Little Red Bastard

Christmas of 1991 was one hell of a Christmas for me. When I was 6 years old, my parents did me a solid and bought me the raddest system on the face of the planet, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The "SNES", if you're nasty. If I'm remembering correctly, Super Mario World was a pack-in game, because I know that I played it all morning that day before leaving to meet up with my extended family for the holiday. I was pretty upset that I had to leave my shiny new console behind, but all of that sorrow and despair flew out the window when I opened up a gift from my aunt. She had bought me a game for my SNES. A game that terrified me the moment I laid eyes on it. A game known simply as "Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts".

Apparently my aunt was torn between buying me that or Final Fight, and I guess the image of a knight fighting zombies was a bit more appropriate for my young impressionable eyes than a picture Mayor Mike Haggar mean-mugging some random thug. The box art for SG'nG scared the crap out of me. I mean, I was 6 years old, and I was afraid of pretty much everything at the time. I didn't let anyone know about my fear of this new game because, well, it was a new game. I couldn't risk having it taken away by my parents, as I had been playing a hand-me-down Intellivision up until that point in time, and my young gamer mind needed to be fed new, cutting edge technology. I was sick of sucking it up at "Burger Time". I needed to suck at a new game. And boy, was this ever the game to satisfy my needs.

We got a chance to play my new game the day after Christmas, and although I was excited to play something new, I was also incredibly nervous. I imagined some horrible ghoul jumping through the television once we powered on the console. My dad popped the game into the SNES and I promptly ran out of the room. The opening cinematic scared me half to death, and the accompanying music makes my heart drop to this day. The terror that this game evoked in me actually contributed to me not really wanting to play it. As a result, I spent the next few months watching my dad play.

Anyone who has ever played SG'nG knows how hard it is. This game is not just difficult, but it will actually rip out your heart and stomp it into the ground if you aren't careful. It is soul crushingly hard. I heard more curse words in the few months it took for my dad to beat this game than I have for the rest of my life up until now. Not only does the game throw a ton of enemies at you, but the fact that you can't change direction mid-jump results in a lot of "oh crap" moments where you can see your death coming but can't actually do anything about it.

The hardest enemy in this game isn't even a boss, in my opinion, and I'm sure many others would agree with me. The hardest enemy in SG'nG is a little red bastard known as Red Arremer, or "SONOFABITCH" as my dad liked to call him. This little demon would fly in at a set point in a level, and fly around erratically, with no apparent pattern. Any time you tried to move forward for an attack, he would fly away and then swoop down for the kill as you were stuck in the middle of a jump. Red Arremer was no joke.

I've since played through SG'nG, although it took me about ten years to build up the courage to try it on my own. The game was as hard as I remembered, but the memories that it brought back gave me the will to play through to the end.

Rocky VII - Activision

So hot topic on the net is the long and bloated story of Activision being a bunch of wankers and many key members of Infinity Ward (Creators of the Call Of Duty series) walking from the company, some people seem slightly confused over what is happening so I thought I would sum it up in my own, short words.

• Infinity Ward's contract with Activision runs out soon
• Activision want them to make another Modern Warfare title before it does
• Activision have hardly paid Infinity Ward anything for MW2
• Infinity Ward are walking

So there are two things to keep in mind with this, one is that without the big guns that are walking from Infinity Ward, Modern Warfare 3 will most likely seriously suck, not to mention, completely and utterly filled to the tip with bugs, not only because they will have a less experienced staff working on the title, but because they have barely any time to develop it before the contract runs out.

This is pretty much what a swastika looks like today.

Basic point Modern Warfare 3 is going to suck, Activisions fault.

Considering how Infinity Ward was formed out of the ashes of 2015, who developed Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, the circle is finally complete with yet another publisher crushing the hopes and dreams of a decent sequal.

In fashion terms, Activision is the new EA.

Stay Retro.

Scrap Yard Mame Project: Entry #1

For a long time I have wanted an Arcade Cabinet, but not only are they too expensive, they take up more room than I have free, after looking into mini arcade cabinets the price factor was still fairly high with people reporting prices of $500 - $900+, so an idea hit me, why not try to build one with nothing but recycled parts, as so I have set up a small challenge as my next project, a "Scrap Yard Mame Cabinet", it will most likely take awhile to complete as I have no idea when I will find resources, but these are the rules I have set myself.

My Pixel art is awesome! Roughest mockup, EVER.

Scrap Yard Mame Cabinet Challenge Rules
. All construction material must be found in the wild
If you hunt around on hard rubbish collection days there is a massive amount of wood out there for the takings, not to mention half finished tins of paint and other things that can be recycled for use on the cab.

.Electrical components must be found in the wild / free
Again there are heaps of old computers that people put in there hard rubbish for collection that can be reused for the guts of your arcade cab, you don't need much power for a mame computer, so be on the lookout. People through out CRT screens all the time!

.Things that can be purchased
While most of the things people can pay up to $500+ for in a mame arcade cab can be found in the wild at the nice price of $0, some things such as the buttons and joystick generally can not so for that purpose the following items cam be purchased.

. Arcade controls
. Screws, glue, other construction needs
. Perspex for the screen, though if free options are available, I will use them
. Items for finishing touches (While the cab may be completed I may wish to buy some decals, etc to give it that 'arcade' feel

At the moment I have an AMD 64 rig with 1.5gb of mismatched DDR ram which I have got from random computers being thrown away as hard rubbish and at TAFE as well as a 7600GT is from a random old rig, I don't remember ow I came into its possession, but it didn't cost me a penny. I do not have a case, but this is fine for what I am after as it will be smaller and have better air flow. I also have a 40GB SATA drive that was being thrown out (It was in an unopened static bag) in someones hard rubbish, I am yet to test the set up, as I don't have a power button, but I will bridge the connection and test everything sometime soon.

So far I have collected most of the 'guts' for my cab.

Keep an eye out for updates on the project, but keep in mind it will take quite a long time to not only build and put together, but to gather resources, so lets find out just how cheaply someone can make a Table Top Arcade Cabinet.

Stay Retro!

The Hunt For Red Ram-Tober...

So I didn't quite pull off the title like I thought I would, but oh well!

So after a few months of solid searching I finally found a Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak at a decent price, while I have seen them floating around eBay for $20-$30aud I wasn't that desperate for one as I only owned two games that used it (And only 1 that required it) but none the less it has been on my list and I finally found one for the lovely price of $13, which is cheaper than I had seen 3rd party ones go for, and I have heard reports of those damaging N64's so I decided to stay away.

Finally a bit more 'umph' under that hood.

I wont give a review or anything like that but just wanted to give my thoughts on it, take in to account I only own two games that use it, which are Star Wars Pod Racer and Perfect Dark. Pod Racer lets you up the Res of the game, and I have to say it makes a massive difference, once you play on Hi-Res for a few minutes, switch it back and the screen suddenly looks overtly blurry, it still has short comings compared to the Dreamcast version, such as lack of Music, but this differently brings them much closer in terms of graphics. Perfect Dark needs to Pak to play the single player campaign, when you switch from lo-Res to hi-Res the difference again is pretty massive. If you own any games that can use the Expansion Pak (Or if you wish to get the select few games that require it) then I highly suggest picking one up, if you can find one at a decent price. If I ever get my hands on a capture card I will upload some comparisons, as taking photo's of the TV doesn't do it justice.

To be able to play Zelda MM / DK64 / P-Dark, its worth it alone, there are just some bonuses in a handful of other games which you might own which will have a small but worthwhile face lift.

PS: I was shocked at the amount of videos I had seen showing people how to remove the jumper pak without the key that was originally supplied with the Expansion Pak, use the lid off the casing, it took 10 seconds.

Stay Retro.

Sticky Situations

Haha, Sorry for the lame title, but I had to do it!

Anyway, today while I was in a Cash Converters (Which is a Pawn Broker chain), on my normal hunt for a retro piece of gold two things happened.

1. I saw a boxed Game & Watch of Donkey Kong.
2. I saw there was a security sticker, the type that destroys everything it touches, right there on the box.

So I went from being very excited (that would have to be the coolest thing I had ever seen at a Cash Converters, and if it was not so pricey I would have added it to my collection.) to being pissed off at the fact that they had wrecked such a awesome piece of history by plastering sticker that would utterly destroy the reason they were selling it for so much.

A classic being destroyed.

Looking for the answer I knew I would get I asked the lady who worked in the store why it was so expensive, she replied because it was a rare collectors item and made rarer because it had the box, I then asked her why the sticker was on the box if it was part of the reason it was so expensive and she replied for secuirty / insurance reasons. At this point I asked to look at the Gameboy games they had on display and purchased The Castlevania Adventure for the Gameboy, but I will come back to that in a moment. What really bugged me about this answer was that not only would the sticker wreck the box, the reason is was so pricey, but the reason given, secuirty, was made redundant by the fact it was placed it a locked glass display case!

With the Donkey Kong thing out of my system, I got home, ready to play some Castlevania Adventure on my Super Gameboy, so I removed (read: Fail) the sticker from the back and this happened.

I have seen this too many times!

I swear I did'nt even try to do this, it happened when I peeled back one carner and pulled, it was'nt even until after this happened that I thought of blogging this. I know what your thinking cant you just pick the reast off with your nail, well I did that and it looked like this.

What a mess, sticky!

I could'nt get any more off with my nails, so I had to get out a cloth and some rubbing alcohol and rub the rest off, in the end I got it looking pretty good and you could'nt really notice that the sticker was there, but I mean why for the love of god do they need to put these kind of stickers on things when they are in a locked display case, its one thing to clean up a cart, but it is another thing when you put it on the box! A piece of cardboard! It blows my mind, cant they stick it on the inside of the box. There have been times when I have gone in, seen a game, seen the sticker across the label of the cart and not purchased the game. If you jack the price on something because it is a 'collectors item' treat it like one!

Did I really need to go through all that effort?

Anyway, after all of that effort to clean the game, I am off to play some Castlevania Adventure, I have the Wii 'Rebirth' so it will be interesting to see how they compare.

Stay Retro.

Super Famicom Bootlegs

So I bought a copy of Super Mario Collection for the Super Famicom, known as Super Mario All Stars to the English speaking world from eBay for the great price of $6. Well of course it was too good to be true because when I unwrapped my shinny new game it was a Bootleg. I thought I would post some pictures and point out some of the tells of bootleg games.

So in these photos you can see a bootleg of Super Mario Collection side by side with a real version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo for the Super Famicom.

Notice how the bootleg is a slightly different color, this can be hard to notice if it is not placed next to a real cart.

It can be pretty hard to tell from the front of the cart, while some have low quality labels which is a dead give away, this bootleg is pretty hard to spot from the front on, especially because the screws used are gamebit, the same type Nintendo use, most times you find bootlegs the use Phillips head or other common screws. So lets flip it over and have a look at the back of the cart.

There are so many giveaways that the cart on the left is a bootleg.

So lets kick off with the most obvious things wrong with the cart, first of all there is no Nintendo stamp. On a real Super Famicom cart there should be a stamp on the top end of the cart that reads NINTENDO, Super Famicom, Cassette, Model No, etc. On the bootleg this is missing as well as the warning being stamped rather than the sticker that is on regular carts. Also the 'holes' oposite the screws look differant.

Bootleg on the left, real cart on the right.

Another giveaway on this cart is the grooves on the left and ride hand side of the carts, all my real carts have five, but the bootleg has six.

Again, this can be hard to notice if your not looking for it.

The bootleg itself works perfectly, it even saves, which as far as bootlegs go is pretty hit or miss.

Just a small add-on, here are front and back images of what the real version of Super Mario Collection looks like, thanks to reagan of Racketboy for the images.

Hope you enjoyed reading,
Stay Retro.