Planning Thread - Together Retro Sharp Dash Alpha 2026

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pierrot
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Planning Thread - Together Retro Sharp Dash Alpha 2026

Post by pierrot »

I rarely spent much time actually participating in TRs in the past, but something about seeing it kind of languish into atrophy stirs something inside of me. So, I figured I'd give the idea I threw out (piggybacking off of Maru's idea) from the brainstorming thread a shot, to see if maybe it sticks.

Fairly simple premise:
- A sleight of four games picked randomly from this list I jammed together of old TR games: viewtopic.php?p=1188842#p1188842

- The list is meant to have primarily games available on (ideally multiple) modern systems (but there's a bit of a PC bias because virtually everything is available on it now).

- The period over which the four games are to be played would extend from about Jan 1st until the April 30th. (Four months.)


Essentially, I figured this would basically fill the time in the calendar year before people typically start buzzing about the Summer Games Challenge, which usually flows into spooktober, after which it seems like most are probably more focused on holidays than forum activity.

I was intending to start this off around the 1st of the year to see how it goes, but if it doesn't generate much interest after a pilot run, I would personally just be seeing TR as dead. On the other hand, if there was some traction and someone else wanted to run the same idea in future years, that would be cool too (I'm not sure how consistently I could do it every year).

Either way, I was thinking of probably sifting through the old threads to periodically drag up some posts that could make for interesting conversation--even if it's just between me and a post from over a decade ago. :lol:

I'll make another thread once the time comes, but in the meantime if anyone has any sort of feedback, I'll take it under advisement.

Game selection will be in the next post.
Last edited by pierrot on Sun Dec 14, 2025 7:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Together Retro Sharp Dash Alpha Spiral Doom - Concept Thread

Post by pierrot »

I put a crack team of lab mice together on the hamster wheels, while letting the monkeys bang away at the tabulation machines, and they have bequeathed us with this group of four games:

Mega Man X (everything under the sun) (Super Nintendo) (DOS?) (Mobile) (Virtual Console-Wii/U, 3DS)
Mega Man X Collection (Playstation 2) (Gamecube)
Mega Man Maverick Hunter X (Playstation Portable)
Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1 (Playstation 4) (Xbox One) (Switch) (PC-Steam)


Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom & Shadow Over Mystara (Arcade) (Saturn)
Chronicles of Mystara (Playstation 3) (Xbox 360) (Wii U) (PC-Steam)


Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I & II (XBOX) (PC) (Switch) (Mobile)


Super Monkey Ball 1 & 2 (Gamecube) (Playstation 2, XBOX - Deluxe)
Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania (Playstation 4/5) (Xbox One/Series) (Switch) (PC-Steam)


If I missed any available formats, let me know.

Personally, this is a pretty exciting group of games for me: I love the Capcom D&Ds; MMX is an X game I actually like and haven't played in a while; I'm seeing this as a great opportunity to maybe finally play KotOR; I've had SMB on my summer games list several times in the past without ever really playing it much, and I picked up the remake for PC earlier this year.

On that note, for transparency's sake, I'll just drop in this screen-grab. It does not, unfortunately, prove I didn't run multiple trials; You'll just have to trust me on that.
RandomPicker.png
RandomPicker.png (88.75 KiB) Viewed 4304 times
Last edited by pierrot on Sun Dec 14, 2025 7:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Together Retro Sharp Dash Alpha Spiral Doom - Concept Thread

Post by Ack »

For something like this, are we comfortable with related games? For instance, I have beaten KotOR but never checked out its sequel.
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Re: Together Retro Sharp Dash Alpha Spiral Doom - Concept Thread

Post by pierrot »

Ack wrote: Fri Nov 28, 2025 1:17 pm For something like this, are we comfortable with related games?

I'm not really interested in being militant and telling people they can't post about something in the thread, but I was hoping to run this as more of an experiment with the hypothesis that less choice might be better for participation. I was also hoping that with these games from many of the early years of TR, they would be popular enough choices to encourage replaying (like MMX and D&D for me, personally). Also, with four games over a four month period, my thought was to have sort of a loose one game per month kind of goal.

That being said, It's sort of dawning on me that D&D is really two games, so I'm waffling a little on the idea of adding KotOR 2 and SMB2 maybe. The latter has regularly been packaged together with SMB1 like D&D, anyway.

Just spitballing with another possible idea: Maybe a fifth game; Some uber-classic that hadn't been featured in TR before, and possibly on the longer side.
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Re: Together Retro Sharp Dash Alpha Spiral Doom - Concept Thread

Post by o.pwuaioc »

I'm somewhat interested in replaying MMX.
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pierrot
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Re: Together Retro Sharp Dash Alpha Spiral Doom - Concept Thread

Post by pierrot »

Hells yeah! Love to hear it.
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Re: Together Retro Sharp Dash Alpha Spiral Doom - Concept Thread

Post by marurun »

The other thing is long games can be tough. I would err on having shorter options.
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Re: Together Retro Sharp Dash Alpha Spiral Doom - Concept Thread

Post by Note »

Appreciate the thread and game choices, pierrot.

I'd be interested in revisiting Mega Man X. I got pretty far into it a few years back, but didn't manage to finish it, so it'd be a good excuse for me to pick it back up.

I've played through Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara on the 360, and am a fan of the games. I'd like to pick up the Saturn version, so revisiting this could be an option for me as well.

While I'm interested in both KOTOR and Super Monkey Ball, I don't own those titles on any format just yet.
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pierrot
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Re: Together Retro Sharp Dash Alpha Spiral Doom - Concept Thread

Post by pierrot »

Thanks for the extra feedback. Glad to hear any of the games are grabbing you, Note.

I want to nail down a final plan in the next couple weeks in order to get a new thread up to start the TR on time. I'm interested in getting any thoughts on a couple details I've been debating:
  1. Leave it alone.
  2. Add KotOR II and Monkey Ball 2
  3. Add a classic as a fifth option (something not from a previous TR; eg. Deus-Ex, Morrowind)
These are meant to be mutually exclusive, but if enough people would really like to see both the latter two things added, with good reason, I'm somewhat open to it. I'm thinking I'll leave this open for deliberation until about the 19th, at which point I'll make an executive decision and start banging away at the new thread.

Thanks
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Re: Together Retro Sharp Dash Alpha Spiral Doom - Concept Thread

Post by marurun »

I am willing to let this be your baby, so to speak. We have had other approaches and attempts, now it can be your turn!
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