mechanized

At risk of sounding like a dick, the power-up/power-down item element doesn't really stick out to me - hell, the colors are what really caught my attention. It's not a mechanic that really seems to lend itself to refreshing Space Invaders, but more than that, it's like applying a more modern and commonplace shooter convention into one of the founding fathers of the genre. At risk of sounding like ...something else, the first thing that I was hoping to see from the game when I read the tentative Rainbow Invaders title was a game in which one's ship cycled through the colors of the rainbow, and each color would be either the Weakness of a particular color of ship or the ship would be Invulnerable to the color, or even reflect it like Light actually works. Such that: -In the first instance, the Green Ship would be vulnerable to only Green Blasts -In the second instance, the Green Ship would not be affected by Green Blasts -In the third instance, the Green Ship would reflect Green Blasts back at the player I mean, with a Rainbow theme, that is a focal point that really needs to deliver Color, ya know? Sheer ... colorliness. Above all that, though, something different would really need to be done with the enemy formations and behaviors to really bring something new to the table, and exploit any of the above. So I'm sure all of this is way too late to ever be useful, nevermind it was entirely unsolicited, but these were a few things that came to mind. Maybe someone out there can use it, anyway... it's a gameplay mechanic I've been kicking around for years, despite my entire ignorance to game coding and high unlikliness to be able to ever pursue utilizing it.

Yeah, Al actually saw the thread and was cool enough to PM me about it! I guess once he gets home and catches up with the other orders, I'll see what he can do with my response to him. Woo!

Arrrrgh! I forgot to order yesterday! Damnable New Year's Eve partying! Son of a bee sting, I even had the Post-It note on my monitor! ArrrrrGH!

I just wanted to say, after checking up on this contest some weeks after its conclusion, I've never been happier to be utterly stomped in a contest. Justin, your knight truly is head-and-shoulders above the crowd, despite his apparent short stature. His bounding walk speaks confidence, the sway of his shield is reminiscent of the roll of a steam train chugging along (and that flowing plume is additionally evocative of vented steam, I'll note), and I can almost hear the comical, metallic clap of his visor. It's truly an inspired icon and I love it and thank you for coming up with it and winning a deserved place in the game. (And of course, I thank the cafeman for setting that place aside, heh!) The icon's so endeared itself to me that I started imagining it in its own little side-scrollery sort of game, thrusting out a little sword or lance to beat back the forces of evil, maybe with a jump animation for some platforming... hell, there should be a platforming Adventure game! Climbing a tower and such! The 5200 has buttons for it! I have never, never been more glad to lose. Very nicely done!

I really geared mine toward being simple, myself. It seemed encouraged due to memory constraints. Here's hoping my Blockhead can hold his own against the square-shielded knight. Ken-iggit.

Many impressive entries!

I loved that game... I haven't played it sine Middle School, though. I don't have a computer to run it and if there's a console version, I don't have it or the console, heh.

As soon as I saw this I read all I could find on it. Let's say I'm .. Excited. Yeah, that's the word... Excited. I've been looking forward to Adventure II for a long time, and to see it nearing completion *and* bringing on a contest, oh... count me in. Count me in five times plus a set of twenty rankings, already sent. Oh yeah. Oh ... Yeah.

Did anyone look at the list of games on it? In particular "Adventure II" is cited. Is this another game, or the one that cafeman was working on? The information does say that some Homebrew games are involved.

Any word on if the next Nintendo console will also be compatible with the GameBoy Player?

I have the DX cart, I'm pretty much just waiting to be in the mood to play a game, and then being in the special mood to take on a more time-consuming game. The last hefty chunk of time I dropped on a game was for Metroid Prime 2 (and I got all the damn Journal and Creature entries, ha!). I still need to finish Oracle of Ages and then do Oracle of Seasons, too... and I haven't, again, been in the mood for the more time-consuming gaming lately. Was never a problem with the Summoner games, for instance, or Baldur's Gate, since they keep a play log/journal... boy do I wish more games did that.... I'm sure I'll eventually give Majora's Mask another shot, once I've got a concise walkthrough in hand (or on screen) and feel like dealing with being a damnable bush shrub again.

You've got plenty of replies by now, but I guess one more can't "hurt" .. can it? Like others have said, don't consider the games chronologically, since not only do the games jump around in time periods, but also in generations, and even worlds. The games that do happen in the same world, for instance, would be generations apart with recurring characters in a sort of reincarnative cycle. For the most part, there is always a Princess Zelda, heir to the Hyrule Kingdom, with the princess in each game being, at least, named in homage to the original Princess Zelda who had been cursed into a deep, magical sleep. How we always have a "Link" available is a bit more tricky and has never officially been touched upon... it's possible that young boys get named in homage to the original Link, or blonde kids, or the Triforce or the Gods themselves (Nayru, Din, Fayore) preselect the hero at birth and inspire the boy's naming... I dunno, it's all supposition. There is, nevertheless, always a Link and a Zelda, and a handful of others are involved with their intertwined fates and reincarnations, or whatever (Impa, Zelda's nurse/guard/handmaiden, and King Jabu-Jabu/Jabun for example) and most of the time Gannondorf is involved with whatever is wrong, notably as the King of the Gerudo, King of Thieves, Dark Magician, or in his more corrupted form, Gannon, a hulking brute of a pig-monster. Often, the King of Hyrule is involved in some manner, but it's uncertain (like much of the uncertainty of LoZ) whether it's a particular recurring kingly presence or just the king du jour. Chronologically, the games were released as: Legend of Zelda (NES), Adventure of Link (NES), Link's Awakening (GB), A Link to the Past (SNES), Link's Awakening DX (GBC; Slightly expanded and in Color), Ocarina of Time (N64; and likely thereafter the OoT Master Quest edition), Majora's Mask (N64), Oracle of Seasons/Oracle of Ages (GBC; these two games go hand in hand, with different plots and play that affect one another via link cable {note: extra features if playing with a GBA}), Wind Waker (GC), A Link to the Past w/ Four Swords (GBA; a slightly modified Link to the Past with four player link cable support), Four Swords Adventures (GC) .... and of course, this totally ignores the bastard games that were released for the Phillips system. Sequentially, it's hard to discern what goes with what. It appears that Legend of Zelda and Adventure of Link are connected, but it's hard to tell which came first, though likely LoZ happened first (I say it's difficult to tell because there's no mention of the Princess Zelda that Link would have saved in LoZ during the events of AoL, in which Link is trying to revive the original Princess Zelda, which seems pretty odd). Prior to both of these is supposed to have occurred A Link to the Past, where we learn more about Gannon's origins and how he became the pig-monster magician fought in the other two. Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Wind Waker also seem to be linked together, but on a potentially different version of Hyrule than the other games; Majora's Mask in particular has little to no association with Either world, but involves young Link from OoT being trapped in a sort of tangent universe and having to escape. Many, many years later, the events of Wind Waker unfold, long after Hyrule is little more than a memory. (There is supposed to be a direct sequel to Wind Waker in the works, reportedly.) Link's Awakening seems to stand entirely on its own as well, but it could tie into another game. It involves a Link's adventures in a dream world (I hope that wasn't a spoiler... ehh..). Oralce of Ages/Oracle of Seasons seem to involve another, different Link as well. I haven't finished these, so I can't really say much on the plot. Were I to rate them, I'd have a difficult time. Legend of Zelda is a stellar game for its time. Adventure of Link, while very different than its predecessor and the games to come, is very good in its own right with solid gameplay all around. A Link to the Past is, for many, the definitive top-view Legend of Zelda game, and for good reason - it's colorful, the world is pretty damn big, the gameplay is solid all around, and there's a lot to find and do with upwards of ten full-fledged dungeons and many smaller dungeons. Link's Awakening was hard for me to get into the last time I played it, but I suspect it's because I just can't seem to get into it with the original release's pea soup colorations - I expect I'll find it much more palatable once I play the DX version. Ocarina of Time is a great game, and one of the defining titles for the N64. The world, while large, doesn't quite seem large enough, to me, but the dungeons are inventive and well-executed, and there's a lot to do. Majora's Mask, though, I personally loathe... I hate the entire time limit thing (you have a certain number of "days" to complete the game) and I found it to be the sort of game I require a walkthrough to manage - very little was intuitive, and finding clues on what to do and where to go was extremely frustrating with that timer ticking down. Oracle of Ages/Oracle of Seasons have so far proven to be a great time, though I haven't picked them up in a while (though I blame that on my current disinterest in games... I just want more to do than sit and play a game, so don't think it's because the game was boring). Wind Waker is a great game, too, but a lot of people find the sailing to be tedious; me, I see right through the sailing and believe it's a result of the developers wanting a "big" game world but not having a lot of space to make it on the GameCube discs.... it's still a great game, though, with fun characters, things to do, nice dungeons, and good plot. .... instead of rating them, I'll say which ones I find myself going back to after all these years. Legend of Zelda, since it's a great, fairly quick play (by fairly quick, I mean if you know what you're doing, you can breeze through it in a few hours) and loaded with nostalgia. Plus, that Second Quest, that's some replay. I still haven't finished that one, heh! A Link to the Past, I pick this one up every few years and do it start to finish and am consistently entertained to the end, where, once again, I'm a little sad that the ride is over. Adventure of Link, I never played much as a kid (I didn't own it) so I'm sort of discovering it for the first time and I like it. I pick it up infrequently. Wind Waker, which also has a second quest that I'm currently working through, but its second quest isn't really a second quest... it's mostly being able to play through the game again in a different outfit with a few new features available, like being able to understand ancient languages that certain characters speak, et cetera. Ocarina of Time has some replace in its Master Quest, too, but I'm usually hesitant to pick it up again because it's a big, time-consuming game, and these days I'm mostly looking for a quick fix before I do something else.

Top-Loader RF output will improve by cleaning the connection surfaces on the NES itself, then using a short male/female gold connector to connect to the RF box, and then to the television. As for Backwards Compatibility, that was one of the big selling points for the PS2 for me. First, the convenience and space-saving of only having to have one system out. Then, various improvements in processing and display (which largely didn't happen, but there are a few here and there) were attractive. Finally, a PS2 has two libraries of games to play, the PSX system's entire library and then everything that comes along for the PS2. My only want now is for reliable PSX "mega" memory cards. It's similarly the reason I actually bought a GameBoy Advance, and then a GBA Player for the GameCube. I don't play games on the go that much, so I certainly didn't "need" a GameBoy these days, but a GameBoy Advance can play all the old GameBoy Games I enjoyed when I was young, all the GameBoy Color games I mostly missed on, and all the GBA library of games that are essentially the next generation of the Super Nintendo in a handheld (which.. I don't really want to play on a small screen, so I got the GameBoy Player, heh {It's the only way to play Castlevania and Metroid!}). If the GBA didn't play the earlier GameBoys' games, it's very doubtful I would have ever touched it or the GameBoy Player, no matter how bad I wanted to play Metroid: Fusion or MegaMan Battle Network 2. It just would not have been worth the money to this consumer (well, pair of consumers, since my girlfriend was mostly interested...heh).

My only problem with the NES Top-Loader is the crevice between the incline with the buttons and the raised area with the controller ports. It's a bit of a pain to clean well... can't just wipe it down, have to whip out the brush and everything. Blargh. That aside, I look forward to your review and further information on the NES Clone.

And for all you PC Doom 2 players, keep in mind the player-made mod levels. In particular, I recommend getting the Osiris mod... it's one of the best, easily, with a sort of Star Gate feel to it. Good stuff all around.