25th February 2013, 12:15 PM
Dark Jaguar Wrote:With those N64 Gamesharks, 3.2 added the port on the back, and 3.3 taketh away. However, you could get a software upgrade to the 3.3 version on one with the port still on the back and get it all. That's what I did. I also ended up setting up a really old Laptop with a proper printer port setup and Windows 98 so I could actually run the software. I did the same for a PS1 Gameshark. I don't really use them to "cheat" so much as play around in unfinished code. Also, the N64 Gameshark is the only way to delete the eggs and ice key from Banjo Kazooie, and the totems from Jet Force Gemini.
I guess that one's an earlier model that someone upgraded to v 3.3, then. There's no version sticker on the back, but when booted up it says "3.3" in the menu.
I can't find one of my nonworking Gamesharks, but I did find the other one. It also has the parallel port on the back, and has a "v3.2" sticker on the back. Interestingly, the two look different -- the working one has a flat black plastic style, while the nonworking "3.2" one has a sparkly black finish. Also the nonworking one definitely has an LCD display in that bubble on the front -- it shows numbers in it sometimes. I don't know if the working one has the LCD or not, I haven't seen numbers there anyway. On the broken one, usually the LCD just displays an 8, but when I plugged in the working Gameshark on the bottom, the nonworking one in the middle, and a game on top, it counted down from 5 to 0, before the bottom one booted up as usual. I can't get the nonworking one to work on its own, though.
So uh, how exactly do you use the parallel port thing? I guess I should look it up online, or do you know... I do have a parallel port on my computer, but I'm not sure if I actually have a cable... but I assume I'll need some software online too, to actually read the thing.
Quote:I bought the same weekend sale of Apogee games, and tossed in Raptor Call of the Shadows to round off that deal. Raptor is an amazing game, but unfortunately the version on GOG can only be played in a letterboxed window, all scrunched up on top and bottom. Disappointing that it doesn't support other resolutions to avoid that as the DOS version can.I bought the DOS version of Raptor back in the late '90s, so I don't need the Windows port they're selling there. It runs in a letterboxed window, really? How odd... but the description says that it supports several different resolutions. They all look like that? Tgat's annoying.
You can actually still buy the DOS version of Raptor on 3D Realms' own online (DD) store (they never stopped selling it), but it's not on GOG, probably because the Windows port is already there... though there are a lot of games in 3DR's store that they still haven't put on GOG yet, so who knows.
Quote:I wish they'd get more Apogee games on there though. I want Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Commander Keen Episode 6, and a slew of other games I played as a kid in Shareware.Cosmo is in 3DR's store, and a bunch of other games like Paganitzu, Math and Word Rescues, Crystal Caves and Secret Agent, etc.. Also remember that 3DR/Apogee made some of their games freeware -- Halloween Harry (aka Alien Carnage), Dark Ages (a favorite of mine), BioMenace, the Kroz series, Stargunner, Major Stryker, and several others are of course free on their website.
As for Keen 6 though, that one isn't available anywhere. I was fortunate enough to buy a boxed copy back in the '90s, but anyone who didn't pretty much has to either spend quite a bit to buy it on EBay (and just hope that those old floppies actually still work... stupid floppy disks, they just don't last at all), or pirate it. The problem is that the game has some rights issues; it was originally published by FormGen, who eventually ended up in, I think, Atari (Infogrames) and nobody has wanted to bother to pay for the rights, or something. The other FormGen-only release, Wolf 3D: Spear of Destiny, is now available on Steam, but Keen 6? I guess id doesn't care enough to want to figure the rights out so they can make that one availabel again. :(
Regardless, Keen 6 (and also Spear of Destiny) never were actually Apogee games.