My Life in Gaming Marathon #3 - Nintendo Systems and Games

The Virtual Boy is famous for being one of Nintendo's most visible and shortest commercial failures. Released in the summer of 1995 only in Japan and North America, the Virtual Boy simulates 3D images with a monochromatic black and red visor screen that was widely considered to be uncomfortable for both the eyes and back and was discontinued in both regions about half a year later with 22

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released personally. I like the virtual guy at least because of his hardware. The 3D effect is clean and convincing and it's not that much. uncomfortable if you play it lying down Nintendo tried its hand at 3D again about a decade and a half later with 3D in 2011, the effect was well received, although 3D is still not to everyone's taste, but Nintendo's history with 3D

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in reality dates back to 8. years before the virtual child for use on a home console this is the famicom 3d system the famicom 3d system arrived in Japan in 1987 and was never released for its overseas counterpart the

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entertainment system the visor se fits easily around the player's head leaving plenty of room for The regular glasses under the cable connect to a small box with a 3.5 millimeter headset-style jack and then to the Famicom expansion port.

Most supported games activate 3D mode by pressing the select button during gameplay. Viewers without the 3D viewer will see a flickering image like this. The viewfinder works its magic by quickly covering each eye alternately, so that when the image that should be seen by the left eye on the screen covers the right eye and vice versa, the viewfinder sinks down to the timing standards of the CRT televisions used in Japan and North America. Unfortunately the effect is impossible on modern screens but the good thing is that today you can see the 3D effect in higher quality than was ever intended to be possible thanks to the nes rgb mod and yes the 3D effect works, It's pretty good considering the age of technology is far from perfect, although the visor considerably obscures vision and adds a quick strobe effect that's not exactly the nicest thing in the world, but it does make games better.

Only eight Famicom games were released in 3D, four. of them are cartridges and the other half on the famicom disk system, let's take a look at all of them. 3d hot rally is the only game that

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released for the 3d famicom system jointly developed by hal and nintendo's ead. It is also the first game. which Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto worked on together, is part of a series of Nintendo racing games that only incidentally star Mario and other Nintendo characters, a precursor to Mario Kart, well, maybe something like that, but maybe it Most notably, this Famicom exclusive disc system is the first game with artwork to feature Luigi and his modern look, taller and thinner than Mario, with a distinctly different mustache.

Hot Rally 3D has only three courses, but a big part of the fun, at least back then in Japan, was sending course times to Nintendo to win official prizes and competitions via famicom fax machines facilities throughout. The country landscape along the fields features grumpy rocks, snake-headed street lamps, and ugly bushes. Miyamoto was going through a difficult time. Each course also has many branching paths, so you'll want to learn the route that works best. for your vehicle and driving style and last longer than 10 minutes, so the race against the clock can get quite intense. At the beginning of the tour, you will choose an auto repair point where your vehicle will instantly recover from damage if you remember. take the right route to get there if you're not going to make it you can make mario and luigi waste a few seconds while they fix things up and down automatic shifting isn't exactly my specialty but this wasn't difficult if you collect enough h icons and then get a speed higher temporary special, well, we're getting warmer.

I love the air you can get out of the hills. It's crazy how this most primitive 3D scaling trick allows for such varied terrain compared to the flat. mode 7 runners we got on snes are generally light on content but still a fun 8 bit runner, attack animal goku and literally attack animal academy was the first 3d famicom cart I found. I was so fascinated by their completely ridiculous tag art that I just had to give the editors a note if your artwork features alligators falling from the sky I'll play your game right what we have here is the most blatant rip off of a space harrier imaginable .

I mean, look at this, so you're like this. schoolgirl flying for some reason shooting a gun at kangaroos, skeletons in sunglasses and yes, flying alligators the first boss is a koala dressed like a 1920s gangster I mean that's awesome but starting with the boss level 2, the game seems to be already ruined. of the absurdity of it and also becomes almost unplayable due to how difficult it is to dodge the sheer number and speed of things hurtling towards you at all times. It's even worse considering the game has no sequel. I had to resort to playing on Retron 5. with save states to record all the footage I wanted which seriously detracted from my enjoyment of the game and of course the 3D effect only works on the original hardware.

It looks pretty good, although the sprite scaling isn't fluid enough to fully sell the effect. Enemies and shots coming at you attacking the animal Gokulan is an interesting oddity, but even if he had continued, it wouldn't have saved him from his aiming problems and messy boss fights. World Runner's 3D battles in North America. 3D World Runner came packaged with a pair of red and blue 3D glasses similar to these, but in Japan they were released on the Famicom disk system and are 3D compatible. The Japanese title is tobadasi daisokusa or operation jumpout 3d world runner was developed by a young and fighter designed in a square shape. by hironobu takaguchi composed by nabu oymatsu and programmed by nasser jabelli the team that would create final fantasy since I am playing the nes cartridge adapted to the famicom pressing the select button will not activate the shutter effect in the 3d visor to To be honest, the effect 3D red and blue in the North American version doesn't seem to work for me. 3D World Runner certainly looks interesting, it's very colorful and whimsical.

You can accelerate and decelerate by holding down the d button. -pad and you simply run forward dodging enemies, you will fly and shoot a giant snake boss at the end of the stages Space Harrier style. It's not a terrible game, but I was getting really frustrated and lost interest in world 2. Upon restarting, I discovered that crashing into columns is a good thing, well, it's kind of funny, but that's how you get powers, but don't grab mushrooms, those will kill you. This renewed my interest in the game a bit, but then there were these horrible giants. gaps in world 3 and I felt like I had had enough, it's certainly an interesting game and I don't hate it, but I don't feel compelled to play it much more.

Sakaguchi and his team weren't done with 3D, but Rad Racer may be. best known for his appearance and the infamous power glove scene in the wizard, but the Japanese version Highway Star features support for the Highway Star 3D Famicom system actually released before 3D Hot Rally and has a really great sense of speed and feel. a higher perspective when climbing the The controls are also much simpler, but that doesn't mean it's easier with 8 visually varied stages and no second chances. Getting to the end of Highway Star is a daunting task. Luckily, it has a simple cheat to continue and a level select code if you want.

To practice any course similar to Hot Rally 3D, you are not actually racing against other cars on the track, but rather just trying to reach the checkpoints without running out of time. There's really not much to say about Highway Star Rad Racer, but it's strangely fun in 3D. The perspective is excellent and the 3D visor effect works quite well, although I think it adds little in the way of improving depth perception. The car just has a great feel and is truly a pleasure to control. I can see the appeal to 80's kids who couldn't. I still don't drive, but that's not all.

From Square, you know the famous story about how Sakaguchi's games before Final Fantasy hadn't sold as well. Square was the only company to create more than one 3D system title, let alone Sakaguchi's last three. The game before Final Fantasy was a sequel to 3D World Runner released only in Japan as JJ. This is meant to be like a darker, harder version of Tobadossi Daisakusen. Gone are the cute and colorful enemies and there's only fast speed and yet I found. the game was actually a bit more compelling, the single speed made it easier to get into the rhythm and the large spaces that made world 3 so frustrating in the first game actually became somewhat manageable in jj. 1ups are more plentiful and generally just arrive.

I consider it a better game, I get the feeling there's a bit of intentional humor here, the tough and gritty atmosphere is almost over the top and clashes a bit with the silly gameplay. Is it just me or does Jumping Jack seem like a great boss? The quality. The 3D effect is also one of the best on the Famicom 3D system. I didn't finish it and I imagine I'd eventually get frustrated until I was breathless, but if I spend any more time on a World Runner game, this will be the only one I'm missing. a famicom disk system game developed by konami now i'm pretty sure those guys knew how to make a space shooter yeah oh boy i've never seen a starry space background like this before and no wonder the graphics look even worse in 3D.

Just like in 3D, dark scenes tend to show 3D ghosting more easily than bright colors, this is especially problematic because it's supposed to look like your ship appears in front of the screen, which totally derailed my ability to focus on the rest of the screen. Image, the screen dimming that is inherent when viewing through the viewfinder also makes the dark shot you are supposed to dodge extremely difficult to see. Fortunately, the background changes after the first level and you have some continues, but the perspective and scale were very poor. that I never had much fun and didn't get very far okay cosmic epsilon now this game looks pretty cool good luck that voice takes up half the cart hey actually this one looks pretty cool and listen to this music.

It sounds straight out of Mario Galaxy. I later found out that it is actually a direct version of a Japanese pop song called Parachute Lemon. I have no idea if they went through the right channels, but it's super catchy. I really like the look of this game. I think the textured floor effect is pretty cool and notice how the perspective shifts slightly left and right with your character. That's great. The 3D effect in Cosmic Epsilon is probably the best on the system thanks to the generally brilliant graphics and surprisingly smooth enemy scaling. Aiming is also easier than in felgian or attack animal cocoon, but unfortunately just like in attack animal cocoon, what starts out looking super promising becomes almost impossible by the second level, this is not a particularly short game and the difficulty increases to the extreme very quickly, has no continuity and is extremely scarce. opportunities for extra lives without any sort of upgrade system or more robust dodge mechanics to balance out this level of challenge.

Cosmic Epsilon is too difficult to be much fun beyond the first level and that's a real shame because playing on Retron 5 I got to see some cool stuff, check out the last level in the Battle Moon aria, how awesome is that and Who knew NES could pull off an incredible run in the Death Star trenches with just a few clever tweaks. I guess this could have been a real hidden gem. the developers were having a hard time coming up with ideas for 3D visuals besides shooters, runners and runners, well we have one more 3D game and this one is actually quite different, fun shaolin, good thing, it's a gelecko fighting game, It even has a two-player mode, it seems a little advanced for its time.

I'm going to be honest with you, I have absolutely no skills in this genre, so I can't praise or condemn it, but it looks like it could be a good thing. scenes in the story that I can't read at all, but I like how there are branching paths that determine what fight comes next, but man, the computer just tears me apart in no time and I was never able to pull off anything fancy. The moves I believe the manual details, as you would expect, all the 3D does in this game is make the backgrounds appear further away.

It's great to see 3D used in a more mundane way, even if it isn't. really add something to the game, so those are all the games that support the systemfamicom 3d. I wish I could say more good things about them, but sadly most of them are flawed to a greater or lesser degree. My main recommendation is 3d hot rally. which is pretty good regardless if you're using the 3D viewer or not, so yeah, maybe it's not the best selection of games and you know the technology is a little dated and more of a novelty than a game improvement, but It's amazing See something like this from that era and it really works When Rare and Nintendo released Goldeneye for the n64, it defied all expectations, a movie license that not only showed how a first-person shooter could be made right on a console domestic, but also promoted the genre.

Forward in its own way GoldenEye was the first first-person shooter that piqued my interest. It also served as a gateway to get me into the Bond movies at a time when it was considered a farce in the Nintendo world when Rare was not developing the game based on Tomorrow Never Dies and it was also going to be a Playstation game, but Nintendo fans weren't completely unlucky. A Game Boy game called simply James Bond 007 was released just half a year after Goldmine. I remember he was pretty decent and would do it. Expect a lot of people to play it, but no one talks about it, so let's revisit James Bond on Game Boy.

James Bond 0007 was developed by Utah-based developer Sapphire and released by Nintendo in early 1998. I'm sure a lot of people ignored it because it wasn't something on the level of a handheld goldmine, but it takes inspiration from a very valuable source. Anyone who has played the Gameboy Zelda games will see that the basic gameplay is heavily inspired by Link's awakening, a winning formula if ever there was one, the plot. is an extremely basic link that has a mission to uncover a weapons cartel that starts in China, the game takes double 07 to the Middle East, Africa, Tibet and Russia, the funny thing is that even though the game was developed during the Pierce Brosnan era, James Bond on Game Boy features a non-specific tie-in and is more like the world of bond movies from the 60s and 70s, surely they could have done better than recycling odd jobs and jaws as henchmen and by They're so huge, but I still get the feeling that the developers had fun getting the chance to work in the Bond universe.

It's very video game, you have to find a carpenter's hammer in order to repair a bridge, maybe a little out of place in the world of James Bond, but this is very much a game about gathering information and figuring out how to get what you want from people. It's a good idea for a Bond game, don't you think I mean Bond has a license to kill? But since most of their games have been shooters in one form or another, this mystery and puzzle-solving element feels like it would be better. In an important facet of Bond, the shooting format doesn't work as well, in fact the combat is definitely the weakest aspect of the game, although Bond has a pistol and a few other weapons, they are a bit difficult to use, you pick up a shield very late. in the game, but otherwise there's not much you can do to protect yourself in a firefight, other than clumsily dodging and abusing hitboxes.

Fighting enemies in hand-to-hand combat is a much more enjoyable experience, although too simple to be interesting. Bond's melee weapons are his alone. fists and a machete which interestingly can be used to cut grass like in zelda melee is probably the easiest way to fight in most situations even against enemies with weapons just equip a bulletproof vest and attack to cutting, it's actually a bit strange when you really stop to think about it as if it were a machete which isn't very binding as the enemy encounters actually become very difficult and tedious towards the end of the game and I found that this It was the easiest way to get through.

You'd think q devices would do it. It will simply be a great option for a Zelda clone, but unfortunately the potential is mostly wasted. The new items don't open up the game in any meaningful way. An electrified key fob is automatically used once in a very specific situation. The laser watch is only useful in a pair. of doors and that's it there's just not much you can do with most of your inventory bonus eventually ends up in Russia a throwback to the cold war era of the series at this point in my replay I started to find the game so Frustratingly, I actually had to visit Nintendo's old power rack and pull out issue 105.

The later stages just became thoughtless mazes full of enemies. Bond eventually meets the mastermind behind the weapons cartel who is not to be confused with General Gogol from the movies. After stopping Golgoth's missile launch, Bond takes villain-turned-ally Zhong May on a slow ship to China despite a promising first half that does a good job of turning the information and mystery-solving aspects of Bond into a stripped-down Game Boy format, the frustrating second half of the game relies on obtuse mazes and too much combat for a game that's not really designed for it, but it's those good parts that I remember most from my initial playthrough almost 18 years ago. .

Unfortunately, I can't say it's an unexpected Game Boy. gem as I wish I could have it, but it certainly shows great potential. I mean, who would have thought of mixing Bond and Zelda? I think if someone did it better one day, that could be the best Bond game since its 1989 Game Boy release. burst onto the market and became the portable

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unit that was no longer confined to your living room if you wanted to enjoy some good Nintendo games as the years went by the Game Boy name would persevere and we would see updated hardware and replaced by more powerful options culminating with the Game Boy Advance in 2001.

In 2006, Nintendo would license the Game Boy Advanced hardware to a US-based company called vestion, which specialized in in-car entertainment technology. This partnership would result in a portable DVD player that featured the capability. play gba games the vistion dacable entertainment system with game boy advanced at the 2006 winter consumer electronics show, this company theon announced its partnership with nintendo to integrate advanced game boy hardware into its line of portable dvd players, Although this wasn't exactly an uncommon occurrence for Nintendo, this would be the first time they would allow someone else to use their technology on a handheld device.

Up until this point, we'd only seen things like the Lodge Net N64, which was special hardware used to play Nintendo 64 games in a hotel. Rooms, after a small delay, the Vistian dockable entertainment system with Game Boy Advance or as I like to call it, the viseon, would be released in July 2006. From the beginning, this device had several challenges at the beginning, it was only available . Buying it through a couple of different automakers, like BMW and Nissan, would also cost you over twelve hundred dollars. It is important to note that when this device was announced, the Nintendo DS had already been in operation for a year and a half.

Its

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cycle At the time of its release the DS Lite was already available in most countries The attachable entertainment system resembles a standard portable DVD player that was quite common in the mid-2000s A sleek design silver exterior and an LCD screen that doesn't. I don't know if it's just me, but all of these things tended to look exactly the same on the back right side of the screen. You'll find a cartridge slot along with an input to connect a link cable for two-player action if you wish. If you're hoping to also be able to play with your older Game Boy carts, then you're out of luck.

Game Boy and Game Boy colors don't even fit in the slot. Turn on the unit. Press the auxiliary input button and any Game Boy games you inserted will boot up. Out of the box, the built-in screen has three brightness levels that can only be increased using the included DVD remote control. The games retain their 3 2 aspect ratio but leave some of the screen empty. More in a minute is included with the device. this bad boy, um, yeah, I guess this controller looks like a mess, but it's actually pretty usable. It uses an infrared signal to connect wirelessly to the vision, so it has to be fairly aligned with at least one of the unit's three infrared receivers, it's definitely easy to lose the signal, but again, this wasn't designed exactly to play in the living room.

The d-pad on this controller was clearly inspired by the original Duke Xbox controller, but it's not quite as extreme. The button layout is actually quite neat. It also has the general a and b buttons arranged as if they were on a Game Boy Advance, while underneath you have a giant Gamecube controller-style button that allows you to move your thumb between the buttons as you would with, say, an SNES controller by going between the buttons. and b works great on the back, you have the l and r buttons and these things are pretty much the worst because they are so far down on the controller that they can be hard for any adult to reach without contorting their hand in a weird way, but you know.

To be fair, the lr buttons were only easy to use on the first gba model. Regardless, the vistian houses actual advanced Game Boy hardware, and as a result, it plays almost exactly as you'd expect when using Nintendo's own Game Boy player with a Gamecube. on your HDTV, but the big question on your mind is how do these games look good? Simply put, don't expect this to be the super secret best way to play your Game Boy Advance games. The gba's 240 by 160 resolution is enlarged. a little, but it's blurry and doesn't fill the screen. It's a shame there's no option to scale further, as the 800x480 screen resolution could have allowed for perfect 3x scaling, so what we're left with is a lot of unused screen. real estate, the quality of the screen itself is not that bad with just a bit of ghosting, if you want to fill the screen a little more, pressing the screen button on the unit will stretch the image horizontally, this sure ruins the look intended of the game, but I'm surprised I didn't go even further because DVD mode offers several video calibration settings and multiple zoom options - unlike Nintendo's Game Boy player, there are no options for borders around the image.

I've never been a big fan. that sort of thing, but it's surprising because the target audience for this drive would probably be upset by the amount of unused space, but that's not all. On the side of the unit is a 3.5 millimeter jack that can output both composite video and S-video so you can connect the dockable entertainment system up to the TV to watch some big screen action, Vestion sold a optional video output, but the unit we borrowed didn't include one, so I had to find a solution using as many cables as I could. To make it work connected to a TV, the Vision only outputs an interlaced signal, which is pretty much what I expected without any type of component video cable available. 480p is impossible and I guess 240p was too much to want right away, you'll see the indicator.

Composite video signs, rainbows and dots trailing across the screen, are typical problems with this low-quality video signal on HDTVs, although the problems may have been made worse by my wiring situation. personalized. The s-video connection gets an immediate improvement. I always felt the jump from composite video to s video was quite a big one in terms of video quality and that's quite evident here, the rainbow is gone and the point tracking is minimal. This looks surprisingly good, if a little blurry, when comparing the composite view output and s video to a Game Boy player using a set of expensive Gamecube component cables and official Nintendo software produces some interesting results.

The gbp is obviously a little sharper and shows a progressive image, but it is much darker. I must admit that this is not quite it. The decisive victory that I originally thought was going to be connecting the vision to a CRT TV reveals a much more appropriate experience the interlaced image looks great even with a much better composite aspect of course s-video is superior but it can be hard to find a crt with s-video these days, since i set it up i took a look at how fast the built in display really is comparing it to a crt, as you can see there isn't much delay between the output and the built in display What's impressive is that the Game Boy Advance's three-to-two aspect ratio is preserved with the video output, unlike other alternatives like the super adapter.advanced retro for SNES, regardless of the fact that vision is by no means the best way to play your gba games on your television.

Homebrew apps like the Gameboy interface for Gamecube Gameboy Player offer far superior experiences by displaying gba games in a more suitable 240p resolution and excellent colors if you are curious about the Game Boy interface and much more. If you know other options for playing these games on your TV, check out rgb 208 from our rgb masterclass here about my

life

and my games so okay yeah this is all beyond what this unit was Originally designed for what you're supposed to do. On a trip, play it in your car and when you arrive at your destination, take it out and plug it into your main TV.

So what's up with the whole portable aspect of this thing? You know, the dockable part of the dockable entertainment system this dock was created for. it will mount on the roof of your vehicle once you block the vision on this thing it will make the image on the screen flip since I don't have a car this fits in let's just pretend and flip this thing over it works Okay the base doesn't really offer too many benefits, although it does have a composite input so you can plug in other consoles and doing so with an older games console like the SNES produces some really decent results, if you don't mind.

By stretching the image you can't get the screen to display the resolution shown, but note that you're not interlacing progressive content on all LCD TVs, they generally tend to read the 240p resolution of older games consoles like the 480i, which causes some really unpleasant side effects. Handles 240p. Test suites throw shadow tests like a champ, but it's a shame this has to be backwards to use this feature. Vision also includes a nice pair of wireless headphones that can be used when docked. They're not exactly the most comfortable. things, but they sound pretty good and can eventually get quite loud when in the base, of course you will be able to charge the battery, the base is powered by the vehicle's power, but if you want to charge it outside of the base then you might get some issues. some problems, such as the video output cable.

Vistian also sold a proprietary AC adapter for charging outside of the dock separately. This adapter tends to be quite difficult to find these days, but you can design your own using a generic 12 volt 3000 ma power supply. block and a psp sized connector, remove the input end of the power brick and plug it into the input and you're done. Fully portable Game Boy Advance. We'd like to thank Ross Attack on Twitter for allowing us to take a look at their veston dockable entertainment system for this video. It's a dark part of Game Boy history and we're glad we were able to show it.

Vistian tends to be quite rare and expensive nowadays, which makes sense since there were limited ways to purchase it in the first place, while it offers no real advantages over the multiple ways to play your gba games. It's a pretty interesting footnote to its legacy in 2017. Retro boutique console maker analog launched the nt mini an nes and famicom alternative that uses modern technology and clever engineering in a way that makes it fundamentally different from emulators of software and traditional cloned consoles. Now, in 2018, we have the next logical step in our hands. The Super NT, which despite being much more powerful, is less than half the cost of the analog NT Mini, was confident enough to allow us to spend a month and a half putting the final hardware through its paces, providing us with all the variations for review. and I even had the chance to go behind the scenes with fpga engineer Kevin Horton absolute cycle accuracy everything happens in real time all time latencies is the closest you can get to the original hardware on something modern from the early 90s I was hoping someone would come with a chip like an FPGA started with the Commodore 64.

At a time when information on programming and computer hardware was hard to come by, Kevin Horton, known online as Kevtris, started with projects like building his own programmer. eprom and converting an old printer into a vector plotter I always really liked Commodore 64 music and was thinking of ways to generate or save it. This idea led Capturas to create many devices that could play game music with hardware precision, but mainly for your own enjoyment this is where fpgas come in. An fpga is a digital integrated circuit that is fully customizable capable of being written and rewritten at any time. configuration as needed and then installed on a mass-produced circuit board The decreasing cost of FPGAs in recent years has now made it possible for capturists to distribute their work without the need to build complex devices made up of countless components, the fpga can even function as the sum of the parts of a pre-existing hardware setup, like a

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console, and potentially add features to it.

On top of that, I wanted to develop an fpga gaming system 10 years ago, but no one was going to pay, you know. , that was my big problem until now, you know, no one really wanted to pay the price for our

systems

with the emergence of

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like avs by retro usb this type of hardware has finally become accessible to the broader retro gaming community analog sought experience capture for its own fpga-based nes and famicom console the nt mini the end result was actually the long awaited nes implementation of fpga work that Ketchus had completed years earlier.

I finished it around 2005 or six, so it's pretty much what was done back then, that NSF player that came out back then, so I'm happy that it finally got released, you know? people can actually use it because that was an internal thing for me only as original systems age and become more difficult to maintain in the coming decades many feel that fpgas could be the future of preserving classic games in a precise hardware for now. We'll just have to see where this path leads, although no one can be sure that the captcha work will be 100% faithful to the originals.

Their attention to detail cannot be doubted. The nt-mini, for example, replicates all the components of the NES down to the last detail. pattern its out of order composite output if that's how you really want to play it while amazing things have been done in the world of software emulation, only a hardware solution like an fpga can interface with a cartridge at the same rate as the original hardware, you can do loop accurate, but you can't do the same kind of latency, usually in an emulator everything is processed in batches. The problem is that you have to read the cartridge periodically.

You know you can't read mass memory because it's too slow. You know the rom. It's only going to give you the data at that rate everyone assumed the next analog system would be an fpga with a super nintendo core or at least that's what they expected given the huge jump in complexity from nes to snes, screenshots thought it could No delivered a finished product with the desired schedule of an analog, but surprised even himself and developed a fully functional SNES core in just six months. You break it down into the smallest parts possible and then work on each part one at a time to identify problems. with each part he reverse engineered screenshots, paired his fpga versions with original snes chips on breadboards, if something didn't work right he knew exactly which part needed the most work, the pp was easy, i was actually a little disappointed, as is the case with most game consoles.

Snes systems can be quite different on the inside, even if they look similar on the outside. Around 1995, Nintendo made radical changes to the way the snes console would be manufactured in the future because they consolidated the cpu and ppu functions onto a single chip. These boards are labeled as a chip. They are highly coveted in the retro gaming community for their significantly sharper video output compared to previous systems; However, there are some compensations, such as exaggerated video levels and minor glitches that appear in a small handful of titles, they may be from Super Nintendo, but some consider them to be official clone consoles, the Super NT, and then be based on the design of chip above is almost a paradox.

Some might argue that it's more of a true SNES than some of Nintendo's own machines. It is based on a model 213 which is a rev2 rev1 CPU. pp1 and a rev3 pp2, which is by far the most common super turrican, ironically the director's cup is one of two five factor games included with the super nt and is known for serious sound glitches on consoles of a boat, flash cars like the super everdrive and the super ufo. They are compatible, there has been a lot of discussion recently about poorly designed flash cards or play cards and whether they could damage your consoles, but Keepress isn't worried, oh it won't damage the super nt, not even the msu one chip and the popular sc to snes . works, allowing audio streaming and other impressive feats.

I couldn't believe it worked. In fact, receivers didn't have to do anything special to get unusual cartridges to interface with the super nt. I have the tsufami turbo that works as a game protector. also the work doctor sf6 worked basically everything I plugged in there worked. I tried all the expansion chips. In fact, I bought all those cartridges on eBay to try the ones that talk about cartridges. The nes slot on the nt-mini was extremely temperamental at least on our unit, but the super nt has given us absolutely no problems with any cartridge that was at least passively clean.

We reported some issues during our own pre-release testing. The most difficult problems that kept us going during development involved games that used direct memory access. or dma works in ways that are fundamentally broken but it ended up working anyway you know my dma was too good so I had um you know so I play a game and you know something wouldn't be right and then I'd have to search We check and we found out why and we found out that most of the time it was because the game did something with the dma that it wasn't supposed to do.

Fortunately, Keepress was able to fix these issues long before Super NT hardware was in our hands. In addition, it also fixed the few visual and audio glitches we discovered, with the only exception being some curious behavior with high-resolution mode and the Japanese exclusive. wonderful but now you have the cartridge and in the case we reviewed several other games that used the snes high resolution graphics and found no similar problems as the super nt is tested by thousands of other snes fans you could still It will take a little while before the bugs are removed as thoroughly as with high-end software emulators like higan, which had the advantage of having been around for many years, but from what we've seen, virtually all games already They seem to work exactly as you would expect, they will be very, very minor things.

I did some pretty extensive testing days and days running all the games. Eliminating lag in all aspects of the system was one of the key goals of the Super NT and NT Mini. Input latency is identical to the original systems because the drivers are read the same way, so there is no latency. There is no USB. overhead, for example, there is no operating system overhead and then the video playback is real time, so with zero delay mode everything is synchronized with the video generation, so there is no delay, so Of course, a big difference between the nt mini and the super nt. it's the newest system it's hdmi just because adding analog was just silly you know too much you would have to have a dac and then the connectors and it also made the system bigger however thanks to the fact that there is no delay between the rendering and analog HDMI port has a unique opportunity to convert the analog output to an external option.

Instead, Analog plans to release an adapter that takes a proprietary signal from its own consoles' HDMI ports and converts it into the same quality 240p analog signal as the nt-mini's built-in port. light weapons, super range would work on that, honestly we can't argue with the decision to provide analog as an external option because the best thing about the super nt is that they managed to get it down to just under 200, much less than half of the nt's 450 mini. Yeah, I mean, that's not exactly a pittance, but it also means that a lot more people can get their hands on it and if fpgas really become a revolution in how.

If playing retro games, price and accessibility should be top priorities. The Super NT has a larger fpga and more RAM than the NT Mini, making possible many features that we felt were missing from its predecessor if you're not a fan of the new source. choose a fontalternative in the system menu for a more traditional retro text type. You can also change the behavior of menu animations and more. You can choose between ntsc and pal in the hardware menu. The pal cartridges may refuse to load if the system is set to ntsc, but interestingly, once it starts up you can change regions which adjusts the speed in real time so you can run the pal carts at a smooth 60 hertz speed ;

However, don't get too excited because if the game was tuned for a friends version, it will play too fast on ntsc. mode and, likewise, ntsc carts will play too slowly in pal mode, but you may be able to use ntsc mode to run certain non-optimized pal versions in a similar way to their ntsc counterparts, but more to the point, Let's dive into the video settings, the resolution options perform as expected. the range from 480p to 1080p 4k isn't really feasible at the moment, there are no chips that support it, luckily it's 20 pixels per second, as long as your 4k tv does a good job of upscaling to 1080p or 720p the results are still quite Well, in fact, it is possible.

You want to choose 720p over 1080p specifically if you're a fan of the scanline look, as is the case with many retro upscaling techniques, the thickness of the super nt scanline looks a little more authentic at 720p and the smoothness it feels more crt like the gamma boost is a nice new feature that we specifically wanted to be on the nt mini. This helps compensate for the dark image when using the scan lines feature. Make sure you set a vertical integer scale or else the spacing between scan lines will be ruined. You can adjust this in the Screen Size Menu which offers some basic height and aspect ratio presets, although at this time we think the list needs some additional tweaks and options which we have suggested and hope to see implemented, the good news is However, there is a way to scale the image.

You like the screen size independent menu, but before we get into that we have to talk about integer scaling and interpolation somehow integer scaling is not as crucial for the super nt as it is for similar systems, including the nt mini, the simplest way to The exclusive low-resolution graphics is to use hard-edged lines. This is fine when each axis is scaled by an integer like 4x and 5x, but to get the correct aspect ratio you would need non-integer scaling due to uneven pixel size, which can cause glare. the screen scrolls as demonstrated here in the nes classic edition.

Fortunately, Nintendo fixed this issue with the Super Nintendo Classic Edition by adding interpolation to the horizontal axis, resulting in smooth scrolling at the correct aspect ratio, and the Super NT's improved fpga allowed Kentriss to implement his own version of scaling there. , I spent about a month and a half developing it, so it's like a framemeister and, more briefly, interpolation calculates missing states between defined values. The end result in this case is that the horizontal and vertical axes are interpolated. so that instead of varying the pixel size, each line has only a slightly smooth edge so that all rows and columns appear uniform.

This means you can use, say, a 4.5x vertical size with the correct 4x3 aspect ratio and get absolutely no brightness. Kevtris tells us that interpolation for him was a high priority feature and by our estimation the implementation is very high quality, calling it the most important graphics feature in Super NT and one we expect to see in all of Super NT's work. Analog and Keeppress in the future. way to disable interpolation the scalar menu when we first received the super nt it was a single switch for both axes, but they implemented a bit of our feedback and the firmware available at launch has separate switches for horizontal and vertical interpolation at 1080p.

Turning off vertical interpolation has almost no noticeable effect, but at both 720p and 480p it is quite good to turn off only vertical interpolation to get lines with sharp edges and at the same time enjoy glare-free scrolling, as most of the footage in this episode was recorded at 1080p, we decided to leave interpolation enabled for the horizontal and vertical axes so that we could take full advantage of the system's advanced scaling features, which you can access by activating the advanced mode, giving us even more fun and excitement along with multiple options additional. The screen size is replaced by the width and height, since we left interpolation on, there is no reason for us not to fill the screen, however we want, here are the settings we checked that completely fill the 1080p vertical space in Letterboxless games perfectly centers every game we tested and the aspect ratio is based on my pvm 20l5.

If you want to turn off interpolation for a sharper image and use integer scales, we recommend a height of 1200 and a width of 1536 or a height of 960 with a width of 1280. The additional functions menu has some options that make minor modifications to snes rendering behavior to improve visuals in specific situations. The most interesting is the combination of pseudo high resolution. Sometimes the 512 pixel wide SNES mode can be used as a stripe pattern on an overlay on a consumer CRT, this can be blended to look like some kind of transparency, but the Super NT can turn it into a true transparency that works very well in Kirby's Dreamland 3.

None of the super nt features do anything like reduce slowdown for better or worse. The slowdown seems to happen the same way as a real snes right after the interpolation. We'd say it's the most exciting new feature for the super nt. nt-mini could not have buffering options by default, zero delay is enabled, what this means is that there is absolutely no delay on the hdmi output, everything is processed and output in real time, so if you have a TV or monitor with low lag, then you can get an almost CRT-like experience, but there is a quirk to the zero lag mode that is also shared by the NT Mini and NES HD.

The nes and snes run at a speed just over 60 hertz. The oss reads it as 60.08 hertz, which is not a problem at all in the analog realm, but to ensure maximum compatibility with digital displays, the super nt actually runs a little slower so it can even reach 60 hertz , it's not something that any human being can perceive, I mean. Over the course of 10 minutes the Super NT loses only about a second, but it's a small thing that makes it just the smallest touch removed from the original hardware. Well, now there is a frame buffer, so a frame buffer gives me a lot more options when choosing completely. buffered the super nt runs on the snes as original slightly faster than the 60hz speed while still outputting a smooth 60 hertz, first there are two small offsets, a bit of lag which is never more than one frame, varies from zero to 16 milliseconds and is adjusted to a sawtooth second, one frame must be released approximately every 10 seconds to remain paired with the 60 hertz output.

An alternative is a single buffer which is supposed to have less lag, but instead of dropping a frame, it causes screen tearing. screen every 10 seconds or so, the audio options are pretty simple if you are using a cartridge with analogue audio passthrough then you need to activate the analogue to digital converter manually, to our knowledge this is only relevant for two types of cartridges, the sd2snes mentioned above with its msu-1 chip and the super gameboy the super gameboy itself is responsible for the audio processing of the game that goes through the cartridge it is analog if the cartridge audio was not activated then you would only hear the sounds processed by the snes with audio cartridge activated, you may hear some noise, more noticeable on quiet screens, you are hearing the CPU bus noise on the Super Game Boys.

What you're listening to, you can listen to on a regular Game Boy if you have headphones and turn it up. you can hear it too, it's much harder to hear this noise when playing with analog output on a real snes, but if you balance the cartridge's audio with the volume of your sound system, hopefully you can find a satisfactory balance between the sound audible game play and low noise levels. It's really fascinating to consider the Super Game Boy when it comes to the Super NT, seeing as it's real Game Boy hardware on a cartridge, whether you play on a SNES or a Super NT, you're still playing a real Game Boy to get the correct size.

For Game Boy games, you need to set the Super NT to a square pixel aspect ratio like 5x vertical and 5x horizontal, something that's actually a bit easier to achieve here compared to the analog output of a real SNES, but as you know, there are some drawbacks. Super GameBoy In terms of precision, it was designed to use a crystal oscillator to run at the actual speed of a Game Boy, but to save costs, the final product derives its speed from the SNES system clock, the result is that games from game boy runs faster than intended and you may notice frequent stutters as the screen scrolls, however, the Japan-exclusive Super Game Boy 2 greatly alleviates these problems by including the Crystal Oscillator not only for run the Game Boy hardware at the correct speed but also to significantly reduce stuttering.

This is interesting for Super NT. first for two reasons, while the original Super Game Boy is controlled by the cartridge bus and the Super NT, just like with a real SNES, in this case you lose only a little bit of speed in zero delay mode, but not much speed Super Game Boy 2 is completely. It is not affected by the Super NT system, making it a completely accurate original Game Boy hardware solution. Secondly, Super Game Boy 2 stutters even less when played in Super NT's zero lag mode. There is still a frame latch every few seconds. The speed of the Game Boy simply does not. quite a bit of sync up to 60 hertz, but our testing showed it's less common than on a real snes, regardless of your feelings about whether an fpga is as valid as the original hardware, this still qualifies as a true gameboy hardware setup which on this If it performs just a little better over Super NT and at the right speed, we can't help but wish that maybe in the future we'll see the ability to scale up to 7x for Game Boy games or maybe even some optimized Super Game modes.

Boy to eliminate stuttering completely. It looks like there's potential here to create the ultimate interface for playing pre-Game Boy color titles with real hardware on your TV, if Analog and Kevtris wanted to make this happen, of course the Super NT has just been released so we have the hope that its features will be refined and expanded as time goes on. Oh yeah, there's a lot of extra space on that fpga, which is good, so on the nt mini I ran out of space. The super famicom was launched almost 30 years ago, more than old in computing terms.

It may have some of the most revered and polished 2D games ever made, but you have to wonder if the guy who reverse engineered it likes it. It's really amazing hardware. I think they did a very, very good job. If I can. It's not easy to go back to NES anymore, so no, I think this is about the peak for a 2D system. I would say it would be the peak, but does it have explosive processing? The CPU bus is eight bits. You know, in the genesis it is 16 bits. but you know it can execute memory reads and writes every cycle in genesis, it takes eight cycles to do that.

SNES has 16-bit video if you consider two 8-bit VRAMs running in parallel, but how far can we go? fpga gaming hardware playstation one neo geo, that would be one of the systems that seems to be on everyone's mind, the n64 with fantasies of fpga consoles with precise hardware that could even render at a higher resolution or with better frame rates, but even if an fpga were powerful enough to do it one day, you might not want to hold your breath, it would be very difficult. I think the problem is that the complexity, you know, gets much, much more complicated in the right hands.

Fpga based game consoles offer maybe. The most interesting alternatives to the real thing while offering modern conveniences, but no matter how archaic a system may be, the captures remain tenaciously committed to accuracy. I replicate the behavior of the hardware. I'm not trying to ask why he does it, I'm just saying that's how he does it. capture mom andIf you could see the return of your personal jailbreak firmware that you released for the nt mini, which made it possible to load roms and other 8-bit kernels that you had already developed, it is definitely a significant added value, regardless of whether it is unofficial. feature like that materializes for the super nt, we are already impressed with the new direction of analog and hope this trend continues through features of compact, portable hardware, excellent mechanical feel in the cartridge slot and controller ports and With optional analog support, the Super NT feels like a collection of clever ideas and small tweaks to add up to a more sensible and affordable piece of technology, so all we want to know now is what the next Resident Evil will be.

Resident Evil has to be one of my five favorite video game series, but during the 90s Resident Evil. Games were something I watched my friends play thinking I wouldn't enjoy them either. It wasn't until the Gamecube remake of the original Resident Evil, arguably the best remake in video game history, that I started to really get into the series that this remake has had ever since. an excellent HD remake, but did you know that the original Resident Evil, the basis of the remake supposedly during early development, was intended to be a sort of remake of another Capcom game, which was a video game adaptation of a Japanese horror film from 1989?

This is Home Sweet, the 8-bit precursor to the survival horror genre and the inspiration for Resident Evil in January 1989. Home Sweet was released in theaters in Japan in the years since it fell into obscurity and, as far as I know, there is no official DVD release. and locating a legitimate VHS available for import is nearly impossible. The film follows a team of documentary filmmakers in the dilapidated mansion of the late Ichiro Mamiya, a famous fresco artist whose work they aim to preserve and share with the world, but the team soon becomes haunted by the violent ghost of Mamiya's wife who haunts the world. went crazy before dying from the loss of her son is certainly not a bad film, but director kiyoshi kurosawa is said to have disowned it due to the interference of producer juzo itami itami also produced a video game called sweet home with It is difficult to get concrete information about Capcom about its development and it is difficult to say whether Sweet Home, the video game, was conceived as an adaptation of the film or together with the film as part of a multimedia project directed by Tokuro Fujiwara, creator of Capcom's ghosts and goblins. and the sweethome bionic commando creates his own identity using plot points from the movie, as it's only a very loose basis;

It was released on the Famicom in December 1989. Probably due to its awful theme which Nintendo of America would not have allowed during the NES. Days Sweet Home never left Japan. Fortunately, it has a fully playable fan translation published by Gaijin Productions in 2000, making it popular as a playback cartridge. I played the fan translation through my Japanese Famicom cartridge on the Retron 5. The main cast is the same as the movie and each has a special tool that, well, some are accurate to the movie and some are a bit over the top. Producer Kazuo has a lighter Akiko is portrayed as a nurse with a medical kit Cameraman Taguchi has a camera art restoration specialist Asuka has a vacuum cleaner and Kazuo's daughter Emmy carry a key that opens many of the doors of the mansion.

Wait a minute, right? In the original Resident Evil, Chris Redfield has a lighter. Jill Valentine is the master opener and Rebecca Chambers is the doctor. Wow, so what do we do with these last two? Well, what if the Sweet Home cast actually inspired more than just Capcom's games? Everyone thinks of Ghostbusters when they see Luigi's mansion, but what if the vacuum cleaner actually came from Sweet Home and the camera? let's say fatal frame, it's a bit difficult for me to follow the default names, so how about this Chris Becca, mio ​​Luigi? so the screen doesn't actually turn upside down, but Sweet Home has an unusual top-down perspective with the sprites rotating depending on which direction they're facing.

I've never seen another game do this, but I got used to it. Easily enough, unlike Resident Evil, Sweet Home is actually a straight jrpg, Capcom's first, although the interface takes some getting used to. The five characters can form groups of up to three. What makes it interesting is that you can never have two perfect, balanced groups. There will always be at least one group that you'll be a little afraid to send wandering around the mansion. Let's call Chris Jill and Becca. Resident Evil team and art preservation experts. Mio and Luigi. Cool Team. You can change characters at any time and anyone can move. anywhere in the mansion, whether individually or in a group, but don't wander aimlessly because oh no, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, that introduction to the battle just makes me listen, I love how generates tension and fuels uncertainty that almost any encounter could.

Being against the most horrible creature, so yeah, it's mostly random encounters and super basic battle. The lack of a defense feature is annoying, but the most interesting thing is that other characters or groups can be called for help if they are not too far away. You can move them to join the fight just fine, but fighting monsters is not to be taken lightly, they can deal heavy damage and cause horribly debilitating status effects that cause extreme emergencies that only Becca can heal and HP healing tonics are a resource. limited that you can just use what you find, but they fully heal everyone in a party and are not extremely rare.

You have to manage HP very differently than your typical jrpg, although I have to admit. Once I got a little past the leveling curve about halfway through the game, the battles became a little easy, but you'll find yourself in other situations potentially. Deadly In addition to losing HP in battle, characters can sink into a toxic substance or fall while crossing rickety planks, oh wait. there, luigi, if no one can save them in time, well, they're dead, that's right, I'm talking about permadeath, damn it, luigi, get together, if a character dies, you can find items to replace the character-specific essential tools, very similar to a resident.

Evil inventory space is very limited and item management is the highlight of the game. Each character can only have one weapon and two items in addition to her special tool. It's always a difficult decision to take a newly discovered item and leave something else in its place that you never know if you'll need later, although I'm not entirely convinced of the authenticity of the sources that say Resident Evil began as a remake of Sweet Home rather than simply a spiritual successor. Much of Resident Evil is undeniably faithful to its Sweet Home base, as the famous door animations that cleverly hide loading times were on the famicom clearly do not hide loading times and much of the story is revealed through documents scattered throughout the mansion.

I especially like this one that talks about this place as a house of resident evil. Wow, I'm sure it's a little funny on the part of the fan translators, but I wonder what would happen if the original Japanese warned you about biological dangers. Some puzzles are quite confusing with hints on where to go and what to do. Sometimes vaguely worded, the latter part of the game in particular focused on traversing the entire mansion searching for items behind previously inaccessible rooms. I wish I had taken notes after finishing the game, which took me about 12 hours. You will see a different ending depending on how. many characters made it out alive, the mansion was not only a sweet home way ahead of its time but remains entertaining to this day is a fascinating look at a rare example of a movie-inspired game that has a far greater impact than The source material itself is somewhat obscure due to its Japanese exclusivity, but no matter how you look at it, there's no doubt that the survival horror genre owes a lot to this old Famicom adventure starring Chris Jill Becca.

Mio and Luigi. I have had many favorite games. Over the years, but I have sometimes wondered which ones are really my favorites. It's still fun to think about, but in recent years I've come to the conclusion that it's too hard to pick favorites and have generally given up on having easy answers for them, but if my life somehow depended on picking a game favorite of all time, I've decided it has to be Super Mario Brothers 3. And why do I love it so much? I don't know, I just do it, I'm not going to do it. I pretend like I have a lot more to add to the Mario 3 conversation, but I love it so much that I decide I want to make it unique among the nes and famicom collections in my cart, so I bought a complete northern boxed copy.

In both the American and Japanese versions, it's been a long time since I've had the opportunity to review the paper materials for such an old game, so let's take a look at these and remember how an early '90s classic was presented A beautiful box, one of the most iconic of all time, the text on the back really makes you feel like this could be the biggest and most varied NES adventure imaginable and maybe it is, but I'm a little confused. why I'm excited to go back to that last screen and get a mushroom screen scroll left and right, maybe not a notable feature in its time and hey look, this is the origin of the insistence of Nintendo that maybe I should take a break.

Wow man, this adventure is so big you'll never be able to top it. Without stopping, I would love to know more about how boxes were designed in the past. These screenshots aren't even straight and have inconsistent lighting. Oh, and this level doesn't even exist now when I took a look inside the box before purchasing. I was sold the moment I discovered that it not only had the manual but also a small Nintendo Power ad and an NES poster. It's interesting to see some games announced that are barely remembered today. I had never thought much about the extra. inserts that come with a game, but now that we rarely get anything other than ugly dlc, if that makes me appreciate it, we won't see new stuff like this again, I don't know, it's a little sad.

Check it out, they even gave me a taste of Nintendo Power's indispensable knowledge by sharing Mario 3's most famous secret. I wonder if my original copy had this insert because I sure didn't know about warp whistles until at least some time later . I had the game, but the manual is now something I remember. It's probably one of the most polished NES manuals out there. It's loaded with colorful illustrations and gives the characters a bit of personality. I like this message from Mario that he begins with. with the cool little tanooki label and here are the koopa kids, now these guys have always been among my favorite characters in the mario universe and I can't express how happy I am that they have once again become a staple in modern mario games.

It was a long wait. I love their distinctive designs and they appear throughout the manual with little word bubbles that give a little flavor to what is detailed on the page. The Koopa kids definitely made a big impression and I really have to applaud Nintendo for doing them justice. with their modern iterations because, frankly, 8- and 16-bit representations never lived up to what my six-year-old self saw in the manual, although I guess nowadays we have to call them koopalings and the text of this old manual is It's now considered inaccurate because this jerk is now Bowser's only official son.

Well, the manual is over 40 pages long, maybe not the biggest ever, but it's certainly big for a platformer. It shows a lot of elements from when Mario 3 was new. I didn't like adventures. I still like Zelda, so the sheer amount of stuff you can collect and use really captured my imagination, but man, I sure don't remember the items looking that bad. Honestly, it's fascinating to see composite videos printed towards the end of the manual. I was introduced to some of Bowser's new henchmen or variations on old baddies that we hadn't seen before. I've always liked blue hits and these things have a name, you know, rotary records, although for a long time I called them. rotozidics or something, this was also the first time ghosts appeared in Mario's world, a lot of people forget that they used to be called not just boo but boo, a tribute to a musician like the koopa kids, although I certainly didn't know that.

At that point and at the end of the manual we get a nice little note from the Mario 3 staff supposedly anyway, while the North American version's packaging takes a bold, minimalist approach, the Famicom box isOverloaded with details, it's a beautiful image that North American fans have had much less opportunity to see, it's fun to see Luigi Toad and Peach represent neither of them, not even having a single piece of art in the North American manual, I love how all the koopalings run and fall down a hill from a fortress and bowser looks impressive and imposing, but he's also decidedly the strangest part of the picture black eyebrows blue eyes a loose cape is an eyeball under his chin am I misunderstanding something here ?

Did they plan another form for Bowser that got cut? Well, he has had black eyebrows before in Japanese artwork, but otherwise it's very strange to see him appear so differently in artwork that is otherwise extremely consistent with everything else, well, I guess that flying bug too It's weird, get out of here, go bother someone in the lost levels. The Japanese manual has as many pages as the North American manual and for the most part presents pretty much the same information as far as I can tell, although I'm not familiar with this strange image of Bowser's legs trampling Mario.

I'm told that Bowser here refers to himself in a particularly arrogant tone, a bit of characterization that gets lost in translation. It's also worth noting that koopalings originally did not have individual names; These were brought back to Japan after the North American release of Mario 3. The small ads also appear to be quite similar in content, although there are some larger differences. Roy appears on a different page in the Japanese manual and seems to think that Mario is a little greedy for collecting all these items to use on the world map that the manual even has. a full page with a very neat watercolor painting that I haven't seen represented exactly this way anywhere else.

The US manual didn't really pay much attention to the airships, which are one of my favorite things in the game. The Japanese manual also has a letter from the game staff, but there's a curious little p.s. at the bottom: They hinted at the existence of deformed flutes as a way to apologize for the lack of battery backup. Save something that certainly surprises me because in Western culture you would never see official materials mentioning a missing feature, much less apologize for it, it has been a lot of fun to have the opportunity to review these materials again and in some cases, some things that never seen before since games became too tutorial.

I admit that I've barely glanced at most manuals for a couple of generations and have probably missed a lot of clever presentations and rarely seen works of art, but now that things like this have all but disappeared, I think it's important to preserve What we have If you were born in the 80s then there is a good chance that your first gaming memories were created with the Nintendo Entertainment System Whether you call it the original Nintendo NES or simply Nintendo, there is no denying that this machine 8-bit and its incredible library played one of the most important roles in the evolution of video games into a lasting cultural cornerstone.

For me, the NES remains perhaps my most played retro console, but it's certainly not without its flaws, the main one being that at best it can only produce composite video and that's not nice, especially in the modern televisions. Nintendo loved showing off giant pixelated sprites in the label art of its previous NES titles, but unfortunately the system simply can't produce that kind of quality. Well, normally, anyway, let's take a look at what the NES hardware is actually capable of. Welcome to rgb 202 Nintendo released the family computer best known as the Famicom in Japan in 1983. A redesigned and rebranded version of the hardware was then released in North America in 1985 as the famous Nintendo Entertainment System that brought home video games back to popularity following the American video game industry. crisis of 1983.

The NES was also distributed in Europe and other regions using the PAL video standard, where it faced much stiffer competition from home computers such as the Commodore 64. The NES and Famicom are powered by microprocessors developed by a company Japanese called Ricoh the Picture Processing. The unit or ppu provides the system with a 54 color palette displaying up to 25 colors at a time, most notably NES lacks good options for yellow, but fixes for this via modding or emulation don't look as good, nes color limitations are both. a weakness as well as an accepted facet of each game's intended aspect when it comes to actual video output, the ricoh nes ppu is only capable of composite video and as you already know, that means lower power quality and, As if it had to be worse, original model, the famicom only has one option to connect to your television, a single cable that pumps composite audio and video through an RF modulator, the NES, on the other hand, has a RCA composite video and a mono RCA audio port on the right side of the system produces better quality than RF, however, every NES ships with an RF modulator and since TVs at the time generally had no inputs other than for an rf signal, this is how most people played their nes when nintendo released the model 2 or top loader nes in In 1993, they removed the composite video output, leaving RF to be the only option, which is a real Too bad because the top loader is known to be much more reliable for connecting with game cartridges and the old front loader, the similarly designed Famicom revision released in Japan around the same time actually did the opposite: added the well-known port multiple AV output used on the Super Nintendo N64 and GameCube, giving Japanese Famicom fans an option other than RF for the first time.

This unit is commonly known as an av famicom, but don't be fooled into thinking you can plug in any connection beyond composite and get a cleaner video signal, it just doesn't work. Unfortunately, video is not an option, but if you are interested in Famicom cards, this is absolutely the model to get. Everyday NES fan composite video using a standard RCA cable is absolutely the way to go. You can split the mono audio signal to two rca cables using a Y adapter like this one, they cost around 5 dollars with this method, the image is certainly less noisy than rf. but the edges are still pretty rough if you want something more let's take a look at how you can push nes and famicom video quality beyond their limits if you've seen our rgb 101 video and the rest of the rgb masterclass series then already know RGB video and how it is much cleaner and sharper than composite video.

You will also learn about the various cables and devices that can be used to receive the signal, such as professional video monitors or video scalers such as the framemeister, and many retro consoles that are traditionally connected with rf or composite video are actually generating an rgb signal from which composite video is derived from, but when it comes to On nes and famicom, the built-in ricoh ppu generates composite video and there is a method to work around this limitation that modders have been doing for some time. Nintendo used to make arcade machines called Play Choice 10. They have interchangeable boards that play up to 10 nes. games on one machine and it turns out that the play Choice 10 has an RGB image processing unit also made by Ricoh.

If you know what you're doing, you can use it to replace the ricoh composite video ppu on the nes or famicom motherboard, so that's pretty cool, but there are some problems: game option 10 uses a different color palette, so the colors will not look as they should. There's also the problem of the mod ruining a legacy arcade machine or consuming limited unused spare parts, as well as being quite expensive. Due to availability, getting better video quality on the NES has been a pretty tough nut to crack for the modding community. In fact, only in recent years has a superior solution been developed.

The biggest advance has been thanks to an Australian modder called Tim. Worthington developed and sells a custom board called NES RGB. Now remember that we are not modders and do not fully understand how it works, but the bottom line is that nes rgb does not replace the original ppu, but rather works in conjunction with it. If you want to learn how to do the installation yourself, Tim's website has lots of documentation. He also sells the nes rgb board on his website, depending on your nes or famicom model, you may also need to select a fairly inexpensive adapter board with your purchase of it.

Tim has distributors in other regions of the world, so you may be able to hire modding services from him like I did or find another reliable modder to help you if you don't already have the nes or famicom you'd like to mod. A more convenient option might be to buy a pre-modified system on eBay by searching for an esrgb. The mod even adds s-video support to your console, which looks great on my CRT. You can access the RGB signal using a designed SCART or JP21 cable. For Nintendo consoles, you can convert it to the appropriate connector for any RGB compatible device you use if you are not sure which cable to buy.

The nes rgb mod supports c-sync which is a pure sync signal that generally provides cleaner image results than others. Synchronization Methods A switch can be installed with the nes rgb mod that allows you to toggle between various color modes. We prefer the default, which is an attempt to accurately recreate the NES palette with RGB color value. If you don't prefer any switch, you can ask. Your modder locks the output to a particular palette, so which system is the best candidate for modding, well, it's your choice. Corey purchased a pre-modified nes top loader which is a great option for reliability compared to the classic front loader I decided to go with. a mod with my av famicom because i already had this nes, the famicom cartridge converter which works perfectly with all the north american cars i have thrown at it, apart from castlevania 3 and jackal, the modded famicom also means i can play disc system games in RGB. which is also pretty cool, now here's Corey with some more interesting considerations.

A partnership between Nintendo and Sharp resulted in three unique systems. First, Nintendo's very rare Sharp TV, which has a built-in NES cartridge slot and is said to show slightly better performance. quality image, but the Japanese version, the Sharp C1, actually uses an RGB image processing unit. The second is the Famicom twin which supports Famicom cartridges and Famicom disc system games on a single console and finally the Famicom title which actually supports RGB and S video as well as allowing users to add custom text to the image in order to to create videos, unfortunately it's very expensive nowadays so it's not really a viable option except for the most dedicated collectors, there's also the matter of the French NES which included a scar cable and has a port labeled rgb, but we're told the end result is just composite-quality video, as hardware patents have expired in recent years.

You've probably seen these cloned systems like the retro duo that plays nes and super nintendo cards. These systems run on hardware. Similar to the originals, but slight differences may cause compatibility problems in various games. They may also have S-Video ports that work with Super Nintendo games, but unfortunately neither of these systems support NES over S Video. Restaurant 5 produces cleaner videos because it runs on emulators. Instead of cloned hardware, the analog nt is different from a cloned system and is built using processing chips from a real nes and famicom console and then rebuilt into a custom aluminum case.

Produces RGB video optionally upscaled to HD via HDMI using a custom developed solution. Meanwhile, by interactive analogy, the super 8 bit is a similar RGB-capable system that also uses chips repurposed from the original hardware. There have also been other projects that try to work with 1080p upscaling and hdmi output directly on the console itself, of course one of the simplest official methods. to play nes games is through nintendo's own virtual console service, but unfortunately the nintendo emulator for nes games fails to impress on both wii and wii u, the image is noticeably darkened and the pixels are excessively blurry.

See how the wii u virtual console compares to the nes. composite and nes rgb via framemeister, this treatment of nes games is even stranger due to the number of brighter and sharper systems like the super nintendo and gba that appear on the wii u, but, what is a lotMore interestingly, the NES Virtual Console on the original Wii hardware can actually output a true 240p resolution on the component, which is great for scalers and CRTs. It's still not as good as what you can get from the nes rgb, but think twice before transferring all your virtual console games to the wii u, so that's nintendo entertainment. system if you're looking to play real carts on real hardware, unfortunately it's not the easiest or cheapest console to get great video quality, you know, I guess I can see the argument that diffuse composite video is exactly what they're supposed to be be the NES games.

Look, I mean, I dealt with it for most of my life and didn't think less of the system, but thanks to a creative modding community, if you want sharp pixels generated by real NES hardware, that dream is now available to everyone when you think of Sunsoft. I'm willing to bet that the first things that come to mind are some of the best NES songs, as was the case for many game companies in the late '90s. Sunsoft paid more attention to Sony's PlayStation than the riskier businesses. n64 but sunsoft published two interesting games for the nintendo platform, both from the same series, let's take a look at chameleon twist and chameleon twist two sunsoft seems not to have had much to do with the chameleon twist series simply serving as a publisher for the west in Japan , the games were developed and published by Japan System Supply.

Oh, isn't that the best, aside from the Chameleon Twist series and a Japan-exclusive Game Boy game? It's hard to find much evidence of Japan System Supply's time in the gaming business, Chameleon Twist. released early in the n64's life in late '97 and presents some pretty interesting ideas. You play as a curious chameleon who follows an Alice in Wonderland-type rabbit to a magical land where you transform into something that doesn't look much like it. a chameleon, that's for sure, I can't decide if he's more of an anthropomorphized pool ball or a full-bodied lolo. The default chameleon is davey, but you can also choose three others that play identically.

The goal is simply to have a fun adventure. no one to save any villain who wants to destroy the world. This game is nothing more than a vacation from Davey's everyday chameleon life, but he is still a chameleon, which is the basis of the game's main twist. Chameleon Twist is a 3D platformer where your main tool is a long tongue that you control with an analog stick. Sure, a lot of games are based around characters eating their enemies, but the way Davey and his friends use their tongues still feels pretty unique, as you'd expect from any small enemy you come into contact with.

Davey's tongue is eaten. The more enemies you grab with a single sip, the more shots you can fire with your next attack. The interesting thing is that all the normal enemies are sprites, so there can be many of them on the screen by holding z that you can stand on. your tongue and do a high jump timing is a little tricky for some reason the camera angles can make it difficult for me to judge when high jumps are required. I died many times in this room because I thought the platforms were much further away. separated and higher up than they actually are the last two moves have to do with attaching your tongue to the studs in the environment once attached you can do one of two things: simply continue pressing b and wait a moment for Davey to stop or Hold a in one direction to rotate, this is a pretty clever mechanic, but it's also by far the most awkward move in the game.

I like the idea, but it never seemed quite right to me. Chameleon Twist was released in the era of 3D platformers, but I think it deserves it. special recognition for living up to the platform or nickname, the most famous platform games on the n64 are not really platform games in the traditional sense if you think about it, although they have a lot of jumps and a lot of challenges in their own way, games like the banjo. -kazooie and things like that are more about exploration and discovering things in the environment. Chameleon Twist, on the other hand, is somewhat of an oddity for its generation in that it's designed around linear levels and more traditional types of platforming challenges, it forgoes some frustrating moments.

The chameleon turn is general. a super easy game that can be finished in two or three hours. Checkpoints are extremely frequent and each checkpoint is forever, even if you finish the game you always continue a little bit back where you die. The biggest challenge is collecting the optional crowns in each level. which are located in very complicated places, there are only six levels in the fantasy world, jungle land, ant land, bomb land, desert, castle, children's land, which is mainly about sweet foods and personally, I am very offended by the implication that delicious sweets are for children. and lastly, the ghost castle, the ant queen battle deserves a special mention for being a little annoying, but overall the boss fights are pretty fun, even if they aren't perfect and are very short.

Chameleon Twist is a good game with good ideas that any n64 fan should appreciate. filmed in the past, this is what we call a good rental, that's exactly what the chameleon turn was for me, as I finished it so quickly back then that it didn't seem like it was worth buying at the time, but it had good I have memories of it and bought a cheap copy over the last few years thankfully it's not hard to find but I always forgot that there is another game that you don't see as often and isn't usually priced as fairly but I finally got a copy. from the chameleon spin 2.

First things first, yes you actually transform into something that looks like an anthropomorphic chameleon and you scream high voltage whats ok so what I think is going on here you know very well the whole tactical espionage action in Japan, that kind of fake. Genre is actually very commonly attached to games to make them sound unique. I'm guessing it somehow carried over to the title screen and the Western release, but how it actually connects to the gameplay, screaming action, Chameleon Twister 2, your guess is as good as mine in any case. The setup is pretty much the same as before, the rabbit takes your chameleon to a new fantasy world with another six stages in the western version.

Davey is now the green chameleon. I guess they were trying to go for something a little cooler and less abstract. but here's the interesting thing: the Japanese version keeps the cutest and strangest original designs, including Davey, who is the blue one. Honestly, I like both in their own way. The sequel features three new moves. First, chameleon backpacks now deploy a parachute with a simple press of z. button at any time, this is a decent idea, but unfortunately the level design makes it not very necessary for most of the game. Secondly, an obvious addition to the horizontal tongue rotation from the first game is the vertical rotation, which is equally awkward to perform and the few areas of the game that require it are among the most difficult, at least for me, it's very difficult to get the right moment and momentum, but I have to respect it as a good use of language and a platform game.

The last new move is a bit more subtle, but also potentially the most interesting in the first game. If your tongue hits a wall, you immediately remove it, but now your tongue not only sticks to posts and enemies, it sticks to any surface and you can lift yourself up there. I love how this really integrates your primary ability with the environment and would be a great move for dealing with platforming and exploring in almost any game. Unfortunately, he's also a little underused in Chameleon Twist. I'm sure it could lead to some fancy platforms. and a quick run, but rarely necessary outside of the final level.

Talking about Chameleon Twist 2 being underutilized in many ways seems like it relies a little less on tongue mechanics in general compared to the first game, I often found myself doing it every day. running and jumping, which is by no means a bad thing, but with the characters creating some unique possibilities, it seems like some opportunities have been missed due to the level design being quite average, it may not seem like it, but despite Of these flaws, Chameleon Twist 2 in some ways feels a little more polished than the first game, is a solid platformer, and moves at a slightly faster pace than the original.

The original generally favors level design that keeps the action on track. motion. It also has a pretty cool set of bosses like a walrus with spiked wheels, which is pretty cool and is pretty challenging, as are some of the other bosses, like this giant toy robot, Chameleon Twist. As a boss, one of the best-looking burgers I've ever seen in a video game, despite some rocky moments, Chameleon Twist 2 took me about 3 hours to play. Both games are short and mostly easy, but they're also full of good ideas and generally have decent design. In addition to being Sun Soft's only involvement with the n64, these games are also the biggest brand that the Japanese system supply and its adorable animated cat logo left on the gaming world, and although in the past, these games They may not have been much more than a good rental and certainly don't have any high-voltage screaming action.

I think looking at them now they stand out as fun and unique examples of more traditional platforming sensibilities brought to the realm of early 3D games. It's been a year since the nes games finally arrived. the nintendo switch and now we have super nintendo games so let's take a look at how they compare to previous releases and other ways to play these games so that our previous mlig midi casual chat video style worked pretty well and so we'll continue to spread these between our fully scripted episodes and today we'll be talking about Super Nintendo games on Nintendo Switch via subscription to Nintendo Online Services.

This is something that a lot of people wanted us to take. Take a look at what we didn't think we were going to do at first because it's very similar to the previous version, the interface is almost exactly the same, I mean the menu, this big checkered board, everyone spread out and all the options are basically identical. the nes, but it's worth noting that some features have been patched in the past year, so the annoying uh button info that would appear on the screen at all times, you can turn it off in the settings now on the nes, as well as the god super nintendo and unfortunately some of the flaws remain, like you still have the border at all times, that gradient gray border which isn't the most unpleasant border ever, but I still wish it could be pure black and Always It's going to show your player icon at the top left, which is also a little annoying, but I will say that I haven't seen any image retention even after several hours of gaming on my OLED, so I'm not too concerned, I just don't do it. like looking and another cool thing that was fixed in the nes app which also carries over to the super nintendo app, the crt filter mode no longer has this kind of fast flickering noise effect so that was causing issues especially with things like I think the ips displays were causing temporary retention, so it's a composite CRT filter, but it no longer has that fast noise effect, so there shouldn't be any concerns with image retention or anything like that.

There are 20 games available on the first day. When we were working on this, I went back to look at the NES just to see how it had changed in the year since then and the lineup of games on the NES is pretty bad. I don't know if you have if you've looked recently but it seems like the amount of games on there is pretty terrible, yeah I mean there are definitely some games missing that would be really cool to have on there but I'm also impressed that you know you know about Vice Project Doom, I mean, that's it.

I thought I wouldn't expect that game to be there and it's very good, you know, kind of a later third party NES game, um, but yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things, a lot of games that I would make. I would have liked to have seen it on NES, but you know, I think my perspective with the NES and Super Nintendo lineups on Switch is when NES first came out. I think people were disappointed that it wasn't a virtual console because you couldn't. I won't buy them and have them on my Switch forever, but for me personally, my perspective is that over the years I've felt less and less ownership of my digital games, now only by subscribing to the online service I I'd subscribe anyway, boom.

I have a selection of 20 Super Nintendo games on my Switch that you know, hey, if I'm on a plane or something, maybe I'll just play Super MarioWorld, maybe, you know, play some Yoshi worlds. island have a few cups of mario kart see how far i can go in super metroid one thing i thought was really interesting is that the game selection is very different than what i would expect uh there are no konami games this time and i'm wondering Yes That has something to do with the fact that the Contra and Castlevania anniversary collections recently came out on Switch, so they have no way to put Contra 3 or Castlevania 4 on there.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's very likely the reason, and you know. I don't know if that could also be the reason why we don't have any Mega Man games because Capcom also has their collections to buy and I think especially there are also new games from Squaresoft as a service like this that you won't have. I see certain games because these collections with older games are really like there are so many of them coming out now that it limits services like this when you know when the virtual console was new it was brand new all these things were showing up there because a service like that had never been there. existed or a lot of these compilations never existed, I mean there were some on the ps2 but there weren't many console games that were ported at the time to other platforms and now they are everywhere.

Here, it took a lot of these companies a long time to realize that people wanted to play these old games and now they finally get it and know that they will sell them together. Yes, so the selection of games we have. I got here at launch. It's interesting. I mean, I think overall it's a pretty good selection. I mean, you have a handful of the ones you know, the obvious ones, the ones you should play, and a handful of games that are good, but that maybe people don't. I've played a lot and some bad games and honestly I'm kind of glad to see them there too.

I can't think of Xbox backwards compatibility, one thing I think is important to point out. people is that they always create a save state before exiting a game to play something else, even if they just go back to the menu like they will lose their place in the game because the game will restart, I'm pretty sure In the Super edition Nintendo Classic you can go back to the menu and re-enter because you actually do the save state in the menu instead of the game menu. This has the ability to rewind, which is also present in the SNES Classic Edition, although I'm pretty sure its implementation in the NES Classic Edition wasn't as perfect as this.

It was very helpful to be able to capture footage for this episode because Super Ghouls and Ghost is an extremely difficult game and I could make cheese. My way through it just for capture purposes and that's not something we would use outside of capture and a variety of gaming reasons at least I know you're very against using any kind of rewind, fast forward, kind of like I completely forgot that feature existed, uh, but even once you reminded me, I still can't do it. I admit that I enjoyed the fast forward feature in Zodiac Age Final Fantasy 12, but I didn't think it would fast forward.

I can see the value on rewind. It just doesn't work with my brain now in docked mode with the 4 3 and crt size modes, uh, you have a four and a half times vertical scale which, if you set four and a half on the super nt with the 16 by nine size, the image quality is virtually identical because the super nt also has very good interpolation and the two are almost indistinguishable, it almost makes me wonder if nintendo was looking at the super nt to determine how best to represent this i.e. both, I would say, are the best visual representation I've seen of super. nintendo games at 1080p, but the interpolation is super good on both the nes app and the super nintendo app.

I mean, the quality of the interpolation is almost identical, and for those who aren't familiar, what we mean by interpolation is uh The edges of the pixels are softened just a little bit, which makes them look smooth. Normally, Super Nintendo games are stretched using a CRT, which is, of course, the device they were originally intended to be viewed on. The Super Nintendo Pixel games are 256 pixels wide, so the pixels as displayed in a 4 3 aspect ratio should actually be a bit wider than they are tall, and when you emulate that, a Sometimes the pixel sizes are uneven and then when the screen scrolls you get this like a glow. effect and uh the interpolation hides that and it's just that it's really good interpolation in the 4-3 mode, as well as the crt filter, I mean, it's among the best I've ever seen, so visually it's a great representation, It's so good that it's almost surprising that they give you the option of pixel perfect because you know that just playing pixel perfect is going to look very, very thin to most people on an HDTV, and not only is it very thin, but it's also a lot shorter because we're doing 4x scaling within a 1080p frame at least in docked mode, so you have a lot of black space at the top and bottom and again, it's thin.

Some people who grew up playing these games like PC emulators. I'm actually used to seeing them in this slimmer look, but that's not how they were originally intended to be presented. I haven't noticed any visual problems. I mean, I don't want to say that they could exist, but there's an interesting point about that as well. I haven't noticed anything anti-epileptic, like the Super Nintendo and Nes classic editions have this weird kind of screen smoothing effect whenever there's a fast blinking effect or something, and maybe the games that are on there now They just don't do it themselves.

It has the right effects to make it work, but speaking of Nintendo, maybe it's behind the scenes inspired by Super NT. uh, we noticed something very interesting when it comes to Kirby's Dreamland 3. Kirby's Dreamline 3 kind of uses this unique effect where it uses the Super Nintendo's High Resolution mode, which means that certain aspects can use 512 horizontal pixels, which is the double 256 the normal resolution. This is typically used in certain games, especially Japanese text, which can look much clearer when you have higher resolution. working with many RPGs could use high resolution mode to have high resolution text like Treasure of the rouges comes to mind and Kirby's Dreamland 3 uses it in a unique way.

I don't know of any other game that does this, where? you use it for transparency effects, the super nintendo can normally do transparency effects and i'm not sure what technical reason was chosen in particular for kirby's dreamland 3 to use this type of alternating lines, but on a crt those effects, especially with composites similar or s video uh, they look like transparency effects, but if you play as a rgb in high fidelity, you will get this dashed look with water or any other effect that is supposed to look transparent specifically in Kirby's Dreamland 3. and the super nt has this feature which really allows you to combine them to make them look like true transparency.

I don't know if that's true to be honest. I don't know if it's like Kevtris's original idea. I don't know if it is like that. a feature that other emulators have had but that we have verified up to this point Nintendo has not had that effect in previous releases of Kirby's Dreamland 3 such as Kirby's Dream Collection on Wii or the Wii U virtual console. It does not have that presentation, so it is that It's a cool feature they have in the emulator that is specific to that game. The NES and Super Nintendo Switch emulation apps have actually been created by a European development arm that Nintendo has had for several years and that has been developed as something like more software technology aspects of things like Super 3D. stable on the new 3ds for example, and they've also done emulation on the nes and snes classic editions, so it's interesting to see that kind of difference. in emulation, in the work of the same division, but you know, in general, I've been very impressed with what they've done, especially starting with the snes classic edition because they're doing interpolation, which not enough people are doing, and that and for me.

It's very important, even m2 doesn't do interpolation correctly consistently, so for me that's a big problem and I know I'm harping on interpolation a lot. You say it out of love, like you want this in all these other collections and I think. which is an important aspect that a lot of people should take advantage of another thing that you noticed with this and something that we have done some tests to check back and forth is uh sound delay, which is something common in all types of emulation that we have come across bumped, you know, we've talked about it before on Genesis Mini, we've talked about it in various builds and what we find here is very, very good, it's there, but maybe like two or three frames at most, there are moments where the ones you may have noticed a little bit more, i.e. two or three frames, I mean, yeah, it would be nice if it wasn't there at all, but it's not that. bad all things considered uh and it may vary a bit, I mean we don't really know why this happens, it could be because they are trying to adjust the system speed to match a uniform 60Hz refresh of modern TVs or something like that and in terms of like the quirks that we've seen in some of these games for all intents and purposes, the things that we've noticed, at least the ones that you've noticed, have come down to the audio, you know, I kind of had my ear.

Open uh for anything that might catch my attention and something that I thought my band's problem at first was that I heard some pops of audio like the easiest one to hear was on Yoshi's Island when the next level appears on the map. this little growth effect and I heard a pop but then I went back and listened to it on a real super nintendo and lo and behold the pop sound effect is there too so that's not a problem. I did hear pops occasionally in other games like with jet pack and wingman several times super metroid, but it could have just been that I was hearing, uh, and didn't double check them on the original hardware, but it's very possible that those issues too are there, I think it's important to just say with that example that based on what we found, it's just because we play these games a lot, but I will say that there is at least one instance that I found that had an obviously incorrect sound effect, and that It's uh, when you beat the first castle in Super Mario World and Mario jumps on the button that sends the fuse to blow up the castle, that sound effect immediately jumped out at me.

I think that's not what it normally sounds like, apart from the fact that they won't let me turn off the border and they won't let me turn off the player indicator, I think the European development division is doing a very good job and speaking of which, We tried the co-online. operating mode where we're both using wired connections with our switch using that USB Ethernet adapter, but I was surprised that you were hosting and I mean there was probably some additional lag, but it wasn't particularly noticeable when we tested it. with nes we felt more lag but I think at that time we may have been using wireless connections but you were using wireless connections and I was wired because I've basically used wired since I got the system because I'm using the same wired adapter I used it with my Wii U, it was by far the best experience I've ever had with a hacked multiplayer mode in a retro game.

And I admit I don't have a lot of experience with things like that, but for example, we did it with the genesis collection on the xbox one and you know I was able to adapt to the lag but it was there, I'm sure there's a lag here, uh, but it was a pretty good experience in the short time we played and ordered it. Another fun thing to point out again: you can do this on the nes app too, but you can play a single player game like Breath of Fire and I can see you playing for people who don't have the means to stream. a great way for them to, you know, just have a friend, uh, play with you exactly.

I think of it as a way, you know, I like to go. I used to like to go to my friends' houses and watch them play. this is like a modern version of doing that now, other than you know any possible lag in online play, I think it's important that you know the direction you know because this is a software emulation, there would almost inevitably be some degree of Entry delay we don't have any firm measures about it, but we know it's there, it's still a good experience for me. I can adapt very easily to a situation where input lag is introduced in a retro game.

I'm not too late. sensible, I think it's pretty good, I think a lot of people are going to make wild claims like oh I didn't feel any input lag or there's absolutely no input lag or you're wrong, there's no input lag, a lot of people want I think not It's true, people need to stop saying there will be delays and emulation ofsoftware unless you have that newer lookahead mode, but you won't see anything like that in this, I guess talking about delays is kind. It's a good starting point to talk about controller options. One of the things I'm excited about is that Nintendo has this really cool replica version of the SNES controller and it looks like it's going to be a lot better than the NES replicas. that came out because you know, I'm really excited about the old service because even though they're very small, it has zrnzl buttons, which will make it usable in any game that doesn't require analog devices, which is a big deal. because I personally have a lot of retro style games on Switch and I want to play them with d-pads.

I don't love the d-pad on the official pro controller, so I've been mainly using the 8.-bit doe sn30 pro, but I'll definitely use the real super nintendo controllers instead. I'm kind of curious about the ebitdo sn30 pro plus that has grips. I'm curious to see if it will be even better. While it doesn't have the exact form factor as a Super Nintendo controller, I'm curious to see if the d-pad is better, so yeah, I guess that's all there is to say for now. You know, Nintendo has announced that. They are ending monthly additions to the nes Switch app and that will be the case on Super Nintendo as well.

Apparently they will add more games to both applications, but it will not be this way. schedule, so it will be interesting to see how more appear, I personally wasn't really biting the bed and looking for more NES games on Switch because my preferred way to play NES is on the original hardware, but like I said, I like having these games accessible for me to travel with, so it will be nice to have more Super Nintendo games there in the future, but for now I think the lineup is nice. decent pretty complete obviously I would like to see more things we would both like to see more things but you know what I can say?

The emulation is, without a doubt, the best representation Nintendo has ever made of Super Nintendo games. In HD it just visually looks fantastic. I wish you could get rid of the border, but you know that European team is doing top-notch emulation. I really have to say that I recently had the opportunity to visit a vintage style arcade and Man, did it make me remember to think about it? I realized I hadn't been to an arcade like this in about 12 years. Everything seemed immediately familiar and my senses brought everything back quickly. If it had really been that long, this experience made me think. about a lot of things and one thing that really stuck with me was that feeling you got every time you left the arcade.

Now, if you're old enough to have frequented one, then you know exactly what I mean: you wanted to have that game that you just played at home on the console you chose, in your mind that game would look good and play exactly the same as its arcade counterpart for many generations of games. The idea that you could have exactly that perfect bit of arcade at home seemed impossible, the consoles just weren't powerful. Long enough and all the wishes in the world weren't going to get that master system version of Afterburner any closer to the arcade. Now that I think about it, what I find most fascinating about this time was the way the developers would fit these huge arcade games together.

In this little cartridge sometimes the only thing they would have in common is their name in these next episodes. I'm going to take a look at some of the more notable arcade to console ports. Hey, the arcade version of Rygar should be fun. was released by tecmo in 1986, long before they had ninja gaidens or deader alives under their belt. It used to be just one of those games I played at the local theme park once or twice I went during the summer. Nothing. more and nothing less, as the story goes, Rygar is a kind of legendary hero who wants to save the fantasy world of Argool.

He wields this spiked shield that is attached to a chain called disc armor as a weapon. It's a pretty unique idea, but functionally it's just the typical blunt object used to hit some demons. Being tied to a chain gives the player a little more freedom than we're used to with this kind of thing, like being able to turn it around. a bow above your head, this gives you some vertical and zoning attacks which are useful in a pinch. Another good thing is that through the collection of power-ups your range gets longer and longer if you last long enough you will become a force of nature and that's big if this is your typical quarter eater so prepare to die a lot, I mean, constantly each of the 27 rounds sticks to your basic side-scrolling elements, there's no real exploration, although the occasional vertical passages give a good sense of progression, you can track your progress each round. this handy little minimap in the bottom right corner, the graphics are okay, there's a nice parallax scroll here and there, but you won't actually have a chance to look at anything closely because you're just constantly being bombarded with enemies from every direction, Each level ends with you gently picking up a statue and moving it to the side to allow passage.

Thanks for being so careful, Rygar. I have to say I didn't really care that much about the arcade version of ragar, it was just one of those games. that maybe i would drop a coin from time to time if i saw it the other way i think my brother liked it a lot more than me because it was one of the few games he asked for for his birthday when he got his nes, tecmo brought rygar to nes in 1987 and made some changes that would make it a much more interesting game, tecmo was smart to realize that the local audience was looking for something a little longer and more profitable, Rygar and his Disc Armor is back, but it was linearity and almost everything else has gone, the mission in this port was much bigger.

You can move freely through arghul looking for these awesome looking meditating guys once you discover them, some give you cryptic clues to continue, but if you're lucky some will give you important items like a crossbow with a grappling hook or a pulley that They open up new sections of the world. These aerial sections are great and spice up the adventure with a bit of variety. It's very evident that the development team was interested. Creating something a little more interesting in this version, if this general style sounds familiar and that's because we had recently seen this style in Metroid a year earlier, I actually find it quite interesting that this game doesn't get much credit for expanding on it. the ragar genre is a pretty difficult nintendo game, difficult if you want, you only start with three life points so you will get hit a lot at the beginning, luckily with every enemy you kill you will be an experience and with that it comes. increased attack power and more life, you can even collect these little stars that allow you to cast spells, you get unlimited continuity which is pretty useful if I had known that as a kid.

The fun story wasn't until I reviewed this game by this video that I even found out, you can continue in general, the game returns you to the title screen with no visual cues that this was even an option, so I usually turned off the game in frustration. , I used to spend hours accumulating life points in Getting Started alone because I couldn't get very far with my gaming skill alone, once I even stayed home from school with the intention of finally beating him. I gained life points all day and made it to the last boss where I was defeated all this time.

The unlimited sequel could have saved me a lot of fear from returning to this game over the years. One noteworthy aspect of this version is how great the soundtrack is. The only really decent arcade track was probably the final jingle of the level, and even that's not that great. but the nes version has some very memorable notes from the beginning, these are not just songs, they are anthems. I think it's pretty obvious which game is better. The arcade version is okay, but nothing special. For me the NES version on the other hand is great, if you haven't played it you should definitely look it up.

It costs less than 10 dollars on eBay. It's definitely worth it. With our controller adapter tips and tweaks episode, we found a lot more to talk about. with each adapter than we expected, I loved all the different ways I came up with using a Gamecube controller on n64 with the highly customizable rathnet adapter, the episode became so unwieldy while Corey was editing it that we decided a device needed its own episode. I took a look at a receiver that allows you to use modern wireless controllers on the NES when I recently saw the interactive analog makers Analog NT announce that they were partnering with 8-bit.

Manufacturers of wireless controllers for PC and mobile devices release wireless receiver for The NES I wasn't too interested at first, but my NES is too far from where guests sit and the perfect fit of my controller extender makes me feel like I was going to break something, so I thought it would be worth donating $20. Give it a try, the retro receiver's big selling point is that it's compatible with wireless controllers you probably already have, like the Wii Remote, Wii U Pro Controller Dualshock 3, and Dualshock 4. I think the obvious choice here is the remote. of Wii. I'm used to playing Wii in virtual console games with the controller held nes style, so this already seems like the most accessible wireless nes controller.

The system controller port provides power to the receiver and all you have to do is press the sync button on the unit and then sync. button on your controller and it works surprisingly well, believe it or not, I honestly don't think the wireless adapter causes any noticeable input lag, while I'm hardly equipped for a scientific evaluation and there are some variables here, this slower comparison suggests additional lag . of at most one frame, possibly less. I have had no drops or mishaps during extended play. Sometimes I thought I was pressing a randomly, but that's because I wasn't careful to keep my fingers away from the trigger b, which turns out to be fast, the a button on the Wii remote is fast, b the classic controller isn't is supported, but I guess it's possible that a firmware update could change that, so this makes things easier.

I can leave the retro receiver in my second nes port, my friends can grab a Wii remote and sit away from the console, it solves a problem I had and works maybe better than I expected, of course, to cover it here on the show , I want to delve deeper into the capabilities of the retro receiver and that's where I ran into a small problem when trying to update the firmware, the micro USB port broke. I contacted analog support and asked if there was a way to get a replacement quickly because we were including the retro receiver in this episode, which luckily they did, but to my surprise, they also sent four wireless controllers inspired by the Dues nes Famicom and Super 8-bit Nintendo, allowing me to show off more functionality of the retro receiver than I expected with a new retro receiver in my hands.

I came to a slightly embarrassing conclusion: the USB cable actually only goes in this far, which to me didn't seem to go all the way in, so I think what happened was that I forced it too much into my original unit, yes. Kinda silly, but I like to think I made that mistake and maybe you wouldn't anyway, so let's look at other ways you can use the retro receiver. The dualshock 3 does not have a sync button, so it requires a PC with 8-bit share pairing software to link the two devices for action gaming. Most people probably prefer a map to an x ​​map and b to a square.

Fortunately, that's exactly what we have here. The circle also acts as fast as a and the triangle is fast b. The Dual Shock 4 enters wireless pairing mode by holding PS and Share until you see the light bar with a double flashing button. The mapping is identical to the dualshock 3. Wii u pro controller support was added with an early firmware update in this case handle and bsb with down angle is not my preference but I had to get used to things like this before and I'm pretty good with that. I couldn't notice any input lag while using any driver as far as 8-bit spraying. controllers well, I had been hearing good things and I have to admit that the feel does not disappoint the shape and texture of the plastic the button presses are surprisingly accurate, it is obvious that a lot of effort was put into ensuring that these controllers provided a nostalgic experience with modern wireless technology if you know the pain of finding a snes controller that feels right, that says a lot, you can see that the versions that pay homage to nintendo's 8-bit style tooThey include at least enough buttons to fully function as SNES controllers, which can be useful when connected to a PC or mobile device, but since the retro receiver is for the NES, functionality is limited to how the button inputs translate to commands. of NES at first, because the 8-bit controller buttons were mapped to the style of the Wii U Pro controller.

Recent firmware updates have mapped b and b to y similarly to the PlayStation layout. I think it would be nice if we had the option to install alternative firmware so you can keep commit on a and cancel on b for e.g. rpgs. but still, i'm pretty impressed with how the 8 bit drivers work on the nes. I played all of gi joe with the nes30 controller and most of the time I completely forgot what it should be like. I thought I would default to using the Wii remotes with the retro receiver which I still think is the biggest selling point but since I have these they might beat me to it you can use the retro receiver not only on nes av famicom or analog.

It doesn't even work with cloned consoles and emulator boxes like the Retron 5. When I first tried the retro receiver on the Retron 5 the button mapping was messed up in such a way that the games were completely unplayable. Retron 5 support was fixed in a firmware update shown here. working properly, but remember that there is some input lag inherent to the retron 5 emulation. Of course, you can also use the retro receiver with Game Boy games on the retron 5. but remember that the retron 5 reads the retro receiver as a nes controller, which means the system doesn't accept the snes 30 or any of the other 8-bit controllers as suitable for snes games, which makes me think of the potential here, I mean if the 8-bit ones only did retro receivers for snes and genesis.

Firmware updates would also improve pairing speed and with the USB connection you can even use the retro receiver as a bluetooth dongle on the PC and as a way to use some of these controllers with retro style games on the ps3 , in this case I can use all the buttons. I originally thought I would just use a Wii remote with the retro receiver so player 2 could sit further away and even if that was all I did with it, I still would have easily gotten my $20. but having tested its full functionality, it really offers a lot of different ways to play and while I think alternative button assignments would be an interesting feature for the future, I'm pretty sure most NES fans could find a controller to enjoy it as a kid, it was pretty big, I beat it up, fan, I'd say I owe a lot to Double Dragon, that's why games like Final Fight and Street of Rage were made, but the genre has been pretty quiet.

For a couple of years now, even though we missed a few here and there, you know, games like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and the fantastic Double Dragon Neon, the Virtual Console helped me play some of the games I missed as a kid. The game has eluded me for years, Super Double Dragon by Technos, from seeing it on the cover of egm over the holidays when I was probably 14 to recently at Magfest and finally deciding to hunt it down and play it for real. The search led me to some interesting facts about Super Double Dragon that I had never had any idea about.

First, it was called Return of Double Dragon in Japan, and second, that version had several gameplay tweaks, ranging from slightly different combos between the brothers. various enemy health levels, allowing for a difficult to continue selection and removing the story almost completely, it seems like the US version was rushed to release for whatever reason and Technos was able to go back and work on the game some more , which resulted in what most people I've played both to be the superior game, so I decided to track down that version instead of the US version from the beginning. I was immediately unimpressed by the double dragon theme song that I liked so much, it didn't sound good out of the ordinary. awesome super nes sound chip overall this sounds totally flat and boring, it's quite possible that I've always been spoiled by jake kaufman and the double neon dragon's perfect performance.

I'd say even the nes version sounds better, I think the point of Returner Double Dragon is differentiating its gameplay from the rest of the fighters at that point is what saves it a bit rather than moving away from the grappling approach that was standardized in Final Fight. Double Dragon introduces a block and counter mechanic if you hit b as soon as an enemy. throw a punch, you grab their arm and can do whatever you want with them, the focus on defense slows down the pace quite a bit and justifies the slowest overall movement speed in the game, punches and kicks are standard, I mean what What kind of fighter would I be without him?

These, if you hold down the shoulder button and combine it with pressing the attack button, you get a couple of higher powered attacks and if you can manage to let your dragon power reach half without getting hit, you can do this. I wonder what this is inspired by: maxing out your power allows you to go into Hulk mode where you can take down your enemies with a single punch. This is good for crowd control, but it almost seems like you do more damage with normal combos than when I'm in this mode, remember when I mentioned the slower overall movement speed, Double Dragon's return is slow, it's actually a Bit annoying until you get used to it compared to its peers at that point, everything feels choppy, like there's almost something wrong with it, I was kind. of surprise because I've gotten used to the faster pace of oh, like all fighters graphically, we've got quite a varied mix here.

Double Dragon's Return starts off strong on the streets of Las Vegas and continues to get worse and worse in In fact, I'll go so far as to say that there's nothing here that's particularly impressive. Enemy variety is fairly limited, around five or six types overall, and one enemy is even a palette swap of the main characters. I think it feels very lazy with the removal of any kind of story from the US version making the game feel incomplete. I can't see how much is in that version, but the levels here end abruptly and you weren't even sure you were facing a boss, no changes to music or anything, it's weird during the last level, you can even jump on walls spikes, not even enemies take damage if you hit them, you think they just forgot to do something about it, apparently one of the areas they changed from the US version was adding significant length to the last level, which it might have been overkill because as far as I can tell, the last level is as long as all the other levels combined and once you beat it, nothing is just a roll of credits, damn it, after years of intrigue.

Playing Return of Double Dragon turned out to be disappointing. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just not that good by much beyond a game or two. There are many other similar games that you have already played and you should really go and play again oh nestor the times they are changing this is the september 1997 issue of nintendo power and for me it is without a doubt the most influential and most referenced issue of any magazine , what makes it so special, is the 100th edition of nintendo power and I thought a lot about it now that I had only been subscribed since last Christmas, but even though I wasn't a long time reader yet, I could really feel the excitement and the buildup that got me to this milestone, but there is one thing above.

Everything else that made this topic so important to me Nintendo Power's list of the 100 best games of all time is fine, so what's the problem? There are like a billion greatest of all time lists and they annoy everyone anyway and appear on this list. Obviously it will only include Nintendo systems, but at the time the Internet was not what it is today and you still had very limited opportunities to access it. I hadn't read many other gaming magazines and to me this list seemed like a really good idea and really opened my mind to the idea that it's still worth playing games for older systems, something that obviously hasn't left me yet until the present day.

You see, at the time I had recently sold my NES without realizing how many. There were great games available that I had never been exposed to and even with the SNES N64 and Game Boy I generally stuck to my favorite series like Mario Kirby and Donkey Kong Country, but I was receptive to broadening my horizons and learning about great games I hadn't played. back then and in those days it was pretty easy to get most old games for very cheap at stores like Funko Land. So you can see how this list became my most valuable reference for my early adventures in retro gaming.

Let's take a look at what people in 1997 were calling the top 100 games of all time alien 3 ultima quest of the avatar super tennis final brawl a move to be honest I've never seriously considered any of these but correct me if I'm wrong ignore them, I know Final Fight is well loved, but fighters are not my usual genre. Okay Kickle Cubicle, now this is a perfect example of a game I would never have played without this list comparing it to Lolo's adventures, that's all. the convincing I needed I love a good character based puzzle and a tickling cubicle turned out to be pretty decent I feel safe and consider some random snes golf game can be skipped at this point hey, I forgot the gargoyle mission was even on this list I never actually got I used it until very recently and it was fantastic.

It combines aerial exploration with really excellent platforming. It's not expensive and is absolutely one of the best titles in the Game Boy library. I tried Ogre Battle on the n64 on two occasions and was never able to get into it. So I'm a little wary of this series. This is funny. Luffia 2 is the game people always say you should play, but I never heard much love for the first game. This one is much less expensive, but a friend tells me that's the story. It's better if you play the second game. The first Demons Crest is actually the third gargoyle quest game and this list is what put it on my radar.

Luckily I bought it not long before the price skyrocketed, but unfortunately I don't remember much about my game. definitely at the top of my replay list battletoads oh yeah this made me research what weird games had been developed before donkey kong country one of my favorite developers at the time I beat battletoads without using warps or cheats the Speeder bikes are infamous because I'm very early in the game, but trust me, that part is easy compared to the worst this game has to offer. You know, I kind of went through a baseball phase when I was about eight years old, but I don't remember the Goonies two being here.

I saw a friend play a while ago and it looks interesting, but I really don't know if he looked as fun as Blackthorne caught him. My attention is on this list, but sadly I've never played it yet. The screenshot here gave me the impression that it was like contra, but it seems more akin to slower paced games like gaia's flashback illusion. I had this at one point thanks to this. list, I played several hours but I wasn't really feeling it. I keep wondering if I would like it if he gave it another chance, but I watched a friend play a little more and I'm still not so sure if he would. big metal gear fan no, the version that hideo kojima doesn't like.

I was never able to get into the NES game. I played through the msx version in the metal gear solid hd collection which was actually a really valuable experience. What they thought was hybrid heaven. its going to be like metal gear for n64 oh wow dragon warrior four now this is a great pick although i haven't played it on nes yet i beat the ds version and its easily my second favorite game in the series behind dragon quest viii i like it Much more the NES game engine than the style used by the DS remake, so I'm looking forward to seeing it.

I played at least half of the Breath of Fire port on the Game Boy Advance, but to be honest, I thought. It was pretty boring, I'm interested in giving the Playstation entries a chance someday, even if it's Baseball 2000 on the Game Boy. Sorry, I can't be too optimistic about this, I mean, the Super Nintendo version is pretty clunky, oh hey. It's that game that Corey just made a video on. I have to admit, that video made me really want to play it. I'll definitely keep an eye out. Two Capcom Disney games in a row and what a game this is, I've actually covered it before.

My memories of getting Rescue Rangers for Christmas became the first game I ever won, so I'll always remember it because I had turtles at one point. I know it's a fan favorite, but it never quite captured me. like the port of the arcade game thatIt's on NES now that's my gradius 3 turtle game nor is it gradius. I have very limited shmup experience but I beat Life Force. It's not my favorite genre, but I feel like it should be. More interested than me, I was about to buy it several times. Super ghouls and ghosts. It's notoriously difficult and deserves it, but it's very good.

Actually, this was the last game. I got through my backlog. I got over it on September 22nd. 2008, zero unfinished games, although I haven't done a good job of keeping that number down lately. You know, that game you didn't own but played all the time at a friend's house was rc pro-am for me. man, sure enough, it was definitely more fun at my friend's house than when I later bought it for myself. Oh, and this is another rare game, by the way, Shadowgate was among the first games I bought when I bought a used NES. The response to this list got me interested in the system again.

It's definitely a must-play game for fans of point-and-click adventures. Good music and killer instinct. Part of me wants to try this just as part of an effort to collect games made by weirdos, but I'm really not a fighting game fan at all if you ask me, Wario's original land is still the best warrior land To this day, one of the best Game Boy games and it's a lot of fun to collect everything. In fact, I recently got Final Fantasy Legend, but I haven't started it yet. I love simple, old Japanese RPGs, so I'm looking forward to seeing the saga series on Game Boy.

I gave Double Dragon a good chance. It gets tough, but I'm not a bad enough guy. to fight the dragons, the zombies ate my neighbors hard, but I beat it, okay, I appreciate its spirit, but it's not that good of a game. I haven't played Final Fantasy Adventure in particular, but I did play Sword of Mana. the gba remix, i know everyone hates that version, but i don't remember it being bad. The Earthworm Gems artists are certainly talented, but I feel like their ambitious visuals got in the way of the game, not my favorites. Oh boy, Star Tropics.

For the first two chapters I thought it was pretty good, but the controls are not suitable for an action game and I don't even want to get into how unfun the so-called puzzles are, which makes me very sad because I love them. the atmosphere, I can't remember for sure if it was this list or other recommendations that led me to buy Blaster Master, but oh my goodness, what's up? Is this one of the best NES games or is it a bit long and difficult for a game with no save files or passwords, but you can't miss it and the soundtrack is easily one of the best on the system.

Blast Core or Blast Body as I called it at the time, was one of the first games I bought to expand from my safe little stable of favorite series that I've generally stuck to. I don't know if there's really anything that can compare to Blast Core with puzzle action. What is it? I don't know, but I'll like it. I'm still woefully behind on Lucasarts adventure games. I've always been very curious about Maniac Mansion, but is the NES version even a good option? I still can't believe I've only played Earthbound once. I'm glad I bought it. Years ago, can you believe there was a time in the late '90s when you could casually walk into funko land, ask for Earthbound, and they'd just pull it out of a drawer and you'd pay $30?

Good times, there are. There are too many options for action RPGs on nes, but Crystallis is excellent. I'm pretty sure it was among my first nes purchases when I got back into the system. Is it just me or does Crystallus look like a game Falcom would have developed? mega man x I already said well, this and x2 are the only x games that I really love. I actually like platforms and act a lot more than I think I should. I know the main draw of the game is the world-building simulator, but something about the simplistic nature of the combat coupled with the good boss design really made me dig into everything about Actraiser Castlevania 4 was one of the hardest games to play. find for me in the years following this list.

I'm not sure if it's my personal favorite, but it's perhaps the easiest game to recommend to newcomers to Castlevania. Okay, fun story. One year I decided to order retro games for Christmas and Bionic Commando was one of the most wanted. My parents said Funko Land didn't have Bionic Commando, so they recommended Commando to me. Sorry, there's just no competition here no, hey, a fighting game, oh hey, another fighting game. Nintendo Power was allowed to acknowledge the genesis, you know that game you have vague memories of playing at a friend's house but forgot what it was except it was awesome, I was pretty sure the opposite was that game, luckily I had reason since then it has become one of my favorite series.

I know Tetrosphere is quite loved and its music is a big part of that but when I rented it I hated both the gameplay and the music maybe it's just me ninja gaiden 2 it's a solid choice to represent the series it's just as hard as the first game but also fairer, so what exactly is Shadowrun? It looks like some kind of fallout RPG, maybe it doesn't. I remember it being on this list, but the snippets I've seen lately have made me a little curious, isn't it funny how Mario 2 used to be the odd one out, but now we just accept it with brilliant game design? by shigeru miyamoto team and music by koji kondo mario 2 may be more than a little different, but just because it's a skin change from another game doesn't make it any less excellent vs. 3 it's amazing, although for me it's more in the middle of my favorite versus games, but that means it's incredibly awesome dr mario, yeah, that game is okay.

I remember my dad discouraging me from renting lolo games and I never understood why I hated playing them so much in hindsight, I'm pretty sure it's because it featured the exact same repetitive tune on every level, fantastic little puzzle adventures, although this one is the slow version. The Secret of Mana is a game I started several times before playing through to the end. I always thought both its gameplay and music were a little overrated, but I played it with three players during a backloggery

marathon

stream a few years ago and now I like everything much better and even bought the soundtrack.

Wow, you can be sure this list was made in 1997, right? Even in its day, Shadows of the Empire was a very divisive game. I really enjoyed it, but I suspect it would be very, very difficult to go back to never having played this version of Simcity. I don't really like simulation style games, but I wouldn't mind trying it one day. In my opinion, the Donkey Kong Country series is pretty close to platforming perfection. They are simple, without bulky gameplay, and the level design is almost mathematical. Perfectly introduce a new concept and then gradually increase. challenges surrounding those concepts throughout a level to this day I think pilotwing64 is one of the most satisfying flying experiences out there, fun challenges, great controls and just relaxing but perhaps most importantly the little ones States are simply wonderful to explore and discover new things. in powerwing's resort on 3ds is a very good and underrated sequel, but unless a future pilotwings brings back a small united states to explore, it will never match 64.

When it comes to nes rpgs, i generally prefer the Dragon Quest games to the original Final Fantasy, but I think it stands on its own unlike the Dragon Quest series. I personally feel that the remakes of the older final fantasies are a little better than the 8-bit originals. Well, the rare one from the Zelda series is on the list. Also and he deserves it. I still wasn't a Zelda fan at the time of writing this issue, but playing a bit of Zelda 2 at my cousin's house cemented what Hyrule looks like in my mind - sure it's different, but as Nintendo Power says, it's true.

Here it turned out to be entertaining and challenging, anyway, well, metroid and metroid 2. two metroid in a row, I was always afraid to go back to these games after having played super metroid first, but you know that drawing your own map is actually a fun experience in its own right, give it a try, it's funny how we criticize annualized series these days, but we tend to forget that it also happened a long time ago. It's hard to believe that Donkey Kong Country 2 was released just a year after the first game, and at the same time, it's even more perfect in its level design.

Easily my favorite game in the Super Mario Kart series is hands down the game that sold me. a super nintendo i wasn't so sure about having to bother my parents by asking for a more powerful system than the nes but mario kart just blew up. I'm so far gone that it finally gave me the courage to ask if maybe I could get one for Christmas. Tyson himself took me every night for the better part of a week to beat him, but what a satisfying achievement! I have no idea how football works, but it makes me happy that so many people still consider an NES game to be the best of its kind.

I spent a lot of time in Mario Paint. I wish I had been smart enough to record my creations on tape. The only thing I'm sure of is that he never helped teach me anything about music. Okay, to be fair, I listen to the NBA jam. It features some pretty fun mechanics, but there are plenty of other games I could play, you know, Super Bomberman 2. I enjoy Bomberman, but I've never been a big fan, but the multiplayer is fine for me. Any recommendations for Bomberman. the best single player mode, wow, Turok is on the list, huh, it easily impressed us back then, right?

The original f-zero has never done so much for me. I love mode 7 graphics as much as the next guy, but this is a series that shows. most brilliantly in the latest 3D polygonal installments. I don't agree with putting dkc3 above the first two games, but I still think it's a great game, but certainly not as good as dkc2. Remember the phrase game control that used to be great. I haven't heard it in years. Castlevania certainly has its own distinctive style of gameplay control and it's hard to get used to, but damn, I love this game. I didn't like role-playing games.

You know, I had no idea what RPG meant in this game. Title, all I knew was that it looked amazing when I knew the RPG minute was like Final Fantasy. I was very worried, but as a Mario fan I decided to give it a chance and it became the first RPG I loved and one of my most. Frequently replayed games when this issue came out. I hadn't delved into the Mega Man series yet given the popularity of two. I'm surprised he's not the representative of the series here. You know, I used to think the first one wasn't that good, but it's recent.

The replays have gone a long way toward changing my mind. Mario RPG may have been the first RPG I loved, but I still didn't think RPGs in general were for me, but after hearing enough glowing recommendations, I decided to take the plunge and activate it in Chrono. It was already worth about $75 in the late 90s but its impact on me was worth the cost. It may not have been my first RPG but it was the one that made me a fan. Yoshi's Island was huge for me, it was the first game I was actively aware of and anticipating before its release at the time when I considered Yoshi to be my favorite gaming character and Yoshi's Story to be my next most wanted game, but So far Nintendo hasn't come close to recapturing what made Yoshi's Island special, but I have hope for Yoshi's Woolly World.

Oh hey, another Yoshi game. This is the localized version of the game from Japan.Panel Day Pond or as my friends call it Amazing Panel Day, while my favorite puzzle of this style is Wario's Forest Tetris Attack is a close second. oh hey, another yoshi game, don't get me wrong, I love Super Mario World, it's fantastic. game, but something about its appearance has always seemed a little strange to me. I think that's a big part of how I convinced myself for three years that oh nes is good enough for me. I don't need any super nintendo to this day. 64 leaves me speechless, how did they manage to implement this technology so perfectly in the first months of the n64's life?

Sometimes racing games on older consoles just don't hold up and I didn't even own the Wavery 64 until after the n64 era, but come on. I tell you it's something pretty special, the first video game I played when I put it in the context of other games from 1985 and even a few years later, it's amazing to realize what this game really was, even the first NES titles from Nintendo are a long way from This incredible achievement that to this day remains a fairly perfect Star Fox 64 is pretty good. I still wasn't a fan of the original SNES game, but I spent a lot of time doing everything theN64 game had to offer, I remember. the brilliant vhs pro mode that nintendo power shipped.

I saw it so many times. link'swaking is a pretty special zelda game, not only is it probably the best game from the original game boy, but it somehow generated a strong emotional connection to the world and characters that the zelda series has rarely come close to since. To match it's almost unfathomable that Nintendo achieved this in black and white with an 8-bit handheld. I like the original Zelda. I played it at my cousin's house on his day, but I didn't do it. I really got into it at the time of course, now I have it and I like it, it's a series I identify with so much that I feel a little bad for not having stronger feelings about the original game, but oh yeah, definitely it's good. play well top 10 we're almost there final fantasy 4.

I saw a friend play parts of the SNES Final Fantasy games before and that's where I got the idea that I didn't like RPGs, but after playing Chrono Trigger re-experienced the Final Fantasy games for me today, I really respect the rigid party structure and pre-set abilities of FF4 more than I used to. It seems like Nintendo Power had a bit of a fight when debating FF4 vs FF6. Final Fantasy 6 is my traditional answer to my favorite Final Fantasy game, but I have to admit that I love them all. Wow, I've hardly been around at all. Nintendo Power just couldn't resist putting Goldeneye at number seven.

It seems like they weren't sure about the game's staying power, but they weren't wrong in their prediction. Not only was it a lasting n64 staple, but its multiplayer redefined popular modern gaming as we know it, for better or worse, although I personally had a lot of fun playing with the open single-player levels when I first saw this list time, I thought. Wow, I had no idea this Metroid thing was such a big deal. I lucked out and paid six bucks for a full copy from my local rental store's inbox, since they were clearing space for the Dreamcast the first time I tried it.

Actually, I didn't. I didn't understand it and had no idea what to do. I gave it another chance a few months later and thought it was for the best. As you know, I think Super Mario Bros 3 quite deserves the number one spot, but hey, I'll take it well, without a doubt Mario Kart 64 was a frequent resident of the cartridge slot of my n64, but nowadays no one can agree about which one is the best. The top 3 tetris wouldn't have been my choice, but I can't deny its influence. and popularity, at the time I was quite into falling block puzzles but tetris was never really a staple for me despite it being my first link to the past, appearing at number two was a big draw for me , like Metroid, had not. but I understood how important Zelda was.

I thought it was something my cousin liked. I wanted to find out why people loved the series so much and not feel left out of the so-called Zelda 64 hype, so I borrowed. a copy from a friend and well my name is Triforce so needless to say it had an impact for a long time. I considered A Link to the Past my favorite game of all time, and some days I think it still might be. finally number one, Super Mario 64. According to the blurb, it was a unanimous decision among the 12 Nintendo Powers voters and at that point I'm pretty sure I remember a green with this choice and as much as I've loved the latest Mario games in 3D.

I've complained a bit about the shift towards slower movement with less momentum. Mario 64 still looks great to me. I don't know, a lot of people disagree and feel like it hasn't held up, but I don't remember. If any other game gives me as much versatile stunt control as this one, Mario 64 is the game that isn't afraid to let you find your own way to do whatever you want, everyone tried to copy what Mario 64 did well, but it's hard to say if anyone ever once did it better and that's it, that's the list, it's amazing to see so many games here that were thought to have endured in 1997 but are now at best forgotten or at worst mocked them, and at that moment he certainly had.

I played a lot of these games, but it was the ones I hadn't played yet that made the biggest impression. Since then, word of mouth and other lists have been helpful guides as I delve deeper and deeper into retro gaming, so next time that you see a top 10 or top 100 or top any list instead of arguing about it or complaining that lists are so stupid or whatever, try to look at it as a potentially valuable resource that you could discover a lot of things that you will love that you never you would have tried, otherwise I really don't care about cars, they get me from point A to point B.

Now this hasn't stopped me from enjoying a racing game here and there. In the past, I actually used to rent things like Top Gear Rally in the 90s, but almost all of them. I'm all about Mario Kart and F-Zero, but about a year ago I was in the arcade at Magfest in Washington DC and a friend and I played around with some exotic equipment, this really brought back a wave of nostalgia. by Cruisin USA comes not from the arcade, but from the n64 version that a good friend of mine bought during the gaming drought that followed the system's release in 1996.

This is a game that I always accepted as a bad thing, but of all ways we enjoy playing. I knew it would be a stupid decision, but I actually almost bought a copy a long time ago, but nowadays, when n64 racing games are worth around five dollars, it seems pretty harmless to give in to the guilty pleasure, so during the Last year I not only revisited Cruise USA, but I also watched the other games in the series that I had missed. Is there really something there or would it be better left as a good memory? The hook of the series is that it is a linear racing game. through famous locations, no twists and turns, just sort of a straightforward world tour or, in the case of Cruisin USA, a tour of the United States from California eastward to its destination in Washington DC.

I think this is what appealed to me the most back then, especially since we were in the early days of 3D graphics, it really felt like I was taking a cross-country road trip and seeing some familiar signs, although in retrospect The rendering leaves a little to be desired, so this is the Grand Canyon, not really a landscape. It's very repetitive and passes by your vehicle in a distinctly choppy manner and I have to say there's a bit of a Californian bias going on here, don't you think you give a little love to the East Coast and Midwest too?

But hey, back then, who wasn't impressed? Because of how realistic it was to have bugs splatter on your windshield while driving around Iowa in first-person view, the game has a very good sense of speed and is actually very easy to control. The only levels that have a lot of complicated maneuvers are Chicago and Washington. DC the game now requires you to get first place to advance to the next race, but this is very easy on lower difficulty levels. It would be an exaggeration to say that Cruisin USA is a good game, but if you have love or tolerance.

What's left for 1996 3D graphics in the US is still a pretty fun and pointless way to kill about 20 minutes, so my friend who I was playing Cruisin Exotica with at the Magfest arcade later found a cheap copy of Cruise World and he gave it to me as a surprise. He had never played Cruisin World on Arcade or the N64 and in fact I was immediately impressed. Although I can't compare it to the Arcade version, I felt like I was playing a cleverly optimized port. As in the first game, the draw distance is not very great, but the central stage blends well with the backgrounds creating a colorful and attractive look, and even if the draw distance is lacking, it is a necessary sacrifice to achieve some solid 30 frames per second, what it honestly feels like. as a small achievement for the n64, so overall it's surprisingly technically solid for a series I had dismissed as somewhat bad, unsurprisingly.

Cruise World takes you on a world tour starting in Hawaii and passing through Japan and Australia. Africa all the way through Europe and then it ends up in Florida where they take you to the moon, kind of a trap, don't you think that's not exactly in the world? The cruise world is much less demanding than the US in terms of advancement, only a third or so required, but it is also more challenging on the default difficulty settings compared to the easy and cheerful feel of the first world of the game, it feels like it's trying to land ever so slightly in reality, ever so slightly.

All I want to say is that there is a certain feeling of weight in the vehicles and whatnot. Crashes and bad corners feel more punishing, this takes away a bit from the feeling of constant and easy movement, but it seems like a compromise that could have made the game appeal a little more to racing fans. The developers also create a light cheat system that adds a bit to the game, the most practical way to use cheats is to do a wheelie by double-tapping the accelerator, allowing you to jump over other cars when you approach them from behind. or drive over oncoming traffic without penalty.

It's a pretty decent addition, but they made the tricks much more fun and easier to use in the third cruising exotica game. I just got this game and to be honest it's the reason I wanted to make a video about the cruise series and exotica turned out to be a lot harder than I expected it to be, but also a lot more fun, like the first game. You have to win first place to advance, but there are limited continuities now. The more miles you drive while attempting cruise mode, the more continuity you will have for the next time, this was a nice addition that allowed me to get familiar with the feel of the game without making an eventual victory too difficult to achieve and gave me a bit of a hard time. more time than I probably would have spent otherwise and I have to admit, no.

I don't really care that this is a dumb game and it knows it's dumb and it's so much better because it takes the cruise world cheat system and makes it much more entertaining. Look at it hanging around everywhere. It's hilarious, similar to the first one. in the cruiser game there isn't much to slow you down, in fact there's even less in exotic, you're moving forward and moving fast, hitting things that go a little out of the way, none of that seems to make much of a difference compared to Even mildly realistic racing games that combine this light, easy feeling with popping a wheelie result in something truly magical: you can flip your opponent's cars or oncoming traffic and it looks a little terrible, but it's very fun and allows you to advance quite easily, no.

That the game is easy at all, it took some work to get through, but it was a fun little ride. It's hard for me to say if all of these changes were technically that beneficial to gaining ground and moving forward, but it really made the game for me. If you're an N64 fan, I'd say Cruise Exotica is the cruising game to get, so Yes, these are all pretty dumb games, but it's also obvious to me that they were created with some love and understanding of the limits of the game. console they reported to and even if each course features a fairly simple track layout and repeating images, you can visit a lot of places throughout the series 41 locations in three games.

Check it out Golden Gate Park San Francisco U.S 101 The Redwood Forest Beverly Hills Death Valley Highway Arizona Grand Canyon Iowa Chicago Indiana Appalachia Washington DC Hawaii Japan Australia China Kenya Egypt Russia Germany Italy France England Mexico New York Florida Moon Korea Atlantis El sahara hong kong alaska las vegas india ireland holland the amazon tibet and even mars If the games aren't all that impressive, they certainly have a lot of variety. I went into this cruise series journey expecting it to be a terrible idea, but you know, I'm glad I did it. I had a lot more fun than I expected. and I wouldn't have bothered to waste my time making a video about this if I hadn't, I'm probably crazy so I'm certainly not wholeheartedly recommending these games, but underneath all their layers of age and overtly silly. design I think there's still something worthwhile here, so next time you come across a 90s racing game for 5 or 10 dollars that you used to enjoy, maybe it's Asian for a bunch of unredeemable garbage, but oh well , if you give it a chance, maybe not. 1993 was a great time to be in video games.

The 16-bit generation was in full swing with Sega and Nintendo finding ways to boost their respective hardware and seconded this with a hardware complement like the Sega CD. Hey, you don't have a Sega CD yet Well, Nintendo took a different approach with the Super NES using technology developed by 18-year-old Dylan Cuthbert and his team at Argonaut Software, the firstgraphics processing.unity was born and along with it one of nintendo's most unique and innovative games star fox we had seen polygons occasionally using console games but they didn't have the power to use them in any meaningful way super fx changed all required calculations.

The polygons were being managed by the chip and this allowed a greater number of them to be used at any given time. Things finally had a real depth and scale that you've never seen before on a home system. Star Fox definitely received a lot of attention. in magazines, but it was hard to understand how truly revolutionary it was until you saw it in motion on June 23, 1993. In America we were formally introduced to Fox McCloud, Slippy Toad, Balco Lombardi, my favorite bouncy hair, and a game that took front. I faced the shooter and turned it upside down.

The genre became known as the rail shooter. I can pinpoint the exact moment I fell in love with Star Fox and Unreal Shooter in general, as you reach stage three, the space armada leaves your ship. of light speed and you are instantly thrown into this immense space battle, it's like something in Star Wars, not only were you fighting tons of enemy spaceships, but you were also flying inside the largest space cruisers, shooting at the core and flying on the other hand. I had always dreamed of playing something like this and here it was better than I thought possible.

It was like Nintendo reached into my head and pulled out exactly what I wanted to play. I think Space Armada is still the best level in any Star Fox game, a few weeks after it was released in the US, Nintendo hosted a competition called Super Star Fox Weekend that took place in thousands of stores across USA during the weekend of April 30 to May 2, 1993, players could win various prizes, while the top scorer would win. a Star Fox flight jacket on Super Star Fox Weekend used a cartridge containing a unique version of the game. They were given four minutes to accumulate the highest possible score on three levels.

The first two are abbreviated versions of the first two. The full game levels and stage three are more of a bonus level where you fly through rings to top up your score once time runs out, so it's your turn. I've seen the ads and thought I would never get the chance to participate except for My surprise I showed up at a local department store and even crazier, at the end of the weekend I got the number one position in my location. The approximately 2,000 cartridges used at each location remain one of the most sought-after rarities in the super.

Nintendo to this day you will routinely find it for over 500 on eBay, which is estimated because the only way to acquire it was through an ad on the back of Nintendo Power, as well as the game sold and despite which was canceled at the last minute. sequel, we wouldn't have a sequel for a good four years on the Nintendo 64. 20 years later, the impression that Star Fox made is still recognized, the technology of the Super FX chip opened the doors for the consoles that would follow, it is actually Very Surprising, we have never seen a true and faithful remake of the original game.

Sure there is Star Fox 64, but that was more of a reboot than a remake, which was a big disappointment to me, but let's save that story for another time. I'm glad The First Game got some love in Super Smash Brothers Brawl, it's well deserved, especially with all the great music remixes. I always found that the sequels never did anything with the first game's incredible soundtrack. I should mention that months after the conclusion of the super weekend competition. I received my flight jacket in the mail upon unpacking it, put it in my bedroom closet where it sat for the next 20 years.

I had even forgotten I had it until recently, maybe one day I'll use it, probably not the Game Boy library. is packed with titles that are easy to dismiss as downgrades from their console counterparts at a glance, it's hard to tell the difference between a totally skippable port and a full-fledged portable entry that can stand on its own alongside its bigger brothers, but it's thanks to the games. Like these, the Game Boy has been making a bit of a comeback for me lately, games I've ignored but finally started giving it a fair chance, so I recently decided to play the third actual game in the Contra series.

Start operation c. When it comes to running, gunning and blowing up aliens, Contra is simply the best in the business for my money, Contra has to be the most fun 2D shooter series out there. The first two games, Contra and Super Contra, were adapted for arcade games bringing additional levels and more fine-tuned gameplay to the home console. Operation C released for the Game Boy in 1991 became not only the first portable contra but also the first contra originally designed for a consumer system, one of the things I enjoy most. about the contra series is the feeling that I've really gotten to know the game through multiple attempts to finish it honestly, I think it's a little ridiculous that the original contra appears on so many lists of the hardest games of all time on The grand scheme of things, even among nes games, it's not really one of the hardest games out there and I'm not even particularly good at them, but yeah, cons games are hard and op c is no different, you're going to start.

From the beginning, many times, at a glance, it is clear that operation C is more like NES games than arcade style, it is definitely the best, if you ask me, the most obvious difference is that your horizontal movement speed running so to speak it's a little slower than nes games but you'll get used to it, other than that this really feels like a proper counter experience, lots of enemy bullets flying everywhere, action gameplay no compromises in the game, that's really impressive, operation c introduced some interesting things that the series The machine gun is the default weapon.

The homing missiles that you probably used more than you should in Contra 3 appeared first here on Game Boy and work much better than I would have imagined. It's probably the best weapon. In the game, the series' signature weapon, the famous spreadshot, can actually be upgraded by selecting a second s icon, the spread is much wider with more bullets, but for some reason this upgrade mechanic only applies to the spreadshot, but it most likely served as the inspiration for the two-level upgrade mechanic that applies to all weapons in the best vs. 4 game in the series, by the way, these plus the firearm, the good kind with a big explosion, not the stupid slow spinning fire, are the only weapons in the game.

The game has a little variety, but the good thing is that you really can't go wrong with any of them. Operation C seems to have served as inspiration for Contra 4 in some other areas, such as the small cutscene at the beginning of each level and the Contra Force port. It definitely seems to resemble the first level of Operation C, especially with the underwater boss. Up to this point, the game has been pretty easy so far. If there's one mark against the Contra series it's that most of the games are intended to offer some kind of alternative gameplay style that, while passable, is never as impressive as the side-scrolling, well, c-op borrows from super c, use his air commando playstyle for levels two and four.

I would have preferred two traditional extra levels, but these are fine and work quite well. It's easy to see how C-Operation could be mistaken for a repeat of the other games in the series. I mean, level three is pretty much a combination of the first two levels of the third game and the music, while it has its own twists, is for all intents and purposes. and the newly recycled purposes for the Game Boy where things started to get really difficult for me was at the end of level three, this stupid little jump shouldn't be that difficult.

I never managed to keep any of the good weapons until level five, the final level. but once I discovered that you don't have to worry about the platforms crushing you in this elevator, things weren't so bad anymore despite the mostly unoriginal themes and the c-heavy recycling operation level design. own and we will challenge the contra fans. who are just looking for another run and gun game to dominate the bosses, the designs are also completely new and I thought they were pretty good, so it sure isn't the most original versus game and its few innovations became standard for the series, but for me it is the funniest part. of a counter game is to feel like you're really getting to know the game over multiple tries, the famous extra life codes just don't do them justice, you have to learn to get up after being defeated and give it another It starts out very difficult, but eventually As you learn the game and eventually beat it, you feel like you can do it again and that's what makes a great counter game, and although it's a little shorter, Operation C offers you probably know Game Freak is one.

Of the company names that appear when you start a Pokémon game, Game Freak was actually founded as a magazine before getting into game development, and while it's true that they haven't developed many games outside of Pokémon, they have actually created some others. very unique but much lesser known games, including platformers like Drilldozer, one of the last big anticipated Game Boy releases, but in this episode we're going to take a look at another platformer developed by Game Freak released on the Super Nintendo almost five years before Pokémon I. I had never heard of Smart Ball until recently and was surprised when I found a copy at a local store for only five dollars.

I'd say it's a small price to pay for an interesting piece of gaming fan history and seeing it published. by sony, so in americanized art we see what looks like a really cool ball with some flair or whatever, a fierce looking bird with fire raining down from the skies over a modern metropolis that we can probably assume is dark and sandy Turn on the game and the illusion is shattered, the surprise smart ball is actually loaded with bright colors and all the cuteness you'd expect from Japan, with absolutely no apocalyptic cityscape in sight, but there are firebirds spewing fire, well , Sony, you tried, so what we have done. really got here is a game known as jerry boy in japan and the main character is not so much a smart mouthed ball but a cute little blob of jelly, eh get it, jelly jerry, anyway, the story setup, which is completely eliminated from the North American version, apart from the ending is that Jerry is a prince who was turned into gelatinous slime by a magician because Jerry's brother was jealous of his fiancée, Princess Emmy.

Jerry's abilities are pretty simple but different enough from the norm to feel refreshing, he can stick to walls and even ceilings, it would be nice if there was a way to jump from wall to wall, but it's still pretty cool. The attacks are also a bit unique. You like to stretch while keeping the direction up or down if you time the hit right to the enemy you connect with. with you will be defeated it's a little weird but it works you also collect red balls that spawn from the plants how nice to be told what you've collected you can hold up to nine at a time and throw them at enemies in an ark but you can also find some other types of balls.

Blue restores your health. Blue expands your health meter for the level. The green one grows a vine that helps you reach places you couldn't otherwise reach, and the white one allows you to jump much higher than normal. also an iron ball that slows you down but can pass through multiple enemies and can be reused quite useful in the right situation. One annoying thing is that if you carry any upgrade you can't get any health recovery or extra balls without dropping the item it's a difficult decision sometimes especially when it comes to the jump upgrade the game has infinite continues and in fact , it has some pretty complicated stuff, it's not especially difficult and can be beaten in just a few hours, but it's also a little frustrating at times.

Sony reportedly canceled a sequel at the last minute. It would have been great to see these mechanics expanded on, but Smart Ball is still a nice little platformer that's different enough to stand on its own if you watch it for cheap, it's definitely worth it. Continuing as the credits roll, you'll see names like Satoshi Tajiri, founder of Game Freak and creator of Pokémon, as well as Kin Sugimori, Pokémon art director and lead designer of the original 151 Pokémon. It's a little surreal to play a game he created himself. people like Pokémon who don'tThey have absolutely nothing to do with Pokémon.

I wish Game Freak had more opportunities to separate itself from Pokémon because games like Smart Ball Drill Dozer and the relatively few other games they've developed prove that they're capable of going far. More than just RPGs, it turns out they have a lot of fun and creative ideas for other genres. As a kid, I admit I wasn't a big reader. I never had that book that hooked me so much. that I had to have more in its place, it was video games that were my preferred escapism and most of the reading I did was firmly of the video game magazine variety, so if you were going to try to get me to read a little, your best would be to put something video game related on the cover, taking advantage of the Nintendo craze that had swept the country in the late '80s and early '90s.

That's exactly what author and entrepreneur Seth Godin did with Worlds of Power, a series of books that were adapted. of popular video games, each was written by a different author under a pseudonym fx9 and was aimed squarely at young adults. My mom recently sold her house. My childhood home while we were preparing to move. I dug up almost an entire set of World of Power books. As a kid I loved them back then but I barely remember anything about them so I thought now would be the perfect time to revisit them so let's start with volume number one. blaster master follows jason into a mysterious underground cavern Full of strange alien beings, you will soon find yourself involved in battle, the gang of radioactive mutants fighting to save the earth from destruction, the complete story of the Nintendo action and adventure game with lots of hints to solve games, already You know, even when I was a kid I knew Blaster Master had a super flimsy story, that was part of the appeal for me.

He felt like the kind of B movie you'd watch at a Saturday afternoon movie

marathon

. Jason Frednik was your normal teenager one day. The pet frog named Fred escapes from his aquarium by jumping out of the house. Fred comes into contact with a radioactive box which causes him to grow in size, then sinks into a hole in the ground, of course Jason chases after him and then ends up finding a Four Wheeled Tank buried deep in an underground passage. The book follows this setup to a T, but it's not long before the author starts taking some liberties with a story instead of just discovering the tank and going after Fred like in the Jason Meets game. an alien girl named eve now eve is the only survivor of an advanced civilization that was eradicated by an evil alien creature the plutonium boss with a hilarious name using his tank named sophia the third who has tracked the alien entity here to earth What's so strange about all this?

This is how close the story of the Japanese version of Blaster Master called Metaphyte seems. The story and setting of that game are totally different, but you have a girl named Neurosatellite who is the only survivor of an attack by an evil intergalactic emperor. total domination, come on, that has to be a coincidence, right, there's no way Sunsoft gave the author of this book the Japanese game materials for inspiration, maybe a developer would do such a thing today, but in 1990 , in no way before you. I know, Eve hands Jason a flight suit helmet and a laser gun and they go off to save the world.

You know, I never thought about game worlds and enemies in the context of the real world, describing things that make sense in games and transferring them to another medium. It doesn't always work so well This is where the author really seems to struggle to get sometimes hilarious results What is that thing? All Jason could say standing in front of a thick wooden door was a guard, his eyes were looking down at them and when his mouth fell open his chin scraped the floor all Jason and Eve could do was stare in shock. and then three deadly missiles shot out of his mouth in the game.

Jason often has to jump off Sofia and explore on foot. I never liked playing these segments in the game, but most of the action in the book is spent outside the vehicle while searching for more energy for Sofia Jason runs into the first sub-boss, he is greeted with the same alert noise from the game, This entire battle is described in dodging detail. some flames jason approaches and kills the pulsating mass then he is convinced that this was the plutonium boss suddenly a booming voice echoes in the underworld you thought that pile of uterescent protoplasm was me you thought that the plutonium boss would let me be Los Thoughts of a Dumb Boy Blaster Master devotes a good chunk of its 119 pages to the first two areas of the game, with most of that time spent on just a couple of enemy encounters.

The game's levels are quite large, so it seems like our heroes could have had more interesting situations to deal with after Jason defeats the giant crab in level 2. He returns to Sofia and discovers that Eve has been kidnapped. At this point the book completely bypasses levels three and four with just a few sentences level three whizzing by in a hail of laser beams and vaporizer robots there he was attacked by a group of eight killer robots keeping their wits about him Jason defeated them after a long battle at level four Jason felt a surge of energy when he surpassed this level, he would be halfway there, the power of the vehicle was becoming amazing, it could shoot in all directions, it could hover for long periods of time , he could climb walls and travel across the ceiling, obviously the author didn't want to keep Jason on his own for too long, hey, it would probably be too hard to keep that interesting, so it's only a matter of time before he rescues one of his classmates, this boy named Alex, who has been in hiding for two weeks and has eventually been tortured and experimented on.

Just ruled out by the plutonium boss, that's pretty tough for a children's book, don't you think the two fight together through level five and six, finally reach level seven and we finally get the big reveal? Fred Jason's frog has been mutated into a sick and twisted creature. A version of himself that faces the harsh reality that he must now kill his best friend. Jason goes into an all out attack. Sure enough, Jason grabbed Alex by the shoulders. Listen to me. Do you know what kind of things the plutonium boss does in genetic engineering? Nuclear mutations. he turned my little pet frog into that thing after alex finally convinces jason to brutally kill his pet frog the underworld begins to fall apart it is here where the book finally escapes the shackles of the source material and simply does what who wants to rush to the conclusion, completely foregoing the final area of ​​the game, the kids are transported directly to the plutonium boss, who, in typically villainous fashion, reveals his grand plan: he has built a machine called a cyclotron that will allow him Consuming the earth's resources instantly in a couple of well-placed laser shots at the contraption is all it takes to finally defeat the plutonium boss.

After all, there's no big battle with the true face of evil, a guy with a shield and a flaming whip after escaping the underground collapse we encountered. a happy ending jason wakes up in his bed convinced it was all a dream fred is somehow totally alive and safe jason's face suddenly turned serious what about you eve where are you going now i've told jason's parents alex about my past eve said they love that? type of thing Alex said: We'll tell everyone that Eve is a distant cousin who was orphaned and her mom and dad had to take her in.

Eve promised to tell them all kinds of stories from outer space. You know, it's quite admirable what the book is able to do. has to do with the source material for better or worse, it stays pretty close before totally losing focus at the end, if anything it made me appreciate how stupid the whole story setup is. Hey, one thing is for sure, although revisiting these books is a lot of fun and 25 years later, I can rebel at how peculiar and strange it is that they even exist, they are a relic of a distant past and one of those oddities that made being in 80's video games was as fun as I can.

Don't wait to see the rest as we prepared to take it out. I dug up almost a complete World of World set. Remember that Taito are responsible for some of the most iconic arcade games of the '70s and '80s, but to be honest, I haven't actually played many of them, most of my experience with Space Invaders comes from a knockoff called Avenger. for the vic-20 commodore and then there's Bubble Bobble, but that's not my thing when I lived in Ohio, I was probably eight or nine. I have this memory of going with my next door neighbor and his mom to Big Lots and she said I could get a Nintendo game, of course that means you have to pick something, so I ended up with this crazy weird little game. for the kiwi.

I loved playing kiwi. madness at my neighbor's house, the character designs made me think of kirby and i guess something about their appearance attracted me, but the best thing about kiwi madness are these, i guess you can call them vehicles, you can steal them, maybe They're clouds of these gummy bears and I think they're eggs and like flying ostriches or emus or whatever, you hold down the a button to fly up and release it to fall. It feels very unique and satisfying. I remember beating the first boss back then, but the game. It has limited continuity and is actually quite difficult between levels.

You will see this map of the island. I seriously doubt I knew that in '92 or '93 or when that kiwi craze unfolded in an actual place, and in fact, if you live outside of North America, you're much more likely to be familiar with the kiwi craze, but you know him by a different name. The Story of New Zealand is originally a 1998 arcade game and was ported for the Mega Drive Commodore 64 PC Engine Amiga master system and virtually every other system of the day. especially consoles and computer systems that would be familiar to audiences in Europe, South America and Japan, and as far as I can tell, the NES version was only released in North America and is the only version North America had until we had an arcade port. the taito legends compilation and a kind of remake for ds.

I recently borrowed a copy of taito legends for ps2 to see if the original arcade version could handle my nostalgia for the nes port, obviously the graphics are much more colorful and the sound is very different as it turns out that the design of NES levels is fairly faithful to the original, but the larger, more compact rooms use fewer tiles in the NES version, but the intent of the original design seems to convey one of the most significant differences. that the various vehicles are controlled differently from each other, the ostrichs are fast and agile in the arcade version, but the eggs are a little slow, maybe they are actually small hot air balloons, the arcade also has vehicles and weapons that the NES slashes like the UFO, which is very easy to fly and shoots powerful lasers, and the staff, which is simply an invincibility item in the NES, shoots fireballs that bounce around the room.

The warps are in the same places in both versions and are activated by shooting into empty space where they are hidden, the most interesting feature that was removed from the nes version is the celestial levels that you have the possibility to visit in areas three, four and five when you finish the game if you reach the goddess at the end of the level you get. kind of ending, what you really want to do is avoid the goddess and find the secret exit that allows you to skip the rest of the level you died in, of course, having played the game in taito legends that allowed infinite continues, I don't I did it.

I had to bleed quarters to get to the end, but the game was still brutal enough, especially in the last level where I spent over an hour before managing to overcome its relentless slipperiness, so I wanted to get an idea of ​​what another port was. console. I like it and bought a copy of the Mega Drive version of the New Zealand story. I was particularly interested in this one because I read that it has totally different levels, almost like a sequel, well that's true to some extent, every level in the first area is new. Aside from the returning whale boss and the second area being different at first until it starts to become area three, the other versions completely skip the second boss and then take you straight to a super frustrating version of the third boss, the third area continues using recycled levels and the memorable pirate ship is completely missing level 4 1 is mount cook the final level making the entire game much shorter than the other versions which end in 5-4 despite Being shorter and having more of a sequel than the NES version, the New Zealand story on the Mega Drive is much more frustrating.

I feel like it dependstoo much of the poor enemy placement and the overuse of enemies like these stars that kill you by touch, as opposed to other enemies that kill you with attacks, something I felt was relatively unique for a platformer. Back in the day, some of what made the game fun and special was removed. I even expanded the slot on my Genesis cartridge just so I could play it and now I regret that, despite its less vivid graphics and the fact that some features have been removed. The nes version still feels like the real thing, it has all the levels apart from the heavens and maybe it's my nostalgia talking, but it feels good and is easily my favorite of the three versions I played a year or two after I left Ohio.

Delaware, I found out through old letters that my neighbor had received a genesis not long after, I guess he got rid of his Nintendo stuff because what did I find in the mail but a package with kiwi craze? I hadn't even had my NES. connected since i bought my super nintendo but i took it out of the basement just to play kiwi craze for a few minutes as i didn't play nes anymore i soon sold it and all my games including kiwi craze to help save for the n64 When I later realized how stupid this was, I bought another NES and started building a new collection.

I found a copy of kiwi craze at my local funko land and of course I had to have it, who knows maybe even be the same card, I mean how many copies of kiwi craze could have been floating around in northern delaware of all Anyway, years later in 2008 I was nearing the end of my gaming portfolio which was heavily populated by some difficult NES games, Kiwi Craze was one of them and you know, it's not an amazing game or anything like that. , but by the time I finished it I had already had a lot of fun and I think it's pretty good beyond simple nostalgia.

It's a little strange that Square Enix now owns Taito, even sending out Space Invaders goodies as member rewards. I doubt we'll see a revival of New Zealand history anytime soon, if there ever are much more popular and valuable taito properties to choose from, but for me, I'll always remember the Kiwi craze as my taito game.