LOVE THE METAL SLUG SERIES!, since i can remember back in the day going to the arcades and seeing the metal slug arcade cabinet for the first time, i was blown away from it's balls to the wall action and very detailed animations, feels like contra on steroids. used spend hours and wasting so much quarters/tokens on this game and it's sequels. i bought almost all Metal Slug games on GOG (they were sale) all ported by Dotemu for PC, i must say im very disappointed the way they handled them, framerate drops constantly and input lag that wasn't an issue in the metal slug anthology release back in 2006!, Even Metal Slug X&3 were struggling for some odd reasons and i have powerful pc, so i don't know what emulator Dotemu are using for these games but it's pretty bad, also i don’t like that they changed the OG arcade menu (that was on the previous consoles), instead a very generic menu with in game cover images and even character select was changed. I was unhappy with it. one of my few regrets spending money on bad ports i decided to try the very hard to find PC version of Metal Slug Anthology from 2007, and after fixing the exe (thanks to the stupid DRM) and controller issues (getting the USB controller to work was super annoying) its working perfectly fine now. like with other ports it's bare-bones but on the positive side you get Metal Slug 1,2,X,3,4,5 and 6 all faithful ports, no frame drops or input lag (except very little in Metal Slug 1&2 when screen get's busy which was common even in the arcades), original title screens, arcade demos and original character select screens are fully intact. I had better time with that collection then what I got on GOG. just keep in mind the metal slug anthology 2007 (called 'PC collection') it's not the easiest game to get working 100% on modern pc and there's no screen resolution options, pretty much a straight up arcade experience. Just stay away from modern Dotemu ports.
interstate 76 is pure fun car combat game, very 1970's with it's theme, it has very good plot, characters and dialogue. i used to play it alot back in the day on my old windows 95 system. i always wanted to play it again, but sadly this game is buggy, unstable and at times broken on newer operating systems (even on windows 2000/XP). it's one of those games that don't play nice on anything above windows 98/ME systems. i tried patchs, followed guide lines all over the place. im using a pretty old 32-bit system from 2008 running a core 2duo on it, a great semi-retro system for older games (95% of them work perfectly). the good news is i finally got this freakin game to work after patches and some changes here and there, compatability to win 95 and run as administrator. the bad news it's very unstable, random glitches and crashed a lot. it was so frustrating. after multiple times trying to actually play it and enjoy it i just gave up and delete it from my computer out of anger and frustration few months later a did something I never expected to do, I build a retro win 98se machine running a Pentium 4 (it took few weeks to get the parts), specifically for native win 98 experience and games, one of the first games that popped in my mind was "Interstate 76" and "Heretic II" two very difficult games to run on newer operating systems. the gog version didn't work on my win 98 build (copied the core files without the gog junk from the directory after installing it on my core 2 duo machine), so i caved in bought the original cds (arsenal/gold edition). i installed the game without issues, disc 2 to play and then finally FINALLY!!! i can play this classic game without worring about bugs, glitches and crashs every few mintues. i played it in software mode cause direct 3D sucks with this game. this game needs a remaster badly!!! it's such a gem of a game. gog or microsoft needs to step up and do somthing about it, cause right now no matter what OS you're using its broken.
"Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" was considered not only a comeback for the franchise after the "Prince of Persia 3D" fiasco, but a huge breath of fresh air for the series. Starting from scratch, same characters but a whole different story, gameplay and less “Arabian nights” cinematic platformer and more mystical swashbuckling action-adventure. They even brought the original creator Jordan Mechner to help with the game's development. This game was a big deal back in 2003 as far i remember, it was everywhere, ported to all the consoles at the time, even on java phones. being mostly a platformer with Hack and slash mechanics, and of course there's the main feature that made the game well-known "The Dagger of Time" mechanic, you can reverse time if you get killed or even missed a hit to an enemy and slow-motion for enemy kills/combo. At the time this was considered groundbreaking for gaming, before rewind feature was even a thing. The game will work fine on modern pcs, but with technical issues, considered it’s an old game from 2003. the fog effects won't work properly, there's two ways to fix it use some patch that fixes the fog glitch (kind of) or turn it off in the options, another problem I have encountered is the water textures are broken, look like squares with broken texture (like a glitch) then water, it can be turned off as well, but then it's like there's nothing there and you can hear water sounds when you touch it/drink it. The widescreen patch but i can't get the hud to align properly no matter what i do. also the in-game audio is muffled from time to time for some reason. so after a while I just prefer playing it on my old 32-bit retro pc from 2009 that I thankfully kept in great condition, cleaned and preserved, and it plays much better than my main pc. no fog problems, no broken water texture and in classic 4:3 in highest resolution in-game without any patches. Im not asking much just playing it the way it should’ve been.
What can i say about shadow warrior, part of the big 3 Build Engine games along with "Duke Nukem 3D" and "Blood". the funny thing is shadow warrior is my second favorite Build game after Blood. it's pure blast from the past with lots of gore and lowbrow humor, essentially the asian version of Duke Nukem. like duke, this game is a parody of a movie genre in this case kung fu movies and asian culture and lo wang is the embodiment of asian stereotypes like the wise master/student character or bruce lee type only it's for laughs and not taken seriously. it's great fun except playing it in DOSBox SUCKSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!! don't mind the primitvie control scheme or the low resolution or limited mouse contol, fit perfectly with it's old school gameplay style, my problem is, it crashed on me several times, when it gets busy with too much action/explosions it crashes. i tried to change memory in DOSBox cfg it didn't make any real differences, it crashed like 4-5 times afterwards, thankfully I saved every few minutes especially on the harder levels, like the volcano levels and those damn bees, I hate those bees, they are the worst enemies in this game. after a while it got annoying so i took an alternative to this, the other ways to play it using a source port or just get the redux version, better frame rate and stability and very little to no crashes at all.
what can i say that hasn't already been said, this game kicks-ass, i used to play this game for hours after school on my windows 95, sadly it was the shareware version, on pc speaker. so no music, only sound effects. everytime i jump with alt and shoot with ctrl it always boot me out of the game. i beat episode 1 so many times i lost count, so many many years later i said to myself, i never played the full version of this game, why not now. for me it's so weird playing the cd version with cd quality audio but everthing else is just as i remember. my only grips i have with this game, is Jazz is so zoomed-in and since he moves so fast that i can't tell at times what im seeing up ahead without getting hit, because its a fast paced game that runs on DOSBox it has screen tearing and i can't find the vsync option to fix this, but i can get used to it, and of course one of the levels is almost impossible to beat, Episode 2: Level 2 ("Orbitus") in the middle section of the level that almost everything there is bouncy and super sensitive too, and there's a small narrow path right bitween all the bouncy platforms, it took me forever to pass that area. the only time i died from the time limit. anyway i did find out there's a patch that fixes that infamous level. overall a childhood classic. the sequel is much better
back on my old pc it was one of the few games that i own at the time, and played it for hours, great tactical shooter, but it has flaws, outside from the dated graphics even back then, you're squad and enemey AI is almost brain dead and very basic. but on other hand the level maps are huge for this type of game, gounded relistic vibe from enemy fire, at time you can tell if you are close or not to getting hit, even hit the ground right next to you. 1 or 2 hits and you're dead. the only bug i have encounter is the Puru mission 4, game froze on me when im in closed area. which is strange i had this same issue even back then but in an different part of the game. so i had to boot out to the desktop and try again, play the same mission and it's working fine without any freezes. mabye it's a compatibility issue. i also tried adding the opening intro that's missing from the gog release, it does work fine, but it corrupts the game's graphics for some reasons, getting a very broken 16-bit graphic problems like everyhting has this vomit rainbow color look to it. i was unable to fix this issue even with the settings so i had to re-install the game without the intro. i read somewhere the intro was removed from re-realases because it's coded with some part of an old copy protection that corrupts the game if it doesn't recognize the program. anyway despite it pitfalls, it's still a classic!!!! i miss NovaLogic
