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F4LL0UT: As far as I know some games actually exploit these glitches of earlier models for achieving certain sounds and apparently these games don't sound too well on MUNT (or later versions of the original hardware, for that matter).
I think those exploited ones were some other glitches, not the "digital overflow" glitch that was a nuisance. (And reading Wikipedia for it, apparently MT-32s had the issue too, but with them it could be overcome by keeping the main volume low enough, while on later Roland models that apparently didn't help).

Do you have some games in mind which use some of those other glitches, and hence wouldn't sound too well on e.g. Munt (with MT-32 ROMs)? I can only say how Munt (with CM-32L ROMs) sounds compared to a real CM-32L unit, and so far I've been very satisfied with the results. So if Munt plays some things wrong, then I guess so does my real CM-32L.

(And then again, there are also games which sound right only with CM-32L (or Munt with CM-32L ROMs), and not MT-32. Like Double Dragon 3 intro music (missing certain extra sound with MT-32), the swimming sound in Ultima Underworld etc.
Post edited August 13, 2013 by timppu
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timppu: Do you have some games in mind which use some of those other glitches, and hence wouldn't sound too well on e.g. Munt (with MT-32 ROMs)?
Not a particular one although Wing Commander would probably be the most prominent example. There's a few games exploiting the glitches on this list, the list also mentions games that will cause problems on the older models like you described.
Post edited August 13, 2013 by F4LL0UT
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timppu: most of the time
Here it is ;)

There are very good and stable SNES emulators and PS1 emulators but if you come to an gamecube/wii/ps2 emulator there are many games which cause trouble and need extra adjustment in the options. Some games suffer heavy glitches other won't let you play it through. Of course there are games running fine but I don't want to look atfer such things, messing around with settings to get a game run properly and still have a slight chance it won't work like it supposed to do

Apart from that if you play on a emulator you'll play most likely on your computer screen which is a LCD/LED flatscreen. I don't want to play old titles in FullHD because the graphics' shortcomings are more visible on such settings. And upscaled low resolution (if choosed not to play in FullHd) looks very bad on a LCD/LED screen.

Of course I have an old tube television for the retro games. I don't play any retro game on my modern TV or PC monitor.
Post edited August 14, 2013 by Filben
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timppu: most of the time
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Filben: Here it is ;)

There are very good and stable SNES emulators and PS1 emulators but if you come to an gamecube/wii/ps2 emulator there are many games which cause trouble and need extra adjustment in the options.
That just means that newer emulators trying to emulate newer systems are just less perfect at this point of time. Just like the early versions of NES, SNES, PS1 etc. emulators were. Heck, I remember trying out some early Commodore 64 emulator on Amiga 500, I recall it was quite horrendous. But it was still a marvel that it could run some C=64 games at all, even if they ran horribly with broken audio back then.

As time goes by, the emulators tend to get better and better. Usually the greatest pitfall is the controllers, if they have some special functions that are not easily reproduced on PC controllers. For example, I recall hearing issues with PS2 pressure-sensitive buttons on the few games that heavily utilize them (some of the Metal Gear Solid games on PS2?). Not sure if they make the games unplayable though, or if they have found a solution how to emulate them. Just read some bed time stories about them.

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Filben: Apart from that if you play on a emulator you'll play most likely on your computer screen which is a LCD/LED flatscreen. I don't want to play old titles in FullHD because the graphics' shortcomings are more visible on such settings. And upscaled low resolution (if choosed not to play in FullHd) looks very bad on a LCD/LED screen.
Same can be claimed about e.g. GOG DOSBox games, which were designed for fuzzier CRT tubes. Anyway, the emulators offer all kinds of different filters to smooth out jaggies and such. Not to mention that e.g. PSX or PS2 emulators let you run 3D games in higher resolutions, and with optional edge AA, texture filtering, perspective-corrected textures etc. that were not available on the original system. If some game causes extra graphical glitches with these options, they can be run without the extra filters.

I personally don't care if the hires monitors show the jagginess etc. more clearly, so normally I don't even use the graphics filters. So what if I can see the Munchman pixels more clearly on a PC monitor than on the old small TV tube I played it originally?
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timppu: Not to mention that e.g. PSX or PS2 emulators let you run 3D games in higher resolutions, and with optional edge AA, texture filtering, perspective-corrected textures etc. that were not available on the original system.
I know, but I think it doesn't make the graphics as a whole visual experience better. Those low polygon modells from e.g. Medievil 1 won't get better (on the visual aspect) with AA or the low resolution textures with AF on low angle.

That's what I meant. Those shortcomings aren't that much, call it visible, on an old tube rather than modern monitor.

Of course emulators get better. But I don't talk about the future and how things might come. If I want to play right know a gamecube title I have to look up the specific section on the dolphin wiki to check possible issues and corresponding solution. That's the state of play.
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Fever_Discordia: Haze may, very well be a fine PS3 exclusive FPS by the standard of other console exclusive FPS's but playing an FPS on a gamepad is like trying to eat with chopstick while wearing mittens so I think they're all rubbish!
Can't say that I agree (and that as a PC gamer who got his first console a few months ago :P). Sure, the games play differently but not necessarily badly. :P
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Fever_Discordia: Haze may, very well be a fine PS3 exclusive FPS by the standard of other console exclusive FPS's but playing an FPS on a gamepad is like trying to eat with chopstick while wearing mittens so I think they're all rubbish!
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F4LL0UT: Can't say that I agree (and that as a PC gamer who got his first console a few months ago :P). Sure, the games play differently but not necessarily badly. :P
Hmm maybe I should give it another go, I was REALLY put off by Slave Zero on DC but I never got on with Goldeneye either and that was supposed to be one of the best....
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mondo84: IGN had a video today with their picks for the most overrated games.

They chose:

Grand Theft Auto IV
Minecraft
Uncharted 3
Majoras Mask
I always considered Majora's Mask to be vastly underrated. Most people I spoke to never finished the beginning tag game.

The time warping mechanism, the story's characters and the emotional aftermath of Ocarina all made the game quite spectacular to me. But it took about 5 or 6 hours into it before I fell in love with it.

As for mine:
Hardwar was horrifically underrated. The game tanked only to reemerge years later. It was so far ahead of its time that it couldn't survive in its time. I bought it shortly after release for 1 cent at EB Games. They were just getting rid of them. And I loved it.

Final Fantasy n are all overrated. I hate their gameplay, setting, characters and everything else. I want to like them, I just don't.

The Witcher's combat system is underrated. Now, it's not good. But it's not as bad as people say it is.
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mondo84: IGN had a video today with their picks for the most overrated games.

They chose:

Grand Theft Auto IV
Minecraft
Uncharted 3
Majoras Mask
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Tallima: I always considered Majora's Mask to be vastly underrated. Most people I spoke to never finished the beginning tag game.

The time warping mechanism, the story's characters and the emotional aftermath of Ocarina all made the game quite spectacular to me. But it took about 5 or 6 hours into it before I fell in love with it.

As for mine:
Hardwar was horrifically underrated. The game tanked only to reemerge years later. It was so far ahead of its time that it couldn't survive in its time. I bought it shortly after release for 1 cent at EB Games. They were just getting rid of them. And I loved it.

Final Fantasy n are all overrated. I hate their gameplay, setting, characters and everything else. I want to like them, I just don't.

The Witcher's combat system is underrated. Now, it's not good. But it's not as bad as people say it is.
I find Majora's Mask the best, its story is more original, despite saving the world from the falling moon, the story mostly centers on the side activities, the people of Termina and the impact you had on their lives.
Overrated.

Beyond Good and Evil. The premise was quite interesting, and if done better, it could've been a fantastic game. Unfortunately, the story moves way too fast to make sense and some moments are just plain retarded. The core gameplay and the basic premise of the story also outright contradict each other, so that's not exactly a point in its favour, either. All in all, I just don't see why this game gets even half the praise that it does.

GTAIV. Compared to San Andreas, this game was just backwards in every way (except for the fancier graphics, naturally). Less vehicles (both number of individual vehicles and different "types"), smaller world, less variety within the world, Fuck all side quests that are actually worth doing and the one great scabby pustule on the otherwise pretty great fact of San Andreas, that is the dating, was not only kept, but also greatly expanded to the point where you can't spend five minutes dicking around without being told that I have to take my cousin to dinner or my girlfriend bowling. Because in all the previous GTA games, I always found myself thinking that while it's certainly fun to steal cars and run over old ladies for funzies, what this game is really lacking is a bowling minigame or a take-your-cousin-to-dinner simulation.

Oh, and let's not forget the super serious story really didn't work with such a game in the first place. It's a little hard to take the whole stuggling immigrant who's forced to lick the local minor crime lord's boots just to survive premise seriously when I can spend literally infinite time just stealing cars, running down pedestrians, gunning people down by the thousands and goading the police into city-wide manhunts just because I can with no negative consequences whatsoever that actually matter.

Dreamfall. It's prequel was damn good, but this game is just a pile of ass. Both the story and the mechanics are a total mess. There's really no other way to describe it. Why people would shower a kickstarter to make a sequel to this game with money is utterly beyond.

Ocarina of Time. There's nothing wrong with the game itself. In fact, it's amazing for its time. However, it's been long surpassed in quality by future Zelda titles, and yet it's still worshiped and sometimes even called "the best video game of all time" to this day. I like nostalgia too, guys, but come on, now you're just being stupid.

Underrated.

Railroad Tycoon 3. Hands down the best railroad business sim I've ever played. In fact, it's the only one I can think of where the economy isn't static, other, non-rail based transport is somewhat modeled and passengers and mail both have specific destinations rather than taking the "surprise me" approach to rail travel. It also doesn't hurt that the trains themselves are quite nicely modeled and animated, and to this day still look rather pretty.

Gothic 2. It did dark fantasy before Dragon Age made it cool, and it did it far better. The whole world has a very desperate and somewhat dystopian feel to it, where simply surviving a fight with a wolf or a bandit or whatever is a significant achievement rather than easy XP fodder (at least in the early stages of the game). To me, it's quite a lot darker then simply having everyone be racist in an otherwise generic fantasy world.
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Hesusio: Beyond Good and Evil. The premise was quite interesting, and if done better, it could've been a fantastic game. Unfortunately, the story moves way too fast to make sense and some moments are just plain retarded. The core gameplay and the basic premise of the story also outright contradict each other, so that's not exactly a point in its favour, either. All in all, I just don't see why this game gets even half the praise that it does.

GTAIV. Compared to San Andreas, this game was just backwards in every way (except for the fancier graphics, naturally). Less vehicles (both number of individual vehicles and different "types"), smaller world, less variety within the world, Fuck all side quests that are actually worth doing and the one great scabby pustule on the otherwise pretty great fact of San Andreas, that is the dating, was not only kept, but also greatly expanded to the point where you can't spend five minutes dicking around without being told that I have to take my cousin to dinner or my girlfriend bowling. Because in all the previous GTA games, I always found myself thinking that while it's certainly fun to steal cars and run over old ladies for funzies, what this game is really lacking is a bowling minigame or a take-your-cousin-to-dinner simulation.

Oh, and let's not forget the super serious story really didn't work with such a game in the first place. It's a little hard to take the whole stuggling immigrant who's forced to lick the local minor crime lord's boots just to survive premise seriously when I can spend literally infinite time just stealing cars, running down pedestrians, gunning people down by the thousands and goading the police into city-wide manhunts just because I can with no negative consequences whatsoever that actually matter.

Ocarina of Time. There's nothing wrong with the game itself. In fact, it's amazing for its time. However, it's been long surpassed in quality by future Zelda titles, and yet it's still worshiped and sometimes even called "the best video game of all time" to this day. I like nostalgia too, guys, but come on, now you're just being stupid.

Gothic 2. It did dark fantasy before Dragon Age made it cool, and it did it far better. The whole world has a very desperate and somewhat dystopian feel to it, where simply surviving a fight with a wolf or a bandit or whatever is a significant achievement rather than easy XP fodder (at least in the early stages of the game). To me, it's quite a lot darker then simply having everyone be racist in an otherwise generic fantasy world.
1. I sometime say this, This game is overrated because its underrated, "Oh you gotta play this game, its so underrated." you know there is a reason why underrated games are underrated.

2.Am I the only one who somewhat liked the story for what it is, the acting is superb, why can't it have a serious story? Anyway my grips with this game after San Andreas is the removal of countryside, it makes the world feel bigger and more realistic, I find it ludicrous being on an "Island City" surrounded by water, but GTA San Andreas did not have much either, yeah I can customize my vehicles, but it sucks if it gets destroyed and I cannot take it to races.

GTA 4 mabye inferior to San Andreas, but I find it much better than 3 and a little more than Vice City.

3. Leave Ocarina of Time alone it deserves the praise, its a competant game with great soundtrack and athmosphere.

4. Dragon Age is a mix between High and Dark Fantasy imo.
Post edited August 15, 2013 by Elmofongo
System Shock 2 was underrated at first launch, which is why it bombed
But because it was good and the unpopularity made it rare it became almost legendary, which is why everyone voted for it on the wish list and not other highly significant things like Doom that they already owned 5 copies of!
Underrated :
- Ultima Underworld series
- System Shock series (the first was understandable with its horrible control scheme, all fixed by the Mouselook patch)

Overrated :
- Bioshock series.

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Elmofongo: 1. I sometime say this, This game is overrated because its underrated, "Oh you gotta play this game, its so underrated." you know there is a reason why underrated games are underrated.
Games end up underrated when they have a quality that the mass populous can't grok. If quality and intelligence were the norm then there'd be no bell-curve distribution to anything.
Post edited August 15, 2013 by Firebrand9
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Fever_Discordia: System Shock 2 was underrated at first launch, which is why it bombed.
Actually it wasn't really underrated. The people who actually touched it seemed to love it, it's one of those games that received enormous critical acclaim (92% on Game Rankings) and yet failed commercially (there's quite a few of those). I think the main problems were:
a) it visually lacked character, there was nothing about the presentation or design that would attract people just with the cover or screenshots, less so make them assume that there's such a remarkable game beneath it. It looked like just another sci-fi game. In fact the presentation may have made it hard for some people to trust a 90+ review.
b) related to the previous point: the game wasn't ever pretty, it looked pretty cheap compared to many other FPS games of its era (and that's what it was compared to, not RPGs and not action adventures), especially the enemies who could be seen on most screenshots. And sure, graphics aren't everything which is especially confirmed by the game's late popularity *but* who expected one of the best games ever when he saw footage of the game?
c) It was officially sequel to an earlier "weird" game which had already failed commercially. I honestly believe that the 2 in the title has actually had a negative impact on the game's sales.

But most importantly:
d) The game was too novel. It was hard for reviewers to fully explain why it's so great and just as hard for regular gamers to grasp the concept and understand what's so great about it. Not to mention that FPS was still a comparably new genre with much progress in lots of areas, few people were tired of the basic concept of the genre yet, I think only much later people would actually appreciate the "complexity" of the game instead of perceiving it as something boring and too complicated standing in the way of simple solid fast-paced and gorgeous action. Proof? Deus Ex which suffered a similar fate one year later with a similar concept but became absurdly popular with a certain delay. Plus it would take years before it would become obvious that System Shock 2 was such a remarkable and unique game among hundreds of games released before it and thousands of games released after. Context matters.

So yeah, maybe it was a bit underrated at first but not as much as one might think with those people who gave it a try praising it most of the time.

Edit: Okay, correction - Game Rankings also included lots of later reviews (even one from 2013) in the average score. Still, all reviews I read of the game when it was new were in the 80 to 90 percent area.
Post edited August 15, 2013 by F4LL0UT
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Fever_Discordia: System Shock 2 was underrated at first launch, which is why it bombed.
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F4LL0UT: Actually it wasn't really underrated. The people who actually touched it seemed to love it, it's one of those games that received enormous critical acclaim (92% on Game Rankings) and yet failed commercially (there's quite a few of those). I think the main problems were:
a) it visually lacked character, there was nothing about the presentation or design that would attract people just with the cover or screenshots, less so make them assume that there's such a remarkable game beneath it. It looked like just another sci-fi game. In fact the presentation may have made it hard for some people to trust a 90+ review.
b) related to the previous point: the game wasn't ever pretty, it looked pretty cheap compared to many other FPS games of its era (and that's what it was compared to, not RPGs and not action adventures), especially the enemies who could be seen on most screenshots. And sure, graphics aren't everything which is especially confirmed by the game's late popularity *but* who expected one of the best games ever when he saw footage of the game?
c) It was officially sequel to an earlier "weird" game which had already failed commercially. I honestly believe that the 2 in the title has actually had a negative impact on the game's sales.

But most importantly:
d) The game was too novel. It was hard for reviewers to fully explain why it's so great and just as hard for regular gamers to grasp the concept and understand what's so great about it. Not to mention that FPS was still a comparably new genre with much progress in lots of areas, few people were tired of the basic concept of the genre yet, I think only much later people would actually appreciate the "complexity" of the game instead of perceiving it as something boring and too complicated standing in the way of simple solid fast-paced and gorgeous action. Proof? Deus Ex which suffered a similar fate one year later with a similar concept but became absurdly popular with a certain delay. Plus it would take years before it would become obvious that System Shock 2 was such a remarkable and unique game among hundreds of games released before it and thousands of games released after. Context matters.

So yeah, maybe it was a bit underrated at first but not as much as one might think with those people who gave it a try praising it most of the time.

Edit: Okay, correction - Game Rankings also included lots of later reviews (even one from 2013) in the average score. Still, all reviews I read of the game when it was new were in the 80 to 90 percent area.
Oh yeah, I wasn't trying to say it wasn't well received critically, I'm just saying that because it was ignored by the buying public at the time it was crazy highly sort after by the buying public more recently, although the rights SNAFU helped too, I suppose, compare with the original Deus Ex - that's getting a sensible, appropriate amount of love and is as good as SS2 if not a little better (bother very good though)
Interesting about Deus Ex being a slow burner though - I didn't realise that, thought it got decent sales right out of the gate, glad to see people finally realised that FPS/RPG hybrid was a damn good idea eventually and that the Deus Ex and BioShock franchises are still going strong anyway!