Archive for March, 2009

30 March, 2009 | No comments

MAME Mondays at Digital Press

 

 

MAME Mondays is like a book club, where instead of a book we look at a classic arcade game and discuss whatever about it we wish. Scooterb23 is kicking ths club off again on Digital Press. RetroGoggles is helping out and encouraging people to check it out. Stop here each week to grab the game and then hit the Digital Press forums to discuss.

This week is starting with Jump Coaster. Since we got off to a little late of a start I do not have a great deal of history about this title yet. What I do know is that it is from 1983 and was manufactured by Kaneko and involves a guy avoiding monkeys on a roller coaster trying to get to his girl. That my friends is a classic if I ever heard of one. Click the screenshot to download the ROM.

25 March, 2009 | 1 comment

Commercial Break: Sega CD

At least now angry black men won’t scream at me like the kid in this commercial. Do you notice that the gameplay in the commercial is all brief flashes and still looks bad? Does calling customers stupid really help sell more items? It sure did not help the Sega CD. Why is it that hair being blown up like you were electrocuted a sign of EXTREME in the 90s?

24 March, 2009 | 1 comment

The Curse of Sega CD is now mine to behold!

Ha! A new acquisition has dropped in my lap, that of some Sega castoffs that a friend no longer wanted. The best part of this lot is that now I have a Sega CD in my collection. Is this a blessing or a curse, I am not yet sure.

Yes, sadly it comes with a copy of Sewer Shark. Even sadder is the fact that I fought for the life of this copy of Sewer Shark. The friend giving up this console so desperately wanted to destroy this game, just simply to rid the world of at least one copy. I stepped in and argued the importance of remembering bad media, maybe some references to the Maginot Line were thrown around for good measure. Eventually I won out and brought this atrocity home along with some other Sega bits, such as a Model 1. Unfortunately as you see it cannot be cranked up to 11.

This is a cool system, so much more brazen than the later models. 16-BIT the system proudly proclaims, as is the only time Genesis was printed on console. The Model 2 Genesis that came attached to the Sega CD is experiencing controller port malfunctions and may soon be a subject of RetroRepairs. I also got a boxed copy of Sonic the Hedgehog, the “Not for Resale” pack-in. This is not rare, but is something that I did not own. The manual even offers names for the many enemies so now I know how to properly address the badniks I am smashing.

Another new game for my collection was Columns. Nice try Sega, but this is certainly no Tetris.

This next picture is the bottom side of the cart. I would like to warn everyone now that this is not for the weak of heart. I was scared and very glad I checked before pushing it into my unknowning console. Remember when you insert a game you are inserting with every other console that game has been with…

To give the Sega CD a good first run I busted out Mortal Kombat. My roommate Josh surprisingly remembered not only moves, but also Fatalities! I however remembered how to punch balls with Johnny Cage and proceeded to provide Kano with birth control. This copy of Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure has been sitting on my shelf for over a year and finally got a bit of play, early play would dictate that it is a competent platformer.

I have my own Genesis Model 2 hooked up to the Sega CD, but have you seen what it takes to get the Model 1 on this thing. First is an extra chunk of plastic so that the thing is not hanging off the end. I can only imagine finding this bit in the wild to leave many confused as to its origin or purpose, even as I look now its meaning is fading.

The other piece is a big slab of metal that screws to the bottom of the Genesis Model 1. This is a lot of effort for so little, but that is what growing pains are about. So look hard at the pimple-faced adolescence of gaming.

So does anyone have any fond memories of the Sega CD? Any suggestions as to games worth hunting down?

18 March, 2009 | No comments

Commercial Break: Ducktales

This weeks commercial is rather obscure. For my just past birthday, Chris from MMO-Corner.com picked me up a copy of Ducktales for the NES. As anyone that played them know that Capcom made numerous competent games based on Disney properties such as The Little Mermaid and Rescue Rangers. Ducktales stands out as the best one in my book, the music and the stages were all unique and wonderful. Scrooge was wonderful to control and had a number of useful moves at his disposal. Unfortunately I can find no trace of a U.S. released commercial for this game, so instead I offer you a Dutch commercial for the game, the music sounds odd and the scenes from the actual TV show seem to have been completely picked at random. I still to this day have not gotten to play Ducktales 2 for the NES, does anyone have any opinion of it?

18 March, 2009 | 1 comment

Web Advantage: Sheet Music

Click on the image to be transported to the nice work of Brian Auyeung. He has been so kind as to put down some real classic gaming music in sheet form. The PDFs are clear and the selection, while not huge, should give any musician a classic gaming melody to play. This could be a good way to encourage a child when taking music lessons, a Mario tune is much more relevant to them than Mozart. I think I will save this Crystalis Overworld Theme on the chance my future child is a piano savant. I can just sit a high back chair with a warm drink and say ” Son, the Overworld Theme please….” yeah, kind of like that….

11 March, 2009 | No comments

Commercial Break: Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening followed the plot line of Mario Bros. 2, it is only a dream… But a great dream it is, the only tragedy with Link’s Awakening can only be enjoyed on the original Gameboy. That and for some reason Nintendo felt that a little elf guy in green still meant hiphop as we see in the American commercial.

When will Nintendo find a solution to let modern gamers gain access to the wealth of games on the original Gameboy. It is a console that had an unheard of lifespan and it is being lost. Without any collections or Virtual Console solutions important pieces of classic franchises are being forgotten, oh well I guess we can always play with puppets since it was good enough for Japan.

10 March, 2009 | No comments

WEB Advantage: VG Maps

Have you ever tried to find Dr. Wily’s Castle on Google Maps? Yeah, no luck for me either. Fortunately many kind souls are working hard to provide wonderful visual aids for all of the gaming landscapes. Check out VGMaps.com and witness some seriously enjoyable maps. This atlas of gaming covers many systems and has self constructed as well as screenshot by screenshot maps. Honestly even if you are not seeking direction, just pouring through the collection at VGMaps.com offers a wonderful scratch to the nostalgia itch.

8 March, 2009 | No comments

Tabletop Games Too, Sure Why Not

So as most retrogamers do from time to time I hit up goodwill. It is kind of like searching the beach with a metal detector usually bottlecaps and things that may have been on someones butt at some point. Sometimes though something interesting shows up, this time surprisingly though the find was not videogaming, but instead classic tabletop gaming. While I will certainly not cover tabletop as much, it does mean alot to me and will show up from time to time. Today I picked up Traveller: 2300 (also known as 2300 AD) which was published by Game Design Workshop.

Traveller 2300 was the title of this First Edition of what can be classified as hard science fiction. Basically this means modern technology and some space travel. Some aliens, but no real lazers and what not. History is based mostly around a third world war and the shift of power afterward. The game had later editions and several additional source books. GDW as a publisher existed from 1973 to 1996, publishing an impressive amount of work. This title is one I never knew anything about until today. Actually the art made me think it was some kind of early Battletech supplement, seriously check out the Sigourney Weaver hair on that woman.

This was a time when you only needed the initial package to get you full up and running, no hunting 3 seperate books plus dice. Out of this box the dice are the only piece missing, there is a player’s guide, referee’s guide, star charts, adventures, overall this is a pretty solid package. For example get a close look at this star chart, this looks like some hard science, right?

Also, what was the best part for me was a star chart, this is supposed to be acurate to real space according to the text. Here are some shots of it.

The great thing about Tabletop gaming is that regardless of age the adventures are as fresh as you choose to make them. The only thing to consider is that the mechanics have become nicer over the years. To make this point clear check out this equation.

Does anyone else still play any older tabletop games?

5 March, 2009 | No comments

Revisiting RetroRepairs: Tengen Carts

This week on Digital Press forum member NES Rules asked how to open a Tengen Cart. Tengen was a company known for releasing titles for the NES without a licence. Without a licence Tengen had more liberties with cartridge design, and ended up with odd looking fellows like Gauntlet here.

Not being an official NES cart also means that the screws holding the thing together are not the security bits you would expect to see, but instead they used Torx screws. Torx screws are like a 6 pointed star. They can be purchased as magnet bits like the security bits or they can be bought in a key set like the one I have here.

All you need to open a Tengen cart is a T10 which is fairly small. There are 3 screws in the back of the cart. 2 are easy to see, but the third is hidden in the middle of the label. There are 2 dips near the middle of the sticker, the upper one is just part of the plastic molding, the other is the actual screw. I tried to use a razor blade to remove the sticker without damaging it, but here is what I got for the trouble.

So I could not get the label to come up kindly (let me know if anyone knows a nice way to lift this kind of label). I ended up slicing around the circle of the screw just partially so that I could get to the screw but still push that bit of the label back down afterwards. Here is where it is in the label.

To open the cart just remove the 3 screws and list from the bottom as the top of the cart has tabs similar to a regular NES cart. Opening this cart up we can see that even the inside is quite different from a standard NES cart. The chipset is larger and even the board has a different style to it. Check it out!

Well you know how to clean the cart so I will leave you here. As for the cut, these are tools I can recommend for that.

Good Night!

4 March, 2009 | No comments

Commercial Break: Super Metroid

So this week is Super Metroid. How was one of the most lauded games of all times marketed? It varies greatly depending on continent it would seem. America falls into what all game marketing was at the time, extreme. This game was so extreme it messes up dogs…that makes sense right?

Next is the German take on Super Metroid. From classical to straight butt rock, wailing guitar awesome. That is what Super Metroid causes. Nintendo seems very proud of that 24 meg regardless of nation and regardless of anyones knowledge of what 24 meg even meant at that time.

Finally we have what I feel is Super Metroid done right in the Japanese marketing take. Seriously this commercial could have been given an english voice over and would have turned alot more heads.

Regardless of the commercials though Super Metroid is one of the greatest games of the 16 bit era, if not one of the greatest of all time.

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