You can always tell when it’s this time of year, because the blog gets kinda silent. You know I’m working on something — well here it is! The FOURTH big issue of Retro Game SuperHyper fanzine is available now!
Continue reading “Retro Game SuperHyper Fanzine Issue #4 is OUT NOW!!”
At last! A project I started back in 2021 and have picked away at little by little is finally finished, and I’m so excited to show it off to you now!
I give you…Laser Game SuperHyper!
Tim Lapetino is the author of one of my absolute favorite video game art/history books, Art of Atari (read my effusive post about that book in the link). Announced on Pac-Man’s 40th birthday (under the tentative name 40 Years of Waka-Waka), his and Arjan Terpstra’s follow-up project, Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon, was published a little over two years ago by Cook & Becker, purveyors of luxurious video game-based art books and prints. Though I pre-ordered it and received it upon its release, due to my regrettable lack of free time it’s only been just recently that I have finally had a chance to sit down and read it. I am happy to report that by all standards, Lapetino and Terpstra have once again knocked it out of the park.
Continue reading “Gamers’ Library: Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon”
As I wrote in a post this past summer, Taito is releasing the Taito LD Game Collection in Japan later this year, including HD remasters of their three animated laserdisc arcade classics Time Gal, Ninja Hayate, and Space Battleship Yamato. It was also noted that the collector’s edition would include a serial code for a bonus game, called Time Gal Reverse. But what is it?
Continue reading ““Reverse” = REBIRTH?!”
Today is Retro Game SuperHyper’s 7th birthday! Woohoo!
Continue reading “RGSH Turns 7!”
The Metroid Database — the website I started in 1996 — is beginning its annual Metroid Marathon today, and for the first time, I am making my return to the MDb to participate!
With this being the anniversary month of the MDb (launched on October 16, 1996), each October they do a marathon in which they livestream every game in the Metroid series. With the franchise now totaling 14 games, and some of them requiring quite a few hours to complete, that provides plenty of daily content to last throughout the month. This year, they have graciously invited me to be a part of it, and I am honored to have been given the prestigious position of playing through the original Metroid on October 16 at 9:30 pm CDT, live on Twitch!
As you may know, October 16 is also significant because it’s the anniversary of the launch of Retro Game SuperHyper (that was intentional), so it’ll be a fun way to celebrate. I hope you all swing by and watch, chat, and join in the fun!
I will be playing the game on original hardware — no emulators — and there may be a surprise or two as well. I’ve been training hard, playing Metroid 1 over and over, so that I can give you a good show!
Find the full schedule HERE at the MDb. Please check out the MDb’s Metroid Marathon daily at the MDb’s Twitch channel, and follow the RGSH Twitch channel too (the MDb’s channel will also be linked through my channel when they’re streaming). Can’t wait to see you there!
When we last left off months ago in Game Room Setup, Part 1, we had just finished moving into our house and I had a big mess on my hands that I need to turn into a great space for gaming, streaming, and chilling. Well, we’ve been here for about five months now, and I am happy to report that I have…a…somewhat smaller mess on my hands.
Continue reading “Game Room Setup, Part 2”
Remember when I wrote an article called Never Say Never, about games I never thought would come out, but did? And in that article, I had a short list of dream games that I still thought would never actually be released, and one of them was a Time Gal HD Remaster?
Well…guess what Taito just announced.
Continue reading “Taito LD Game Collection, or That Time I Willed a Game Into Existence”
A few years ago, I wrote a post called Solving the Portopia Serial Murder Case. In it, I detailed how I spent a fair amount of time examining the English fan translation of the Famicom version of the adventure classic, Portopia, and figuring out how to complete the game efficiently. After playing through it several times and taking detailed notes, I created a walkthrough which I made available to download.
Now, in 2023, Square Enix has released a new version of this hugely influential title, but with a twist: rather than the text parser input of the PC original or the menu-driven gameplay of the Famicom version, this new edition serves as a tech demo of an AI-driven input system which Square Enix is calling NLP, or Natural Language Processing. Allegedly, NLP is able to recognize a wide array of commands typed or spoken and utilize them to control the game. In theory, this could revolutionize the way graphic adventure games are played.
Continue reading “Solving the 2023 Portopia Serial Murder Case”
UPDATE: The thrilling conclusion to the story, at the end of the article!
Love playing video games? And collecting them too? Well the game-playing doesn’t have to stop when you run out of lives — if you wanna roll the dice on winning and losing some more, why not try pre-ordering your next game?
Okay, that sounds like cynical snark right out of the gate. But I was thinking about this as I’m looking at pre-ordering a title I’m really looking forward to, and realizing that just pre-ordering a new game can be — well, a game in itself.
Continue reading “The Pre-order Game UPDATED 5.5.23”
A couple weeks ago, my gorgeous, saintly, and astonishingly tolerant wife accompanied her big dorky nerdball husband (that’s me, follow along here) on a date to see the Super Mario Movie. She thought it was pretty good. I LOVED IT.
Continue reading “The Super Mario Movie: Chris Pratt is the BEST MARIO EVER and Other Observations”
Midwest Gaming Classic went down from March 31-April 2, 2023, and I attended on the show’s final day, Sunday the 2nd.
As I’ve mentioned in all of my previous posts about MGC (2022, 2019, 2017), I have attended nearly every year that the show has run since 2005. (There was a blizzard in 2018, 2020 didn’t happen due to Covid, and 2021 didn’t work out for me.) That’s a lotta shows! Some years, I will admit, have been better than others; unfortunately, I felt like I didn’t get much out of it last year, but that was largely due to my own tight schedule, not any fault of the show’s.
However, I am happy to report that this year, I had a great experience and it felt like a true return to form. I saw and played lots of kickass games, picked up some cool stuff, enjoyed some entertaining panels, and met some rad people. Let’s get into it!
Continue reading “Midwest Gaming Classic 2023”
As I mentioned in my last post, we spent the past couple months moving house. It’s been an intense and exhausting process, but we are finally in our new place. Now, the process of putting it together begins as we live amongst boxes for the foreseeable future, gradually putting away, setting up, and settling in.
Naturally, I wanna dive into putting together my new game room, and I have slowly started putting some things away and roughing out the layout, but of course there’s the whole rest of the house that needs attention too, so I don’t know when the new RGSH Research Lab will actually be complete. I thought I would wait until it was done before getting back into blogging and creating content, but then I thought, why not just document it as it happens?
Continue reading “Game Room Setup, Part 1”
Retro Game SuperHyper 