Today is the second anniversary of Retro Game SuperHyper! Happy birthday! Continue reading “2 Years!”
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.
Since I have two semi-related topics I wanna talk about, I’m going to make this a split post, or two posts mashed together, like a punk rock split 7-inch (or should that be grindcore, given the topic?? HA! I’m funny.)
Continue reading “Super Mario RPG: FINISHED/When in Doubt, Grind it Out”
True confession: I’ve never played through Super Mario RPG. Shock and horror, I know!
I have a lot of favorite games. Who the heck doesn’t? But rare is the game that I love so much that I buy it again. Sometimes they’re remakes, sometimes a Japanese version to complement my US copy, sometimes just different or more convenient formats. And even rarer is the game that I buy again…and again.
Having just picked up the PS4 remake of Shadow of the Colossus — my third version — I got to thinking about which games I love so much that I’ve bought three times…or more! Continue reading “Triple-dippin’”
Although I have love for all game systems (admittedly to varying degrees, but still, love), I of course have my favorites. The Super NES/Super Famicom is very high on my list, and I know I’m not alone in that sentiment. The 16-bit era overall was a magical time to be a gamer, and while I also have great affection for its contemporaries the Genesis, the TurboGrafx, and the Neo-Geo, the SNES was pretty much nirvana in that period of videogame history.
Still, as much joy as Nintendo’s fabled powerhouse brought me, there were some games that I would have loved to see on it that never were; some franchise titles and some “what ifs” that would have made amazing entries in the SNES library and catapulted the console from just “all-time great” status to “untouchably perfect.” So let’s fire up our imaginations and dream up a catalog of Super NES games that could have been…
…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.
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”
Way back when I wrote my downsizing post, I mentioned at the very end that I had, for some reason I myself don’t understand, sold off my copy of Kid Niki for the NES, and that it was the one game I regret selling.
Well, I am happy to report that Kid Niki has recently returned to the family, and was welcomed home with open arms. Continue reading “The Comeback Kid”
