Retro Game SuperHyper

Here’s something you may or may not remember if you were around during the 16-bit era: before Game Fan the magazine, there was Game Fan the catalog! Die Hard Game Club, a prominent import videogame seller which used to advertise in magazines like EGM, put out a mini catalog/magazine that came well before they began publishing their Game Fan magazine. Measuring only about 3.5×5 inches and weighing in at 24 full-color pages, this catalog was packed with screenshots and a little editorial content to make you drool for all those Japanese games that they were selling for well north of 60 bucks a pop. Continue reading “I have this thing: Die Hard Game Fan Catalog” →

Hope everyone had a good Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice, Yule, Festivus, Saturnalia, Sega Saturnalia, or whatever you celebrate at the end of the year. And regardless of what you celebrate, I hope you got some gaming goodies! My super rad wife got me a Raspberry Pi kit, and I’m gonna share my experience with it thus far.

I’m all about playing on original hardware. But let’s face it, the price on Crisis Force is rising, and I no longer have my JAMMA cabinet, so yeah, I use emulators. And the Raspberry Pi and RetroPie thing looked way too good not to check out, so here we are at this blog post. Continue reading “Mmm, Raspberry “ →

Oh, the tricks we used to have to use, just to play games.

Back in the days before region lockouts, the way to keep gamers from playing games from other areas of the world, which for some reason (money) they weren’t supposed to play, was simply to make the cartridges not fit their country’s console.

Challenge accepted, said the greyish market! If the cart won’t fit — adapt it! Continue reading “I have these things: Nintendo cartridge adaptors” →

I say tomayto, you say tomahto. I say laserdisc videogame, you say stupid interactive full motion video non-game. And then I say you suck and laserdisc games are completely awesome and no I will NOT call the whole thing off.

I love laserdisc videogames. My obsession with them started when they came out in 1983. I was 8 or 9 when Dragon’s Lair first came out in arcades, and even though I wasn’t great at it, I was madly in love with it. All of it. The technology, the animation, the characters, the whole feel of the game. The LD game craze continued, and I was hooked on the whole idea.

Continue reading “Chasing the Dragon” →

While digging out Christmas decorations this afternoon, I came across my bin full of electronics and gadgets and stuff. It’s got a couple old DVD players in it, lots of cords and cables, some random pieces of A/V equipment, and and lifetime supply of outlet strips. Suddenly – a flash of inspiration! Continue reading “Resourcefulness!” →

Shantae is a series I’ve been wanting to check out for a while now. With the recent Limited Run physical releases of the last two games in the series popping up in my Instagram feed a lot, and the new entry Half Genie Hero coming out in a couple weeks (and looking really cool, like I need to play it), I got the bug to finally take a look at this little platforming franchise.

So, I thought what I always think in this situation: I’ll start at the beginning. The original Shantae was a Game Boy Color game, released in 2002. I’ll just pick up a used copy of the game and have at it, I thought. Continue reading “So I thought I might check out Shantae” →