always drop a powerup, and this powerup gives you a more powerful shot. It’s essential to get this because the gun without it is very weak. Some time later more powerups will drop. The next few will give you a Jump button and an AI droid ally. The Jump button uses your third face button and jumps upwards, moving you out of the way of enemies if they reach the top of the web. They can’t jump to hit you up there, but you could still get hit by shots, and of course you will need to land somewhere clear at the end of your jump so while helpful the jump won’t keep you alive if there are too many enemies on top of the web. Still, it’s great. The AI Droid is similar to the one in Llamatron 2112, and moves around on its own a above the web shooting down at enemies. It cannot be killed and is fantastic if you can get enough powerups to get it. There is also a rare random-drop powerup which immediately skips the current level, and once you have all other powerups in a stage further powerups give you a 2000 point bonus.
The Bonus Games
There is one more powerup, however. Lastly powerup-wise, getting enough powerups in a level will give you a green triangle. You can only get one green triangle per level. Once you get three green triangles, you go to a bonus stage. There are several different types of bonus stages, changing as you proceed through the game. The first bonus stage type has you flying through space, trying to fly through gates. There are no enemies, you just move with the d-pad to get through the gates. This bonus game is a lot of fun, it’s very calming after the intense action. However, if you want the best possible scores you will want to avoid actually completing the bonus games, because if you finish a bonus game you warp forward five levels. You get a point bonus, but the point bonus is a whole lot less points than you would have gotten if you played those levels.
There are three different layouts of each bonus game, though you will never complete all three in a single game because after a few skips you are sure to have progressed far enough to get to the second bonus game type. That one I find much, much harder — you have to stay on a green track that curves around a tube that you are driving through. I must admit, I don’t think I have ever completed a stay on the green track bonus stage, and if I ever did I sure haven’t again. Still, it’s fun enough. After that… well, there is a third type of bonus game later on, but play the game to find out what it is. The bonus games are fun stuff and do a great job of giving you a break from the frenetic action. I particularly love the first bonus game, flying down a tunnel through those rings is great fun.
The Enemies and Scoring
When you fire, enemies in front of you and their regular shots die. That latter point is important: your shots and most enemy shots kill eachother. Some enemy attacks cannot be stopped, however, so you need to stay on your guard.
The enemies you will face include: basic ones which go straight up one path, heading towards the top; ones which do that but also shoot upwards; larger ones that split into multiple regular enemies once shot; ones which move around between paths as they go, trying to get closer to your position; a strong monster which has these two invincible scythelike limbs it shoots out you before going to the top that you must avoid while trying to shoot the main body; small enemies which stay at the bottom and electrify a whole section of the web, killing you instantly if you are in that section after it lights up; spikes, which can be in lanes towards the centerand will kill you if you run into them while traveling through the web after beating the level; and some more that come in to play later. There are a total of ten enemy types. The enemy variety is enough to keep things interesting while remaining easy enough to remember and identify each type.
As you kill your foes you get points, and scoring in this game is simple: kill stuff, get points. There is no complex scoring system and that is entirely fine with me, there’s more than enough here to keep anyone hooked. As you get points you will earn 1-ups, and there is no maximum. Your life count is displayed as a row of ship images instead of a number, though, so once you get past about eight lives in reserve you won’t know exactly how many you have. It’s enough, though, to know that once you know how many lives you have left things are starting to go wrong… heh.
The Graphics in General
Tempest 2000’s graphics are exceptional, and are one of the many reasons why I love this game so, so much. The visualizer-style backgrounds are incredible, first. And somehow, T2K has some of the best-looking graphics ever. Even though the game is running at 320×240 regular graphics, not the ultra-sharp lines of the originals’ arcade vector graphics display on its special vector monitor, it looks exceptionally sharp. I don’t know what wizardry was done here but somehow T2K’s lines look straight and not jaggy.
Of course the game is made of pixels, and some of them are noticeable square ones, but they are used perfectly — the moving square pixels that form the background’s laser-light-visualizer style show are the exact right thing to use for that job. Minter would go on to use a similar look for the visuals for his VLM, or light synthesizer, for the Atari Jaguar CD, and my opinion is that that is the best-looking visualizer ever. And that’s not said because of nostalgia, I did not have a Jaguar or Jag CD in the ’90s. It just looks incredible, better overall than more powerful visualizers do.
Tempest 2000 is similar; sure, newer games, including some from Minter himself such as Tempest 4000 for modern consoles, look ‘better’ than this game and run more smoothly, but T2K’s overall visual style just cannot be beat. The enemy sprites, the web, the creepy fear this game instills on the player, it’s all nearly perfect. So, the sharp, clear graphics look unbelievably good. The game does have problems with dropping frames or slowdown when the screen gets full of enemies, I will admit, and I have died because of this for sure, but despite that I do think T2K is one of the most amazing looking games ever.
Everything works together to make the game both look and play great. The stage layouts are each interestingly different, giving you something new to look at and changing the gameplay; the enemies are varied and stand out and all look nice and are each immediately recognizable even when the game becomes more cluttered with foes because of their distinct designs and colors; and the sound effects of the enemies and your shots fit perfectly with the visuals. Jeff Minter definitely likes that early ’80s pixel art slash vector graphics look, so Tempest was a perfect game for him to remake, and he did a fantastic job of it.
Overall, despite the occasional slowdown, as I mentioned I think that T2K has some of the best graphics ever. While playing T2K I often think, is this the best looking game ever? The look of this game is just exceptional, every element is done fantastically. When output via RGB, in my case via a Jag to SNES adapter that I use my SNES component cable with, connecting to a Retrotink 4K that I have attached to my 4K TV, T2K is so amazingly great looking that it is kind of hard to believe that it is actually a game from 1994 and not a 4K remaster of the game on my Xbox Series X, or something. I do not say that to brag about my setup; honestly, most games don’t really look different enough on the Retrotink 4K to definitely justify the high expense. Tempest 2000 is the one game that has actually made me think that maybe it was worth the money.
An Aside on the Scanlines Option
The game has a few graphics options, too. Most notably, you can turn on or off an optional scanline-style effect. So, CRT television screens work by not drawing every line, but by drawing every other line and having the lines blend together due to the nature of the technology. For a long time, despite this consoles worked by drawing every line they could, progressive scan style, because that was much easier technologically. Of course the screen would then display the results with scanlines, so your standard 224×240 or 320×240 console would display at the TV’s effective resolution of 640×480 because of the scanlines doubling the output.
However, at some point in the early ’90s developers started adding interlaced scanline output right into the consoles’ hardware, in order to increase output resolutions. By adding interlacing, you can draw 640×480 for a similar amount of graphical power required for 320×240 without interlacing. The first model of 3DO in Japan actually has a switch to turn on or off the scanlines; all other 3DOs are interlaced-only. The N64 and PS2 particularly were designed around interlaced output. The Jaguar, however, was not, and like a classic console displays a usually 320×240 image drawing all the lines.
However, in Tempest 2000, Jeff Minter tried to program a scanline option to increase resolution, but apparently couldn’t get it to entirely work so instead an option was added which calls itself a scanline option but in fact adds a sideways jitter effect to the screen, blurring the graphics. The results look alright on a CRT, but I think that on a HDTV, with an upscaler, the interlacing option makes the graphics look significantly worse, as the blurry jitter does not look great.
I do think that the ‘interlacing’ mode performs a bit better, though. I am very bad at judging framerates, but I do think that while the jittering looks kind of awful interlacing reduces slowdown. While Tempest 2000’s graphics are exceptional and are among the best ever, it is true that things can slow down very noticeably in areas dense with enemies, particularly as you get deeper in the game. I noticed the framerate problems less with interlacing on, though it negatively affects the graphics so much that I cannot recommend using it. Some information in this section comes from this this thread: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/51325-...d-screens/
The Music and Sound
In addition to everything else, Tempest 2000 has an exceptional soundtrack as well. With an intense euro-style techno score, Tempest 2000 has what is easily one of my favorite game soundtracks ever. I do like the music CD version of the songs maybe slightly better than the versions on the actual cart, but the music on the cart is shockingly great! This may be music on a cartridge but it’s some of the best cart chiptunes I’ve ever heard, and it has great variety and dynamism too, as the music changes depending on which level you are on and what’s going on. There are even vocals in some songs. On that note, there are also a lot of vocal sound effects in this game too. Quite unlike your usual budget bargain-basement Atari Jaguar game, and that’s how most exclusives on this console feel, Tempest 2000 feels like a top-flight production for its time, and the audio is very much a part of that. Every song is just so fantastic! I love techno music and game soundtracks and this is one of the best ever at both.
Strategy
I would say that I am decent at T2K. I’m not amazing at it, but I’m not bad either. My best score is a bit over a million points, which I think is an above average score. I will admit that my best score on real hardware is a bit lower than on emulator, because in emulator it runs fully smoothly, but despite this I have more fun playing on real hardware so that is what I play now. My best on real hardware is about 650,000; decent, but I know I can do better. So what is the best way to play this game? It’s best to keep moving and focus on getting rid of the most dangerous foes. Always make sure to get out of lanes that are about to electrify, kill those large enemies, and try to keep the web clear if possible and focus on timing your shots correctly to take out enemies on top of the web before they get you if you can’t do that.
It’s fun to just hold left or right and fire and shoot stuff, but this won’t get you very far once you get past the first set of levels. You need to pay attention and move carefully, though you don’t want to just stay in one place either, that will lead to a quick death. Balancing this can be difficult given how fast-paced the game is, but quickly scanning the bottom of the web for what foes are coming at you while also avoiding whatever is on top is vital for survival. T2K is the perfect game to get ‘in the zone’ with. Focus, move to defeat the most important threat at each moment, and stay in the zone, staring at the monster-filled abyss in front of you. Yeah, again, there’s something about Tempest that is disturbing to look at, but there is also beauty to it. Hours feel like minutes when you’re in the zone in Tempest.
Conclusion
What more is there to say? Well, I didn’t mention the multiplayer mode, but honestly I’ve never played it. It’s just a two player versus mode though so it’s definitely not the main attraction. Beyond that though, Tempest 2000 for Atari Jaguar is the greatest shooting game ever made. One of gamings’ great masterpieces, T2K is unmatched in its field. The stunning visuals, the sense of tension this game evokes, the feeling of getting into the zone, the amazing soundtrack, the pretty much flawless controls, the interesting and varied level webs you will face, the varied enemies and how as you proceed new foes are added at just the right moments, everything here is peak. Tempest 2000 is an A+ classic and is flat-out one of the best games ever made. This is a top 5 all time console game without question and the only non-Nintendo game that high on my best console games list.
So that’s my review. I think I spent too much time saying ‘this game is great’ and not enough saying why, maybe I will continue working on improving this. But that’s it for now. Also please correct me if I got any facts wrong, which I may have.
Well now this is a bizarre collection of stereotypes of American dietary habits. I mean hey we don't exactly eat healthy, but the notion we're all super excited to eat specifically Kentucky Fried Chicken as our Christmas feast has got to be up there in terms of trashy stereotypes.
I knew about Satelliview, but I wasn't aware of the specifics of another late Super Famicom idea. Nintendo Power wasn't a magazine in Japan, it was a kiosk that allowed certain rewritable cartridges to store a number of copied games on it. The whole history is fascinating, especially hearing that apparently a lot of Japanese game studios at the time were trying to outlaw "used games" themselves. Geez... Corporate culture in Japan is in some ways even more customer hostile than in the U.S.
...So did anyone else see EA's shudder inducing press conference? They basically showed a game being designed by Wesley on the Holodeck or something, with a big boring level full of boxes and generic shooty guys that didn't seem to match any sort of cohesive artistic vision, and then the line... THE line. "Make it more epic", as if we were still living in 2009. Can it also make things more "beast"? ... So, after catching my breath from all the groaning, what I heard was... well generic music that matched tags of "epic" that you can find easily enough on The Youtubes. And then it gave us a pyramid. Yeah... epic... That's one Epic Megagame you've got there you guys. You did it, unsettling "Hello fellow kids" the company.
Posted by: Dark Jaguar - 26th September 2024, 7:13 PM - Forum: Tendo City
- No Replies
Valve has changed their Steam terms of service in a positive way! Now, part of this I think we can thank Biden for, in that he's been pushing for outlawing "forced arbitration" clauses, and so Valve may have wanted to get out ahead of that mandate. As always, a company really only does something good when regulations force them to, or in this case the threat of upcoming regulation.
The point is this. Yes, it does specify WHICH court the matter is resolved in (Washington State), but I'll take it over a company paying the "judge" who will decide a case with no legal recourse available outside that corporate decision. It's a win, frankly, and a very positive one considering how consolidated PC game sales are onto this specific platform. It blindsided me, and I double checked it to the best of my ability, but once I realized exactly what it was saying, I agreed to the shift right away.
