Retro Gaming

Me and a friend were on voice chat last night and it turned into one of those classic "no, seriously, you have to play this" talks. He's been circling Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max for a while. He could just load it on his phone, but his exact words were "fuck that." He's already got the hardware ready for PPSSPP, he's just waiting on a controller to show up from Amazon.

And not just any pad. It's Sega's officially licensed six-button Saturn controller, just made USB now. The exact same shape, the exact same legendary D-pad, but it plugs straight in. He refuses to play a Capcom six-button fighter with four face buttons and heavy punch on a shoulder trigger. On the actual PSP, Capcom had to cram HP and HK onto L and R. It works, but your thumb is never where your brain expects it to be. With PPSSPP and that Saturn pad, he can finally map light, medium, heavy punches across the top, kicks across the bottom, and just play.

That alone is why I think he's going to actually stick with it this time.

He also kept asking the same thing a lot of people do: what even was Alpha? Why was Capcom putting it out at the same time as the main Street Fighter games? Was it just a cash-in?

Short version I gave him: it started as a hardware problem. Alpha was first built for the old CPS-1 boards because Capcom had a pile of them they were buying back from arcades, then they built it for CPS-2 at the same time. It hit Japanese arcades June 22, 1995, which was four years after Street Fighter II, but story-wise it's a prequel. That's why everyone looks younger.

The other big change was the look. Capcom threw out the bulky SFII sprites and drew everything in that bright, exaggerated anime style they were using for Darkstalkers and X-Men: Children of the Atom. My friend lit up when I mentioned that, because that's exactly his thing. He loves the anime look, and Alpha is basically a playable 90s OVA.

Gameplay-wise, Alpha was Capcom's "everyone can play" branch while Street Fighter III was cooking for the hardcore crowd. Alpha gave you a three-level super gauge, Alpha Counters so you could spend a bar to counter out of block, plus air blocking and chain combos that let you interrupt one normal into another of equal or greater strength. It's less about one-frame parries and more about feeling cool quickly. When I told him Alpha was the casual-friendly one, he just said "yeah, that's right up my alley."

And that's where Alpha 3 Max is perfect for him, especially emulated. The PSP version has the biggest roster Capcom ever crammed into Alpha, plus the three Isms that let you pick your own complexity:

X-Ism if you just want one super bar and big damage, no air block A-Ism for the standard Alpha Counter stuff V-Ism for custom combos when you feel like labbing

He doesn't have to learn V-Ism day one. He can live in X-Ism, throw fireballs with younger Ryu, and enjoy the sprites.

The real win is the setup he's waiting for. PPSSPP is zero friction, save states mean he can practice a Dragon Punch without sitting through load screens, and that USB Saturn D-pad fixes the one thing the original PSP release got wrong. It's not nostalgia, it's literally more accurate to how the arcade six-button layout was supposed to feel.

So yeah, I spent an hour basically pitching my friend his own controller back to him. He's not playing Alpha 3 Max because it's retro, he's playing it because emulation finally lets him play it like Capcom drew it: six buttons, anime as hell, and forgiving enough that you don't need to be Evo-ready to have fun.

Controller lands from Amazon, Saturn pad plugs in, PPSSPP boots. I'll report back when he discovers how busted V-Ism Sakura is.

— FP

I have been telling my friend for a while now that he needs to play Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days.

Not because it is some sacred classic that must be respected from a distance. I mean it more directly than that. I know the kind of games he likes, and I had a pretty good feeling this one was going to land once he gave it a fair shot.

Now he has finally started it.

He is only a couple maps in, playing it on his phone through emulation, just getting a feel for the basics. But he already said the thing that told me I was probably right.

He likes how you can queue up your actions and then watch everything happen at once.

That is the hook.

A lot of strategy RPGs move one character at a time. Move here, attack there, wait, repeat. Disgaea has a different rhythm. You can line up your movement, attacks, throws, positioning, and combos first, then hit execute and watch the whole plan unfold.

At first, it just feels stylish.

Then it starts to feel clever.

Then you realize the game is quietly asking you to do ridiculous things on purpose.

That is where Disgaea gets interesting. It is not only about winning a fight. It is about figuring out how much nonsense you can get away with before the game pushes back.

And the funny thing is, he has barely seen the real systems yet.

He has done the Geo Panel tutorial, but those have not really clicked for him yet. That is the part I am waiting for, because Geo Panels are one of those mechanics that sound confusing until the moment you understand them.

The short version is that different colored tiles on the map can carry special effects. Those effects might help you, hurt you, boost enemies, heal units, change damage, or create strange restrictions. The effects are controlled by Geo Symbols, which can be moved, attacked, destroyed, and used to trigger chain reactions across the battlefield.

Once that clicks, the map stops being just a place where the fight happens.

It becomes part of the fight.

You stop asking only how to defeat the enemies in front of you. You start asking what will happen if you break this symbol first, or move that one over there, or set off a chain that clears half the board.

That is the moment I want to see happen.

Because right now he is still playing Disgaea like a normal tactics game. That is fine. That is how almost everyone starts. But eventually the game starts revealing what it really is. A tactics RPG, yes, but also a weird little machine full of systems that want to be bent, stretched, abused, and eventually broken wide open.

And we have not even gotten to the Item World yet.

That is another reason I wanted him to play this version specifically. Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days is perfect for a handheld or a phone. You can play one map and stop. You can grind for a few minutes. You can tweak your party, mess with equipment, run a quick battle, and put it away.

Or, more likely, you can tell yourself you are only going to do one more thing and then lose an hour.

That is the danger with Disgaea. It never really forces you to go deep. It just leaves all these systems sitting there, waiting for you to become curious.

Level your characters. Level your items. Build strange units. Reincarnate them. Stack advantages. Chase bigger numbers. Turn a simple battle into a personal project.

That is the part I think is going to get him.

So this is not really a review yet. It is the beginning of an experiment.

I talked my friend into trying Disgaea 2. He is a few maps in. The graphics have already won him over. The turn system has his attention. Geo Panels are still waiting to click. The Item World is still lurking somewhere in the future.

I know where this road goes.

We will check back in once he gets there.