First up is legitimacy. In the past, I’ve been an advocate for getting into the guts of your console and modding it – this could be for adding better a/v outputs, controlling the refresh rates (50hz/60hz), and breaking open region protection. Cue up the PS3 then – all the AV outputs I need, standard refresh rate, reasonably good media playback (with transcoding sorting out the rest, albeit a bit messy), easy backup of the whole system to an external device, out of the box 2.5″ HDD swapping and, most importantly, region-free.

Let’s go back to that last point – region-free.

So, most of the boxes are ticked, especially that last one – I’ve been actively importing my games since the Saturn era when I first got the internet at home and the gaming world opened its doors, and the fact that the PS3 is region-free by default and that the SATA drive can be expanded on demand? Perfect.

So for me personally, I have no need for modding my PS3. I mean, even in terms of the cost of gaming, this is easily the cheapest generation for gaming. With the competition introduced from the discount cycles from specialist and general retailers, readily available imports and favourable exchange rates, it is comparably very cheap to game this generation. Compare even brand new RRPs of $110 for a new PS3 blockbuster, and compare that to the early-mid 90s where the average cart would set you back $100. I can even list specifics – Sonic 3: $140; Super Street Fighter 2: $180; Virtua Racing: $200. Take into consideration inflation, and it’s pretty clear that prices in this generation are extremely favourable if you shop around.

So, given how open the PS3 is, is it necessary? Arguably no, it isn’t, and I base my opinion on the above.

To be honest though, it really isn’t surprising – the moment they took away Linux support out of the box, they raised the ire of their consumer base, but more importantly, they also raised the ire of the Linux community, who are notorious for making Linux available on any/all platforms (bless ‘em!). I remember thinking that this decision would come back and bite them, and to be honest, I’m not surprised that this has come out of the woodwork post-Linux cancellation. In this regard, Sony have to take a bit of the blame for the knee-jerk reaction they had with removing Linux support. While I never used it, I liked what this symbolised about the PS3, and was disappointed to see it removed.

But so far this has all been negative – so why not look at this as an opportunity? The old mentality with regards to modding has been iron-fisted, and to stamp out change/challenges to the established order. Why not take this opportunity to make a pre-emptive strike against some of the issues users have raised with the PS3? Here’s a few to think about:

• Re-introduce OtherOS support
• Improve PSone emulation to add true high resolutions and nice filtering
• Add PS2 emulation via software
• Remove regioning for PSone and PS2 games, and for DVDs and BRDs
• Add the option to install games to the HDD alla the XB360
• Create homebrew licenses to allow groups to contribute to the PS3 legitimately
• For the hell of it, make the system compatible with PSP games downloaded via PSN
• Update the media playback functionality of the machine – MKV, subtitles (embedded or separate), better xvid/div support, etc
• Introduce some interesting emulators – Neo Geo, CPS2 and CPS3 wouldn’t hurt for example, especially with some nice netcode

Sony pre-empted a lot of the reasons legitimate users traditionally modded their machines by introducing progressively better media playback, excellent backwards compatibility (well, at first), user-serviceable HDDs with out-of-the-box backup to any USB HDD, Linux support, 60hz performance and region-free gaming. Why not continue this attitude by making some progressive steps forward again?

Note that I’m not advocating piracy or any of that nasty business – if I like a game I buy it, and the reason I mod my machines is because of those points I raised in the second paragraph.

Just my $0.02.

No related posts.

So, on Friday nights I check PSN to see what new stuff has come out, and low and behold, after much drooling over screenshots and trailers, Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game is out. I downloaded the demo, Wifey and I fired through the first level, and I bought the full game immediately.

There is so much about this game that is just so right – beautiful spritework (thanks Paul Robertson, you’re my hero!!), amazing chiptune audio, fantastic old school gameplay with a few twists, local co-op, and all in 1080p, razor-sharp low-res style 2D gold. Then there’s all the fan service to the greats of years gone by, and probably heaps of other goodies I haven’t uncovered since we’ve only played through the first level…

I need to spend more time enjoying this game. You should as well. if you have a PS3, download it. If you have an XB360, hang in there, it shouldn’t be too far away. For those unawares, enjoy a trailer:

I really should do a special on Paul Robertson as well, the man is a certified superchamp.

Related posts:

1. Afterburner Climax – Game of the Year 2010
2. Jeremy “Junglist” Ray axed from Good Game, the plot thickens…

The problem I’ve had for a while now has been with some persistent issues regarding convergence and clean lines on the existing monitor, but the main issue I’ve had is knocking out some nasty interference on the tube from what looks like some omnipresent unshielded speakers. Despite attacking it with a degaussing wand, I haven’t been able to permanently shift it, and talking to a few ops and techs, I’ve been told the tube’s probably on the way out. Given the machine’s originally from Japan (though the tube’s been changed since it made it’s way to local shores I’d hazard at a guess, given the dodgy chassis driving the tube before I switched to a genuine Pentranic dual-resolution chassis) and has made it’s way across the country, this isn’t surprising.

So, what to do? I floated the idea of grabbing a big 29″ tri-res tube and use that, but the issue with going this way are that 15k games (which are the majority of arcade games out there) generally look a bit rubbish on most tri-res chassis’ compared to a 15k or 15k/24k chassis, and the cost of the tube (well, tube + postage) is enormous. So, what to do?

After asking around at Aussie Arcade, I found out that Jomac can do a 29″ universal chassis that can be used on old TV tubes. So, given a 68cm TV will suit a 29″ tube frame, the prospects get much better. Given the relatively negligible cost of CRTs at the moment (a lot of my fellow arcade fanboys at AA are pros at nabbing working tubes off the side of the road during hard rubbish!), I managed to nab one for pretty much nothing that’s in great physical condition and a prime candidate for plonking into my cab. All I need now is a uni chassis to suit (I’ve already checked in with Jomac and he’ll be able to sort me out), and I’ll be fine to go. Given I’ve already had plenty of practice hooking up chassis components to tubes when my old generic chassis died last year (including safely discharging the tube), the job shouldn’t be too tricky.

So, this means I’ll be able to swap out the old tube for a relatively new one, pair it with a nice 15/24k universal chassis, and be up and running with a great little setup. Definitely makes for an easier and more cost-effective way of swapping tubes around, and will leave me with a working 15/25k Pentranic CH-288 chassis I can either hold on to, or sell off to offset the cost of the new chassis.

So that’s part 3 – part 4 will deal with more scope creep, this time involving the addition of some old PC parts.

To keep track of the whole project, just use the Sega Astro City Overhaul tag – the whole series will be added to it over time.

Related posts:

1. Rotating the monitor on my Sega Astro City
2. Overhauling the Sega Astro City – Part 1, power supplies
3. Overhauling the Sega Astro City – Part 2, audio amplification and fans

In line with the previous post, I want to add a way to have a stereo amp in the cabinet to take care of line-level sources and enhanced stereo sound (e.g. Naomi, CPS-II, Sega Model 3, etc). So, in the spirit of making the cab as universal as possible, I need to look at adding in a small amp that can be switched on or off as required, and be able to direct either amplified sound off the JAMMA cable or amplified stereo output as required. So, this is what I’ve come up with:

It’s not all the difficult – I’ll need to rewire the 4-pin connector that goes from the speakers at the top of the cab so that they’re separated into stereo channels, then create a little switch to roll between a split dual-mono amplified output (from the JAMMA harness) or stereo output from the stereo amp, which in turn is powered off a 12v source (with switch to control when it’s on) and grabs its input directly from the PCB (Naomi, Model 2, etc).

This then means the audio can be setup in the cab when inserting a new board. All I’ll need are a pair of stereo RCA cables to run form the CPS-II or Naomi boards (and make a stereo RCA adapter for the Model 2/Model 3 boards) and run them off a pair of 12v mono amps I already have around the place, and I should be good to go.

The other addition I’d like to add is a stereo controller I can mount on the cab to adjust the output before it goes to the speakers as required – there’s currently a cheap knob the previous op added to give this kind of functionality, but it’s not a true stereo actuator, and doesn’t do much except distort the audio

Of course, the great thing with this setup is that it won’t cost much at all to add this kind of functionality. To make it clean though, I’ll plonk the lot into a small project box and mount everything inside it. This way, I can use the same project box to run a 12v switch to selectively power the 12v fan I got with my Model 3 kit before. And to make sure I don’t mangle my hand again, I’ll also grab a pair of 120mm fan guards to avoid any more stupidity

Thus ends part 2 – part 3 will deal with the lovely scope creep and deciding what to do with my monitor

To keep track of the whole project, just use the Sega Astro City Overhaul tag – the whole series will be added to it over time.

Related posts:

1. Overhauling the Sega Astro City – Part 1, power supplies
2. Overhauling the Sega Astro City – Part 3, monitor replacement
3. Rotating the monitor on my Sega Astro City

I’ve recently been looking at the existing setup inside my Astro, and can’t help but feel that it needs some work. The wiring is a bit of a rat’s next at times, I don’t know where all the cabling’s going, I’ve had to beef up to wiring on the 5v connections to increase the PSU’s output, the PSU itself is on the way out, as is the existing arcade monitor.

Where things got to a bit of a head was with regards to power issues – I’ve recently grabbed a Naomi and currently have a couple of Model 2 and Model 3 boards that need a reasonable amount of juice on tap. So, I figured that maybe I should investigate rewiring the way the power supply worked. The problem here was finding a power supply that couple happily take everything from a mid-80s PCB all the way through to resource-hungry Model 3 and Naomi setups. This left me with two options:

Option 1 – Parallel PSUs

In this case, I’m taking the 240v AC supply, chaining it across my existing 15A arcade PSU, chaining it to another 15A PSU and finally chaining it to a 3.3v PSU I bought a while back. From here, I then wire it to a distribution block, which connect to suit Naomi, Model 2/3 or JAMMA.

The pros with this is that all I need is another PSU (cheap and accessible), it runs off 240v (no need to run it through the transformer), and doesn’t require too much tomfoolery.

However, against this is – will it actually work on games that need a full load? What if one fails? Is it really safe to be mixing too PSUs together to get this kind of power distribution.

This then leads to option 2:

Option 2 – Dedicated PSU

In this case, the aim is to grab a Sega Sun power supply, since they are great pieces of kit and are certified to power anything you can throw at them.

There are some challenges with this – cost (they’re more expensive and more difficult to get locally), only 110v (therefore would require some extra work on hooking it into the transformer), no -5v output.

In the end though, I decided to go for the above setup – fork out the extra for the PSU, grab a Negatron to introduce a true -5v connection where necessary for older boards, and run them all off a distribution block.

However, after chatting with some more experienced arcade builders, I decided to change the model a little – instead of having a big distribution block, I decided to simply create a handful of male JST plugs for each connection (e.g. JAMMA, Model 2/3 and use standard cabling for the Naomi) and hook them directly into the JST power plugs on the PSU. The following is the final run:

So, I figured if I was going to start rewiring some areas of the cabinet to accomodate the PSU and make the whole setup more universal, there are two other factors to consider – amplification for line-level sources and getting the 12v fan from the Model 3 setup up and running when needed – you’ll see these (as well as switches to accomodate them and the Negatron when needed) have been added to the above diagram.

But I’ll stop here before I get too carried away – part 2 will deal with more of the planning behind this project.

To keep track of the whole project, just use the Sega Astro City Overhaul tag – the whole series will be added to it over time.

Related posts:

1. Overhauling the Sega Astro City – Part 2, audio amplification and fans
2. Overhauling the Sega Astro City – Part 3, monitor replacement
3. Update on power supply problems with Virtua Fighter 3 (Model 3) PCB

Equipment needed:

• 4.43mhz crystal oscillator (WES Component # QXO-1100, source [Australia])
• Thin-gauge wire
• Soldering iron (15 or 25 watt – I use the latter, but 15w ones are better I’m told)
• Solder and desoldering wick (if you stuff up)
• Stanley knife or something sharp to cut PCB traces
• Screwdriver (d’uh!)

Disclaimer

You mod your machine at your own risk. Myself nor anyone else is responsible for YOU modding YOUR Mega Drive/Genesis. If your machine doesn’t work as a result of this, don’t blame me – you do this mod at your own risk.

Intro

Throwing a 50/60hz switch is easy to do on a Mega Drive – for PAL gamers, the problem is to get it to output the 60hz signal in colour. Providing you have a telly that can accept RGB via SCART, this is a non-issue – the RGB feed comes out great regardless of whether its in 50hz or 60hz. Should you have a 32X, you’re also set – the a/v-out on the 32X cleans up the 60hz colour issue, though apparently some early model Mega Drives still have issues despite this.

So, if like myself and plenty of others you don’t have a SCART socket on your telly or a 32X, this mod will show you how to fix up this arse of a fault in your PAL Mega Drive and get it to output 60hz as a proper PAL60 signal, whether it be via crappy composite leads or a custom-built s-video connection. Props out to viletim! from the NFG Games forums who came up with the solution btw – we in the community owe this one to him! Note this was all done on an original model PAL Mega Drive, not model 2 or 3 or what-not; your console may differ from mine, so you mod your machine at your own peril.

Step one: Disassemble Mega Drive

This one’s pretty easy so I won’t go into it – disassemble the whole lot, including the heatsink and everything. We want to be able to take the PCB (printed circuit board, or the board that is the guts of the Mega Drive) entirely out off the case to get to the underside of the PCB itself. If you know your way around the Mega Drive, you could probably skip taking the heatsink off the board itself if you know where the CXA-1145 chip is; otherwise, remove it.

Step two: locating the chip

The aim of this mod is to feed a new signal onto pin 6 of the Mega Drive’s CXA-1145 chip to get it to generate a colour picture when it’s running in 60hz. Obviously to do this we’ll need to find the chip. The CXA-1145 (or the Irony Chip as I call it – “It’s a Sony”) is located on the top left-hand side of the PCB underneath the poxy RF mod we all used in the 90s owing to our crap-tacular tellies. See the image below for a general guide:

Or for a dodgy close-up view, here’s this:

Our victim will be pin 6 of the CXA-1145, which is the oscillator input. Apparently anyway. Viletim! said it was, and my crap understanding of schematics reckons that’s what its called, so we’ll call it that. You could also name the pin the “Mr Bob” pin or “I wish I were as cool as Sauceman” pin for all I care (“Kloppy is a champ” pin is another), as long as you use pin 6, it’s all good. To work out which is pin 6, count from the bottom-right of the chip if you’re looking at it normally, or in the above image, the bottom left-hand side (the one with a little ‘1′ printed on the PCB) and count up six pins… or just use the above image as a guide and count to the right. It’s all good.

Step three: Cutting the trace

Now we’ve located the chip and the pin, we need to turn the board over so we can attack it with a stanley knife or equivalent cutting device (I’ve heard of x-acto knives or somesort being talked about in the past – whatever, as long as you can use it to cut a trace on the PCB). You could use pin 1 as a guide and count up then follow the traces from pin 6 through a capacitor and a resistor to get to the point we need, but thanks to the power of the intarweb [sic] and some schematics available online, we can use the references to the capacitors and resistors to work out what we’re supposed to cut.

You’ll need to look for ‘C28′ and ‘R23′ – see below:

Now, the astute observer will notice that there is a thin trace that runs off the resistor and continues along its merry path to the 315-5313 IC8. What we need to do is cut this trace AFTER its followed the resistor – see below for an example:

And for your reference, here’s what I did:

Make sure you do this carefully and DO NOT cut any of the other traces nearby. Good lighting and a steady hand makes a really big difference here – be patient cut the trace all the way through. You’ll know you’ve severed it when you can see the green trace all gone and the core of the circuit board is visible; you know, the light brown stuff. If you don’t cut it all the way through, the mod won’t work correctly. If you accidently cut the wrong trace or damage a nearby one, make sure you bridge it – GameSX has some good guides to this, so visit their website for more info.

Step 5: Wiring the oscillator, part 1

Okay, before we get into soldering to the PCB, let’s get our oscillator ready to go. All this is based on the assumption you’re using the WES component # QXO-1100 that I used; I’m assuming you could substitute it for something similar, but you do that at your own peril. I’m just following what was suggested to me.

The image below is of the oscillator’s specs from the catalogue:

You’ll note that there are 4 pins and that it has rounded edges, the exception being the one labelled ‘NC’ or ‘not connected’ which was a straight edge – this is important so we know which pins require what in order to operate. The + pin requires 5v that we can draw anywhere from the board, and the – pin requires a ground connection that we can also grab from the board. The out pin is the bit that sends out the signal we need, and consequently is the pin we need to connect to the PCB point we’ve just cut. The nc pin isn’t connected, and we use the straight corner to work out how we wire everything up.

How you wire it is up to you – I threw it onto some veroboard and soldered to the underside of it, but looking back I probably didn’t need to. Since it can be a little squeezy inside the Mega Drive’s case, I wired everything so I could have it sitting in the space beside the PCB when I put the console back together, hence why I used long lengths of wire. There may be better options out there, but I figured that’d do for now.

With that out the way, let’s actually get to work.

Step 6: Wiring the oscillator, part 2

Okay, let’s do the deed. First up, wire the + and – points – I used the ground pin on the CXA-1144 (pin 1) to get my – bit, and tapped the 5v point over on where I set up my 50/60hz and language switches (see below for images – I’m pretty sure I tapped JP2 for it). I think the CXA-1145 has somewhere where you could tap 5v, but I was too lazy to work it out Grab some appropriate lengths of wire (as you can see below, I used reasonably long lengths for where I was going to let the oscillator sit), strip the ends, tin the tips and get to work on the + and – points.

Next, we have to get the output from the new oscillator to feed into the CXA-1145 – you could either solder directly to the trace, or do the lazy method and solder to the pad the resistor is sitting on that runs along the trace (in the pics below, it’s the one to the right, or the one the trace runs off). Just don’t get too carried away and f&*% up the resistor, otherwise you’ll have to repair or replace it. The following images show how I hooked everything up:

Step 7: Finishing up

Well, that’s the bulk of it done. Use electrical tape on the connections to make sure you don’t stress the joins you’ve made, then wrap a layer of electrical tape around the chip to make sure nothing causes a short anywhere. Reassemble and don’t pull on those wires! I plonked mine near the headphone bits ’cause there was room there.

Step 8: Test it!

Test your Mega Drive and hopefully it works! I tested all my PAL, US and Japanese games and they worked fine. You’ll find that when you swap between 50/60hz there’s a lag of about 1-second before it gets the colour right, but that just be my display device. Otherwise, it’s all good. I’ve tested this in composite and s-video connections and had total success. I’m not sure if this will screw around with the RGB signal, so if it does and you want to reverse it, desolder everything and bridge the gap you created when you cut the trace coming off pin 6 on the CXA-1145. I’ve posted previously about running this same Mega Drive through a RGB to component transcoder and had good results, but running it natively on a TV with RGB via SCART? Haven’t tried it. Should be fine, though.

And that’s it! Good luck, and feel free to leave comments if you have any questions, or fire across an e-mail via the Contact page. If you want to view the lot, you can do so via the gallery.

Related posts:

1. Getting component video out of a Sega Mega Drive (works for other RGB signals as well!)
2. Something Awful presents movie posters as video games (book covers too!)
3. Rotating the monitor on my Sega Astro City

Expect a review once it’s out

Related posts:

1. Finishing up the annual viewing of Retro Core
2. Retro Otaku gets its own domain – www.retro-otaku.com!
3. Joygasm – Afterburner Climax coming to PSN/XBLA?

This topic has come up a few times on one of the forums I frequent so I figured it couldn’t hurt to post a quick how-to if anyone else is interested in a no-solder solution for getting component video out of a Sega Mega Drive, something that’s particularly handy if you have display devices that can’t take RGB via a SCART cable (like yours truly!).

The concept’s simple – grab a RGB signal out of the Mega Drive, run it through a transcoder, display on your TV. The trick was finding a box that could do it, as a simple input converter won’t do the trick, you need to transcode the signal on the fly for it to work. Previously this has been a bit pricey to do, but with eBay and other stores flooded with a stack of RGB to component (or YUV if you prefer that acronym instead) converters, it’s not too difficult to track one down, especially following GameSX’s excellent wiki entry on the CSY-2100 chipset.

So, on with the simple tute – grab a decent RGB SCART cable (I got mine from an eBay seller in the UK called pcenginesales, excellent product, price and service), ensuring the cable’s carrying RGB and not just composite video, a transcoder (mine came with a UK 12v AC adapter, so I just added a power point converter to it since we run 240v locally as well), three RCA cables (colour coded if it helps, I had a spare set of composite AV cables that did the job fine) and an extra spot on your power board for the AC adapter.

As for method, dead easy again – plug the SCART cable into the rear of the Mega Drive, fire the other end into the SCART input on the transcoder, connect your RCA cables into the transcoder’s YUV outputs, then run them to your TV/AV receiver/etc.

The end result is an extremely clean and beautiful picture that gives an indication of what a true RGB signal can look like as a component video output. I’ve posted some comparison shots below that go some way to demonstrating the improvement, but you really need to see it to believe it.

And as an added bonus, flicking the Mega Drive into 60hz won’t affect the colour output, as the transcoder’s grabbing the signal from the RGB outputs on the CXA1145 encoder and not the signal from the composite output. While you can go to town on the Mega Drive’s internals to get colour output on RF/composite/s-video output (I’ll add a tute on how to do that in the not too distant future), this is a simple no-solder solution that gives great video quality. It’ll of course cost a bit more than doing the internal mod, but I love the results.

I did notice that at times the colour flickered a little on my unit, but I had a hard-wired composite connection I added to the back of my Mega Drive, and once I hooked that into my switchbox for the hell of it, the flickering via the component video stopped. Not sure the issue – could be noise from the transcoder or switchbox, weird pulses in the Mega Drive due to the mods I added to get colour in 60hz via composite/RF/s-video, might be something else entirely. Probably won’t affect you, but there you go.

For the visual tour, see the gallery below!

[View with PicLens]

Sega Mega Drive RGB SCART cable and the transcoder

Close-up shot of the RGB to component video transcoder

Top view, transcoder

SCART input, transcoder

Sega Mega Drive hooked up to the transcoder

Sega Mega Drive running in component video, Mega CD screen

Close up 1a - Sega Mega Drive running in composite video

Close up 1b - Sega Mega Drive running in component video

Close up 2a - Sega Mega Drive running in composite video

Close up 2b - Sega Mega Drive running in component video

Related posts:

1. PAL Sega Mega Drive colour correction – 60hz in full colour in RF, composite and S-Video!
2. Overhauling the Sega Astro City – Part 2, audio amplification and fans
3. Something Awful presents movie posters as video games (book covers too!)

[View with PicLens]

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Title screen

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Player Data

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Cut scene, pre-game

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Cut scene, pre-game, Lagi

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Cut scene, pre-game, subtitles

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - in-game cut scene, Episode 2

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Episode 2

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Episode 2

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Episode 2

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - End of Episode 2

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Cur scene, pre-Episode 3

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Episode 3

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Episode 3 boss

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Episode 3, stats

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Episode 4

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Episode 4

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Episode 4, boss

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Episode 4, boss

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - End of Episode 4

16 November 2009 - Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon 2 - Episode 5 in-game cutscene

12►

Related posts:

1. Gaming sessions – 1 November 2009
2. Gaming sessions – 11 October 2009

I don’t quite understand why RayStorm HD isn’t available outside Japan on PS3. So I went and grabbed a pre-paid card and bought a copy through the Japanese store. Probably cost a lot more than it should when you consider the markup assigned to obtaining a Japanese PSN card, but I reckon it was worth it. Plus, I was able to get the Playstation port of Thunderforce V – I’ve played that to death on my Saturn and was always curious what the port was like, so it was a convenient arrangement.

Anywho, Square Enix’s idiosyncrasies aside, how’s the remake? Very nice indeed (as Yakumo over at Retro Core would say!). I haven’t put a stack of hours into it at this stage, just fitting in the occasional session when not hammering through Afterburner Climax or other gear on the PS3. The HD visuals look clean, uncluttered and the 16:9 playfield works really well – this last bit was my biggest concern going into it as breaking out the boundaries of a horizontal shooter already squeezed to a 4:3 aspect ration (rather than tate, or 3:4 ratio) to an even broader ratio may have messed up the balance RayStorm managed to achieve from back in the day.

While the decision to forego any crazy/fancy new effects may turn off the new breed who haven’t spent much time with the original FX-1B version or the Playstation “port” (though the FX-1B shares its hardware design with that of the Playstation, not unlike Namco’s System 11/12 or Capcom’s ZN-1/ZN-2 platforms, hence why I’ve put the word ‘port’ into quotations), I think it’s a very tasteful update to a solid game… though I still prefer the original Layer Section to its sequels (i.e. RayStorm, etc). So instead of having all sorts of filters, high polygon counts, motion blurring and so forth, we’re presented with slightly updated models and textures that reflect the exact same aesthetic as the original, only without jagged polygones or blurry textures. This is especially noteworthy with the low-poly waterfalls in level 3

And that’s pretty much it – there’s an arranged mode and some unlockables to keep things interesting, but probably the best feature introduced to take advantage of the current hardware platform are the leaderboards that not only post your high score (mine will be down the bottom if they register at all! ), but also allow you to save and upload your replays. This is excellent, since it allows rubbish shmup fans (like myself) to see how it really should be done Aside from this, it’s still RayStorm, so if you didn’t like it before, you probably won’t now unless your tastes in gaming have altered accordingly.

The only question left is – why the worldwide snub for PS3 gamers? Hopefully this’ll be rectified in time. The PS3 needs more Japanese shooters on it – I’d love some Otomedius on our machine, as well as the R-Type remake that came out a while ago, then there’s the Naomi ports (like Ikaruga and Triggerheart Exelica), and so on.

Still, we do have the Söldner-X games which are pretty awesome, but I wouldn’t mind sharing with XBLA if PSN can get a couple of those exclusives in return

Related posts:

1. Afterburner Climax – Game of the Year 2010
2. The Rocket Knight Adventures revisit looks promising (new trailer!)