I was feeling a bit nostalgic last night, so once we put the kid
to bed, I dragged out my Super Famicom for a round of Super Robot War 4.
It gave me an excuse to try out my unbranded SNES-to-SCART and
SCART-to-HDMI cables which, I must say, worked beautifully. Clear picture
with no blurring.
I was *really* into the console scene, from the mid-90s until rather
recently, and am the proud owner of several still-functioning copier
devices and other grey-market goodies. Largely out of laziness, my
current go-to device is my Super UFO Pro 8 SD, which uses an SD card for
storage and can transfer to/from a Windows PC via USB. It's vastly more
efficient compared to my older floppy and/or parallel port based copiers,
such as my Double Pro Fighters or Game Doctor 7.
But, back to Super Robot War 4. I've been playing this game off-and-on
since the mid 90s and finally made an effort to beat the game back in
September (which I did thanks to twenty years of extensive notes). When I
went to start a new game, I found the first save slot on the cart was
non-functional although, inexplicably, the second slot worked. Not
wanting to risk faulty SRAM, I dumped the cart to the Super UFO's SD card
and played the game off the copier.
This time, I decided to have a little fun: I used Exterminator codes, aka
Pro Action replay (PAR) codes to cheat a little. I figured after twenty+
years of taking this game seriously, I'm going to take the piss out of
it! I used a save game editor called SDGundRAM to change my team's mecha
from their original Gundams, Super Robots, etc to some of the more
powerful boss mecha, gave myself virtually unlimited money, and upgraded
the living crap out of each unit.
Yeah, I breezed through the first few maps rather quickly, but the novelty
wore off after a while, and I found myself wanting to play the game
without such a signifigant advantage.... so I turned the codes off and
started the game from scratch. I'm still playing the game recklessly, and
levelling up all the weaker support/comic relief characters for my main
attack squad. It makes for a more balanced game, and a lot more fun than
giving myself what is basically an infinite advantage.
Of course, I'm going to be absolutely screwed once I near the end of the
game, but I'll deal with that when I gett there...
