Tuesday Top Ten: Retro Gaming Wishlist
This is a new feature I’m going to try to do every week in an effort to get myself blogging more regularly. If you have any ideas for a future Top 10, leave it in the comments.
This Tuesday Top Ten isn’t a list of the top 10 “best” retro gaming items. It’s simply my top ten items I’d love to be able to add to my collection. If it’s retro, it’s awesome, and it’s not on this list, then I must already have one… I guess.
10. Gameboy Advance – Indigo color: I still maintain that this was stolen from me. I couldn’t simply misplace something like this. Regardless of what happened, I haven’t seen my original GBA in a long long time. Now, I have the GBA-SP which is awesome, and pretty much superior in every way over the original, but I spent so much time with my GBA back in the day, trying to find just the right angle to catch the light. Not to mention it’s somewhat more comfortable than the GBA-SP. I’d love to have one back just for the nostalgia.
9. Sega Genesis: I’ve never owned a Sega system. But the Genesis is the one I’m most familiar with. I remember playing it occasionally at friends houses. I also remember having to firmly choose one side or the other… and I chose Nintendo. But no sense hating on Sega any more. Now I’d just like to play some of the great games I missed out on.
8. Atari 2600: One word… “Woodgrain”. I bet this thing looked pretty damn slick in 1978. I also used to have an Atari 2600 I picked up at a garage sale back in my youth. I never appreciated it for what it was back then though and myself ended up selling it at a garage sale. Now I finally figured out what it’s all about. HIGH SCORES! I grew up in the era where the point was to BEAT a game. But these games were designed to push the gamer to their limits. No matter how far you got, you always could have gone farther. The games were short and repetitive, but that was the point.
7. Real Pinball Machine: Video games are all well and fun. But there’s something about the mechanical pops, clunks, and dings of a pinball machine that is entrancing. I was never all that good at pinball, and that’s obviously because I never had a pinball machine of my own to practice on.
6. Colecovision: The Colecovision had to have blown some minds in 1982. It was one of the first home consoles to deliver graphics that were close to what you actually saw in the arcades. Playing Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 for instance was an… approximation of what Pac-Man looked like. But playing it on the Colecovision looked damn close to what you would actually play in the arcades. It had graphics approaching NES levels years before the NES was released. But the video game crash of 1983 ended pre-maturely the Colecovision lifespan. It’s an interesting looking console that actually has some very good games. And there’s probably $60 worth of copper in the Colecovision power adapter.
5. Original Gameboy: When it comes to playing Gameboy games, you have a lot of options. GBA, GBA-SP, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Pocket, Gameboy Light, Super Gameboy, Gameboy Player, and probably the worst choice to play a Gameboy game on is the original Gameboy itself. But there’s just some kind of nostalgia there of staring at that green screen, feeling the ribbed plastic in the palm of your hand and listening to those tinny little sound effects pop out of the speaker. The only reason to have a Gameboy is to remember what it was like to play the Gameboy. From a time when portable games were mostly limited almost entirely to segmented LCD displays and handheld poker games, the Gameboy was pretty friggin awesome in its day.
4. Mame Cabinet: Now we’re getting serious. This kind of setup is way out of my price range, but this list isn’t meant to be realistic anyway. First off a MAME cabinet is in short, an arcade cabinet that plays all kinds of arcade games. There’s a ton of old arcade games I remember playing, and you’re hard pressed to find an arcade theseday, and when you do the are kinda dingy, creepy, and filled with “out of order” signs. I would completely have a blast building one of these, and PLAYING one of these.
3. PacMan Cocktail Table: What’s better than gaming? Gaming and cocktails! I remember coming across several of these over the years. Laundry mats, hotels, Taco Tico’s. I haven’t seen one in the wild for a long time. But in my basement I think it would be the ultimate conversation piece. A conversation that ends with finding out who’s score is highest. These are pretty pricey, but there are also plans available on the internet to build your own. This would be another great platform to run a MAME machine.
2. Gameboy Micro: The little GBA Micro didn’t have much of a spot light. It came out around the same time as the Nintendo DS. The GBA Micro was probably Nintendo’s hedge bet incase the DS didn’t take off. After over 150 Million DS units now sold, we know how that story ended. Nevertheless, the GBA Micro was a great little system, and probably the one I see the most useful today. Portable consoles are still just a little too big to be considered “pocket sized”, but the GBA Micro is absolutely perfect for sliding into your pocket and ready to play at a moment’s notice. Due to the limited sales, used ones are going for more than I’m willing to pay right now since I have my GBA-SP that will do all the same stuff. But maybe someday I can justify it.
1. Vectrex: The Vectrex is my holy grail. And I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I will never have one. A used Vectrex in good shape is pushing beyond the $300 mark. That’s a pretty hefty price to pay, and one that’s really hard to justify to the wife, let alone myself. But ever since I saw it, there’s just been something about it that struck me as awesome. Maybe it’s the different screen overlays for each game. Or the crunchy sound effects. I guess at it’s core I love it because it is such a potent example of what cutting edge technology was in the 80’s. The styling, bulkiness. Something that today looks incredibly antiquated, but in its time was fresh, new and exciting. It’s a wonderful juxtaposition of time and gaming that I think makes it so interesting.
Lazy Weekend
Well I really wanted to get a lot of stuff done this weekend. Probably NEEDED to get a lot done. Then I came down with a stupid cold. Not a debilitating cold, by any stretch, but enough to say, “Ah, screw it.” So instead of doing things like rotate my tires, I spent a lot of time on the computer, hanging out with Luke, and napping.
I did get the yard mowed. But upon finishing the last section, the bracket that mounts the handle to the mower itself complete cracked and came loose. The metal on the deck of the mower had rusted so much that it had no strength left. So I’m tasked with either fabbing up a bracket to replace it, or get a new mower. I’ve thought real hard about getting a riding lawn mower… but just can’t justify the expense.
Finally got around to installing WordPress on my server here in the basement. http://web.bgwillers.com Been thinking about doing that for a long time since I had just a basic placeholder page there. It’s password protected for now, but don’t worry, you aren’t missing out on anything, it’s just a blank template. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with it, if anything.
The one thing that I didn’t get done this weekend that I really could have was beat Metroid Prime. I can’t believe I’m still talking about this game. What I’ve done is put myself in a circumstance where I’m not getting any games played. I don’t want to admit that I don’t like Metroid Prime… I think it’s a fine game. But for some reason it just feels like work to play it. And I don’t want to play any other backlogged games until I beat that one. The problem is I’m getting to the point that if I don’t play it again soon, I’m going to forget what’s going on and have to start all over. I don’t know if I should just give up on the game or what.
Back to work next week. Then the week after that VACATION! I can’t wait!
08.1.12A Perfect N64 Thumbstick: The Holy Grail
It’s been expressed before that if I have any fatal weaknesses, it is my obsession with game controllers. I’d probably walk right into any trap if you baited it with a new and unused N64 controller. In their prime the N64 controllers were known to wear quickly. Especially with games that required intense and repeated movement. (Isn’t that every game?) So back in the day I would wear them out, then go to the store to reluctantly buy new controllers. Today that’s simply not an option.
Prices on new controllers for the N64 have really gone up. I’ve been seeing far fewer on eBay. And the ones that are there are usually listed with a lofty buy it now price. This means the only real viable option is to find a quality facsimile. There is finally a new aftermarket thumbstick in the original style, but it’s still not quite perfect.
Pictured above is this new stick. It is extremely similar in appearance to the original thumbstick. The most obvious differences are that the dark gray plastic bezel is not quite the same color as the original. The replacement is a bit lighter. The thumbstick itself has more of a flat finish, whereas the original is somewhat glossy. And finally, the movement of the stick just isn’t quite as smooth as the original, and as such feels a bit cheap. With that said, after playing GoldenEye for an hour or so with the new one, it feels very accurate, and after a few minutes, you really forget that it’s not the original thumbstick.
For comparison, pictured above is a lightly to moderately used original controller. The joystick is still very tight, but notice how you can already see some of the trademark “chalk dust” that plagues these sticks. This is the “newest” controller I still feel comfortable playing with. But I refuse to play Mario Kart with it. That is the game that by and large has destroyed most of my past controllers! Haha.
There is also another variant of the N64 thumbstick available from aftermarket sources. This joystick is often called a “GameCube” style joystick. But this is far from anything as glorious and refined as the GameCube stick. Although feeling solid and smooth, this joystick is anything but. Small movements are simply too sensitive. It is almost impossible to make fine movement with this stick, like aiming a sniper rifle, or making Mario just barely creep along. Though it is decent for arcade style racers and generally more forgiving games. It’s better than a completely worn thumbstick, but that’s about it.
So there ya go. This new thumbstick, while not perfect, is the best replacement so far. It may look slightly different, but only to someone who notices such subtleties. The accuracy is good and if the movement was just a little smoother, I would say the feel would be almost indistinguishable. Never the less, for $10 on eBay it is an outstanding option to refresh some of your old controllers.
07.10.12A Pair of Podcasts
Well two new things here. First off, I’ve joined with Biebs for a new weekly podcast we’re dubbing “The Rants of Two Old Dudes”. We’re going to discuss tech and gaming both modern and retro.
Here’s Episode 1 of The Rants of Two Old Dudes! Enjoy!
Secondly I tried something new with my own personal podcast. It has a lot of refinement left to go. Infact I don’t even have any intro artwork, and had no idea what to use for video during the Mystery Song, but here it is. I had to just go ahead and post it, or else it was just going to sit around forever. As I get more proficient in video production, I’ll be able to crank them out and make them more polished. But for now here’s a very rough video podcast.
Only one topic: Digital Distribution of games vs. Physical Copies
Previous Mystery Song was from Super Mario Bros 2
No podcast Music
New Mystery Song
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkV8rGqEq0k]
07.2.12Just What I Needed
Yesterday was the first time in a while I didn’t leave the house. Well I didn’t leave the driveway at least. No work, no travel. Just some honest to goodness free time.
First I slept in. I highly recommend it if you ever get to try it, but like anything else, you don’t want to get used to it. So I rolled out of bed at 8:15am and started up some coffee, and went out to the garden and pulled up a nice batch of potatoes and a fresh yellow onion. We didn’t have much for breakfast, but I fried those up and Andrea made some muffins and it was a pretty alright breakfast! Just needed some bacon and eggs to be perfect!
Afterwards I went back outside and aired up the pool for Luke and I to play in. It was a hot day, but didn’t feel too bad once you hopped in. Luke did pretty good, but the water was a little bit deeper than his bathtime, so he had to get used to the fact that he couldn’t just crawl and flop around like he’s used to. He inhaled a big gasp of water once, and that was a little scary, but he coughed it up, and went right back to playing again. Haha.
I also got to play some of my “new to me” Super Off Road game I scored for 99 cents on eBay. I remember renting the game back in the day, but I never owned it. I probably played it for almost an hour non stop. I made it as far as race 40 and was getting my butt kicked. That one sitting was worth the 99 cents right there. So my NES collection continues to grow.
So it was a great Sunday. And even with that one day of R&R I feel ready to face the week. Of course it helps that it’s going to be a short week with the 4th of July smack dab in the middle. That helps the motivation too.
03.22.12Time Machine
This is one of my “accidental” scores off of eBay. Won it for 99 cents. And let me tell you it was worth all 99 of them.
I never owned this game, but I remember playing it. I don’t recall whether it was renting it, borrowing it, or playing it at a friend’s house. One thing is certian though. I haven’t played NES Pinball for at LEAST 20 years.
I cleaned up the cartridge a bit. It was pretty obvious this cart led a tougher life than most of mine that are still in my collection. It had grease and gunk all over it. And some sticker residue from a garage sale or bargain bin somewhere. It cleaned up okay, but I definitely wouldn’t call it “Like New” as the eBay listing explicitly stated. Oh well. Not going to make a big deal over a really common game that only cost $1.00.
My NES hasn’t seen much use lately. Really who’s has? But it took a minute or two of blowing in the cart and massaging the position of the cart just right into the system. First several attempts the sound was great, but the screen was gobbly gook. Ironiclly, it brought back a lot of memories of the old NES days and all the little tricks you had to do to get a game to play right. Seems like everybody had their own method. Mine is to push the cart in only BARELY as far as you need to to push the game down. Works most of the time.
But anywho, after getting the game to work, I started playing and it’s quite to contrast to the games I’ve been playing, like Skyward Sword with the motion controls, or the 3D screen of the 3DS. This is one of the more straight foward games, even by NES standards. It is what it is. Pinball. And it plays remarkably well. There’s “Game A” which is kinda like easy mode, where the ball moves a bit slower. What you want to play is “Game B” where the ball moves a lot faster, and feels a lot more like real pinball. It’s a simple game, so there’s not much to say about the gameplay other than, it’s very polished.
I like it just because it’s so basic. Like if you took today’s games and stripped them down of all the graphics and technology, and got to the core of what made them fun, you end up with games like this. With simple ideas and polished gameplay. This game is fun to just sit and try to beat high scores. No achievements. And heck, your high scores even disappear the moment you turn off the game. But it’s games like this that just take me back to when I was 7 years old and stuff like this was brand damn new and awesome.
Definitely as close as it gets to a real life time machine.
03.11.12A Look Back: The World Is Not Enough
I need to set the stage a bit for this review. This game came out in 2000 which was right in the pinnacle of my James Bond fanaticism, and also well past the point that gaming had pretty much become the de facto use of my spare time. So while this game had everything it needed to become the most awesome game for me ever at the time, it unfortunately was not.
Here’s the back story. When GoldenEye came out in 1997, from the moment I had beaten that final Cradle mission… I was ready for a sequel. Rare Studios, which developed GoldenEye however, had a track record of releasing a title for the N64 about once every two years it seemed. There was a lot of silence on the GoldenEye sequel front for a long time. Then when the silence broke, it was announced that Electronic Arts had picked up exclusive rights to the Bond franchise. This meant… if there was going to be a sequel to GoldenEye, it would definitely not be a James Bond game. The game that eventually came out was Perfect Dark. A game that really beat GoldenEye in every way… except for James Bond content.
This game still had one thing going for it though. It was the next James Bond game on the N64. It was still a first person shooter, and not a weird third person shooter like Mission Impossible. And so far really had no indication that it was going to be terrible. My anticipation of taking on the role of 007 once more meant I was willing to give EA the benefit of the doubt here.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the pre-release of this game, because honestly I remember that as much if not more so than actually playing the game! After all, Perfect Dark was only 6 months old when this game released. We were still death matching and scheduling Perfect Dark Events at that time!
At a certian point the different colored carts were uncommon and pretty cool. The gold carts for Zelda, or the black cart for Turok 2. Those were pretty spiffy. But this late in the N64’s life cycle, not only could you get the system itself in six funtastic colors, but it seemed like every new game had it’s own colored cartridge for no apparent reason. So by this time the blue cart for TWINE was nothing new.
Okay, I feel like I’ve been pretty harsh on this game so far. In truth that’s not really fair. I sat down for this re-review and wanted to do two things. One I wanted to compare this game to GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, because that is unquestionably the measuring stick I used to judge this game originally. But also, after I looked around at some other reviews that were written at the time of release, I found that it got fairly good feedback. So I decided I was going to sit down and judge the game completely of its own merit.
That proved more difficult than I thought. And again after all these year brought to light the reason I just can’t get into ANY console FPS anymore. And that is the controls. Not that the controls are bad. Infact playing this game, I found that it was really pretty smooth and accurate. But here we are… 15 years later, and I hesitate to spend too much time with another game like this, for fear that I will get used to the way this game controls, and un-learn and dull my GoldenEye skills. I mean it’s been 15 years! Let it go!
But if you had any idea how many hours I put into 007 and Perfect Dark… You know how sometimes people can accomplish amazing things by pouring all their energy into just one thing? Honing their skills and using their time and efforts to create something truly remarkable. For instance out in Colorado, there’s a stone castle built by one man… all by himself. An entire castle! While not nearly as meaningful, tangible, or remarkable… GoldenEye and Mario Kart… that’s my castle.
So I may not be the most objective person to ever review this game. Be that as it may, I believe the game did have some shortcomings other than just not being GoldenEye. One thing the game touted at its release was the starring role of Pierce Brosnan, not only in likeness, but also using his voice. However if there’s one thing that I’ve learned replaying these games its that heavy use waveform audio on the N64 is almost universally a bad idea. With possibly the only exception being StarFox 64. You have to realize that the largest N64 cartridge available was only 64MB. TWINE was shipped on a 32MB cartridge. For comparison sake, 32MB = about 3 minutes of CD quality audio. And that’s if audio is the ONLY data on the cartridge. But you have to have all of the maps, textures, animations, physics engines, graphic engines, lighting effects, game menus, etc all on that 32 MB cartridge too. The result is HIGHLY compressed audio. What is left is very fuzzy and flat sounding.
With the limitations in audio fidelity also came limitations in audio length. The game rigidly followed the storyboard of the movie, and scenes that are fleshed out over 5 or 6 minutes, are forced to be summed up in 15 to 20 seconds. What’s left are scenes that just feel very rushed.
“Thanks for getting my money, 007! OK, see ya.”
“That was Robert King. We go way back”
“Wonder why he is involved?”
BOOM
“King, the money!”
I suppose I don’t have to say that in retrospect, this game could have been a lot more immersive had the characters used on screen text only and skipped voice over audio all together.
As cheesey as the cutscenes are forced to be, the game itself, honestly isn’t that bad. Again the game follows the story very strictly, and does a good job of recreating the scenes from the movie and taking control of 007. Infact as I was playing this game, I found myself compelled to go back and watch the movie!
Honestly, this wasn’t a bad game. The limitations the game had technically, were also the same limitations every other game had at the time. The controls are solid, and I just wish I had a little more customization over them so I could get them set to my familiar settings. Levels are fairly linear, but well laid out and plenty of objectives. And the graphics, are really this game’s strongsuit. Other than the resolution limitations of the N64, this is really a pretty good looking game!
For me though… this will always be a filler game. A game in between the great games to pass the time until the next one is released. And I just can’t find a whole lot of reason now to play this when I could be playing GoldenEye or Perfect Dark instead.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pAtlZy6HIw]
Podcasterrific
I was a batchelor over the weekend while Andrea and Luke were out of town. I talk about that. Skip the first few minutes if you don’t want to hear me complain about work. I would recommend it.
Roots
Okay, so this picture is not what it seems at first glance. While I did get a picture of him holding the controller perfect (complete coincidince) I didn’t get that AND the screen in the same shot. So this is some fancy Photochop scripting to make it work.
It was pretty fun. I was sitting there listening to the podcast music and decided to pull out the game from the mystery song. We were playing that for a while and then switched to Galaga. Andrea and I had fun challenging each other’s scores. I remember Mom could get perfect scores on the “Challenging Stages” in between the levels. We didn’t do that good! Hehe.
It was a night of good old school fun!
01.2.12Holidays are over, it’s 2012.
Well I’m finishing up my last day off before getting back into the regular world. This time of year is always crazy with all the people there are to see, so there’s just not much of a routine. It will be nice to get back into something consistant and being able to spread out all my work over a whole week. It just doesn’t pay to take time off because I have to do all the work either before or after I leave anyway. But anywho.
It was a really nice holiday season as far as I can ascertain. Doesn’t seem like as stressful as those of the past few years. Even with Luke here, it just felt like everything kinda fell into place. We made it out to Cimarron, Wichita, Kansas City… all in less than a month. It kinda blew our gas budget, but we made a little extra money with side jobs to come up with the difference. Seems like the Lord still finds ways to provide!
This last quarter of 2011 has really rekindled my excitement for gaming. I got Zelda around Thanksgiving and the new Mario Kart for Christmas. On top of that I got back into Guild Wars for the Wintersday, getting hundreds of holiday items that I need to consume now. Let’s just say I’m not too worried about Death Penalty for a while! I still need to get Super Mario 3D land, but I think that can wait while I work my way though Zelda and Mario Kart.
I’ve been having more fun with Mario Kart 7 than I’ve had with any game for a real long time. Honestly after the Wii and GameCube versions being so similar, I really didn’t expect this to be so compelling. But I’ve really been enjoying the new courses.. a lot. Online mode has been pretty fun too. There’s no communication between you and the other players, but it’s clear that you’re not just racing the computer. Mostly because there’s so many more cheap shots in Muliplayer. In the context of Mario Kart though that’s a good thing. For everytime you get screwed at the finish line, there’s an equal chance that you’ll be able to screw over somebody on the next race, and really that’s what Mario Kart is all about. Haha. I haven’t played a whole lot of Time Trials yet… but the couple ghosts I raced were very fun. I’m not quite ready to give a final review of the game yet, but initial impressions are very good and I’d already recommend it if you have a 3DS.
I’ve been getting into retro gaming more too. I’d like to bolster my collection some dating back to the Super Nintendo and before. I have the N64 pretty extensively covered, and besides a few more brand new controllers, there’s really not a whole lot else I’m looking for right now. I want to go real old skool. In fact at the top of my “retro list” right now is an old “Vectrex” console from the early 80’s. I never had one. And until a few months ago I didn’t even know one existed until I started watching some reviews from Classic Game Room on Youtube. I think I like it because it’s so far and different from anything that is still around today. It really hearkens back to the day when the real games were in the arcades, and if you had something at home that could approximate that experience… man you were living.
Well, happy new year. Hope yours is a good as mine is going to be. I’ve pretty much made up my mind it’s going to be awesome.