Did you know this was a thing? A lot of gamers don’t! But it’s true, Konami put out a 3-episode Salamander/Gradius OAV (original animation video, or direct-to-video anime) series in 1988.
…arcade machine. Mine was Donkey Kong.
Many people ask arcade machine collectors, “how do you even get these things?” And usually the answer is well, you kind of get into the ranks of fellow collectors, form networks, buy from other collectors, ask the owners of bars/restaurants that have machines if they’ll sell them, inquire at local amusement devices distributors and operators…it’s never really a straight answer, because that’s how collecting arcade games really is.
But you have to start somewhere. I scored my Donkey Kong machine way back in 1999. And I literally found it in the classifieds section of the paper.
I have only recently become aware of some of the bad press that Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest has gotten. This came as somewhat of a shock to me, as Castlevania II has always been one of my favorite games on the NES, and I guess I thought most people agreed with that. It’s also a direct influence on the modern style of Castlevania games, having been referenced directly in some of the series’ best entries.
So why’s everybody hating on Castlevania II all of a sudden? Continue reading “In Defense of Castlevania II”
Not long ago, I wrote a bit about re-acquiring Kid Niki for the NES after selling it off, and not really remembering why I would have sold it because I love the game. I also mentioned that for some reason, I had no photographic record of selling the game on eBay, even though I still have all the photos of everything I’ve sold on ebay ever.
The other day, I was deleting old emails, and started on my eBay folder, which contained thousands of emails from eBay acquired over the past few years. I thought about the Kid Niki thing and checked my listing confirmation emails.
There was no email confirming that I had listed Kid Niki for sale. Continue reading “The Comeback Kid…or not?”
Here’s a really unusual book in my videogame library: it’s called Credit 00: I Love Game Graphics, edited by Tsuyoshi Kusano and published by All Rights Reserved in 2003. It’s artsy and weird.
Continue reading “Gamers’ Library: Credit 00 – I Love Game Graphics”
Having been introduced to videogames through arcades and the Atari 2600, I have largely lived my gamer life feeling that videogames should be played with joysticks. I mean, naturally I’ve gotten used to control pads, and I do think that the SNES controller and the DualShock are two of the best game controller designs of all time, and there are plenty of games with control schemes that cannot be executed efficiently on an arcade-style joystick setup. But I’ve always been a sucker for adding arcade sticks to my consoles; to me, there’s always been something better, more formal, more serious, more proper about using a joystick whenever possible. Continue reading “Joystickery”
Retro Game SuperHyper 