No Man's Sky

[Harrison]

This has been the case for as long as I can remember. Who remembers seeing the amazing box art and screenshot on 16 bit games, then getting them home and noticing in small print (the graphics shown might not be for this version). Worst was when they used to show the arcade version, which bore little resemblance to the home version.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[Teho]

Is this where I bring up Rise of the Robots again or are we done with that now?

I haven't looked at the game yet, or any other PC game for that matter, because my CPU died several weeks ago. Still waiting for a replacement. The fact that it was in the middle of the holiday and that the norwegian webshop I bought it from is actually in Sweden makes it take ages. Almost three weeks since I sent it now. Annoying as I've been without my gaming rig for basically my entire holiday, and I started Witcher 3 a week or so before. Was going to get through that over the holiday before NMS came out. Also I've been wanting to get back into Elite Dangerous for a bit as it had a major update a couple of months ago which added quite a bit of gameplay and revamped a lot of the mission structures to make it more interesting and more intuitive than it was.

From what I've read about NMS it appears to be exactly what I expected it to be. And it got exactly the hype backlash I expected too. I'm still looking forward to playing it and am sorely tempted to just get the PS4 version. But I'll wait. I've also read about the issues the PC version has, but there are allready workarounds and improved drivers from the GPU manufacturers, so I expect it'll be mostly ok by the time I get it. Which hopefully will be soon.

[Ghost]

This has been the case for as long as I can remember. Who remembers seeing the amazing box art and screenshot on 16 bit games, then getting them home and noticing in small print (the graphics shown might not be for this version). Worst was when they used to show the arcade version, which bore little resemblance to the home version.

Ooh I hated it when they pulled that stuff off, I got suckered a few times because of this.

[Demon Cleaner]

This has been the case for as long as I can remember. Who remembers seeing the amazing box art and screenshot on 16 bit games, then getting them home and noticing in small print (the graphics shown might not be for this version). Worst was when they used to show the arcade version, which bore little resemblance to the home version.

Ooh I hated it when they pulled that stuff off, I got suckered a few times because of this.

I'm glad that already during that time I got everything pirated

[Harrison]

I used to pirate a lot of Amiga games too, but also bought a lot, especially games I really wanted at launch or anything on offer. There were always the pirated/cracked games that didn't quite work properly.

One I remember well was the racing game Nitro. The copy we all had was probably a beta because it ran properly but when you get to the higher level all the level graphics blocks were scrambled. You could still race around the levels but the bits of road were all over the place and you could get stuck in the scenery.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[Demon Cleaner]

One I remember well was the racing game Nitro. The copy we all had was probably a beta because it ran properly but when you get to the higher level all the level graphics blocks were scrambled. You could still race around the levels but the bits of road were all over the place and you could get stuck in the scenery.

WOW. Was that game not called Turbo? We used to play such a game, 2 player, seemed to work fine, but at some point, it ended but you could continue. You could drive over people on the streets and in the cities, trains came in from the side, which you could destroy by shooting them, or just blowing them up by running into them. Was top down view. Awesome game, one of my favorites.

Will try to find some pictures.

[Teho]

No, Nitro was a different. I loved it as well and played it a lot. I liked the dystopic setting and the cyborg drivers who were so obviously based on Sylvester Stallone, Clint Eastwood and Roger Moore. I also liked the music, and have tried to get a hold of it. You can find the original files on Exotica, but they are in a format that Deliplayer supports but does not play well. Samples repeat where they shouldn't and the resulting sound is just a mess. Tried recording the output from WinUAE, but that one attempt ended up sounding bad as well. Was horriby muffled, something with the filters I guess. Also I couldn't record the full length of some tracks, like the loader. Will go back and try that again someday.

I had a version that could actually be completed. It was the final stage that was corrupt on most versions, but the one I had had the final stage replaced with an earlier one. Something the crackers fixed. I've tried playing the original uncracked game in WinUAE, and even that hangs on loading the final stage. I forget who developed the game but it was published by Psygnosis. Odd for them to let something like that slip through. One thing I learned by trying the original is that it actually has a nice raytraced intro. That was removed from my pirated version, probably to get the game down to a single disk. So I never even knew.

I also pirated just about every Amiga game I had. It was too early for me to have any money of my own, and my parents disliked me spending so much time on the computer so would never give me money for computer things, especially not games. Only towards the end of the era did I start gaining funds of my own and got a few originals. But Commodore had allready been bankrupt a while by then and games were just about disappeared from shelves. I got most of the few I had back then by mail order, only Elite 2 do I remember picking up in a store, found it in a bargain bin.

Since then I've bought a small lot or two from online auctions and such but I still only have just over 40 Amiga originals. I just counted, that's actually more than I initially thought. I would love to pick up more and amass a good collection, but you hardly ever see anyone for sale, online or otherwise. There are a couple of gaming expos in Norway, one retro specific and I visit them every year. But the sellers there only deal in console games. I asked around, and the reason is that there just isn't any money to be had in old computer games. Prices are low and customers are few. So keeping an eye out for the few that appear online is the only way it seems.

[Demon Cleaner]

We didn't have any software based computer shops in Luxembourg, could also have been a reason. Plus the mentioned money problem.

- - - Updated - - -

Btw, HOL has an entry: http://hol.abime.net/1525

[Harrison]

I don't think I could have coped without any software stores near me. Locally to me in Southampton in the 80's we had a lot of video game stores, and larger department stores with gaming sections. Was great.

[Demon Cleaner]

We still don't have any real dedicated shop to games, thus buying them online, in discount stores or supermarkets.