Great Games You've Found Since You Got Your Caanoo/wiz!


Orion4874

Orion4874

Mega GP Mania
Joined
May 17, 2009
Messages
1,426
Age
50
Location
North Brunswick, New Jersey
Since buying these handhelds my hunger for retro gaming has greatly increased. Enough that I often search for cool games I either never tried or heard of before. This brings me to this thread where we can recommend those undiscovered or forgotten gems to each other. Any game any console, as long as they're playable on the Caanoo/Wiz. So lets here 'em!

I'll start it off with a couple for the Genesis and the SNES, my two favorite consoles.

Genesis
Dynamite Headdy, a great platformer with equally great graphics and action
Panorama Cotton, think Space Harrier but better
Ranger X, an interesting shooter with a fairly high degree of difficulty but the gameplay and graphics are top notch
Haunting - Starring Polterguy, you're a ghost who tries to scare the hell out of people

SNES
Plok, a platformer with bright visuals and some would say the best music on a SNES game
Ardy Lightfoot, another platformer with it's own style to say the least
Majuu Ou(King of Demons), sort of Contra meets Castlevania
Space Megaforce(Super Aleste), if you love shmups like me you will enjoy this one

When I come across some more I'll list them here.
 
For me, it was more some kind of rediscovering. In 1982, my parents bought me an Atari VCS 2600(which was already my third console back then). Over the next two years, I spent a lot of my money and time with it. Here are some examples for the games I owned and loved:
Atari: Yar's Revenge, Haunted House Activision: Enduro, Pitfall2 Imagic: Cosmic Ark, Atlantis, Moonsweeper, Star Voyager
After that came the Commodore64 and with it some more great games like Archon(one of EA's first titles), On-Court Tennis, Decathlon(maybe the most expensive game I ever had, because it destroyed several Joysticks), International Soccer, Supercycles(way too easy, but I love the music), Forbidden Forest.
The next computer was the Amiga 500 and later the Amiga 1200. The Emulator for the Caanoo isn't that great, so games like Gods, Cannonfodder, Speedball2, The Chaos Engine, work better via SNES or Genesis emulation. Some games are still worth a look on uae4all, like Battle Isle, The Settlers and F/A 18 Interceptor.
I know, most of the games aren't that undiscovered, but old enough to be forgotten.
 
Good point Akabei, I couldn't agree more about rediscovering the old classics. The Atari 2600 wasn't my family's first console but it was mine, considering I was 5 when we bought it. Amazing how expensive that thing was back then, huh? But I remember playing Pac-Man and Pinball with my father for hours on end!
Unfortunately, I rarely if ever play those older games anymore, pretty much nothing pre NES nowadays. I've tried though but I just can't seem to get into it. Sucks, since I myself owned a Commodore 64, Intellivision and Colecovision and have fond memories of playing all of them with friends and family. I regretfully never had an Amiga (my brother did but it was always off limits) so pretty much all of those games would be new to me.
 
I remember trying to find platformers for the Genesis, and stumbled across Earnest Evans.
It's a sidescroller, a quite bad one for many reasons, but I find it amazing because of the way it uses sprites. Instead of just using single sprites with multiple frames of animation, Earnest Evans uses multiple body part sprites that are rotated to produce animation like many 2D games of today, this gives a really smooth animation, though it does look a bit weird.

I really like the game because of it's technical impressiveness ( Although there are some other, more technically impressive games for the genesis, like Light Crusader or Zero Tolerance - one of my all time favourites ), not it's gameplay, which is flawed, but the game is fun enough anyway, so I'd say give it a try if you're a fan of the genre.

There are a few others that I can't recall at the moment, but I might post more later, there were some awesome PS1 games that I stumbled across when searching for something cool for my Caanoo.
 
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And I totally forgot all the arcade games. Time Pilot is a neat shooter. Mame4all is great, if you're sitting in a Bus/Train/Subway and there's only 5-10 minutes, till you have to get out.
Little story about Xevious. My classmates and me often went to the local pizzeria after school. There was a Xevious arcade cabinet and if you used an electric gas lighter on the coin-slot, it gave you a random number(5-20) of free plays. That made us all Xevious-experts in a few days, because none of the waiters ever noticed.
I don't know, if this trick works on other arcades, but I know I spent a lot of money on all Hyper Sports/Hyper Olympics/Track and Field arcades, though I wouldn't recommend them for playing on the caanoo, as they will easily destroy your buttons/pad. I still like to play Galaga, Donkey Kong and Pacman(you're not surprised, if you look at my name and Avatar). If you adjust the controls in mame, which can be a real pain, you can play games like Arkanoid or Centipede as they were meant to play, thanks to the G-Sensor, even without a Paddle/Trackball.
 
Good idea for a thread!

I'll add some as I think of them. So many! It's cool to play Neo Geo games because no one I knew ever had one of those expensive monsters. Zed Blade is a particularly good side scroller shooter.
 
heh I was just thinking of posting a thread like this! :D

I've mostly been re/playing PSX games and right now I'm hooked on:
Umihara Kawase - this puzzle game is pretty addicting and runs great on PCSX rearmed
Intelligent Qube - another good one, has some sound issues but is still playable
Castlevania SOTN - I'm in the middle of this so no spoilers plz!
Time Gal - looks great on the caanoo screen, fun game to kill time.
 
A couple of quick ones:

My MAIN game - Street Fighter Alpha 3, I used to play in tournaments and have met and played againsed some of the best in the world. I'll never bore of it EVER.

Snatcher - A sega cd adventure game from the maker of Metal Gear

Metal Gear Solid - psx

Syphon filter 3 -psx

Metal Gear 2 on - MSX , Very cool game that has been fan translated to english as it was never released in US. a must if you're retro and like Metal Gear.

Wasteland - Dosbox, The game that the Fallout series evolved from, I like this better as it plays the same but its in 2d of course but it has a whole party AND actually has cryptic puzzles to solve unlike Fallouts..

Alot of Neogeo games as well like Blazing Star, Cyberlip, Metal slugs, Nam74 etc..

Fay - Sega Cd, a RPG remade my the people who did the Lunar Series

Monkey Island 3 - Scummvm

Alien Resurrection - A somewhat difficult game if only because of too few save points. Still a fun and scary FPS

Lemmings - Picodrive

Zak Mckraken - Scummvm , I really like this game but I run out of money and don't know how to win the lottery, can anyone give me an obscure hint ??

Phoenix Wright ace attourney - PhoneME, Just started this one..

Myth History in the Making - Uae4All, One of my top games for Atmosphere (crank up the sound)

GemX - c64,atariST, Amiga, My favorite puzzle type game ever, it will fry your brain :)


Keep'em coming guys..
 
Here's what I like to play on my Caanoo:

"Galaga 88/90" on PC Engine (with Temper via Ginge). Can be played as original Arcade version with Mame4all as well but has some frameskips.

"Cosmo Gang The Video" on Super Nintendo (DrPocketSnes 7.2). I am really glad that I stumpled upon this game a few month ago. Can be played as original Arcade version with Mame4all as well but has some frameskips.

"In the Hunt" with PSX ReARMed. Arcade perfect. Mame4All version unfortunately doesnot have sound.

"Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro" with PSX ReARMed. Really nice as PSX ReARMed now supports touchscreen buttons.

"H.E.R.O" on C64 (Frodo) or ColecoVision (Colem). I just love that I am able to play this game again.
 
Akabei said:
For me, it was more some kind of rediscovering. In 1982, my parents bought me an Atari VCS 2600(which was already my third console back then). Over the next two years, I spent a lot of my money and time with it. Here are some examples for the games I owned and loved:
Atari: Yar's Revenge, Haunted House Activision: Enduro, Pitfall2 Imagic: Cosmic Ark, Atlantis, Moonsweeper, Star Voyager
After that came the Commodore64 and with it some more great games like Archon(one of EA's first titles), On-Court Tennis, Decathlon(maybe the most expensive game I ever had, because it destroyed several Joysticks), International Soccer, Supercycles(way too easy, but I love the music), Forbidden Forest.
The next computer was the Amiga 500 and later the Amiga 1200. The Emulator for the Caanoo isn't that great, so games like Gods, Cannonfodder, Speedball2, The Chaos Engine, work better via SNES or Genesis emulation. Some games are still worth a look on uae4all, like Battle Isle, The Settlers and F/A 18 Interceptor.
I know, most of the games aren't that undiscovered, but old enough to be forgotten.
Click to expand...


Yars revenge - probly my fav atari games.

Enduro - I remember the commercials on Tv thinking that game looks fun.

Archon - fun 2 player game

Supercycles - Did you mean the Epyx one? If so, yeah I remember that being one of my fav racers on the c64, And yeah it was easy but that made it fun back then as most games were TOO hard IMHO.

International Soccer - for how old it is it had such a great feel, actually I played it not too long ago over the net with a guy I know from the UK , We also played Street Sports Basketball. That was neat, that guy (MOG) commented on it at the Lemon64 site in the Street sports basketball comment page..
 
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I may just be a grinch straying from the norm here, but I'd prefer to focus less on the emulated games, there are some absolute gems of homebrew in the wiz/caanoo (and GP2X through ginge) cluster...

Nether Dimensional Runner
Firewhip
Meritous (ok, not exclusive to these handhelds, but plays wonderfully on them...)
Paper Wars
Jelly Mahjong... weird commercial game, weird sounds...
Smallball (with g-sensor controls)
Snakes on Dope (aka, all of Ruckage's games!!!)
All those Zelda clones/fanmakes
Audiorace
Eeek! Eeek! Hook!!!
Escape from Zombie City (although not finished, hella fun for the most part!)
Dynamate
Giana's Return (and most of the releases from kojote and team... sqrxz! drives me insane, but is a good game)

There's lots more on the wiz/gp2x side of things, but I hope some day the caanoo starts to mature a bit more, it's got alright hardware... just pisses me off on a few points, like speakers on the back, the stupid backlighting that gradually fades to the top of the screen, etc.

... BUT if I had 2 caanoo's, I'd have to convince somebody to play bubble bobble through MAME with me amongst various others...
 
R-Type Leo on MAME looks and runs great, but no sound. Is this normal or is there a rom with sound?
 
1, Combat Atari 2600 ..The game came free with the console back in the day and it had so much gameplay with 2 players.

2, Wizball C64/Amiga This wacky shoot em up was amazing in 2 player team up made by Sensible software the creators of Sensi soccer/Cannon fodder ect

3, Paradroid C64 Amazing shoot em up that required a little logical puzzle to get into each robot and take over them.Not tried the C64 emulator as of yet so not sure if it's working or not

4,Stunt car Amiga 3d vector racing sim which you could linkup with another Amiga and play 2 players head to head via an Rs232 cable

5,Kick off 2 Amiga This football game had so much depth and skill to play it and it still lives on today as people around the world play in World cup tournaments

6,Elite C64/Amiga 3d space sim that had so much game play and would take forever to complete it.Hopfully one day David Brabem will make a sequal "Elite 4"

7,Turrican 2 Amiga Great shoot em up that used every drop of the Amiga's power. The creators where much hard done by when their beta game called Katakis (Amiga) was stolen and made into what we all know as R-Type.
Very much like Mario was taken from the Great Gianna sisters.

8,Diablo PCSX4ALL Great game that works well although a little tweaking with the sound set to mono ect.Then it plays fine.A classic Gauntlet game with lots of gameplay.

All these games for me have lasting great memories and they all have one thing that most modern games aint got "GAMEPLAY" :)
 
3, Paradroid C64 Amazing shoot em up that required a little logical puzzle to get into each robot and take over them.Not tried the C64 emulator as of yet so not sure if it's working or not

4,Stunt car Amiga 3d vector racing sim which you could linkup with another Amiga and play 2 players head to head via an Rs232 cable

5,Kick off 2 Amiga This football game had so much depth and skill to play it and it still lives on today as people around the world play in World cup tournaments

6,Elite C64/Amiga 3d space sim that had so much game play and would take forever to complete it.Hopfully one day David Brabem will make a sequal "Elite 4"

7,Turrican 2 Amiga Great shoot em up that used every drop of the Amiga's power. The creators where much hard done by when their beta game called Katakis (Amiga) was stolen and made into what we all know as R-Type.
Very much like Mario was taken from the Great Gianna sisters.

I only played paradroid'90 on the amiga, liked it.

Stuntcar Racer was a classic that I actually liked better on the c64, you actually felt like you were on a roller coster :)

I remember Kickoff 2 being huge But I thought it was forgotten after Sensible soccer came out...

I love Turrican 2 as well i just wish I could save the state. The bosses are what I like best about the game.



All these games for me have lasting great memories and they all have one thing that most modern games aint got "GAMEPLAY" :)
[/quote]
 
With the latest version of PCSX rearmed v11, I tested the fan translated (english subtitles and menus added) ISO of "Policenauts" and it works great. It's a highly rated PSX game by Kojima, that was never released outside of Japan.
Anybody who is a fan of Hideo Kojima's "Snatcher" will see instant similarities with this game. I don't speak Japanese but I think the voice work got good reviews also. The shooting scenes are alot better than the "grid" shooting scenes of Snatcher, which is also an excellent game.

Also for anyone a fan of detective (Blade Runner-ish future distopia setting) type games, The sega CD port of "Rise of the Dragon" on picodrive is a forgotten gem from the 90's. I wish they ported "Heart of China" too, but oh well. At least they ported Willy Beamish too!

I also wanted to try the little known Lucas Arts classic on PSX, "Herc's Adventures", but the music is messed up unless I turn off the "XA Sound" function. The cutscenes are fine however, but something isn't working right with the in game music tracks.

Older console recommendations:
Atari 5200: Pitfall 2, Miner 2049'er, Dreadnaught Factor, Joust, Star Raiders, Solaris-on 2600 (first home game system!...I feel old) ;-)
Nes: Deja Vu, Uninvited, Shadowgate, River City Ransom, Sweet Home (jap title-translated to english)Bionic Commando
SNES: Demon's Crest, Act Raiser, Soul Blazer, Terranigma, Out of This World, Castlevania 4, Blackthorne
Genesis: Road Rash series, Flashback, Desert Strike series, Beyond Oasis, Comix Zone,
MAME: Vendetta (Euro ver, not USA), Peter Pack Rat, Roadblasters, Food Fight, Sunset Riders

And this isn't emulated of course, but on the Nintendo DS, "Hotel Dusk" and it's Jap/Euro release only sequel "Last Window" were wonderful 'interactive mystery novel' type games.
Also on DS, "Ghost Trick" has an amazing story, and was one of the most interesting games I have ever played in my life. I HIGHLY recommend anyone with a DS (or even try it on a PC emulator) to give it a shot, as long as you don't mind clever and witty dialogue, mixed in with the animation and puzzle gameplay.
 
Any fans of Chrono Trigger? There was a fan made sequel titled Chrono Trigger:Crimson Echoes which was 98% completed before a C&D was issued. The ips patch was leaked afterwards and can be downloaded here, http://filetrip.net/f23683-Chrono-Trigger-Crimson-Echoes--IPS-%22FINAL%22.html

Another fan made version called Chrono Trigger:Flames of Eternity is still being worked on. It's actually a fork of Crimson Echoes from an early alpha version but wound up being a completely different game. The most recent update is RC6 which is here, http://filetrip.net/f26239-Chrono-Trigger-Flames-of-Eternity-RC6-RC6.html

You'll need the ips patcher, http://filetrip.net/file.php?id=23432

Also, you need to remove the header for Flames of Eternity before patching, http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/593/
The above utility also patches the roms but I linked to both anyway.

Of course you have to supply your own rom. ;)

EDIT
Ok, Flames of Eternity won't play on Pocketsnes or Snes9x4c. I'll leave it up in case someone wants to give it a try anyway. On the other hand I found another cool hack called Prophet's Guile. http://www.zophar.net/hacks/snes/chrono-trigger/Chrono-Trigger-Prophet-s-Guile-618.html
 
I was listening to a retronauts podcast about capcom disney games for the NES and I just happen to have my Caanoo close by. I was able to follow along with the games they were discussing by playing them on the Caanoo.

Some of them ended up being pretty fun, especially Duck Tales.

Beyond that, getting a Caanoo gave me the motivation to play some old favorites that I never got a chance to play in my childhood. Stuff like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 7.

Wind and Water Puzzle Battles is a great freeware game that I got a chance to play because of Caanoo as well. I even bought the Dreamcast version I liked it so much :)
 
I was listening to a retronauts podcast about capcom disney games for the NES and I just happen to have my Caanoo close by. I was able to follow along with the games they were discussing by playing them on the Caanoo.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I love to watch YouTube videos of retro gaming/reviews and play along with my Caanoo, especially videos by AVGN and Gamester81.
 
I have been re-playing Sierra's POint and Click adventures series "Kings Quest", and will soon be adding QUest for Glory to the list. These were the first game si played as a kid on my 386 pc. It's liek being young again... except for the arthritis, the receding hairline and the back pain...
 
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