Monthly Retro Game Club

I’m just starting with Animal Crossing too.

The game tells you to play with friends but how does/did that work?

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I noticed that. Did GameCube have ethernet support? Didn’t the back of the unit open up so that you could install modules? Maybe a modem was one of them lmao. Or maybe there was a pack you could put on that let you connect nearby devices like the DS could… Should probably just Google it at this rate rather than guessing

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I did some digging and it seems that what they mean is that you can have up to 4 players playing on the same memory card. So “multiplayer” means playing using the same memory card and visiting other player’s towns while they are not using it.

That can be emulated with a shared savefile, but seems like a lot of work and a lot of potential issues:

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Two ways.The first is that other players log into the same game and start a profile. They can live in one of the other handful of houses that you pick from at the start. The second is that you can visit another player by inserting your memory card into slot B on the GameCude while your friend’s card is in slot A. You then take the train to your friend’s island. If you’re emulating you can duplicate this by creating a virtual memory card in slot B in Dolphin.

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Huh. So I could send you my savefile and then you could insert it into the virtual memory card slot B and visit my town. And when you give me the file back… will I see any change?

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I hadn’t thought about that, but yes that could potentially work. I’m not sure what you would see, I don’t remember what visitors could do. I think I could leave you some items, or take some of the fruit from your trees. It allows people to share things like fruit, flowers, etc that are somewhat unique to different towns. I have apples in my town, so if you have another fruit I could probably leave you some apples so you can plant, harvest and sell them for 500 bells a piece instead of the 100 bells for your local fruit.

I think the original idea was Nintendo’s ongoing desire to bring people together. You would physically visit your friend and then access their game on their GameCube. Later versions obviously sport online connections, but I kind of like this off-line co-op play. Each town you visit is a little different with a unique layout, different townsfolk, etc.

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By the way, if you are using Dolphin (which I assume you are), you should also enable the built-in GameBoy Advance connection in controller slot #2. This creates a link to an island you can visit that features unique fruit, fish and insects. You’ll know it works when Kapp’n is sitting waiting to take you there in a dinghy at the dock along your shoreline.

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Interesting to know. I’ve been using dolphin for handheld via a little switch-lite looking handheld I got recently. Tried out some sega saturn using the beetle saturn core with retro arch and it didn’t run too well. Might see if theres a dedicate app out there for saturn stuff. Usually use retro arch for the 16bit and below generations

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I might be curious to try a Home Alone sometime; I do like the movies. Though, I got the impression the movies would be somewhat more entertaining

AVGN Adventures and The Escapists have Santa in them [I’ve never actually finished the Santa mission]

And Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [Gamecube], I think, gives them Santa hats if you play on Christmas. I don’t think I’ve ever actually done this

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I’m using Dolphin on Android and I don’t see this option. The only input options are “Disabled”, “Emulated” and “GameCube Adapter” :thinking:

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We could try it! I’ll see how to share my savefile and then you can send it back.

That has to be why I have zero interest in most Nintendo games. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Oops. Only meant to edit that post, not delete it.

I booted up home alone just to take a peak and it really does throw you into it. No idea what I was doing but it was quite fun

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Now that I think of it, we did rent Home Alone [NES] long, long ago. But, we never owned it

I believe in that one, you just have to stay alive for 20 minutes. Possibly I could beat it at this age, if I had access to it

You know, once I wondered if playing as Harry and Marv would be more interesting. Maybe you could have the choice of Kevin or Harry or Marv

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I played it a few seconds in a website with an online version. I didn’t understand anything. Why am I skating? Why does destroying snowfolk give me points? What’s the countdown for?

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Lol yeah it’s very confusing at first. You skate to a house and then do a setup thing where you prepare traps. Once you’ve done that it launches you into the game and you’re playing inside the house… What you do inside the house I’m still not entirely sure. I think you have to survive / fight off the two guys trying to rob you

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We are talking about a generation where the Dreamcast was at the forefront of network connectivity, the PlayStation 2 utilized the network adapter for only a small handful of games like FFXI and the GameCube was designed to be carried around as a means to play at friend’s houses.

I quite enjoy the simplicity of Nintendo’s approach because I love couch co-op.

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I don’t know if it’s very different, but I can take a screen capture of my setup on Steam Deck later when I’m at home, if that’s helpful.

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The NES and Genesis games are apparently very different.

In the Genesis version the object is to stop the Wet Bandits. They will try to rob twenty houses and you can sled around between them as a means of getting around. On hard mode they will rob forty houses.

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Yup, exactly that, you have to thwart their robbery attempt. And you have to do it twenty times (or forty on hard) to win, or so I believe.

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If I’m being fully honest, Home Alone is not a great game, lol. It squarely feels like one of those games you’d rent and play for a weekend. I played hundreds of crappy games for short stints thanks to rentals. And I’d probably even have some nostalgia for this if I’d rented this one weekend as a kid.

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