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”
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”
Dangan is a new homebrew Game Boy game made by two individuals known only as Snorpung (code, graphics, and design) and Nordloef (music and FX) in honor of the Game Boy’s 30th anniversary. And believe it or not, it’s a bullet-hell shootemup! Continue reading “Dangan: A New Game Boy Shmup”
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…
Retro Game SuperHyper 