Posts Tagged ‘Nintendo’

Sam’s Scores: Gameboy Edition!

Today’s Sam’s Scores is yet another special edition. I had enough to do a special Gameboy Sam’s Scores, enjoy!

8) – Turn and Burn
Turn and Burn is much like Top Gun for the NES, to a point. It isn’t bad, but its far from great. I picked it up at a Goodwill just because it was cheap and it was a video game.

7) – Rechargeable Gameboy Battery
Sifting through bric-a-brac sometimes yields interesting results, and this is one such case. The Gameboy logo is worn off, but its pretty clear what this is. I’ve actually had this for a long time, avoiding adding it to a scores article because I don’t even know if it works. Even so, its a pretty cool little piece.

6) – Gameboy/GBC AC Adapter
Another thing that I find myself doing quite a bit in thrift stores is sifting through the cables and power adapters. Sometimes I come out a winner, like this time, but mostly I find myself trying to untangle a rat’s nest of stuff to come up empty handed. This thing works with both GBC and Gameboy, with a switch on the unit to get the right power to which device you need to power. Although the case is broken, it still works and with a little super glue it will be good as used.

5) – Castlevania: The Adventure
I found this one at Half Price Books, during a strange mark it at a single price and sell it period. This game, to be honest, sucks! I like Castlevania, but Konami really screwed up a good thing with this one.

4) – Pokemon Red
Way back when this game originally came out, I bought it. I loved playing this game because of it’s RPG style gameplay. I ended up loaning this game, and sadly the box and manual, to someone and never saw it again. I had always kept my eyes open for a loose copy of it and never found one less than $7, until Half Price Books got one in.

3) – Pokemon Silver
Yet another tag it and sell it score, brought to you by Half Price Books! The Pokemon Red above was exactly a week before I bought this one, so prices went down. Sadly the battery inside this one doesn’t work, but I did swap the battery in the Pokemon Gold I had, which will become a tutorial at some point.

2) – Zelda 1 and 2 for the GBA
I personally don’t think the Gameboy Advance is a vintage system, but these games certainly are. Even though they’re remakes for the system, they’re still vintage gaming classics. I must note that I bought these with another Gameboy Game (Dr. Mario, not pictured) at a Goodwill and had to wait 15 minutes for someone to go unlock the case!

1) – Green Gameboy Color
In a previous Sam’s Scores I showed you a Green GBC that I picked up off Craigslist for $10, so when I saw how cheap this one was I didn’t care whether it worked or not. I figured at the very least it would give me a matching green battery cover for my other one. When I took it home it didn’t want to work, but after shaking it, it sprang to life! The screen was scratched and it only works on batteries, later I decided to buy a new case and swap it out, so its no longer green.

Sam’s Scores VI

4) – Yellow N64 controller
Sadly this isn’t the DK edition controller, but the yellow sure is bright. When I found it, it needed a lot of cleaning, but that is something I do to all my scores anyway. The joystick is pretty loose on this one but its overall completely functional.

3) – Gameboy Color w/ games
Over a year ago now, I passed up a Gameboy color in a thrift store because I didn’t know whether or not it worked, and to this day I wish I had bought it. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for another one at a reasonable price when I saw a Craigslist posting. The ad was a few weeks old but I took the chance. 2 days later I became the owner of a lime green GBC with Galaga/Galaxian and Yoshi’s Cookie, beside the atomic purple battery cover (at least it had one!) everything was in great shape!

2) – Beeshu Zinger
Every once in a while I will come across something so wild, I have to buy it and this is such an occasion. I own a Beeshu Zipper, so I have a little background with Beeshu’s products. I was checking out a Goodwill I had never been to before when the box (and the bright colors!) caught my eye. I picked it up and checked inside, everything but the instruction manual, if there even was one, was inside the box. This thing is a bright pink with a white cable, very strange for an NES joystick, but everything works and its just a fun piece to own.

1) – Casino Kid 2
If you’re an NES game collector, you may know Casino Kid 2 is one of the harder to find games. I’ve only seen 2 of them and this is 50% of that equation, the other was $20 or $30 at a local Disc Replay store. This particular copy had been sitting in a bin at a flea market, I knew the game was harder to find and I knew it might get snatched up at the $5 they were wanting for it. Week after week the game was still there, so I decided to take a chance and buy it, but when I got to the cash register they had a surprise for me..

NES vs Sega Master System: My Personal Opinion

No matter where you may stand on the whole Nintendo vs Sega debate, there are two indisputable facts when it comes to their 8-bit systems: Nintendo’s NES was far more successful, but Sega’s Master System was more powerful. With Nintendo’s NES coming out approximately 9 months before Sega’s Master System, Nintendo was headlong into building up popularity for their NES, but in that time Sega made the Master System more powerful. Even so, with Nintendo’s tight grasp on licensing games for the NES, marketing manners and many other factors, the Master System, sadly, never stood a chance.

I must admit that the Master System wasn’t as high on my list of wanted consoles as say.. the NES top loader, but it was always there. As research for the system, I spent countless hours studying video game comparison for the few games that were released for both the NES and the Master System, with the Master System version almost always looking the best. I had always hoped to acquire a Sega Master System (or Power Base converter for my Genesis 1) on a vintage gaming hunt, but sadly I had only found one at Disc Replay and one at an indoor flea market, both of which were priced too high for the thrift hunter within.

Being fed up with waiting I decided to just go ahead and pay a little more than I normally would, just to own the system and see what it was all about. After spending some time with both the actual system and some emulation, just to get a feel for what the games I don’t own felt like, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the Master System. Although I now love the Sega Master System, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it’s faults, chief among which is the pause button being built into the console, instead of conveniently on the controller.

Another issue is the standard look that almost all of the game boxes and cartridge labels have, instead of flashy artwork it all seems pretty stock and boring. Finally, and it may seem trivial, but the cartridges are pretty hard to get out of the system. There is very little sticking out to grasp on to, which seems to result in transferring sweat and grease to the cartridge’s label, which seemingly helps it deteriorate.

I do, however, quite enjoy the D-pad on the Master System’s controller, a full 8 directional, concave pad that I find to be very comfortable. The 1 and 2 buttons on the controller are large, comfortable and number 1 doubles as the Start button, again perhaps there should have been a single start/pause button (like the Genesis!), but that is well past debate. The Sega Light Phaser feels much better than the NES Zapper, and for some unexplainable reason, makes shooting games more fun!

Now lets talk about games. The Master System’s library is nearly half that of the NES, which some may think that would cut down on the junk, and you’d be wrong. The Master System does have it’s share of pure gems such as; Golden Axe Warrior, Ys, Out Run, Hang On and quite a few more, but it also had it’s share of complete trash. And when I say a game is trash, it was completely unplayable. Albeit, I was using the emulation to test most games, and I did test a few games I now own and hated them on emulation, yet love them once the controller is in my hands. Let that last sentence stand for itself.

Overall I find it sad that the Sega Master System seems to be a massively overlooked system. The games that are good, are great, but sadly the games that are bad are terrible! My only true gripe goes back to the Pause button being mounted within the console itself and not on the controller. The thrift hunter within me is mostly upset that I’ve never seen a single Sega Master System game anywhere other than Disc Replay, so snagging them at a good price is going to be impossible, but at least finding them isn’t.

Sam’s Scores: Pick up video!

Thats right, I have gone youtube! Not always, but I felt that this score deserved a bigger presentation. If you’re a fan of pick up videos, you may enjoy mine. This doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned the article based Sam’s Scores, this just means I’m going a little more visual than articles will allow. Enjoy!

Sam’s Scores IV

The fourth edition of Sam’s Scores is upon us and there are many more scores to show!

4) – King’s Quest VI & Lamborghini American Challenge
Admittedly, I’m not a PC gamer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy them, I am just more of a console person. Usually while searching through CDs for misplaced or mistaken Playstation games, I often find PC games thrown in as well. There aren’t many titles I actively search for, but you never know what you’ll find in a thrift store CD bin. King’s Quest is completely new to me, but I had heard of the name before so I picked it up. Now, I’ve had a fond past with Lamborghini American Challenge release on the Super Nintendo, so I was well aware of what this game was and knew I had to have it, even though I still prefer the SNES version.

3) – Sega Genistick
The Sega Genistick is a joystick controller with integrated A, B and C buttons as well as the Start and a turbo feature, much like the Quickshot joysticks. Oddly enough, this looks almost identical to the Quickshot QS-177 for the Sega Genesis, with gray buttons instead of blue. This sat on the shelf for a week or so before I went in and bought it during a discount week, not a bad price….

2) – Mario Party 2 and WCW Mayhem N64
I’ve been buying any game I can for my N64, I love that thing! Even though some games are pretty lousy, if I get them cheap enough I don’t feel bad adding them to my collection. N64 games don’t pop up all that often at the thrift stores I frequent, but when they do I try to get my hands on them unless I already own them. If I don’t know a title, I’m not afraid to check it out because the price is always pretty inexpensive.

1) – N64 Tremor pak CIB
As always, like above, I’m on the look out for N64 accessories, controllers, memory cards, anything really. Back in the day, Performance was making accessories for anything they could and N64 was a hot ticket. When I came across one of their Tremor Paks (complete in box no less!) I was pretty excited, especially by the price. Sadly, when I brought it home the previous owner had left the batteries inside to corrode and leak, with a little cleaning and coaxing it trembled to life in my controller and everything turned out alright.

NES Cleaner Project

NES cleaning kits come in many forms, and over the years I’ve owned a few different kinds. Yesterday I acquired an old Doc’s Fix a System cleaning set that included a broken NES cleaning head. The NES cleaner would clip into any of your NES cartridges and you could senselessly stab your NES until it was clean.

Since the NES cleaner was broken I figured it was trash, until I had a brain storm. Why not put it into a spare NES cartridge and make it look like an NES game? Genius! At least I thought so.

I decided to use my (non-converter bearing) Gyromite cartridge for the cleaner’s new home, as it had done nothing but take up space anyway. I first removed the game’s ROM board and then modified the cleaning head to fit inside the cartridge. I also had to modify the cartridge to allow the whole thing to close properly. Everything went smoothly and turned out great.

This is a simple project if you have both items laying around, and it only took me about 10 minutes. If I had the right tools it may have taken less, but the success was the main goal and that is what I achieved. All I need to do now is remove the Gyromite label and replace it with my own concoction.

NES sized Gameboy game cases?

In the years prior to my hardcore vintage collecting addiction, I paid most of my attention to my Xbox. Within the last year and a half I’ve bought quite a few games for the NES, and when the games started to pile up I went searching for cases to put them in. All my NES games prior to this were in their own cases, whether it be a clear case with a big red Nintendo logo or a yellow, pink, purple or blue case that said Gameboy on it.

Wait, did I just say NES games in a Gameboy case? Yes, yes I did! Somewhere among my childhood I had acquired four Gameboy cases that were the same size as the NES (clam shell) cases.

The camera washed out the colors terribly, they're actually "1990's" LOUD!

I forget exactly where I got them and with all the local NES games that were floating around back then I could have gotten them from anywhere, but the fact is that I still have them. It came to me one night that I had a collection of game manuals stashed away inside one of them, so I started ripping through boxes to find out where they were. After I found them a whole new level of amazement dawned on me, which for some reason never dawned on me before, that I had never seen these things before and haven’t seen any since.

What I find remarkable is that these things are the exact same size and color as their NES counterparts, but emblazoned on the front is a black Gameboy logo, instead of Nintendo. Inside the case were 4 tiny corners, clearly cut out to fit a Gameboy game cartridge. I’m going to make a bold assumption that these were produced to accommodate the Gameboy players who wanted to keep the manuals with their games, as the manuals fit better in these cases than they would the smaller ones, obviously!

Size comparison

Sadly NES games wouldn’t fit inside these cases without a little modification, which I eventually did. Looking back I wish I hadn’t, but I needed more NES cases because I had plenty of the tiny Gameboy clam shells. You can still see the remnants of the corners that held the Gameboy game, but NES games and their manuals fit perfectly, although they do slide around a bit (sans the protection the Nintendo version afforded).

A little hard to see, so I tried to point them out.

I can’t find information on these cases anywhere, so I have no clue how many were made and how many different colors were available. To my knowledge there may only be 4 different colors because I have been fooled by VHS cases that are the exact same colors as these, while gaming hunting, but I’ve never seen anymore for the Gameboy. I would love to own a full set of these (unmodified!), although I probably won’t use them for Gameboy games, I just want to own them because I find them fascinating.

Attack of the Clones: Send in the Clones!

I will admit that I’m pretty fond of my Super Joy 3, but lately it has been giving me problems. I think the batteries are going dead, but with anything made in China, it may also just be dying for good. Recently I found a functional Power Joy that may take it’s place, so I figured what better to do than to give the Power Joy it’s own review!

New (Left) and the old one (Right).

The Power Joy also has the N64 controller resemblance, but takes it a few steps further from the Super Joy, for the integrated light gun. The first thing you’ll notice is the toy jet design on the front, as well as the toy gun like handle, with trigger, underneath. The toy jet design may have been added to throw off the N64 controller shape, but the handle and trigger are essential and feel quite comfortable when you’re playing one of the many shooting games packed into this unit. Also, the light gun’s accuracy is surprisingly good!

Black is the new one and blue is the old one.

At the bottom of the handle is the second controller port, as well as the hardwired AV cables, with optional power input. The cables are decent in length and don’t get in the way, despite their placement. Underneath the unit you’ll also find a 60 pin connector and the battery storage, which has an extremely weak feeling cover. The Power Joy does play Famicom cartridges, but the unit isn’t quite big enough to play them comfortably, so your fingers might be cramped until you find a comfortable playing position.

On top of the Power Joy are the controls, which are setup much like the Super Joy’s, but with a few exceptions. Here the D pad is still inaccurate, the reset button is much smaller but still too easy to hit in a hurry, the power switch is right above the reset button and start and select are the same. One feature the Super Joy lacks, but I enjoy on the Power Joy, is a fully functional joystick, which is more accurate (just slightly) than the D pad. A minor drawback is that the A and B buttons (including their turbo counterparts) are backwards, which takes a little time to adjust to.

My new Power Joy came with the cartridge, so I had a chance to see what it could offer. I honestly think the cartridge alone was worth the $3 I paid for the whole unit! The PJ-008 is packed with playable games, and it even works on the NES, with a Famicom to NES converter. Out of the 84 games on the cartridge, there are only a handful of failures. That isn’t to say they’re not functional, they’re just not games I enjoyed. It is noteworthy to say that most of the games packed on the PJ-008 are simply pirated, very few are hacks.

I like it, just not that label!

Overall, again, I am impressed with this cheap, Chinese toy. I enjoy sitting in front of my TV and having many choices right at my finger tips, which the Super Joy and Power Joy units provide in abundance. The controls are whacky, the games are mostly pirates or hacks of games we already know and love, but this system is a pretty cool little device. Thanks to my new Power Joy, I now know that my other Power Joy works as well, it just needed the battery cover to power up properly. I don’t expect them to live long, but for what they are, I will enjoy them as long as I can.

Here is the list of games that the Power Joy offers, as well as the PJ-008 cartridge. I know they released a few different versions, so I would imagine the games differ from cartridge to cartridge, so this is a list of what I’ve got on my system.

Peripheral Vision: NES Controllers

During the lifespan of the NES, there were many different companies trying to get their hands in on making controllers and different peripherals for the system. While there were many different options for replacement controllers or controllers that offered more features, it seems Nintendo always had the edge over the competition, at least in my personal opinion. Nintendo only released 4 main controllers (not counting the Zapper or the “Its so bad” Power Glove), and those are what I will be examining today.

Almost all of us started out with the standard NES controller. That rectangular hunk of plastic with it’s simplistic design, but was fully functional for any NES game you wanted to play, and later it would be redesigned into a more rounded off (SNES-ish/dog bone) shape. Then perhaps you may have also had the NES Max, a futuristic design with handles at the bottom and finger rests on the back that also featured turbo buttons along with an odd and oftentimes hard to use D-pad. Last and certainly not least there was the NES Advantage, this thing was huge in size all around and made you feel like you were turning your NES into an arcade machine!

NES Rectangle:

The standard NES controller offered the bare necessities you needed to play any game released for the NES. Unlike the more rounded off Famicom controller, if you didn’t learn to hold this controller just right you would often hurt your fingers, and if you wanted more than standard reactions from A and B, there was a lot of button mashing needed to be done! One thing Nintendo did do right with the NES over the Famicom was giving the cables more length and allowing for the controllers to be interchangeable, in case one was damaged.

NES Dog Bone:

Sporting a more rounded off shape (aka dog bone), this controller featured the same standard controls as the rectangle, but this time in a more comfortable, smaller design. To accent the rounded off design the A and B buttons were set in at an angle, as were the start and select buttons, to offer a more SNES controller feel. The cable is about 3″ longer than the standard NES controller and the D-pad is substantially larger. These controllers can be hard to find as they were released with the NES 2 (aka top loader) and are naturally harder to find than the rectangles. There are 3rd party copies of these controllers available today, but I would prefer the Nintendo brand, personally.

NES Max:

As I mentioned before, this controller has handles and finger rests possibly making it the most comfortable NES controller ever released. Introducing turbo buttons was a huge plus, but whatever they called the sliding D-pad featured on this controller really tanked the user friendliness overall. I think Nintendo was possibly looking to incorporate an 8 directional option, without using a joystick. You could still use the outer rim of the D-pad much the same as a normal D-pad, but it was only slightly less frustrating than the sliding button within it. If you can manage to use the D-pad without it sending you off in some odd direction, this controller would have been the best NES controller in my personal opinion.

NES Advantage:

With it’s huge base, giant A and B buttons and it’s 8 directional joystick, the NES Advantage was obviously modeled to simulate the arcade controls of it’s time. The Advantage also offered a slow motion feature, variable speed turbo with individual dials for both A and B, as well as a switch to hand it over to player 2 for their turn. My assumption is the Advantage was intended to be placed upon a table or the floor and used, but sometimes I like to pick it up as if it were a standard NES controller and use it that way. There are some games the Advantage can enhance, mostly the NES ports of arcade games, while others are hit or miss whether this controller is useful or more of a hindrance to the player.

Final Thoughts:

I own all four of the above controllers, in fact I own two of each with the exception of the NES Max. Over the years I can say I have quite a lot of personal experience with each design. With the exception of the D-pad design on the Max being a little tricky, all of these controllers get the job done. Each controller has a different purpose to me. If I’m playing my NES and need some turbo buttons, I’ll use my Max. When I just want that nostalgic experience, I use the standard rectangle.

Lately I’ve grown very attached to my redesigned NES controller because its very comfortable and sits right in my hands, comfort is important when you’re playing video games for hours at a time. Some 3rd party controllers have the more rounded Famicom design, but for whatever reason it just didn’t occur to Nintendo to make some for the NES. The official NES controllers have a sharp reaction that is difficult to achieve with other controllers, although not impossible. I own a lot of different controllers for the NES, both official and not, but there is just a certain feeling I get when I’m using Nintendo brand controllers with the NES.

Emulation vs Original

A while back, a friend of mine acquired an Atari 2600 and wanted me to test it out and clean it up, knowing I love doing that sort of thing. After I got the system running, I was playing through some games when it dawned on me, sitting there with the joystick and it’s single button was the best feeling I’ve had playing Atari 2600 games in quite a while! I own software for PC and my other consoles that allows me to play most of my favorite Atari 2600 games, since I can’t play them on my own (broken) system, and it just isn’t the same.

When I play Activision Anthology on my PS2, sometimes I get confused as to what to press because the PS2 controller has more buttons (and 2 analog sticks!), not to mention the shoulder buttons being mapped to emulate the switches on the Atari deck. The Atari was super simplistic with merely 4 to 8 directions and 1 button. If I’m playing a game designed for the PS2 there is no confusion, it all comes naturally with the mental understanding that this game has a feature for most if not all the buttons on the controller. Video games have come a long way since the Atari 2600 and thankfully so, but when they try to reach back there seems to be a disconnection within that transition.

Don’t misunderstand me, I believe it is a great idea to offer classic video games on next gen consoles. I believe it helps keep the classics alive and bring them to a new audience that may not have been exposed to them beforehand or possibly can’t find or wouldn’t be caught dead with the classic systems these games were programmed for. There are many pros and cons for each side and I can understand them both equally, but I still feel that personally I would rather take the time to hunt down an old system and it’s software so that I can connect with the originality over playing them on a console they were never designed to be played on.

Emulation and software remakes have done a lot of good for classic video gaming, with companies like Atari, Activision, Namco and many others releasing multiple (albeit usually the same games over and over again) compilations of their classic games for many of the next gen consoles. I use emulation as a learning tool, sometimes they might offer games I’ve never heard of or haven’t seen before so I try them out and find out whether its a game I would like to add to my collection or not. While I must admit, I do own them, will probably continue to buy them and for the most part thoroughly enjoy them, I’m simply saying that emulations and software remakes are not a perfect alternative to the decades of bliss and simplicity that the original hardware has provided before.