Emulation Has Come for Me

A specter is haunting the world. The specter of this...big...robot...duck

This will come as no surprise to some, particularly not you, my dear sweet and intelligent readers, who definitely already clocked where my TMNT-based obsession was going to lead me, but after playing a lot of TMNT for the NES on my Analogue Pocket, and also using the Cowabunga Collection's version of it on my PC, I got to thinking... what if I did this but also made it look fucking gross like it used to on my old television growing up? What if I put the world's nastiest CRT filter on this bad boy?

I've had RetroArch installed on my Linux machine for... probably as long as I've been running Linux, but I hadn't really done a lot with it beyond booting it up once, pointing it at some files, and fiddling around a bit. This also more or less covers my initial experience with retro handhelds - I have a Retroid Pocket 2 that I put a bunch of stuff on and then kind of didn't really use that much - mostly because it didn't quite have the horsepower to do what I wanted. Even its PSX emulation ended up being a little ropey, so my dream of playing Symphony of the Night on the go was... well, not dashed, entirely, but certainly not as pleasant a dream as I'd hoped (it mostly runs fine but the audio has a crunchiness to it that I just can't deal with). It makes a decent enough PSP, although in the end I didn't even use it much for that (apart from playing most of the way through Peace Walker and Portable Ops). The button feel isn't great, and I will never in my life fully come to grips with how the stubby little analogue sticks feel. This isn't a hardware review by any means (I'm sure that the newer Retroids run and feel a lot better), but it's just to give a little context of where I was before things really got out of hand.

Once I picked up an Analogue Pocket, however, things started to shift - and when I started to get into real sicko territory. It was a gradual process, I think, mostly because it took me a little bit to get everything set up the way I liked it. When I ended up taking it on a work trip, that's when I really started to get into it and drink deeply of the various random-ass games I'd gotten for it. There are so many games I remember playing (or wanting to play) growing up, but for reasons economic I never really had the chance. The Pocket gave me the opportunity to experience those games (well, not all of them, of course. The Pocket's not able to do anything beefier than maybe a 32x reliably, although I do have a PC Engine CD core that kind of works installed on it). The different shaders on the Pocket also got me to finally join the ranks of people who are Into That Shit, specifically because some sprites shouldn't be seen clean. I was never that huge on the whole scanline thing before this, mostly because a lot of the CRT filters and whatnot didn't look very good. On the Pocket's screen, however, it looks very good. The technology has caught up to it, even if it does still feel a little silly for me to be like "I need this to look blurrier so that I can properly relieve my youth" with a lot of this stuff. My point is, the Analogue Pocket is the best piece of hardware I've bought in years.

A Brief Comparison of Scanlines vs No Scanlines, Using TMNT

One of these looks correct to me. The other is way too crisp and you can see just how gnarly the sprites actually are. There's a part of me that is kind of into that, but when I am playing these old games, I prefer the softer look you get with the blur of crt scanlines. It helps that on an OLED monitor CRT emulation looks shit hot.

Okay Back to the Intro

Anyway, the Pocket got me really into bouncing around old favorites and old things I had no idea what the fuck they were but Whatever, and then when the urge to play some slightly beefier old games hit, I first did the normal and rational thing and bought a used Dreamcast and PS2, and secondly started emulating things on my PC a little more. It helps that emulating things on my PC meant emulating things with the Real Good Shit, aka some of the more over-the-top CRT shaders that RetroArch supports. Boy howdy! You put that shit on an OLED monitor and it looks good as hell, I'm telling you! It's disgusting! I love it!

The final piece of the puzzle for me was remembering that at some point, I'd set up a RetroAchievements account (I believe I did it because DuckStation supported it, and I was using DuckStation to play through Metal Gear Solid for the millionth time). Imagine my delight when I saw that RetroArch also supported RA, which is more or less what got me to really start paying attention to what I was doing. I like cheating in games - entering in SICKASS SECRET CODES is one of the parts of gaming I miss in these more Modern Times - but if you want the real reason I've committed to beating TMNT on the NES without using cheats, it's primarily because using cheats disables achievements! So I have to play through TMNT II as honestly as possible or I don't get the achievement for getting a higher score or whatever. Has this made my life more complicated than it needs to be, because now I am hooked on the sweet, sweet dopamine that comes from seeing an achievement pop that only like 15% of people have gotten or whatever so I am constantly chasing the dragon? Yes, maybe.

Anyway, with all that said, here's a couple of games I have stumbled across which I 100% never would have given a second look (sometimes for a very good reason) if not for the fact that, you know, I've got these files and I might as well take a look, right?

Adventure Island (PC Engine CD)

Look at this lil' guy!

No, not that Adventure Island where you're a dude in a loincloth and you throw hammers at snakes, I am talking about the game where you start as a knight and then get turned into a dragon and the castle you're in collapses and now you have to... do something about being a dragon, I think? I don't know if this is in any way related to the NES series of games at all, but it is a Hudson Soft joint so maybe it is? This sent me down a wiki hole and now I know that in fact this Adventure Island was in fact a port of Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, but it's called Adventure Island for reasons I can't even begin to parse. The point is, I think it kind of rules, but that is probably just because I have a soft spot for Adventure Island and its shitty, shitty physics. Learning that it actually came from a whole-ass other game series and the delight of this discovery makes the argument for emulation better than anything else I've done so far.

This guy's here to tell you your password

Actually while I'm at it you know what-

Adventure Island (NES)

Look at this dumb motherfucker

Some of my earliest memories involve visiting my cousins who lived a couple hours south of me. They lived in a giant house, because my uncle had a lot of money, and part of that meant in the basement (furnished, naturally) there was an absolutely massive television. That television had an NES hooked up to it, which is... probably where I first encountered Nintendo's output at all, come to think of it. We played an absolutely incredible amount of Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, Zelda II: The Adventures of Link (a game that I will defend to the death and also a game that is the gold standard for me in terms of... if a game makes me feel the way I felt the first time I played Zelda II, it is going to be a good fucking video game for me. The most recent game to make me feel that way was, I think, Tears of the Kingdom).

Anyway, we also played this piece of shit. I say "piece of shit" but I say it with a deep affection, mostly because I think the music on the first level rules and also because I mean, it's pure nostalgia on my part but I did play a lot of it as a kid! It's fun to go back to it and go like "yep, this game still feels horrible to move around in because the way the momentum works is a fuckin' crime in this game."

Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon - Another Story (SNES)

This is a fan-translated game, so the title may be something else, I'm just going off of the name as it is displayed here.

Here's an interesting one, I think. I guess they just put out a whole damn JRPG Sailor Moon game! I have only ever messed with the beat 'em up Sailor Moon games out there (plus a competitive puzzle game that I stumbled across, and of course there's at least one fighting game). I guess it is set just before the final season of the show, because the gang's all here, but Something is Bringing Back Old Enemies! It's a whole thing. You party up with different Sailor Scouts as you run around town trying to get to the bottom of all this nonsense. This is one that I've only played on my Pocket, which means I have no cool retro cheevos for it. Alas! It's pretty neat though, and I do love Sailor Moon unabashedly because it is extremely silly (well, the anime is anyway. The manga takes itself very seriously for the most part but is also a fun time). I'm not very far into it, but I'll definitely put more time into it!

Now that's what I call a JRPG fighting interface

Bubble Bath Babes (NES)

I don't have any screenshots of this one to share, because I do not want to get into trouble. This is a simple puzzle game that is kind of like Tetris, except the bubbles shift when you clear them so you can put together chains. Now are those bubbles floating up from the naked lady with suds tastefully covering her crotch and her tity out? Yes they are. You can rotate the bubbles but they do not rotate in a way that makes sense, to me. They like, flip on a weird axis that I can't quite figure out? I can't get out of the first stage and I have no idea how high of a score you need to get out of the first stage or if that actually does anything. Do you get a different titty-out lady at the bottom of the screen? I don't know and frankly this game isn't good enough for me to really care. I just think it is fucking hilarious that someone put out a bootleg NES cart in 1991 with a titty out lady and a mediocre Tetris knock-off.

Bucky O'Hare (NES)

BUCKY! CAPTAIN BUCKY O'HAAAAAARE

Yep. That's Bucky O'Hare alright. Toe to tip.

I remember this cartoon surprisingly well. It was not... a great cartoon, but I definitely wanted the action figures as a kid? A little weenie of a kid opens a portal to another dimension populated by the titular Bucky O'Hare and his crew o' rebels, who are fighting aginst the evil Toad Empire. You know how it goes, Bucky and co. are space rabbits and cats and whatnot, there's space battles, it's a whole thing that I bet that if you google image search it with safe search off you'll be exposed to a whole new world. One of the characters is a psychic cat lady, so I bet it has a very dedicated fandom.

Anyway, this is a little gem from Konami, and by "gem" I of course mean "kind of shitty but weirdly compelling." That's how it always is. The setup is simple enough: Bucky's crew gets captured, and you have to go to various planets to rescue them and reassemble your gang. The twist is you can go to any planet you like, and also the game randomizes which crewmember gets sent to which planet. When you rescue a crewmember, you can switch to them (and in fact have to switch to them in some cases, as there are certain obstacles you need specific characters to overcome. That's the interesting bit - the bit that sucks ass is the game doesn't tell you this, so if you go to a planet without the right character, you're fucked and you just have to run out of lives so you can go back to the level selection screen. I don't mind telling you, I think that fucking sucks! The running around feels decent, at least.

Cat Ninden Teyandee (NES)

Not the most exciting environment, honestly. I should've taken a screenshot of the city streets, but Oh Well

Aka Samurai Pizza Cats, or rather the show they made Samurai Pizza Cats out of. I am one of the people who fucking loves Samurai Pizza Cats, because it was a show that really fucking went for it, and also I just think it looks neat! It's good that I think it looks neat, because this game kind of nails the look of the show as far as I can tell.

You play as the whole damn team of pizza cats in this one, each with their own unique powers. At the start of each level - which you select from an overworld map, and even though the levels are numbered and presented in batches of four you can just pick whichever one - you choose the leader, and then roll with your crew through the level which is...

Okay so this is untranslated and I am just guessing, but it seems like you're basically playing through an episode of the show each level. One of the bad guys shows up with a plot, you foil it, you go on to the next plot. This is all told through Ninja Gaiden-esque cutscenes which is pretty standard at this point in the history of the NES (1991, if you were curious). This one feels real good to play, which means that even though I have zero idea of what is going on, the vibes of the show and gameplay make this one a fuckin' treasure. I haven't finished it yet, but it does have a password system so I can pick up where I left off if I want to avoid save states in order to get those sweet, sweet retrocheevs. I've just had a real good time playing this one, the music is pretty good and like I already said the moment to moment gameplay feels snappy.

The platforming's good (and if the platforming is bothering you, one of the cats can fly). Which is something I should mention - each cat (except for the leader cats, who are just good all-rounders and have bitchin' super moves you can find) has its own particular skill. One can fly, one can knock down walls, one can... I think he uses a jackhammer and digs, is what it's supposed to be? Using those skills drains a little help bar which you can either find items to replenish or just switch back to the lead cat to have it refill on its own. You also can pick up different items for a secondary attack that uses a different meter (marked ninpo, since these are I guess ninja cats in the original show instead of samurai pizza cats). That meter doesn't recharge on its own - you have to go looking for items in there. Oh, and every level has multiple different routes through it, as far as I can tell, which you can go through to get extra items and health and whatnot. The boss fights haven't been particularly challenging (I pretty much breezed through the first four, although the fifth one gave me a little trouble) but that's fine! I'll forgive that, because I have really enjoyed the look and feel. A fine appetizer to tide me over until that new Samurai Pizza Cats game releases, I guess!