#game anthologies

[gear-project]

Annon-Guy: In regards to this poll I sent you, what do you think of the games I chose for the Guilty Gear and XBLAZE/BlazBlue Options? Think these would work in Compilation Games?

Guilty Gear: Guilty Gear Judgement (and by extension Guilty Gear X2 since's it bundled with Judgement without it's Story Mode Component), Guilty Gear Petit, Guilty Gear Petit 2, Guilty Gear Isuka, Guilty Gear Raid of Arms and Pro Jumper! Guilty Gear Tangent!?

XBLAZE + BlazBlue: XBLAZE CODE: EMBRYO, XBLAZE LOST: MEMORIES, BlayzBloo: Super Melee Brawlers Battle Royale and BlazBlue: Clone Phantasma

https://www.tumblr.com/annon-guy2/755360705613545472/potential-collectioncompilation-game-poll?source=share

Bloody Roar/Beastorizor Collection (up to Konami, actually) Treasure Collection (up to Treasure)

Both of these are on my wishlist (I also wish Dodonpachi had a compilation collection, anything shootemup related by Cave really…)

Also, speaking of Treasure, I've got my eyes on Ubusuna which is supposedly coming out either this or next year and is a spiritual sequel to Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun. (Also Mischief Makers and Silhouette Mirage technically...)

I doubt there will ever be a perfect Guilty Gear collection because of Guilty Gear X port problems, which I've mentioned in an older post.

As for Xblaze, no idea, Lost Memories already contains a "recap" of the events of Code Embryo though, so there's that.

I kinda wish BlazBlue Dark War got a Visual Novel adaptation at least, or even just a Light Novelization.

[gear-project]

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It's always a Feather in my Cap whenever I successfully add a new (or at least, relatively new) game to my collection, but it's rare for such games to be PS2 Era.

Despite the fact we live in an age of High Definition displays and real-time Arcade quality, there are some games that the PS3 and PS4 struggle to fully replicate the experience of.

I decided some time ago to invest in a decent-sized PS2 HDD Drive along with Open PS2 Loader and MCBoot/uLaunchELF.  And while there's no option for Netplay, and installing games via WinHiip is something of a pain to set up, the end result grants me access to an extended library of games you won't likely ever see in Today's current-gen.

Street Fighter Alpha Anthology with Pre-patch Dipswitches and Color editor, SF Anniversary Edition (with Third Strike), Samurai Spirits Rokuban Shoubu (Samurai Showdown Anthology), Vampire Darkstalkers Collection (with Dee exclusive character, this title is finally compatible with OPL), Guilty Gear Isuka (with 4-way adapter I bought), King of Fighters Maximum Impact 2, FATE/Unlimited Codes, Hokuto no Ken, Neogeo Battle Colleseum, SvC Chaos SNK vs Capcom, The Rumble Fish, Last Blade Anthology, Marvel vs Capcom 2, Arcana Heart 1, Capcom vs SNK 2, Saint Seiya Hades Chapter, Sengoku Basara Cross, Melty Blood Actress Again...

And that's just my Fighting game collection!  I could tell you about Raiden III, Thunderforce IV, Gradius V, not to mention Psyvariar, Ibara, Homura, Exelica, even Dodonpachi Dai Oujou!

These are games you won't find on other consoles with the same features you might expect!  Even spinoff iOS and cellphone versions don't hold a candle to a tried-and-true PS2 Dual Shock Controller, or PS2 compatible Joystick!

The biggest difference between a PS2 game and an HD port is "Upscale".

HD ports are meant for "extremely large displays", but if you just have a simple 22-inch monitor, you're gonna get Black-barred.  The sprites will be smaller because they're being squeezed in to another resolution.

PS2 games on the other hand get "Upscaled", and while some may argue such games aren't pixel-perfect or sometimes blurry or stretched, consider that this scale is the optimum experience for Arcade Displays.  Sol and Ky were never tiny sprites to begin with, even in GGX, so why do they look so small in HD?

Upscale is the answer.  Not to mention all the Sega Dreamcast games the PS2 inherited, import or otherwise!

We may live in an age of franchise reboots, HD remakes, and Netplay, but it doesn't hurt to revisit our roots now and again.  They still have value, like buried treasures, deep in the vault of our nostalgia!