This worked out pretty well last year, so with 2022 upon us, it’s time to start a new list! As with 2021’s list, new entries will be added to the top. There’s plenty to play, so let’s get busy:
Continue reading “FINISHED in 2022! (Updated 10/26/22)”
As a fan of graphic adventure/visual novel type games like Snatcher and Jesus, I’d been meaning to tackle Portopia for the Famicom for many years.
Thanks to our current worldwide situation, I just happened to have plenty of time to do it. And not only did I play it, but I took it apart. Continue reading “Solving The Portopia Serial Murder Case”
This is a pretty simple gadget, and this will be a very short review, so I’ll get straight to the point: this was a great idea. Continue reading “My Arcade Famicom-to-NES Cartridge Converter: The RGSH Test”
Here’s a confession: I have loved Godzilla for even longer than I’ve loved video games. It’s true! I actually cannot recall when I first discovered Godzilla — I literally have no memory of a time when I did not watch and love his movies, and some of my earliest memories of watching any TV at all are of Godzilla. It had to have been pre-Kindergarten that I started watching them — maybe my older sister had watched them because she was into horror movies — but I didn’t discover video games until I was five or six, and I know I was watching Godzilla before then.
Anyway, with Godzilla and video games being two of Japan’s most significant pop culture exports, naturally there have been a bunch of Godzilla video games. Unfortunately, as is the case with many licensed properties, many of them are…not that good. And those that are decent are probably most enjoyable only by hardcore kaiju-eiga no otaku.
The problem with Godzilla games is that he SHOULD translate wonderfully into a video game, but he often just… doesn’t.
Even after all these years of being a gamer, this journey of research and learning about them still fascinates me as it leads me through various paths and I find myself arriving at information, games, people, or items I’ve never encountered before. Such is the case with the book I’m looking at today: a Japanese tome entitled simply Family Computer 1983-1994. Continue reading “Gamers’ Library: Family Computer 1983-1994”
Today is the second anniversary of Retro Game SuperHyper! Happy birthday! Continue reading “2 Years!”
At the risk of featuring too many PS4 games in recent posts (what can I say, they all have a retro connection or I wouldn’t be talking about them), Sega’s Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise (aka Hokuto no Gotoku) was released in the US this week, to the gleeful delight of combined Fist of the North Star and Yakuza fans everywhere. How wide or slim the overlap of that particular Venn diagram is, I don’t really know. But I’m wedged in there myself, and when this game was first announced, my head almost exploded like one of Kenshiro’s unfortunate opponents.
FotNSLP/HnG (it’s a long title either way, I don’t even know how to abbreviate it for this post) is just the latest in a really long line of video games based on the classic manga/anime property, Hokuto no Ken (lit. “Fist of the North Star”), dating all the way back to the ’80s when the manga was current and the show was actually airing on Japanese TV. Some of the games are good; many are not. And out of the dozens of HnK games released, only a handful were released outside of Japan. Let’s take a look at some of the good ones, shall we? (Perhaps I’ll do another post about all the not-so-good FotNS games someday, and call it “You’re Already Disappointed” or something.) (Don’t steal that, I just came up with it.) Continue reading “You’re Already Having Fun”
35 years ago today, on July 15, 1983, Nintendo released its new video game console, the Family Computer, in Japan. Happy Birthday, Famicom!!
“In my day, we didn’t have no innerwebs to search and instantly find maps and passwords and solutions to our Nintender games. We had to play them by ourselves, with no help, and draw our own maps, and write down the clues that some mistranslated NPC gave us, and write out our own passwords, and if you screwed up one single letter, it was no good and you had to go back to the beginning of the game and start it alllll over, and that was the way it was, and WE LIKED IT!” Continue reading “Ye Olde NES Notebooke”
Recently I was talking to my friend Zac at his shop, Press Start Games, about methods of getting original NES hardware back to working order. While discussing replacement of the infamous 72-pin connector that seemingly causes 90% of NES problems, he told me about the boiling method, and how it can yield even better results than installing new aftermarket connectors. Boiling? Like literally boiling the connector in water?
Turns out, yep.
Last week, I picked up a Hyperkin Retron HD to see what it’s all about. I’ve spent the last few days putting it through the wringer and making it do some things it probably shouldn’t oughtta do. How’d it turn out? Read my exhaustive report right now! Continue reading “Retron HD: The RGSH Test”
True confession: I’ve never played through Super Mario RPG. Shock and horror, I know!
Retro Game SuperHyper 