I’ve never really liked the Nintendo 64. I’ve always found for example 16-bit graphics to be much more appealing than the awkward 3D graphics of the N64. I also never liked the controller, the stick is so “wriggly” and loose and there’s way too may buttons on the controller! haha ^_^ And the three handles?! How are you supposed to hold it?? ;D

Then again, I never played a lot of games on the system. The only memories I have are from loosing continuously against my boyfriends little brother in Golden Eye 007 back when it was new, and that was extremely annoying >_< We also played a bit of Diddy Kong Racing back then which was fun though. I recently started giving it a little more attention, mainly since I found that there are also a few 2D games and puzzle games on the system ^_^  It started with the Pokémon Puzzle League game that my friend Gabriella showed me, it was so much fun! Then I also started looking up the japanese scene for the N64 and here are the games I have gotten so far:

Rakuga Kids, a 2D fighting game with the quirkiest characters and cute animations ^_^ This one is quite entertaining even though it’s not as advanced as the regular fighting games like street fighter :) Here’s the back so you can see what it kind of looks like ^_^

Uchannanchan no Honoo no Challenger – Denryu Iraira Bou, the longest name of a game that I have ever encountered ;D It’s a type of puzzle-like game where you have to steer a ball through a maze, it’s also 2D, and gets quite challenging :D The cover is mainly what drew me to it in the first place though ;D Hysterical!

Magical Tetris featuring Mickey Mouse :D It’s basically like Tetris with a few extras thrown in ^_^

I’ve also gotten a few Tennis games. They were quite fun in 2-player VS mode, and didn’t look too horrible on the N64 ;D Also my niece is really into Tennis so I thought it would be fun to play some with her :) I also had to get Mario Tennis 64 of course ^^

Hoshi no Kirby is another classic series, I haven’t tried it out yet, but I’m hoping that the N64 graphics won’t ruin it ;D

I also got some Star Wars games, because STAR WARS! ;D (the top one is Rogue Squadron)

Ganbare Goemon (known as Mystical Ninja over here) is a series that sometimes can be quite enjoyable, I haven’t really tried this one out yet though. Judging from the back it’s unfortunately awkward 3D worlds :/

Then I got some Sumo games, mainly because they were cheap and I liked the cover art :D

Last but not least I picked up a copy of Diddy Kong Racing, I already have it for my PAL N64, I mainly wanted to see if there are any differences in the game ^^ I haven’t really had time to compare the two yet though.

So all my new Japanese Nintendo 64 games got their own little corner in my game room, if I get any more I’m gonna have to get more shelves ;D

I also have 20-something games for my PAL N64, but I haven’t really worked on that collection in the last decade or so.. If anyone has any suggestions of GREAT GAMES for the N64 then please feel free to give me some suggestions ^_^ I have all the regulars like Super Mario 64, Golden Eye (even though I dislike it much), Pokémon Snap and the Castlevania games among others.. but if you know any hidden gems for this system then please let me know :D

So here comes my pickups from yesterday’s Sci-Fi convention Sci-Fi World in Malmö :D I bought quite a few games for various systems, mainly Sega this time! But let’s start off with some odd stuff that I just felt compelled to get!! Like these Star Wars Bend-Ems figures from 1993 with bonus trading cards! The poses of these figures are ridiculous! :D Look at that Stormtrooper!! ^___^

Then there’s this awesome Samus Aran fuse bead lamp made by Pappas Pärlor ^_^  It looks great in my game room! I also got a pair of Game Boy earrings from him! Thank’s Johan! :D

This figure of Sepiroth was not possible to pass out on! So cheap, and so cool ^___^

I also got some stuff from Webhallen :) Mario, yoshi and toad PEZ dispensers, a Mega Man energy drink and a mushroom ^_^

After this it was all games! :D Let’s start of with Sega! I got four Sega Master System games, Monopoly, Golfmania, Prince of Persia and G-Loc. Prince of Persia had such an awesome cover! He looks like a scared Luke Skywalker! :D

Then I also got G-Loc for the Sega Mega Drive, and Super Hang On, Normy’s Beach Babe-O-Rama and Mario Lemieux Hockey. Probably not the best games, but I didn’t previously have them, and my fiance only plays hockey for the Sega systems ;D And I got Strider II which I hope is as awesome as the first one! ^_^

I also got a Sega Mega CD game that had two games in one, on one side there’s Cobra Command and on the other side there’s Sol-Feace.

Let’s move over to Nintendo. Here I got three NES games, R.C. Pro Am (which I was sure I had before, but I couldn’t find it in my list, so I guess I was wrong..), Mad Max (probably extremely shitty since games based on movies usually are ;D) and Defender of the Crown.

I also got three SNES games, first up was Kirby’s Ghost Trap. This one is interesting since I had never heard of it before, but in the morning before the convention I was at my friend’s house and she had it, I got curious since it looked just like puyo puyo so I needed it, then I looked it up on eBay and considered buying it, but didn’t. Then when I came to the convention I saw it again! So I bargained with the guy and got it! I’m super excited to try it out now! :D Then I also got Q-Bert 3 and Dragon’s Lair, I’m wondering whether it’s as hard as the NES version ;D

I found some cheap Super Famicom games as well, but they’re hardly worth mentioning ;D Soccer, Baseball and racing Z_Z boring..

That’s everything I got at the convention! I also popped by the GAME store afterwards, and got some more stuff ;D But I’ll make another post of that later ^_^

The japanese Famicom is the equivalent of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), they later released a Disk System to go with the Famicom, and after that Sharp produced this Twin Famicom which had the Disk System integrated with the console so you didn’t have to have two power adaptors. It was first released in 1986 :)

I recently bought three more Twin Famicoms! Don’t ask me why I need to have four Twin Famicoms, but they are just all so pretty! And I really love the Famicom so I just figured I’d collect the hardware as well ^_^ The Twin Famicom is definitely my favorite Famicom system :) Then again, I don’t have the toploader to compare with yet.. I think I’m only missing one Twin Famicom now though :)

Two of the consoles are Twin Famicom Turbo systems :D This means that the controllers have built in Turbo buttons. One of them is pale orange, I thought it was sunfaded but was told it comes in this color! The one I had before is brighter red. They also have different colours on the controllers. You can see the difference here, the right one is my old one, the left one is the new Twin Famicom Turbo:

I will call it orange from here on. The orange Twin Famicom Turbo from Sharp has a darker red eject-button and beige / blue-grey elements. This one is called Sharp Twin Famicom AN-505.

Another system I got was the darker version of the Twin Famicom Turbo. This one is black with green and grey-purple elements. This one has the same name as the orange one, Sharp Twin Famicom AN-505.

The third one I got a bit earlier is a regular Twin Famicom without Turbo buttons on the controllers. This one has a matt finish in dark grey with pale red and green details. This one has the same “Famicom” text on the top as my old red one. I like the design of this text better than the straight one on the Turbo’s. This one is called Sharp Twin Famicom AN-500B. The name differs from my first red one which is called AN-500R, but I’m not sure what the technical differences are.

What’s interesting is that all the Twin Famicoms have led lights in the power button, except for my red Twin Famicom. Here’s the various fronts of the consoles:

And here’s some more pictures to compare the versions:

Now I just need to find some space for all these beauties in my game room ;D Also if you wanna see some more pictures of my red Twin Famicom that I got a long time ago you can find them here >> 

So which one is your favorite? :D

I’ve actually never played this game before, since I didn’t grow up having games of my own I just never encountered it. I’ve heard a lot of people through the years praising it though so I finally went ahead and bought it! Star Fox is what it’s called in Japan. This popular series has also gone by the name of Starwing and Lylat Wars, mainly in Europe.

A lot of people are probably gonna hate me now, but I don’t really care, everyone is entitled to their own opinion! ;D

I didn’t like it.. It might be because I don’t have any nostalgic memories when playing it. I bet it was all amazing and such when it came out, but it hasn’t’ aged well in that case. The controls were a bit stiff and I found it hard to aim and hit the targets.. I did give it a good hour or so before quitting.

I also tried several different routes you could choose from, and reached a couple of different bosses, all but one of which I couldn’t beat..

I have to admit that the graphics are unique for the SNES and the polygon shapes are somewhat charming, but this type of shooter (rail shooter) just isn’t my type of shmup. I prefer sidescrolling shooters, horizontal or vertical or fixed shooters like space invaders :) Bullet hell shooters are also quite fun ^_^

I will put this in my shelf, to await that nostalgic friend that will visit me and ask for it. Then I will gladly pull it out, let them play it for all the hours they want while I watch and in my mind being glad that I don’t have to play it again ;D

Yesterday was the second time I visited Pixel K.A.F.E. in Malmö! This time it twas mainly because they were hosting a Retro Market there, selling off games and consoles and other nerdy things! Unfortunately it’s not going too well for Pixel, but I hope the contributions and sales today will have some effect and make it turn around! Because it’s an awesome place! :)

There were so many things for sale! Both Nintendo and Sega games, both PAL, NTSC and Japanese! Even Neo Geo games!!! Both AES and MVS, right next to the My Little Ponys ^__^ There were Vintage Toys, consoles, even arcades! And also something I really wanted, but it was too heavy for me to carry home on the train >_< Namely a custom built arcade controller for the Playstation 2 to be used with Pop ‘n Music!! So pretty ^__^

Apart from this, the owner showed me around arcade town! I even got to see the insides of a Blast City cabinet! :D So cool! The key to the cabinet had “SEGA” written on it ^_^ It’s all about the details ;D

So this is what i scored! First up is a bunch of Neo Geo MVS cartridges!! :D :D I’m totally excited about these! And NONE OF THEM are fighting games :D I’ve bought a converter for my AES so that it can play MVS cartridges as well. This is mainly because the collecting will become more feasible and cheaper! I will buy shockboxes for these carts, then they will blend in with the rest of the AES games on the shelf ^_^ The games I got was Spin Master, which is a really cool platforming game, Puzzle Bobble, Puzzle de Pon and League Bowling ^__^ I’m eagerly awaiting my converter to arrive so I can play these!!!

One of the cartridges is transparent, the others are black.

Apart from this I also found some Sega Mega Drive games. These were The Tennis Tournament Grand Slam, RoboCop 3 and NHL 95. The last two lacked a manual, but Grand Slam was complete.

I also found some Super Nintendo games and a Super Famicom game. Even though this NTSC version of Final Fight was in pretty bad shape and lacked a manual I still had to get it, because that boxart is amazing!! I fell in love with it ^_^ I also found Final Fight for SFC, so I got that one too. It’s really fun to just see the differences in the artwork between the North American version and the Japanese :D Apart from these two I also found a really nice version of Tetris Attack!! I didn’t have Tetris Attack previously, but I have Panel de Pon, which is basically the same game, they just switched out the characters ^_^

I couldn’t help but look at all those amazing vintage toys that were there as well ^_^ They are just so charming! :D I ended up buying four figures for Pepparkaksninja that he wanted. He collects vintage toys, takes cool pictures of them and makes even cooler videos (check out his amazing collection here!). I also got a little something for myself that I think will fit perfectly in the game room! :D

When you move his arm the ghosts appear in his mouth!! :D Pac-Man <3

I recently got Zoids Densetsu for the Game Boy. I didn’t think much of the few Zoids-games I’ve played for the Famicom, but this one got recommended to me, so I thought I’d give it a try ^_^

It’s amazing! A side-scrolling shooter where you play as various “Zoids” (giant robots), dodging blocks and vulcanos and killing enemies! The music is also extremely catchy! I spent quite a lot of time with it in the couch last night, and I managed to get past the first boss and make it to the third stage. The difficulty increases fast though, and I haven’t gotten past all those erupting volcanos on stage 3 yet >_< This is definitely a challenge I will re-visit and try to beat! :)

You can check out some of the gameplay that I recorded here:

This week I also got a few other games in the mail. They were all NES games, Challenge of the Dragon, Super Turrican, and two pirated games with 32 in 1 and 40 in 1 ^_^ Challenge of the Dragon was a really shitty game! But the box looks awesome ;D

This weekend I visited a dear friend way up north in Sweden :) I brought an NES so we could try out some adventure games and also play my latest Tetris acquisition, Tengen Tetris, since my friend loves Tetris! ^_^ We had loads of fun with the co-op mode of Tengen Tetris, and also played a bunch of other games, like Xexyz!

Xexyz is an awesome adventure game that merges platforming action with sidescrolling shooting ^_^ It’s also really pretty and colorful, and you get to see fairies in bath tubs! haha ^_^

Another game that we played was Wurm: Journey to the Center of the Earth which is also really cool :) It is also a merge of platformer/shmup, but it also has a strategic boss battle element :) This dinosaur was really annoying >_<

We also played Zen: intergalactic ninja! This game is hard!! But I love how they’re making it all about environmental friendliness haha ^_^ Every stage is about fighting pollution in some way, and in the bonus stages you recycle trash! LOL! I’ve never encountered such an environmentally aware Ninja ;D

Last game we played was Karnov, and we got stuck on the 5th stage with the dinosaur boss that appears a second time >_< The game was a bit glitchy, we got stuck sometimes inside walls and had to wait for the timer to run out and kill us, lol…

On Saturday we went into town and visited the GAME store. They had quite a lot of retro games, apart from three big glass cabinets by the entrance they also had more shelves around the counter :D I picked up quite a lot of games here ;D

At the end of they day we visited a really awesome place called Café på Bit! It’s a café/arcade! Mainly focusing on console gaming but they also had some pinball machines and an arcade machine with Pixelbot Arena (a game produced by a local talent) :)

Apart from all the setups, CRT’s and consoles, they also had a whole wall of games you could choose to play! :D They had the entire NES library that was released in Scandinavia ^_^ And some games were even for sale! I picked up a few great ones ;D I’ll tell you all about them in my next post ^_^

We spent 4 hours there, all three of us were playing the same game, the only game I was interested in playing since I knew I couldn’t play it at home: Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril! I’ve seen the game maybe once before, and I know it’s a new game released for the NES (in 2006 I think) made by one guy. It was extremely difficult! You just had to memorize every step! We were competing on who would finish it first, after four hours none of us were even close to finishing it haha ^_^ I made it the furthest though, to boss no. 2…

Café på Bit was really cosy, too bad it’s so far away from me :( Probably around a 15 hour drive! I recommend anyone visiting the north of Sweden to check it out though! ^___^

I’ll get right on writing my next post about my pickups! I came home with almost 20 games! :D

After visiting the GAME store and Café på Bit in Skellefteå I came home with 19 games! I’m really happy with my pickups ^_^ All decently priced!

Let’s start with what I found at GAME: shitloads of Game Boy games! :D Mainly for Game Boy Advance, but also a few for Color and one for the first Game Boy. DK King of Swing, Gradius Galaxies, Bust-A-Move Millenium and GTA 2 were all brand new and still sealed! :) I’ve already opened up two of them though.. so now they’re “used” lol..

I really enjoyed Gradius Galaxies! At first I thought it was a compilation game with all the previous ones in it, but when I realized it was its own game I was thrilled :D Just as fun as the original Gradius on the NES ^^ They kept all the good parts :)

When I was younger and didn’t have any console games I downloaded GTA 2 on my PC, had hours of fun with that game ^_^ I was glad to see a Game Boy Color port of it! Now I’m excited to revisit it :D

I also got these four games for Game Boy Advance: Batman Begins, American Dragon Jake Long (surprisingly fun!), Alex Rider Stormbreaker (like an updated version of Crackdown on the Mega Drive) and a compilation of Winnie the Pooh’s Rumbly Tumbly Adventure and Rayman 3 (Rayman is always awesome! Especially the older 2D games ^_^)

For the Game Boy I found a really pretty copy of Double Dragon! Love the artwork! :D The gameplay was far from as good as it is on other consoles though… probably the worst port I’ve played of that game so far :/ And then I also got Blade for Game Boy Color, since it looked like a cool platforming action game :) Haven’t tried it out yet though..

Apart from all these handheld games I also found an interesting game for the Super Nintendo, Harley’s Humongous Adventure! Never heard of it before.. it was one of the first things I tried out when I got home! And it was fun! The gameplay and controls were fluent, the sprites were pretty and it was most of all fun!

The story is about a smart inventor guy that has accidentally shrunken himself and has to fight off all the bugs to regain all the parts to his machine so he can re-size himself haha ^_^ Best part is that you get to ride a TANK!! :D

The final game I found at this store was Raiden for Atari Jaguar :) It was in really nice condition and to a decent price ^^

Now on to the interesting things I found at Café på Bit! :D You can’t begin to imagine the excitement I experienced when I realized that half of the games in their giant wall-covering shelf had price tags on them!! ^___^ hahaha

I only found one NES game I didn’t already have: McDonaldland

This game was OK.. I wouldn’t recommend it though. It’s a platformer, when you start the game the intro states the name of the game as Mc Kids instead of McDonaldland which it says on the cartridge. What’s also annoying is that this one is apparently a french version.. >_<

You have to run around and collect M’s and find the hard-to-reach M-boxes to unlock the face of Ronald McDonald on the map screen.. I gave up after having tried all the stages..

I found a bunch of Sega Mega Drive games that I’m super excited about though! Haven’t had time to try them out yet, but I’m really curious about Dahna, Turrican and Super Fantazy Zone ^_^ I’m also interested to see what Probotector is like and to see if I already have the same game for Super Famicom or not.. (Probotector is the European name for the Contra series)..

Apart from these I also got Ariel the Little Mermaid, it’s in super nice condition and I didn’t have it before :) I remember playing it when I was young, at my friends place, and I recall it being fun. I hope it still holds up today ^_^

I also got Dynamite Duke and Krusty’s Fun House, cause they were cheap ;D

That’s it for this weekends pickups, got some things in the mail that I’ll write about soon ;D Meanwhile, I’m preparing myself for Sweden’s yearly retro game exhibition in Gothenburg that is coming up in just around 2 weeks :D

In celebration of May the 4th (Star Wars day!) I thought I’d share some of my beloved Star Wars retro games! ^__^

First up is the weirdest Star Wars game I have, Star Wars on Famicom:

This is a really interesting game! I think it’s a fun platformer, but it gets very challenging after a while. It’s got some really weird things in it, like Darth Vader magically transforming into a scorpion or crab-like creature or Luke Skywalker having black hair in game but yellow in the cutscenes haha ^^ It’s definitely an interesting game though that I urge any Star Wars fan or 8-bit platforming action game fan to try out! It’s also a great addition to any collection with it’s sparkly silver cartridge :D So pretty ^__^

Next up is the Super Star Wars thrilogy on Super Famicom:

These three are amazingly well done and really fun ^_^ Sometimes a bit challenging, for example, I got stuck on the Empire Strikes Back and couldn’t get past one of the later levels because there was a jump that was nearly impossible to make! Otherwise they’re well rounded and stay fairly true to the movies :) I also have the first one on Super Famicom, I have been considering getting the other two as well, but it’s not really necessary since I already have the games ;D I do enjoy the Super Famicom artwork a bit more though…

Next up are some Nintendo 64 games with Star Wars. These I haven’t played a lot, basically just started them to make sure they worked. I’m not really a fan of the N64 :/

One Star Wars game I have that I haven’t even been able to play is the Star Wars Arcade for the Sega 32X. I don’t have the 32X expansion for my Sega Mega Drive yet :( The artwork looks amazing though!

I also have Star Wars games for several other platforms, but I chose to picture the ones that are nice and complete ^_^ There is another one that I find really charming though, The Empire Strikes Back for Atari 2600 :D So I pictures it here with my awesome Darth Vader lunchbox! :D

I hope you have enjoyed some retro gaming Star Wars love! On our Geeky Gals instagram account we’ve also shared loads of various geeky pictures related to Star Wars today! Go check it out here >>

May the Fourth be with you!! ^____^

I’m so excited!! RSM (Retrospelsmässan) is one of Sweden’s largest retro gaming conventions, been running for 6 years now :D I’ve been there every year (except for once when I lived in Japan..). If you wanna see what it’s all about you can check out my posts from RSM 2014 and RSM 2013 here :)

This year I’m having two of my Geeky Gals coming with me :D It’s gonna be so much fun to meet up with people and this year I’m also planning on competing! They’re hosting competitions in Super Mario Bros on NES, Bomberman on Sega Saturn and Asteroids on arcade! I unfortunately only have Asteroids on Atari 2600 o_O Do you think my practice on that will suffice? ;D hahaha

Super Mario Bros on the NES won’t be an issue, however I bet I will screw up in the competition ;D I can run through it usually on one life, but sometimes I get stuck on that stupid 8-3 stage >_< If those stupid hammer bros are in the wrong spot >_<

Last issue is that I don’t have Bomberman on Sega Saturn… I’ve been meaning to pick those Saturn ones up as well, but I haven’t yet >_< I have loads of other Bomberman games though! Here are a few of them:

I also have Bomberman (the first one) on PC Engine as well, just couldn’t find it right now.. Does anyone know which one of these are most similar to the Saturn version in gameplay? ^__^ And please don’t tell me it’s Super Bomberman 3, since that’s the only one I’m lacking in the series ;D hahaha

Anyway wish me luck! I will start practicing now ^_^ And after next weekend you will get to see all my pickups and all the other awesomeness from RSM 2015! :D

So  here’s the final part of my RSM loot! All the games!! :D Apart from the Atari Lynx games that I mentioned in the first post..

I got quite a lot of C64 games since these were cheap ^_^ Scramble Spirits, Pac-Mania and Cosmic Causeway were really pretty big boxes ^_^ Scramble is always fun! Pac-Mania looked like a cool 3D version of Pac-Man, I’m sure I have it for other systems already but it’s always fun to try out various ports ^_^ Never heard of Cosmic Causeway but I love the artwork! On the screenshots it kind of looks like some kind of Space Harrier game ^_^

I also found these 4 big boxes, I’m hoping this C64 JAWS is better than the NES version ;D Killer Ring looks to be some kind of shooter, Terry’s Adventure was just cheap and I loved the tacky James Bond montage on the 007 License to Kill cover ^_^

These C64 boxes were a bit different! Frost Byte and Kong Strikes Back were in soft plastic, the screenshots and artwork intrigued me ^_^ Creatures had a really pretty cover! It’s a paper box, and it looks like an amazing side-scrolling platform adventure ^_^

I also got Wibstars, Chuckie Egg (a classic that I actually didn’t have before), Herobotix and a Christmas Collection containing 6 games. Herobotix had such a cool name and an awesome robot on the cover! :D Had to get it ^_^ The Christmas Collection contained a game I’ve been wanting to try out for a long time now! I bought Exolon on Amiga 500 a while back and it never worked, the seller kept sending me new floppy disks but none would load :( So hopefully this cassette will and I’ll at least get to see what type of game it is! :D

I got a few PC Engine titles as well. There weren’t a lot of PC Engine stuff at RSM, but I did find these three titles that I didn’t previously have, pretty cheap ^_^ Master of Monsters, Ballistix and Babel.

I bought an expensive N64 title, Paper Mario! I have never played any of the Paper Mario games and everyone tells me they’re good. I’ve recently found out that they’re kind of RPG games as well.. which I don’t like >_< So I have no clue what I will think of it.. I guess I’ll just have to try it out and see for myself ^^

There were more japanese stuff at RSM, and I found some Sega Saturn games :D Pretty nice titles I think as well :) Vampire Hunter, Bubble Symphony & Saturn Bomberman Fight :D

Another system I got a few games for was Playstation 1. Both Puchi Carat and Parappa the Rapper were cheap :) I’ve actually never played Parappa the Rapper, I have a Playstation 2 version, but it was Japanese so I didn’t have a system to play it on until recently when I got a modded one. Haven’t gotten around to trying it yet though.. Now I will though ^_^

I’m extremely happy to have found a Neo Geo AES game that was affordable and NOT a fighting game!! :D I found this game called Puzzled ^_^ It’s quite fun and very challenging! It’s falling Tetris pieces that you need to put in place to remove the obstacles that is keeping your ship captured at the bottom. Once the ship is freed you clear the stage. I love puzzle game like this! :D It’s also in really nice condition ^_^

I also found some NES games, there were LOADS of NES games for sale at RSM, but I didn’t dig too deep into all the piles. I found these two that I didn’t previously own and was curious to try out ^_^ Tom & Jerry and… Barbie! haha

Tom & Jerry was a fun platformer, kind of hard though. You could only take three hits and there were so many things that would hurt you >_<

Barbie had extremely stiff controls and animations. It was extremely simple and stupid haha ^_^ And it got difficult only because of the stiff controls..

I also got a really cool looking NES game called Defenders of Dynatron City! I had never encountered this one before! :D And I got a pretty good deal from KCL to by this minty complete game ^_^ The cover art is amazing!! The game was also pretty cool, but the hit detection was extremely off, which made it frustrating in the long run >_<

You can choose from 3 various main characters, and while in game you can change between another three companions. There’s 6 characters in total, Jet Headstrong, Radium Dog and Ms. Megawatt are the three main ones, out of these I prefer Ms. Megawatt ’cause she has the best and fastest attack ^_^ The three other characters you can always choose from in game are Toolbox, Monkey Kid and Buzzsaw girl. It’s got a pretty cool setup, you have to clear all the streets of the map from robot enemies, once you’ve cleared a stage the shops open up, they’re also filled with enemies, but once killed you can get an item. The item is either a clue, money, food for health or some item you can use. Once all streets are clear you’ll find a boss, when killed he takes you to the next stage, which is inside a mall where you can use the money to buy more items ^_^ It’s got a lot of depth and nice graphics with a lot of various locations but falls short on the horrible hit-detection..

I only found one Famicom game that I didn’t already have. There wasn’t a lot of Famicom at RSM though. The one I found was Sanrio Carnival 2 with Hello Kitty ^_^ My friend Mattias also brought a Pachiottokun game for me which I didn’t have :) Thanks!

I found only one Sega Mega Drive game.. Granada, which is a japanese release. This was a cool tank shooter ^_^ I reached the first boss but he killed me >_<

And I got some Game Boy games, all japanese ones ^_^

Apart from all these games I got a few other goodies from various people or from the Asteroids competition I came in second place in ^_^

I’m extremely happy with this years RSM! Had a great time! Met loads of nice people, bought massive amounts of cool retro gaming stuff and had a blast! :D

20 years ago, on July 21st 1995, the Virtual Boy became available in stores in Japan. Less than a month later, August 14th, it released in North America as well. We never got to see a release here in Europe but it was advertised and many people were excited to see it, but disappointed that it never came out. Unfortunately the console got discontinued not even half a year later! On December 22nd 1995 the Virtual Boy was discontinued in Japan, and 3 months later on March 2nd 1996 it discontinued in North America.

The Virtual Boy only sold a mere 770,000 units, it’s Nintendo’s lowest selling console ever!  The launch price of a Virtual Boy was $180, and it was supposed to be a considered “handheld” system. Compared to the Game Boy which initially cost $89.99 the Virtual Boy wasn’t attractive enough to justify the price tag. The portability was questioned, since it was on a stand and there was no way of equipping it on your head like a “real” VR headset. It only had one color, red on black, it was less powerful than home consoles, and even though it was 3D it wasn’t interesting enough to beat the other handhelds on the market which had more colors. Finally the health issues were on all the parents’ minds, the Virtual Boy even had a built in function to turn itself off after 15-30 minutes of gameplay so that the player could take a break before any injuries occurred to their eyes! That and the warnings that use of the Virtual Boy might cause epileptic attacks, nausea and headaches probably made parents hesitate on buying one for their kids. Still today many people who have tried gaming on a Virtual Boy states that they experience nausea when playing, I thankfully don’t! ;D

Apart from all this, at launch Nintendo partnered up with Blockbuster, having 3000 stores to rent out the Virtual Boy console for $10, once returned they got a $10 coupon for when purchasing their own Virtual Boy. This proved damaging to the system though, since everybody got to see what the system actually was (or was not!) capable of instead of being lured in by the advertisements. The console was rented out to 750,000 people in total during the campaign.

When I started collecting games some 12 years ago I bumped into the Virtual Boy for the first time on eBay, I got super intrigued and had to find out what it was! After getting my first Virtual Boy I became obsessed with the obscurity of the system and started collecting everything I could find related to it! Today I have 3 Virtual Boys (had a 4th which I gave to a friend) and almost all the games released for it. My latest purchase was Space Invaders which was only released in Japan. I am now only missing some obscure Gundam game and Virtual Lab I think.

I prefer the box art on the Japanese games, they’re usually prettier, but the US ones do carry a certain nostalgic charm to them as well :) Here’s all my Virtual Boy games with some screenshots I tried taking with my camera through the lenses on the VB, it was hard to get good focus ;D

Vertical Force is probably my favorite Virtual Boy game :) It’s a shmup with an awesome soundtrack! :D It’s kind of cools since you can switch between two different levels of depth in the stage, but it also makes it much more difficult than a “flat” shmup.

Space Invaders is also pretty cool, there’s both a classic 2D mode and a new 3D mode. It’s not that different from regular space invaders though.

Insmouse no Yakatta (インスマウスの館) is a dungeon crawling horror game, you walk through corridors and encounter creepy monsters. It was only released in Japan.

Jack Bros  (ジャック・ブラザースの迷路でヒーホー!) is also a fun game. You can choose between three different characters, and the game is sort of a top-down platformer where you collect keys and enter new levels and encounter bosses. There’s a time limit on each stage which is kind of annoyingly short..

V-Tetris (V・テトリス) is just like normal Tetris. There’s just some flying spots in the background (maybe it’s supposed to resemble space and stars?) that are sort of 3D. I really like Tetris though, and it’s got good music ^_^

3D Tetris is different though! This is much like Blockout on Sega Mega Drive, but harder, since the platform keeps moving around like a 3D model.

Waterworld is based on a horrible movie with Kevin Costner, the game wasn’t all that bad though.. it’s not good, but it’s not awful. It’s a shooter where you’re some kind of boat shooting at people on jet skis hahaha ^__^

Nester’s Funky Bowling is quite a rare one out of the US releases, it’s a bowling game.. and I’m not that into that :/

Panic Bomber (とびだせ！ぱにボン) was only released in Japan. Just like in V-Tetris it’s not really using the 3D effects much, but Panic Bomber is fun anyway :) Not as good as Tetris though ;D

Space Squash (スペース　スカッシュ) is the only game I own that I haven’t played.. because I only have one copy of it, and it’s still sealed >_< I need to find an opened one, but so far this is the only copy I’ve ever encountered.. This game was also only released in Japan.

Galactic Pinball (ギャラクティック・ピンボール) is just what it sounds like, a pinball game. I’ve never quite gotten into those… This was released both in the US and Japan.

Teleroboxer (テレロボクサー) is a first-person boxing game, which was released in both regions. This is one of the few exceptions where I think the US boxart is actually better than the Japanese ;D

Warioland (ワリオランド) is a nice platformer, just like the old school super mario games :) It’s quite challenging as well! Was released in both regions and the box art is really similar…

Red Alarm (レッドアラーム) is a rail shooter which basically just looks like lines that haven’t been finished drawn.. quite annoying, especially with all the explosions and tiny sticks flying around >_< I prefer the Japanese box art on this one, what do you think? :)

Mario Clash (マリオクラッシュ) is what you would have hoped to be the platforming classic Mario game, but it’s not. Instead you’re stuck on one screen where you move through tunnels to the front or back and try to hit enemies that are on the opposite side by throwing other enemies at them.. gets boring after a while..

Golf (or Virtual Golf in Japanese バーチャル　ゴルフ) is a golf game. I hate sports games >_< On this one though I also kind of appreciate the US boxart more, but they’re both hideous ;D

Mario’s Tennis (マリオズテニス) was released in both regions, and this is a game that uses the 3D effects well. I still don’t like sports games very much so I rarely play this one. I bet it would have been cool if they would have released a link cable so you could battle a friend on another Virtual Boy though, but that never happened :/

Last and definitely least in my book is Virtual League Baseball (called Pro Yakyuu ’95 バーチャルブロ野球’95 in Japan). I just don’t enjoy sports…

There’s a whole homebrew scene for the system today though, I haven’t gotten into that yet, but I am considering getting myself a Flashboy so I can get to see all the games that were never released and also some of the new games that has been made for the system, since the original library only contains about 22 games or so.

Anyway, I would like to celebrate this old 32-bit system’s birthday by running down to the super market and buying a big package of batteries, plugging in 6 of them in the Virtual Boy controller and then play some Vertical Force, followed by V Tetris and maybe some Space Invaders ^_^

This week I visited Halmstad with my buddy Becki. We went there since there’s an exhibition there called Game Masters for a few more weeks. Here they display various video game history from past to present, and they also have a bunch of games for you to try out. We had heard it wasn’t all that great, but that was mainly from friends who thought my game room had more to offer ;D haha! We still wanted to see it with out own eyes, and I also had a free ticket to go see it that I won in the Asteroids competition at the last retro gaming convention we went to :)

To my surprise there were actually A LOT  of old arcade cabinets there that you could play ^_^ I tried them all out except for three that were occupied almost all of the time, which were Donkey Kong, Pac-man and Space Invaders. I think it’s sad that people don’t dare to try something else, then again maybe they’re playing those because of the nostalgia of having played them before.. What kind of bugged me though was that the Donkey Kong cabinet was occupied during the entire time we were there and by the same 2 people which were hosts working at the exhibition.. I think it’s fine that they play when there’s no one around, but when I was in there there were at least 10-15 people in the arcade corner, they shouldn’t be occupying the most popular cabinet then since they can play it whenever o_O

It was really hard to get good pictures in the exhibition since it was pretty dark, only colorful neon lighting in various spots. It made for an extremely cosy environment though, and it looked really cool! But you will have to excuse the shitty images since my camera doesn’t have flash and I didn’t bring a tripod for it.. Anyway, here are most of the arcades that were playable!

I tried playing Tempest, but this was much harder than the console versions I’ve tried! The controls were a wheel that you had to spin to make the ship fly around the edges, and the control were extremely unresponsive! I don’t know if the arcade was faulty or if its supposed to be like that, but you had to really spin it hard for the ship to move a few steps around the side.. I prefer the console versions. Tempest 2000 for Atari Jaguar is pretty cool ^__^

I was surprised at how advanced Missile Command was! I have never seen one of these in person before, so I played it for a bit. It was really hard! You had to hit those missiles straight on the tip of the tiny thin line and you only had a limited amount of shots.. pretty cool ^__^ The controls consisted of a giant ball, it gave you quite a lot of precision but it was also very responsive which made it kind of hard to aim precise.. and you had three different buttons for the various missile launchers you had.

Rip Off was kind of cool, it took a while for me to figure out what the objective was cause I was pushing the wrong buttons on the machine, I was probably on player 2’s side haha ^_^ It’s kind of similar to Asteroids in the controls, but you had to shoot creatures that were stealing your triangles, STAY AWAY FROM MY TRIANGLES! LOL!

I was a bit disappointed in the graphics of Xevious, it looked JUST LIKE my Famicom version… at least how I remember it.. I guess it’s a really good port on the Famicom ;D I did make it into the highscore list on this arcade though ^_^ I like Xevious, but it’s far from the best shmup out there…

Reactor was kind of boring. You just pushed blocks with some kind of magnetic force into a wall while trying to avoid touching the wall yourself…

There was also a Tower of Druaga arcade there but it was out of order :/

I also tried out some Asteroids since that’s what got me the free ticket to the exhibition ;D This was the second time ever that I had played on an Asteroids arcade! I really love this game, and it’s extra nice on an arcade! The graphics remind me of the Vectrex, it’s so crisp! I wish I had one of these at home..

Elevator Action was better than I had expected! The graphics look so dull and I thought it was just about moving down the elevator to the bottom level avoiding enemies, but once I got down there they put me back up by the first red door, apparently you had to collect stuff as well! Woah! Advanced shit ^__^ haha!

Scramble is always good ^_^ Here I actually beat the main highscore!! YAY!!! But unfortunately you didn’t get to sign your initials, the game’s highscore on screen just changed… so nobody will know it was me :(

What really blew my mind was Robotron 2084! This game was so much fun!!!! I played this for the longest time, the controls were smooth, it was hectic but still manageable. You’re this little guy with goggles and you have to shoot all the robots on screen, but there’s also obstacles that you have to avoid or shoot and regular people which need saving, each person gave a bunch of extra points. I’ve researched a bit and there only seems to be an old Atari 7800 port on consoles, and one for Atari Lynx, I’m trying to get a hold of the Lynx version now since I don’t have an Atari 7800 :/ There’s also a Midway collection for GBA that contains the game, and then there’s newer versions like Robotron 64 on N64 and Robotron X on PSX, these do not interest me as much though since they probably fucked up trying to make it 3D >_<

The rest of the exhibition contained a bunch of other stuff, both old and new, but mainly newer things as you walked away from the arcade corner. I spent  most of my time by the arcades while Becki checked out the rest. I did take a stroll around and looked at everything afterwards though. Everything was extremely neatly displayed :) Colorful and clean.

Becki spent  most of her time at the Blizzard corner since she’s an old WoW player ;D She also spent a lot of time with Fable and Black & White, she loves those types of games ^_^ They had most common consoles on display with some typical games in them to be played, like the NES with Super Mario Bros, Sega with Sonic games, Dreamcast with Shenmue etc.. you get the point ;D There were also a lot of PC games, even a lot of earlier ones. A whole corner dedicated to Tim Schafer, and PC’s and consoles so you could play his classics, such as Psychonauts ^_^ They had cubes where you could walk in and play Rockband, a stage for playing some Dancing game, some Outrun arcades and a big corner for indie games at the very end.

In the indie corner I recognized two things I really enjoy, first up the Behemoth studio which made Castle Crashers and Alien Hominide ^_^ Great games! But then I was also really surprised to see Tomáš Dvořák’s Samorost on display and playable on a PC! I haven’t played this game since it came out on the web back in 2003! I used to love this game and show it to all my friends, you could play it in your browser and it was really cool! The graphics were really different for its time, the puzzle solving is a lot of fun and the animations of the characters are just adorable! I URGE EVERYONE TO TRY IT OUT RIGHT NOW! Even to just see the beginning, it’s amazingly odd! And the music is cool ^_^ Click this and play this point and click adventure naaaaoooow!! >> It’s pretty short, but he’s also made sequels to the game ^^ Samorost 2 is longer and harder and has the best soundtrack, you can only try out the first chapter for free then it costs $5 but you get the soundtrack with it if you buy it ;D And Samorost 3 is in the making :D

We got the advice to check out a store while we were in Halmstad, we were told they had a bunch of retro games for sale, among other geeky things like movies, posters, merchandise etc, it’s called Backlist. Of course we went to check it out!

And they sure had some retro games!! :D

There were loads of NES games, some even boxed, but most were quite common titles so I didn’t find anything I didn’t already have. There were also quite a bunch of SNES and N64 games in decent condition. I checked out a few but no real bargains. The store is quite aware of the value of the retro games. I did however find some Sega Mega Drive games. They had both Master System and Mega Drive games, and a few systems as well. In some glass cabinets you could find some rare stuff though, like odd NES controllers, Game & Watch systems, other weird handhelds and a bunch of other stuff.

Apart from all the things on display you could see boxes of things “behind the scenes”, so I bet you could always just ask to see if they have what you’re looking for :) They were also in the middle of re-arranging the store so maybe they’ll put it all up eventually.

There was another room upstairs filled with “not-so-retro” games ^_^ Here’ you could find anything from GBA to PS3. Loads of Xbox 360, Gamecube and PS2 games. A little bit more expensive than Game Stop’s second hand games, but they are on the other hand only selling games. Here you could find a few odder titles though, at Game Stop it’s mainly the same old games in the shelves, the ones nobody want anymore ;D The good or rare ones disappear immediately, while here there still seemed to be a good mix of different games :)

They also had a bunch of other things in the store!

I wish I would have had more time that day, then I would have gone through all the boxes with vinyl records ^_^ There were loads of music at Backlist, both CDs and LPs! And most of all there were movies! DVDs on almost every wall and in the basement! These you could get a really good deal on! But you could also find some really rare collectors edition ones that were priced accordingly. I saw this VHS with Macross “Do you remember love” which I really felt like getting, this one was in japanese, but I already have it from when I was a kid, mine is dubbed into Swedish though! Hahaha! It sounds ridiculous ^_^ But I loved that movie when I was young. They had basically all genres of movies there, both anime and korean films (which I love!).

I also saw vintage toys decorating corners here and there, and merchandise like actions figures and that one pretty cool Final Fantasy watch :) The store is well worth a visit if you’re ever in the neighborhood of Halmstad, Sweden.

Here’s what I picked up at Backlist:

Yes yes, I know.. boxing..?! You all probably know that I’m not a fan of sports games, but I recently had a friend who asked me if I had this one boxing game that he used to play on the Sega Mega Drive as a kid, and I realized I didn’t have a single 16-bit boxing game o_O So when I saw these two (I do not remember which one it was my friend asked about, maybe it was one of these) I just couldn’t pass them up ^_^ So yay (>_<) now I have boxing games too! :D Hahah!

I’ve never even seen the other game before, The Ooze. The cover looked cool, but I have no clue what the gameplay will be like. It’s hard to tell from the screenshots on the back but I will try it out soon ^_^

That’s it for the Halmstad trip, I’m sorry for the extremely long blog post! Creds to those who stuck with it to the end ;D I’ll be back soon with some NEW PC Engine games, yes brand new… ;D

This weekend I visited Retro Gathering in Västerås (Sweden), I was there for the first time last year, but this convention has been running yearly since 2006! I came home with quite a lot of loot last year, and this year wasn’t far behind ^_^

I bought 62 games, and traded another 400+ games with friends! So I came home with lots of games.. most of the traded ones were newer games though so I’ll just cover my retro acquisitions on here ;D First up is the Philips Videopac Computer G7000 with 8 games that I traded with Anton for a bunch of Famicom doubles I brought for him :) I also found one Videopac game at the convention, this one was a newly made homebrew game for the system, the packaging was just splendid though, fits right in with the originals ^_^ Can you spot which one it is? ;D

Another system that I bought at the convention was an Arcadia 2001, or at least one of it’s clones. Never heard of this one before, but it didn’t last very long, it was discontinued after only 18 months. The reason I bought it was that it came with almost all the games released for the system! :D The games come in paper boxes, which were surprisingly well kept! Inside there’s a manual and overlays for the controllers and the game cartridge is latched in a whole in the box. This is extremely frustrating since the cartridge tends to move around underneath the opening so it’s hard to get it out of there without ripping the paper around it >_< This makes me even more surprised though that the previous owners haven’t already torn the boxes apart! XD

BTW I think it’s hilarious when companies back in the day lacked the licenses for certain popular titles and had to come up with “alternative” names for clones ;D Nibblemen!!! Hahaha!

I also got my second Sinclair ZX Spectrum that I had bought previously, but got delivered on the convention ^_^ The 48k model is so cute!!!!!!!! :D

There were more japanese games popping up at this convention than what I have seen before in recent years here in Sweden. I think it’s nice that people are becoming aware of all the amazing things you can find from over there ^_^ Unfortunately when demand rises the prices also go up >_< There were no Famicom games that I didn’t already have though, but I did find 5 Super Famicom games and a Famicom pirate that was just cheap :)

It’s always nice to pick up some C64 games as well, they are usually pretty cheap and the artworks on these old cassettes are just amazing! :D I always buy games that look fun, have a funny title or just incredible or funny artwork ^_^

I also found some Atari 2600 games, two turned out to be unopened and I’m torn whether to break them open or not >_< I wanna play them!!

Apart from all this I found a few other titles for various systems, like Batman Forever on Sega Mega Drive, Wolfenstein 3D for the Atari Jaguar and two Amiga 500 games, Pinkie and Capone ^_^ These last two looked like fun games when looking at the screenshots on the back :) Unfortunately my Amiga 500 has gotten a green screen so I can’t try them out right now :/ Have to get it fixed or find a new one first…

This year on Retro Gathering there were even more sellers than last year and loads of old systems setup to play ^_^ They held competitions in Super Bomberman 2 for the SNES, Super Skidmarks on the Amiga and Car Race ][ for Commodore PET. This last one in honor of the late CEO of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, who programmed that game back in the day. They also hosted the annual Swedish Championships of Pong, and I participated this year as well! I made it one step further than last year, so just a few more years and I might win! ;D hahaha or not.. I’ve began searching for an Atari Pong console so I can do some serious practicing though ^_^ They’re unfortunately hard to come by :/

This is one of my favorite retro gaming conventions in Sweden, the atmosphere is just so friendly and you can find so much more than just Nintendo and Sega stuff! ^_^ It’s just a shame it’s so far away from where I live :/ I will still come back next year though ;D

For more pictures from Retro Gathering, check out Geeky Gals :)

This year’s retro gaming convention in Malmö (Retrospelsfestivalen) was awseome! I didn’t have much time to buy stuff though since me and my Geeky Gals spent most time hosting competitions and stuff on stage. It was a lot of fun though ^_^ And we got to meet so many cool people :D I did however get half an hour off at the end of the day where I did some speed-shopping for retro games! haha :D

So here’s what I found ^_^ Not bad for 30 minutes huh? ;D

I’m thrilled to have found a Neo Geo game I didn’t already have! Less thrilled to find out that it’s a fighting game (like every other game on that system >_<) instead of a platform game, like the previous Karnov games on NES for example.. but I got a fair price so I’m happy :) I have a lot of friends who enjoy fighting games, so I’ll pop it in my new cab ;D (I’ll tell you more about that in a later post..)

I was also happy to stumble upon some PC Engine games, they’re quite unheard of here in Sweden. But Japon carried a few titles ^_^ I got Gokurake Chuka Taisen on HU card :) I love the other games in this series so I hope this one will be as good, if not better ;D

Apparently Rock n’ Roll Racing for SNES is supposed to be rad, haven’t tried it yet, but I’m looking forward to it ^_^ It’s NTSC, but now I have an NTSC SNES so I feel comfortable buying this region as well :)

I found these C64 carts that I jus thad to have, since they had such amazing artwork haha ^_^ I love how the guy on the cover of Saboteur is both jumping, kicking and shooting a gun at the same time, with such precision! hahaha :D

I also got some games for the Nokia N-Gage, a few weeks ago I bought two N-Gage systems so now I also have games for them ;D It’s Sonic and Crash Bandicoot, so hopefully they haven’t screwed that up..

From MXS I bought two handheld Game & Watch clones, one was called Hungry Elephant and the other one Sky Invaders. Unfortunately Sky Invaders didn’t have a hatch over the battery slot, and it didn’t seem to work when I held batteries in there :/ But I got them really cheap so I’m happy one of them worked :) I also bought a Tetris Jr. from Pixel, so cute! ^_^

I also found a Famicom pirate called Mechanized Attack II, I liked the cover and was curious of what was on it :) And I found a Game Boy game from Japanspel, I mainly bought this one for the ridiculous cover XD It’s called Tasmania Monogatari. Apart from this I found a cheap Sega Master System game I didn’t previously have.

I got some gifts from friends, like the Famicom matchbox from Pappas Pärlor and the mushroom and Sonic pin från Pixel K.A.F.E :) Thank you!! And I bought an amazing album that I have been listening to all week on Soundcloud from Professor Sakamoto! :D He performed at the festival and also at the after party ^_^ So talented and an amazing composer of chiptunes! At the bottom here I’ve embedded a few videos I filmed from his performances :) Go check him out!

Apart from all this my friend David showed up with all the ZX Spectrum games and other stuff I had bought from him earlier :) So I came home with 42 new Speccy games! (which I’m pretty sure is more than I paid for ;D) Thanks David! Apart from the Spectrum games I had bought a perfect case for storing Atari 2600 cartridges, or Famicom games :D But preferrably Atari 2600.. and a Neo Geo MVS game, Super Sidekicks 2. It’s football >_< but it was cheap :)

This year at Retrospelsfestivalen I also had a table where I sold off some doubles, I’m happy with how my table turned out ^_^ First time ever selling games!! It’s hard since I’m a hoarder by nature ;D hahaha! I set up a PC Engine with Coryoon so people could try out this awesome game ^_^ Unfortunately I didn’t sell too many of the japanese games, a lot of people don’t have the consoles for it here. Most people are into PAL NES and SNES.. :/ Also my fiancé was taking care of the table all day, and he is completely clueless when it comes to games! LOL!  I appreciate his support though, and people told me he was friendly ^_^

Here’s the videos from Professor Sakamoto’s performance at Retrospelsfestivalen 2015! Check them out! So much awesome!! :D

It has taken some time to sort, clean and photograph all of the 138 games I bought at Retro Gathering Vintage Computer Edition last weekend, but finally, here they are! :D I will go through them system by system ^_^

Atari ST

The first thing I bought at the convention was an Atari 1040 ST, I already had one game for it back home, and it was in nice condition, and cheap, so I couldn’t refuse ^_^ I also picked up a few games for it. I have never played on an Atari ST before, so I’m looking forward to trying it out! :D If anyone has any suggestions of exclusive games for the system that are a must have, then please let me know :) So far I only have 5 games for it, the ones I found this weekend were Deathbringer, Gauntlet III, Future Dreams and Captive.

Atari Lynx

To continue on the Atari trail, I also found a few additions to my Atari Lynx collection from Spel & Sånt :D Not particularly exciting titles, but they were in pretty nice condition :) I do however enjoy the game of Shanghai, and it’s gonna be interesting to see what the Slime World port on Lynx looks like! :D

Atari 2600

I’m always on the lookout for Atari 2600 games as well, but this year there were hardly any :/ I found one guy who had like 5 cartridges, crappy games in shitty condition, but he still wanted a lot for them! I bargained a bit and bought one, just to come home with at least one 2600 game >_> I got Super-Ferrari…

Commodore 64 – 5 1/4 Floppy disk games

Moving on to Commodore, I’ve had a 5 1/4 floppy disk game for the C64 for a while, and nothing to play it on :( But this weekend I found a new in box Ocean floppy disk drive for the C64! :D It was a bit pricey.. but I really needed one since I also bought even more floppy disk games this weekend ^__^ I got the classic text-based adventures of Zork 1-3, and at the very end of the day I got a good deal on a pretty cool adventure game called Infidel. The cool thing about it is the packaging and contents! Inside are handwritten letters and maps and stuff, it’s really well made ^_^ I have a friend that I think will really enjoy trying this game out ;D Apart from that I had bought a whole moving box full of old Amiga and Commodore games from my friend Likilato beforehand and I picked it up on this weekend since he was going to Retro Gathering too :) In this package were quite a lot of C64 floppy disk games as well ^_^ Some games that I’m quite happy with are T2 Terminator Judgement Day, Robocop, Space Harrier II and Weird Dreams, they all look pretty cool ^_^ Then there were also a few less fun games, I’m not quite sure what Operation Market Garden is, but it doesn’t sound fun, and the last three: Europe Ablaze, Russia The Great War in the East and Halls of Montezuma I’m pretty sure are some kind of edutainment games for learning history >_<

Commodore 64 – Cassette games

I found a few cassette games for the C64 as well. I got Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker from Japon, and Slap Fight for the ZX Spectrum. Pontus from Japon also tried to sell Last Ninja 2 to me, fortunately I didn’t buy it!! Because inside the big cardboard box of things I had bought from Likilato earlier contained not one but TWO copies of that exact game XD I had bought the package weeks before and didn’t remember everything that was in it.. but I’m just happy I’m not possessing three copies right now at least ;D The other C64 cassette games from Likilato were Last Ninja 3, Superman the Game, Ghostbusters II, Mr. Heli, Platoon, Speedball, Silent Service, Starglider and The Hunt for Red October.

Commodore VIC 20

Going back in time a bit we have the Commodore VIC 20, I got one of these last year and I’m still trying to expand my library of games for the system. I found a few VIC 20 cassettes on Retro Gathering this time on Mikael Holm’s table (he always has the coolest stuff!) ^_^ I know there’s two copies of Panic for VIC 20, but I couldn’t choose which one to go for, since they are DIFFERENT! It’s weird, since they are released by the same company, but one has a black spine, and the cassettes inside are different colors as well! O_o These were all dirt cheap though so I just picked them all up :) Except the two games called Vicolumn and Blue Star, these two were new releases for the system and cost a bit more, but it’s always interesting to see what people develop now for these old systems! Doodle Bug, Space Scramble, Cosmiads and Alpha Blaster all sound cool!

Sinclair ZX Spectrum, ZX81

Before moving on to consoles we have pickups from yet another old computer ^_^ I bought a few games for the ZX Spectrum, Pssst, Jet Pac and Cookie had such cool matching covers! Had to get them :) Then I also got Jet Pac with a different cover and 3D Starstrike, Split personalities, Pedro, Ghosts n’ Goblins and a program that came with the system called Horizons. I also found a Sinzlair ZX Interface 2 so I can play cartridge games on my 48k :D Now I just need to find some cartridge games >_> I also bought a ZX81 :D I’ve only known about this one for a little while, when I was looking for 3D Monster Maze and found out that it only came out on the ZX81. Now I have one! So now I just need to find 3D Monster Maze again >_< I missed out on the one eBay auction I’ve ever seen… >_<

Nintendo NES (+ Game & Watch and FDS)

I bought some NTSC NES games from Gaminggrannar and from some other sellers. I also got a Game & Watch Lifeboat from Söders Spel & Skivhandel and a random Famicom Disk System game with cats from Sven666 and another FDS game from my friend MXS :)

Sega Mega Drive

From my friend Karl I got a good deal and bought the sought after Japanese Sega Mega Drive shmup V-V (V five), I also got to buy most of his other Japanese Mega Drive titles since he wanted to get rid of them, it was mostly RPGs or strategy games, but I got such a good price that I couldn’t pass them up ^_^ I also found some PAL Mega Drive titles from other sellers, mainly sports games XD which I don’t particularly enjoy, but they were cheap! And some day me and Becki will have to have another Golf tournament ;D

Sega Master System

I also got a lot of Sega Master System games from various sellers. Mainly sports here as well, but I didn’t have them, and they were cheap ^_^

Sega Saturn & Playstation 2

Japon also managed to convince to bring home these two huge boxed Sega Saturn Arcade Racer controllers XD One PAL and one Japanese.. they told me that the controller was region free, so I sure hope they will both work with one console ;D In that case I might have another game to use in the next Retro Rumble competition for the finals ;D I also got two PS2 games with Megaman at a fair price from Anders :) They’re sealed.. but I might open them so I can play them!! ^_^

Amiga 500 / 1200

Now onto the biggest category of the day… Amiga! The big lot of games I had bought from Likilato contained A LOT of Amiga games :) I was happy to find Banshee in there, since MXS had recently told me it was a good game, it’s for the 1200 though so I have to find a place to plug that system in as well.. They’re so big and space-consuming! Loom has a beautiful cover, and I’ve seen it before, not quite sure what kind of game it is though, but I will find out :) There were a lot of other games that looked cool like Harlequin, Codename Hellfire, Wonderland, Super Stardust, Galdregons Domain etc. It’s gonna be fun to try them all out :D I wonder what kind of game Leather Goddesses of Phobos will turn out to be XD

That was all the loot for this time, now I have some gaming to do ^____^

So here comes my pickups from yesterday’s Sci-Fi convention Sci-Fi World in Malmö :D I bought quite a few games for various systems, mainly Sega this time! But let’s start off with some odd stuff that I just felt compelled to get!! Like these Star Wars Bend-Ems figures from 1993 with bonus trading cards! The poses of these figures are ridiculous! :D Look at that Stormtrooper!! ^___^

Then there’s this awesome Samus Aran fuse bead lamp made by Pappas Pärlor ^_^  It looks great in my game room! I also got a pair of Game Boy earrings from him! Thank’s Johan! :D

This figure of Sepiroth was not possible to pass out on! So cheap, and so cool ^___^

I also got some stuff from Webhallen :) Mario, yoshi and toad PEZ dispensers, a Mega Man energy drink and a mushroom ^_^

After this it was all games! :D Let’s start of with Sega! I got four Sega Master System games, Monopoly, Golfmania, Prince of Persia and G-Loc. Prince of Persia had such an awesome cover! He looks like a scared Luke Skywalker! :D

Then I also got G-Loc for the Sega Mega Drive, and Super Hang On, Normy’s Beach Babe-O-Rama and Mario Lemieux Hockey. Probably not the best games, but I didn’t previously have them, and my fiance only plays hockey for the Sega systems ;D And I got Strider II which I hope is as awesome as the first one! ^_^

I also got a Sega Mega CD game that had two games in one, on one side there’s Cobra Command and on the other side there’s Sol-Feace.

Let’s move over to Nintendo. Here I got three NES games, R.C. Pro Am (which I was sure I had before, but I couldn’t find it in my list, so I guess I was wrong..), Mad Max (probably extremely shitty since games based on movies usually are ;D) and Defender of the Crown.

I also got three SNES games, first up was Kirby’s Ghost Trap. This one is interesting since I had never heard of it before, but in the morning before the convention I was at my friend’s house and she had it, I got curious since it looked just like puyo puyo so I needed it, then I looked it up on eBay and considered buying it, but didn’t. Then when I came to the convention I saw it again! So I bargained with the guy and got it! I’m super excited to try it out now! :D Then I also got Q-Bert 3 and Dragon’s Lair, I’m wondering whether it’s as hard as the NES version ;D

I found some cheap Super Famicom games as well, but they’re hardly worth mentioning ;D Soccer, Baseball and racing Z_Z boring..

That’s everything I got at the convention! I also popped by the GAME store afterwards, and got some more stuff ;D But I’ll make another post of that later ^_^

The japanese Famicom is the equivalent of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), they later released a Disk System to go with the Famicom, and after that Sharp produced this Twin Famicom which had the Disk System integrated with the console so you didn’t have to have two power adaptors. It was first released in 1986 :)

I recently bought three more Twin Famicoms! Don’t ask me why I need to have four Twin Famicoms, but they are just all so pretty! And I really love the Famicom so I just figured I’d collect the hardware as well ^_^ The Twin Famicom is definitely my favorite Famicom system :) Then again, I don’t have the toploader to compare with yet.. I think I’m only missing one Twin Famicom now though :)

Two of the consoles are Twin Famicom Turbo systems :D This means that the controllers have built in Turbo buttons. One of them is pale orange, I thought it was sunfaded but was told it comes in this color! The one I had before is brighter red. They also have different colours on the controllers. You can see the difference here, the right one is my old one, the left one is the new Twin Famicom Turbo:

I will call it orange from here on. The orange Twin Famicom Turbo from Sharp has a darker red eject-button and beige / blue-grey elements. This one is called Sharp Twin Famicom AN-505.

Another system I got was the darker version of the Twin Famicom Turbo. This one is black with green and grey-purple elements. This one has the same name as the orange one, Sharp Twin Famicom AN-505.

The third one I got a bit earlier is a regular Twin Famicom without Turbo buttons on the controllers. This one has a matt finish in dark grey with pale red and green details. This one has the same “Famicom” text on the top as my old red one. I like the design of this text better than the straight one on the Turbo’s. This one is called Sharp Twin Famicom AN-500B. The name differs from my first red one which is called AN-500R, but I’m not sure what the technical differences are.

What’s interesting is that all the Twin Famicoms have led lights in the power button, except for my red Twin Famicom. Here’s the various fronts of the consoles:
Edit: The dark grey Twin Famicom is supposed to have a red power button without the light, it’s been modded ;)

And here’s some more pictures to compare the versions:

Now I just need to find some space for all these beauties in my game room ;D Also if you wanna see some more pictures of my red Twin Famicom that I got a long time ago you can find them here >> 

So which one is your favorite? :D

I’ve actually never played this game before, since I didn’t grow up having games of my own I just never encountered it. I’ve heard a lot of people through the years praising it though so I finally went ahead and bought it! Star Fox is what it’s called in Japan. This popular series has also gone by the name of Starwing and Lylat Wars, mainly in Europe.

A lot of people are probably gonna hate me now, but I don’t really care, everyone is entitled to their own opinion! ;D

I didn’t like it.. It might be because I don’t have any nostalgic memories when playing it. I bet it was all amazing and such when it came out, but it hasn’t’ aged well in that case. The controls were a bit stiff and I found it hard to aim and hit the targets.. I did give it a good hour or so before quitting.

I also tried several different routes you could choose from, and reached a couple of different bosses, all but one of which I couldn’t beat..

I have to admit that the graphics are unique for the SNES and the polygon shapes are somewhat charming, but this type of shooter (rail shooter) just isn’t my type of shmup. I prefer sidescrolling shooters, horizontal or vertical or fixed shooters like space invaders :) Bullet hell shooters are also quite fun ^_^

I will put this in my shelf, to await that nostalgic friend that will visit me and ask for it. Then I will gladly pull it out, let them play it for all the hours they want while I watch and in my mind being glad that I don’t have to play it again ;D

Yesterday was the second time I visited Pixel K.A.F.E. in Malmö! This time it twas mainly because they were hosting a Retro Market there, selling off games and consoles and other nerdy things! Unfortunately it’s not going too well for Pixel, but I hope the contributions and sales today will have some effect and make it turn around! Because it’s an awesome place! :)

There were so many things for sale! Both Nintendo and Sega games, both PAL, NTSC and Japanese! Even Neo Geo games!!! Both AES and MVS, right next to the My Little Ponys ^__^ There were Vintage Toys, consoles, even arcades! And also something I really wanted, but it was too heavy for me to carry home on the train >_< Namely a custom built arcade controller for the Playstation 2 to be used with Pop ‘n Music!! So pretty ^__^

Apart from this, the owner showed me around arcade town! I even got to see the insides of a Blast City cabinet! :D So cool! The key to the cabinet had “SEGA” written on it ^_^ It’s all about the details ;D

So this is what i scored! First up is a bunch of Neo Geo MVS cartridges!! :D :D I’m totally excited about these! And NONE OF THEM are fighting games :D I’ve bought a converter for my AES so that it can play MVS cartridges as well. This is mainly because the collecting will become more feasible and cheaper! I will buy shockboxes for these carts, then they will blend in with the rest of the AES games on the shelf ^_^ The games I got was Spin Master, which is a really cool platforming game, Puzzle Bobble, Puzzle de Pon and League Bowling ^__^ I’m eagerly awaiting my converter to arrive so I can play these!!!

One of the cartridges is transparent, the others are black.

Apart from this I also found some Sega Mega Drive games. These were The Tennis Tournament Grand Slam, RoboCop 3 and NHL 95. The last two lacked a manual, but Grand Slam was complete.

I also found some Super Nintendo games and a Super Famicom game. Even though this NTSC version of Final Fight was in pretty bad shape and lacked a manual I still had to get it, because that boxart is amazing!! I fell in love with it ^_^ I also found Final Fight for SFC, so I got that one too. It’s really fun to just see the differences in the artwork between the North American version and the Japanese :D Apart from these two I also found a really nice version of Tetris Attack!! I didn’t have Tetris Attack previously, but I have Panel de Pon, which is basically the same game, they just switched out the characters ^_^

I couldn’t help but look at all those amazing vintage toys that were there as well ^_^ They are just so charming! :D I ended up buying four figures for Pepparkaksninja that he wanted. He collects vintage toys, takes cool pictures of them and makes even cooler videos (check out his amazing collection here!). I also got a little something for myself that I think will fit perfectly in the game room! :D

When you move his arm the ghosts appear in his mouth!! :D Pac-Man <3