Hey all, Kinglink here,  I know it’s not the beginning of the month but I’m actually here to talk about one of my favorite games.  And right here is where I first remember playing it.  

And… ummm… I can just.. Pop it in… Nope… Ummm How about.. Ok. So maybe if I … 

Ok maybe it’s the box, just put it on top.. So… This might be a problem …. And not just because I don’t remember where I put the actual Activision Anthology disc. Not like this would work on a PC but… the good news is we can go back to a video I did a couple of years ago, about our old friend Emulation.  And before anyone asks, no this week’s game isn’t on Steam in any form I know of.  Sadly… However thanks to PCSX2 we can look at this game and … oh boy. 

Ok, the music goes off, honestly, there are two things I loved about this Activision Anthology, the first being that music… which of course we won’t have anymore.  The songs brought me back to the 80s with Tainted Love and White Wedding.  The other thing I loved was the collection of games.  Activision was amazing during the Atari era making unique and incredible titles, and I’d recommend people check out this entire Activision Anthology if you can.  But I wanted to focus on a specific title I first experienced playing this and that’s Dolphin. You already know from the video’s title, that that’s where we’re going.  But let’s check out the Real Atari 2600 cart. 

Oh, wait. I don’t still have my Atari 2600, or maybe I do at my parent’s place in Florida and that’s like 3000 miles away … sooo… umm yeah, let’s see if the PC can run it. Ok just push it in.. just umm USB?  Right?   Oh, I’m such an idiot, it’s upside down.  And .. yeah… that’s not going to work either, I guess we’re going to emulate once again. And this is Dolphin.

Now as you watch me play this game, I’m sure a lot of people aren’t going to understand what’s going on, and that’s a fundamental part of why this is one of my favorite games from the 2600.  There are three things I love about this, including one very unique feature of the game.   The first is this is the game, there’s not a lot of hidden complexity here, after all this is a 2600 game.   The dolphin tries to get away from the squid, the dolphin can even switch directions.  The squid chases after him and will keep gaining.  There are little waves that can help or hinder the Dolphin depending on who gets hit. 

The second thing is of course there’s the “power pellet” and in the case of the Dolphin, it’s the seagull.  So yes, a dolphin jumps out of the water and eats a seagull which gives him the power to eat a squid, just like real life.  It’s kind of a strange power dynamic, but let’s be honest, we’ve all seen worse, right?   

The third piece though has been playing the entire time and maybe some bat-eared listeners have picked it up but let me make it more obvious. 

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That’s right, Our plucky little dolphin is echolocating, and the sound and pitch means a wall of seahorse is approaching and players have to dodge through them figuring out the height based on the pitch of the sound made.

The thing is, there are not a lot of games that even do something like this today, and admittedly it’s a really bad game design if you’re hard of hearing or just deaf, but that’s kind of the point of it.  This is intended to be the main ability or skill the player has and has to master it.  And I…. have runs of good luck and bad luck.  Honestly, I’ve played this game a lot so I’m hoping I’m better than most, but hearing has never been my strongest suit.

So we have a unique single-screen game, it does have multiple difficulties, it has a unique echolocation mechanic, and it’s worth checking out.  That’s it.  Fastest video I’ve made. 

Except…. Ok, there’s more.  This is one of my favorite games, maybe not top 10 but easily top 3 on the Atari.  So what more is there to say?  Well we are talking about emulation, and I’ve talked about why others and I emulate a long time ago, but there’s an important piece of emulation that does mean a lot to me.  

RetroAchievements is a site where amazing people create achievements for old games.  You have everything from Final Fantasy to Genesis titles to even the Metal Gear Series.  If it’s an old game you love there are probably achievements that have been added to it.  And of course, I wanted achievements for Dolphin, but when you used to search for Dolphin you got this… 

This is of course the site’s 404 but essentially Dolphin isn’t on RetroAchievements… well it wasn’t. 

Yeah, so a big piece of what I’ve been doing for the last couple of months is thinking about how I can do more for RetroAchievements and actually.  Let’s try it out. 

Oooh 25 achievements… let’s earn some.  

The thing is when I talk to people about RetroAchievements, I hear two responses.  “Achievements are stupid” And yeah, that’s fine, just don’t turn them on.  Retro games have this great ability to not even have achievements, but the other and perhaps a little more common statement is “That’s cool”.  And, I agree, I love little achievements, plaques of completion, and challenges.  I’m having a pretty good time with this set.  Let’s… take a look at the site. 

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Hmm… ohhh… oh that would be why we’re talking about this, isn’t it.   And I’m sure someone is going “AHA this is just self-promotion… “

And yeah, admittedly this is a bit of an ad… for something you don’t have to pay any money to enjoy.  That’s a pretty good deal, but this is also a promotion of a game from a very old era, a retro review if you will.  A game I felt so strongly about that I decided to put aside just gaming in my off time and start looking at the game itself, and you know what, let me quickly show you what it looks like. 

And yeah, there’s a lot here, and maybe another time I’ll talk more about this if people are interested and talk about my passion for it, but ultimately I used all these tools and worked on the game, and eventually, I found parts of the game that made sense in memory, wrote achievements, edited them, playtested them like crazy, waited about 5 weeks for review(ugh), and got them published.  After all that work, mostly waiting, Dolphin is now able to be played by anyone who wants to check out a classic Atari title that deserves a look, from a time when Activision tried some novel stuff instead of just putting microtransactions into everything and reviving the same franchise in admittedly unimpressive offerings. 

There’s one other thing that’s been going on with me.  I’ve recently become a bit bored by modern games, I just don’t find myself enjoying them as much and what I have been enjoying is looking into these older titles and figuring out how they worked, and then using that information to make achievements for other people to check out when they feel like it.  

And not just simple achievements, but, well – let me tell you one more piece of Dolphin’s history or Activision, because as much as I love this game, there’s just something cool about how Activision used to operate.

You see if you go to the back of the manual, you get these offerings.  Back in the day, if you sent Activision proof you hit 80,000 points in any mode, you’d get a badge.  And if you hit a special number. 300,000, you’d get a secret message that got you a better badge.  And this is legit a badge that Activision sent people.  And of course, this is where I display my actual badges… if I had it.

Yeah, I’m not exactly THAT old, well maybe I am but I didn’t play these games when I was two, or at least I didn’t know about the badges, and that makes me sad.

However I took those two badges and made a series of achievements based on it, implementing them on each difficulty in the game, and there’s a lot more I did here.  You can check out the achievements yourself, I’ll drop a link in the description, and I hope you do.  I’m not going to go through the whole process of setting up RetroAchievements on an emulator.  

But simply… download it. Boot it. Create an account on RetroAchievement. Add that account to Retroarch, there’s a similar process for Bizhawk if you prefer that.  Download a compatible core, Stella in this case. Then boot the correct ROM.  Note this is all done off of hashing so if you don’t see the game, it’s possible you have a different version of the game, and may need to acquire a new copy through legal means, of course.  I have no rights to the game itself, I just own it on two different platforms… If I ever find that pesky PS2 disc. 

But before I end this I do want to talk about one other cool thing about the whole process.  I’ll demo a little bug, so if you get close enough to a sea horse and change direction, the game glitches and gives you 50 points, thinking you passed the sea horses.  This is something I doubt anyone knows, maybe not even the developer, at least not anymore.   It’s a bug, but it’s a cool little feature that I might be the only one who knows about and I’m going to share it with all of you.  Basically without diving in too deep, this is all done based on hit detection where it checks how many times the dolphin collides with the sea horses but you trigger the area of the sea horse and leave it before touching them.   Kind of a fun but minor bug in my opinion.

So what does this video mean?  Well, let’s go through.  Dolphin is a great freaking game and needs to be checked out by more people.  Retroachievements now have a set for it, I’m officially creating achievement sets on Retroachievements. I’m mostly over playing most modern games, but I did just play Like a Dragon Gaiden, so I’m full of contradictions, and honestly, I’m happy to be checking out games more deeply and uniquely. 

With all that, I’m also going to keep talking about them, as well as the achievement sets I work on, and I hope you’ll come along down memory lane.  I will say that I’ll have more to talk about in future entries, perhaps, and I’ll try to keep these shorter at least with the side information, but I enjoyed this so much I am going to share my passion with all of you. 

If you’re concerned about the channel, don’t worry, Humble Choice is still going to get reviewed, I’m sure I’ll play something else modern someday soon, Like A Dragon 8 is still coming out early next year after all.  But I kind of want to talk about Retro Games for a while and why I love certain ones.   I’m not sure what the next game I’ll be working on is… I’m just going to tuck this one away, and … oh what’s the game doing there?  I’m sure that means nothing. 

Let me know what you think about this video, it’s of course something new. Let me know if you want to see more, or even just suggest great retro games whether they are just something you love, something you are so passionate about that you feel a desire to get more people to check out, or games with or without a great set on RetroAchievements. 

Like, comment, and subscribe, it helps out and lets me know what you think of this video and this idea.  I’m going to try my hardest to keep making sets, but my goal is also to talk about the WHY I made sets or what’s special about these titles that I select.  At least assuming I have a real reason for it. 

See you next time.