Romhack Thursday: Final Fantasy for MSX, in English

On Romhack Thursdays, we bring you interesting finds from the world of game modifications.

There was a period during the 8-bit era where games best known for being on the NES could get ports to other machines. Most of the ports we got in the US and Europe were not that great. There were a fair number of classic NES games with lackluster home computer adaptions. Even the best of these, like Mighty Bomb Jack, Castlevania and Life Force for the Commodore 64, usually paled compared to their NES counterparts.

I put the blame for this on the cartridge format. While a much more expensive media for releasing software than disks or tapes, it had the great advantage of being enormously flexible. The whole phenomena of mapper chips and other in-cart add-on hardware on the NES had no counterpart on the C64 during its heyday, even though there was really no reason the ’64 couldn’t use the same kinds of chips that the NES used.

Things were a little different in Japan on their native microcomputer platforms. While anemic ports were certainly possible there (like the infamous Super Mario Bros. Special) a fair number of console games got pretty good computer ports. Many of the best of these were for the Sharp X68000, a system I really must cover in detail soon, but the MSX platform got a fair number, many due to the efforts of Konami.

Both Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy for MSX ports with their own unique properties. Today’s post is about Final Fantasy, which recently got an English translation, and which in play and structure resembles its NES original to a large degree. It’s even a slight upgrade, with more colors in its characters and able to make use of an MSX sound expansion cartridge for improved music.

The game was reimplemented from the ground up, so it’s even missing many of the bugs that the Famicom original, forged out of raw bytecode as it was by consummate hacker Nasir Gebelli, is known to have. It would probably be the definitive early version of Final Fantasy if it didn’t play painfully slowly. You can’t see it in these screenshots, but instead of the world sliding smoothly across the screen as on the NES the terrain snaps by in eight pixel steps, and your party also walks more slowly than on Nintendo’s machine. And while it’s not as bad as loading times in the Playstation 1 Final Fantasy games, the game still lingers on a blank screen for several seconds when fights begin and end, which will drive you nuts before long.

The English translation patch that FCandChill put together basically just uses the NES game’s script, so no surprises there. These days games in the style of those early JRPGs are quite out of style, but if you still have a hankering to play a game that basically demands that you grind out levels to have a chance and where you will almost certainly total party wipe at least once during your run, you could do worse.

English translation patch of Final Fantasy for the MSX2 (romhacking.net)

The Latin American Games 2023 Showcase

This is an indie showcase covering the demos I check out during the Latin American Games Showcase for 2023.

0:00 Intro
00:29 Super Crane Bug
1:56 Uniduni
3:07 Tiny Witch
4:21 The Bunny Graveyard
5:45 Super Hiking League DX
7:33 God Machine
8:44 Hannah

Set Side B is One Year Old!

Thanks for reading Set Side B! This year we’ve talked about roguelikes and classic arcade games and romhacks and silly game videos and even some more esoteric subjects, like Wordle clones and crossword puzzles, and all kinds of other things. We intend to bring you lots more, over the next year, from the Flipside of Gaming.

Might I suggest taking a moment to investigate some of our finely-sifted tags? There’s @Play, the continuation of my old GameSetWatch roguelike column, Arcade for Arcade Mermaid and other arcade gaming posts, Sundry Sunday for fun gaming memes and videos, and Romhack for Romhack Thursday and similar posts.

PannenKoek2012 Returns: Crashing Super Mario 64 With Pendulums

PannenKoel2012 is the Super Mario 64 enthusiast (that’s the only word I can think of that matches) who has been working on reducing the number of A button presses needed to finish the game. They haven’t gotten it down to zero yet, and likely never will, but by resorting to increasingly extreme measures they continue to figure out ways to get it down. I think they’ve been working at this project for over 12 years; the oldest video on their Youtube account is that old.

Of arguably more interest than their quest, though, is its interesting byproducts, which is a series of Youtube videos, on both their main channel and alternate channel UncommentatedPannen, which not only explain how their many subtle and effective stratagems work, but also a number of aspects of how Super Mario 64’s engine works, and even basic principles of computer science. These videos are so in-depth that they have their own wiki to track the concepts they use, to explain turns like Parallel Universe (PU) and Pedro Spot.

When I say they return, it’s not that they ever left, but it’d been a while since they had a solid explainer. Now they have one, it has spoken narration instead of the text that marks many of the best videos, and the production values have even increased a bit:

In this video, a clever way to manipulate the pendulums in Tick Tock Clock to crash the game after 39 1/2 days of playing also takes into its sweep an excellent explanation of many of the systems compilers use to represent numbers and their limitations.

And here are a number of those interesting videos (by no means complete) that they’ve posted in the past: The Art of Cloning (17m29s) – Walls, Floors and Ceilings parts One (37m23s), Two (32m5s) and Three (37m26s, all three together being a pretty through explanation of how Mario 64’s platforming system works) – Blinking (eyes, 8m40s) – Floats (9m23s) – Pause Buffering (8m7s) – Pitch Conversation and Yaw Velocity Conservation (15m15s) – Sleeping (Mario, 7m25s) – Random Number Generation (12m37s) – Wall Hitboxes (6m50s) – Releasing Objects (5m18s) – How Holding Objects Really Works (12m1s) – Units, Speed and Sense of Scale (4m41s)

How to Crash SM64 Using a Pendulum (Youtube, one hour 12 minutes)

Daytona USA 2001 for Dreamcast Online Functionality Being Restored

Some exciting news for people who have set up their Dreamcasts for online play. While official servers for Dreamcast games have all been taken down long ago, fans have worked towards making their own fan-run versions, and word from Dreamcast Junkyard is that they’re close to getting one working for Daytona USA 2001! While the game was released with online play, the servers for that game went down very quickly, staying up for just 18 months. Dreamcast Junkyard has an interview with ioncannon, the person responsible for this wondrous event.

Images from the article, ultimately from ioncannon

If you have a Dreamcast and the game, you won’t have to edit anything to get it working, but the Dreamcast Broadband Adapter does not work with it. You’ll have to use the built-in Dreamcast Modem in conjunction with DreamPi, a method for using a Raspberry Pi to connect a Dreamcast to the internet.

All the details are in the interview, so if you’re interested in trying this or just want to learn more, there the info be.

The Dreamcast Junkyard: Daytona USA 2001 is due to be Playable Online on the Dreamcast for the First Time in 21 Years

Set Side B Changes Formats!

I’m thrilled to announce that today marks the beginning of big news for Set Side B. We’re switching our theme! We’re no longer providing the most eclectic and interesting of retro, indie and niche gaming information. No, starting on this auspicious day we’re going to all old websites and ancient meme videos!

We’re talking zombo.com! We’ve got YTMND! The Onion! I Can Has Cheezburger! Know Your Meme!

You like wikis? Have you heard of Everything2, or The Earth Edition of the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? I hear there is also another upstart wiki-based knowledge site out there somewhere, we look forward to the day when it’s nearly as content-packed as E2 or H2G2.

Remember Slashdot? Remember Digg? I mean the Digg after the Digg that succeeded Digg! Have you been to Fark lately? How about MetaFilter? For some reason I’m still there! The twin fonts of news, Salon and Slate! Liberal infozones Dailykos and Talking Points Memo, they still exist, thumbing their noses at ennui and entropy!

Project Gutenberg is still gamely trying to give away a trillion ebooks! Snopes debunks all the worst misinformation out there, and Cecil Adams’ The Straight Dope column stopped running, but seems to be now running again, and new columns debut on their message boards! And the Internet Archive, in particular their Wayback Machine, is an essential tool for any thinking netizen, and I hear they could really use your support!

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency still brings a droll sort of funny. The IMDB may be owned by Amazon now, but you can still get a ton of information on nearly every form of visual media there. Rotten Tomatoes still aggregates movie reviews from critics and viewers alike.

Game stuff? GameFAQs, although owned by Gamespot, is still around, and StrategyWiki is the good version of what Fandom ruthlessly exploits. The Cutting Room Floor provides info and esoterica on hundreds of games!

There are webcomics too! Let’s see. XKCD, Argon Zark, Dork Tower, Order of the Stick, Penny Arcade, PvP, Bob the Angry Flower, Girl Genius, Megatokyo and The Perry Bible Fellowship! Also Maakies and Red Meat (although they’re a tad edgier, and Makkies is sometimes NSFW).

We hope you’ve enjoyed this April Fool’s Day post! Happy thoughts! It’s intended as a real and useful post and certainly isn’t just an excuse to write whatever I wanted today!

But pleaase remember: the internet isn’t forever. The sites you love now won’t always be around. Ask me about Suck.com, Plastic, or the Brunching Shuttlecocks someday. But not today, I’ve got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.

Have a few ancient Youtube videos from our voluminous files! (Yes, we keep files of cool Youtube videos. We’re awesome that way.)

That should be enough for now. Gotta keep some of it in reserve. For later….

Chrontendo 61!

Does it seem to you like there’s been a lot of Youtube videos here lately? It’s an unfortunate fact that a lot of the information and articles that once would have been in informative and quick-reading blog posts are now presented to the internet in a format that requires video editing software to create and 15+ minutes of your time to watch.

However, with Chrontendo it’s worth it. Dr. Sparkle’s epic-length tour through the entire run of the Famicom’s and NES’s libraries. Most episodes are an hour or longer, but you definitely get your time’s worth by watching them. And like U Can Beat Video Games, it’s nice just to have running in the background while you do other things.

We linked to Chrontendo #60 last June, titled “The Most Perverted Episode.” Sadly Chrontendo #61 doesn’t come with any titillation factor; it’s title is “Not really worth the wait.” It’s a series of games ranging from pretty bland to outright terrible. Covered are the months of May and June 1990, plus one game that’s a holdover from April. Within the video is footage and commentary on:

  • Castle Quest, which is not the same game as Castlequest in the U.S., which was a renamed localization of a game called Castle Excellent in Japan. It’s a turn-based strategy game that’s like Chess against a computer opponent, but with a random factor.
  • Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished: The Final Chapter, which isn’t so bad, but was greatly overshadowed by the must more impressive Turbografx CD version released around the same time.
  • Baken Hissou Gaku: Gate In, yet another horse racing sim, this one with an extremely bland presentation.
  • Jajamaru Gekimaden: Maboroshi no Kinmajou, a so-so ninja adventure/Zelda clone.
  • Snake’s Revenge, the disowned sequel to Metal Gear that Hideo Kojima didn’t work on, a game that some people like but Dr. Sparkle doesn’t. I’ll say it’s more polished than NES Metal Gear, at least.
  • Remote Control, a video version of a nearly forgotten MTV game show that couldn’t use any of the celebrity likenesses from the show.
  • Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, another of the Disney Afternoon tie-in games. Dr. Sparkle admits it’s not bad, and it’s probably the best game of the episode, but is only really interesting when played co-op with two players. There’s a fairly scandalous piece of Gadget fanart here, scavenged from the aptly-named halls of DeviantArt.
  • Rally Bike, a port of a Taito arcade motorcycle game with much less polish than the original. I note that this game was ported by one of my un-favorite developers, Visco.
  • Battle Fleet, another turn-based strategy game, with a naval theme.
  • And S.C.A.T.: Special Cybernetic Attack Team, a game that plays a bit like Capcom’s Forgotten Worlds, but without that game’s hallucinatory visuals.

Chrontendo #61 (Youtube, 1 hour and 1 minute) – archives – previously

Arcade Gradius II Compared to PC Engine CD Version

These days, if you’re playing a game with multiple versions, there’s usually one specific version you want. For pre-Crash games, if there’s an arcade version, most of the time, it’s the one you want. After the Crash it becomes less definite. Super Mario Bros. at home is a much more playable game that the arcade version. Vs. Super Mario Bros., which is hungry for those quarters. For games like Smash T.V. though you still usually want to play the arcade version.

The arcade and PC Engine CD version of Gradius II though are a much closer call. In a couple of places this home version is actually slightly better, or slightly harder, than the arcade original. It also contains an extra level that’s missing from the arcade.

Inglebard Gaming on Youtube has played through both games entirely and shows them to you side by side, so you can decide for yourself!

Gradius II Arcade vs PC Engine Super CD (Youtube)

Editorial: Where Are Retro Games Going?

This editorial doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of this blog. However, blogs don’t have views anyway, so what would that even mean?

I was sitting and watching some Zelda: Breath of the Wild videos in a Metafilter post by Fizz, from streamer PointCrow. I was going through the usual generation shock–I the hyper-frenetic editing, zooming visuals with added sound effects, slow zooms, constant cues telling me how they want me to feel, combined with his constant state of hype and excitement, they were wearing on me. But that’s probably just my age? As much as it pains me to admit it I’m not young anymore, having just turned fifty last month. Maybe it’s just the style of popular youth media now Somehow I don’t think it is, I don’t see everyone doing that. I suspect it’s really Youtube’s algorithm that prioritizes engagement really really hard, that pushes some people to those lengths. Anyway, I don’t intend to make this into a screed against PointCrow, who obviously works very hard to succeed, and does have some interesting videos. By all means watch a few if you want. That’s not the point of this post anyway.

Movie notwithstanding, does anyone care about Super Mario Bros. anymore, for its own sake?

It was while watching it that I started to realize how insular these kinds of video can be? If you don’t know anything about Breath of the Wild, a lot of it will be impenetrable to you. That may be why there’s so many videos about this game in particular. There’s like a while little genre of BotW videos that show off tricks, odd corners of the game, and amazing feats in it. I post about them here sometimes even.

My worry has to do with the phenomenon of retro (from our perspective) gaming in general. We often hear people talk about games like Super Mario Bros. and the original Legend of Zelda as if there were some kind of timeless classics, which is a bold statement to make even approaching 40 years out from the Famicom’s launch. Timeless is timeless, and in centuries will anyone know or even care about it? The jury is still out of course on whether humans will still be around in that time, but let’s presume they will be.

It’s a tricky and devious game for people not prepare for it, but the original Legend of Zelda is surprisingly playable now.

In fact, let’s restrict out scope to the relatively near future, maybe 20 years from now. Will people still care about the 8-bit era of games around that time?

We have some reason to believe that they aren’t played as much now as they used to be. NES-era games, on the Switch, are no longer sold individually, like they were on the Wii and Wii-U, but in bulk, as part of a subscription. That seems to indicate, I think, that they haven’t turned out to be as much of a selling point individually as before.

My hope is that they will, and I think games like Super Mario Bros. do have some qualities that don’t just expire like the milk left in the fridge for a month. But they don’t exist in a vacuum, and what gives me cause for concern is the ways in which these games are experienced now.

I think that retro games still fill a useful niche, in that they’re solidly-made and challenging games, with a distinctive look and sound, that don’t have gigantic playtimes. Super Mario Bros. will not claim weeks of your life. Even the longer ones don’t demand as much of your attention and times as a AAA-title Square Bethesda WA Microsoft Co Inc. And indie games, while often worthy, are often a risk to spend money on. Many NES-era games are well known to be playable and interesting, which is how they got to be popular in the first place.

My concern, though, is that as the people who grew up with these games age, their original context is being increasingly lost. Less and less often, the people who play and think about these games didn’t come to them from mostly personal, pre-internet perspectives, but as something brought to them by other people, meaning, not just hearing about them, but being pre-spoiled regarding their gameplay, and especially from watching streamers and speedrunners.

What, I wonder, is the ratio between people playing games as intended, and those purposely trying to break them in a variety of ways, and do superplays? Are new game players inundated by streaming culture? Do they get the sense that 8-bit games are only interesting if one tries to blow them up? And in the future, will people continue to find their way to games like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, and appreciate them for what they are?

Is there perhaps space out there for people just doing normal runs of retro games? I wonder if I should give it a shot.