donkey kong

Waxing Nostalgic

There’s a new video on the Retro Game SuperHyper YouTube Channel! This time, I show off video game trading card wax packs from the 1980s!

If you were a kid during the Golden Age of video games, you probably ran across these more than a few times, and if you were like me, you bought ’em, played the scratch-off games, and stuck the stickers on everything you owned. Let’s revisit them, shall we?

I’m also thinking about turning this into an expanded pictorial in issue #4 of the RGSH fanzine, so stay tuned for more waxy memories!

July 24, 2020

Nintendo’s Early Licensing Days

With Nintendo being the protective and litigious juggernaut it has been since the launch of the NES, it seems unbelievable that they would ever allow their most famous properties to be licensed out to other companies. Yet, in the pre-NES days, when their arcade games were what made them famous, that’s exactly what they had to do to spread their brand awareness and get console ports of their games into homes. Continue reading “Nintendo’s Early Licensing Days” →

March 3, 2019 0

Itsy-Bitsy-Teeny-Weeny Arcade Games

20160802_124227 — Display of Coleco tabletops at the American Classic Arcade Museum/Funspot in Laconia, NH

Lately, there’s been an influx of little-bitty arcade games hitting store shelves. There’s the steadily-improving “Arcade Classics” series that can be found at Walmart; the keychain-sized Tiny Arcade series; the working, accurate scale models coming from Replicade; the forthcoming Neo-Geo Mini. All of these have been reminding me of the original Coleco mini tabletop arcade games that came out in the early 1980s, when I was a kid, and how badly I wanted them. Continue reading “Itsy-Bitsy-Teeny-Weeny Arcade Games” →

May 19, 2018 0

Player 2 Arcade Bar Grand Opening

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A month or two ago, my wife and I were driving down College Avenue (the main drag through downtown Appleton, Wisconsin, where we live) one evening, and she said “hey, the old Raven’s bar is full of arcade games, wonder what’s going on?” As soon as we got home, I checked the ol’ Googler and found out that sure enough, there was a new arcade/bar/barcade opening right in my own town! I started keeping a close eye on their development, and last night (Thursday, April 12, 2018), the new Player 2 Arcade Bar finally opened to the public, so of course Retro Game SuperHyper was there to check it out!

Continue reading “Player 2 Arcade Bar Grand Opening” →

April 13, 2018 0

You Never Forget Your First…

…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.

Continue reading “You Never Forget Your First…” →

January 27, 2018 1

Nintendo’s Legacy of Gorillas

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Much can be debated about Nintendo’s history and their successes and failures. Say what you will about their role in the resurrection of the American home videogame console market, whether or not they won the “console wars,” the failure of the Virtual Boy, their innovations with the Wii and DS, or whether or not they’re doing right by the Metroid franchise (they’re not), but there is one inarguable, unquestionable fact about Nintendo:

They drew some great gorillas. Continue reading “Nintendo’s Legacy of Gorillas” →

June 4, 2017 0