Silverfleet

Yesterday, I was perusing my game collection, looking for something to play. I came across Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil for the Xbox, and completely forgot that it has Ultimate Doom and Doom II on there! So, I played through the 1st episode of Ultimate Doom. Yeah, I'm counting it. Ultimate Doom (Knee Deep in the Dead), Xbox: I haven't played through the 1st episode of Doom in years! Last time I did, it was on a 486-based PC, and it was a shareware version. Playing on the Xbox with my Logitech wireless controller was sublime, and made the game a lot easier. I plan on playing through all of the episodes soon.

I went out hunting over the weekend! First stop was a car swap meet I go to every year, and I always find gaming items there. In past years, I've gotten rare NES games real cheap, piles of Atari games, and more. This year, I found stuff, but it was all overpriced. Game Over. -PS2 commons were $10-up, GC commons were double that! -PS3/360 commons were even more -Found a bunch of grungy OG Xboxes, all $65-up -Broken Game Gear with a handful of games for $30 -NES Control Deck Box for $75 (just the box, not even the Styrofoam!) Needless to say, I got nothing. Later in the day, I was driving by a closing Toys R Us, and decided to pop in one last time. To my surprise, the place was still loaded up pretty good, and even had some games. Nearly all of the games were in a case, and no one would open it. But I did get what's in the pic below for right around $30: The Switch controller grip was interesting. I think I read somewhere that I can get a cell phone to recognize the Joycons and use it to play games, or I can just use it as intended. It also charges the Joycons as you play, which is cool. Sunset Overdrive is one I've had on my list for a while. The Lego car was an impulse buy, as is the little Lego-style arcade machines. Those things were cool, and I bought all they had (there are 6 in the set and they had 4 of the 6).

This is a tough one, as I'm a huge Castlevania fan. My problem is that I group Castlevania games into 3 categories: platform action, Metroidvania, and 3D (not counting the weird Castlevania Judgement fighting game). Best overall? Uhh... Symphony of the Night, I think? It's definitely my favorite of all the Metroidvania-style games, and I've played through it a bunch of times without getting bored of it. I also have it on multiple platforms (the original PS1 game, PSP, and Xbox Live) and have played through it on all of them. Out of the platformers, I'm going with Castlevania III. It had everything that made the original great, but with better graphics, sound, and gameplay. Plus, it had better replay value, with the branching paths and different allies. IV comes in real close, as does Rondo of Blood. On the 3D games, I have a bunch of them, but haven't played enough of them to make a real decision. In my head, Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness are hard to tell apart. I know I didn't enjoy Legacy of Darkness on the N64, but not many people did.

I haven't had a lot of time for gaming this year, but one of the things I've wanted to do for a while was to burn some Sega CD games to play them on the actual console rather than emulation. I had a couple hours yesterday, so I cooked up a bunch of games. And surprisingly, I played all the way through a couple of them! Lords of Thunder (Sega CD) I've heard this was a good one. Yup, it is! Sorta reminded me of if one of the Castlevania games was a shooter, with some elements from UN Squadron/Area 88 thrown in (power up orbs, health bar, the shop, etc). I played it on Normal difficulty and had no problem breezing through the game without dying. The real standout here is the soundtrack. Holy crap it ruled!!! It's so good I'd listen to it outside of the game. Total early 90's riff-tastic shredfest! Road Avenger (Sega CD) Another one I've read/heard about for years. It's a FMV game like Dragon's Lair; basically one huge Quick Time Event while watching a video. And that video... it's one of the most ridiculous, over-the-top action sequences I've ever seen. It stars the car that's seen hanging out in the garage in the very beginning of Double Dragon, and you basically are going out to avenge the death of a loved one... ON THE ROAD! And in office buildings, museums, caves, sewers, on a farm, and more. None of it makes any damn sense, and it's beautiful. I had to just keep playing until the end to see all the insane action. Also, the opening theme is amazing. Game Sack did a "rough translation" that you have to see and hear. The whole soundtrack is 80's style Cheese Metal, and it's great. https://youtu.be/vrULSod-JO8

Mega Man 2 is very high on my top 10 all time favorite games list. It's also my favorite game on the NES, and for good reason: the gameplay, graphics and music are absolutely timeless. That said, paying $100 for what's basically a tribute to that game just doesn't make sense to me. Even if I didn't have a copy, I'd just seek out the original. Then again, that's me. I can't blame others for getting excited about this release, because both of these games absolutely RULE.

Man, I'm glad I still have my original boxed copy of Mega Man 2. It's cool that they are doing this, but $100 seems a bit steep.

My Top 3: Power Strike Wonder Boy Shinobi I own all three of those. Also, I really need to play my SMS more.

Ha, I still have the Beeshu Jazz Stick! First turbo controller I ever bought. It's odd because the stick is on the right and the cord is super short.

It was such a deal, even back then. Remember, the Saturn was still in stores at the time! I also knew way back then that Guardian Heroes was something special; I played that copy of the game for hours at that kid's house before I bought the Saturn!

Now that I think of it, I believe I also got my Saturn toward the tail end of 1995! A rich kid up the street that I used to hang out with sometimes decided to get a Playstation at launch, and didn't want his Saturn stuff anymore. I gave him $100 of my hard-earned paper route money and he gave me the following: -Saturn console -3 controllers and a Virtua Cop gun -InterAct Memory Card -Virtua Fighter 2 -Virtua Cop -The Horde -NHL All Star Hockey -Daytona USA -Guardian Heroes (!!!) He also had X-Men: Children of the Atom, but he traded it in for some reason on the Playstation, but not any of the other stuff. All games were complete and mint, and I still have them all. For some reason, I had a hard time finding Saturn stuff at stores at the time, so my library stayed pretty small. It still is; I only have about 10-12 games for it today. I need to do something about that! And on the topic of "how do you remember 1995?"... I was 13 years old in 1995. I had been gaming in one form or another for 10 years of my 13 years. It was prime time for gaming at that age! I remember where I bought almost every game in my collection and how much I paid for it, yet I sometimes can't remember what I had for breakfast the day before.

As far as consoles go, I had the following at the time: -Colecovision -NES -Genesis -Game Boy I did get my SNES in late 1995 for Christmas as well, but I was still doing most of my gaming on the Genesis or NES. I also got my 1st PC that year: a Gateway 2000 tower with a Pentium 166mhz with MMX Technology. I don't remember all the specs, but that thing was AWESOME. I had custom ordered it with my dad, and the total came out to be around $4000!!! It was great for playing all the latest games. I wish I kept it.

I got a silver PSP 2001 back when Castlevania Chronicles came out for it because it was cheaper than buying a Turbo Duo and importing Rondo of Blood. While I originally only intended to play that on it, the rest of the library ended up catching my attention, and now I have a sizable PSP collection! There are so many great games on the thing: The Capcom arcade collections and remakes of Mega Man and Ghosts and Goblins, all of the RPG's that are on the thing, and so much more. Recently, I modded my PSP with custom firmware so I could emulate older systems on it. That's when I noticed my screen was starting to die. I'm getting vertical lines on the left side of the screen, and that's usually a sign of the screen crapping out. I has a sad. Not sure if I'm going to get it fixed, attempt fixing it myself, or just buy another one.

Good info guys! I'm not sure what it has for a sound card yet, but I'm itching to play some 90's PC games on this thing as soon as I can. I went digging at my parents' house over the weekend and turned up a bunch of CD-ROM games, including Starcraft, Star Wars: Dark Forces, a shareware version of Blood (loved that game!), a shareware version of Quake, and Tempest 2000!

Not a "thrift find", but more of a "work find". I'm an IT guy, and I was going through some equipment in our office to get it ready for phasing out/donation and found a relic. It's a late 1990's Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop. Retailed for something like $4000-5000 back then! This one is running Windows 2000. It has a CD-ROM drive, a 3.5 floppy drive, and something like 8-10GB of hard drive space. It's a Pentium II processor, but I'm not sure of the exact specs. The crazy part is that it fires right up and works! Since it's worthless in the eyes of the donation place, I brought it home. I'm hoping to clean it up and use it as a retro PC game machine. Compared to modern laptops, the thing is HUGE. It weighs about 10 lbs! It's been a long time since I messed with a machine of this vintage, so it should be a lot of fun.

Man, what a phallus. Here's my take on this: As an old-school gamer, I like playing older arcade-style games to try to compete for high scores. When I play, I play against myself or maybe friends, but I know there's NO WAY I could ever smash a real record. For instance, every time I go to Funspot in NH, I immediately go to Gyruss first. I always try to set the high score for the day, which means I usually have to get between 160,000 and 200,000 unless there's a real Gyruss ninja in the building. I think my personal record is around 210,000. The world record is something insanely high that I'll never get, and I don't care! For me, it's still fun. Sometimes, I'll practice at home with MAME and an arcade stick before going to Funspot, but it's just not the same experience as playing Gyruss in the real cabinet. I also appreciate that there's people that are so good at the game that they can set those high scores. It's like playing football with your buddies VS watching an NFL game; the pros are incredible. I've been to Funspot while people were taping and going for high scores. It's pretty cool to watch how intense some players get in mastering the game they are playing, and almost makes me want to do better as a result. Then there's Billy Mitchell. He is the equivalent of a pro athlete that was doping illegally, has been doing it for years, and has been caught red handed. I've read that his "performance" in King of Kong was "an act for the camera" and he was a nice guy. I've also heard that he's a mega douche in real life. Seems like the only acting for the camera that he did was trying to fool Twin Galaxies that his MAME setup was a real arcade game. There seemed to be some shady stuff going on between him and Twin Galaxies, so I'm glad that's over with now. The real question: are they taking down that giant poster of him at Funspot that I have to stare at every time I go to the top floor? It gives me douche chills every time I see it.

I have a plastic storage drawer that holds all my manuals/paperwork.

This was my 1st 6-button Genesis controller. At the time, I loved it. The "macro" function was really cool for fighting games if you took the time to set it up properly. I also have the Eclipse Pad for the Saturn: Looks familiar, right? For some reason, the buttons would always stick on this one, which was beyond annoying. Still, not a bad alternative to the jagged original US Saturn controller.

Nintendo didn't ruin anything for me but my free time. While we had a Colecovision in the house, my 1st console I could call my own was a NES. I got the Deluxe Set with R.O.B. for Xmas in '87. I loved it then, and I still do now. Did I use R.O.B.? Yes, I did, when it was new. Like lots of other 80's kids, I was obsessed with robots. I used to build motorized ones out of Construx back then, and having one that played games (er... Gyromite) with me was the coolest thing ever. Now, R.O.B. sits proudly on top of my Vectrex, watching over my game room. And yes, he still works! Did Nintendo corner the market with their third party practices in the US? They sure as hell tried. They were trying to make money, just like everyone else. But, necessity is the mother of invention, and companies found ways around this. See Tengen, Camerica, Konami/Ultra, etc. It didn't last long. Were home computers superior? In some ways yes, and in some ways, no. I remember having a friend with an IBM PC clone, and he raved about how much better it was than my NES. He could copy games from other kids, play all sorts of adventure games non-existent on consoles, and play realistic flight simulators. BUT... he was relegated to keyboard controls and his clunky Kraft joystick. I had a game pad which was much easier to use, and a host of great games to play myself. Not to mention the vast price difference between the PC and the NES hardware. I found the NES titles easier to play. Were things different outside of the US? Yes, yes they were. Nintendo didn't have the foothold the various 8 and 16-bit computers (and Sega for that matter) had in Europe and other areas of the world. In 1989, I visited family in Italy for a few weeks. I was missing my NES BIG TIME. My dad and I went to a local department store there and they were selling NES consoles! Problem was... they were really expensive compared to the states. They also had Sega stuff, but wanted the NES. I ended up just waiting until I got home and soldiered on with my Tiger LCD Double Dragon and Simon's Quest handhelds. I want to say that the one we saw in the store also came with Mike Tyson's Punch Out, which makes no sense to me now. Was that even a real bundle? Were Nintendo's later consoles terrible? Not at all. The SNES ruled, and introduced some of my favorite games to the world. Game Boy revolutionized portable gaming. Virtual Boy is weird and headache-inducing, but kinda cool. N64's controller did suck, but they were trying new things, and there were some great games for it. GameCube was awesome, as was the Wii, DS, GBA, 3DS, and the Switch. The WiiU was a better Wii, so I'll give it a pass as well. All of these except the Virtual Boy and WiiU are in my collection, right next to all the Atari, Sega, and other brand consoles. I love them all. I also love old-school PC gaming, for that matter, I still don't get hating on game consoles. I like video games, period. They are sprinkled about on all sorts of consoles and computers,and have been since the beginning. Yes, it's annoying to have to own a bunch of different ones to play the games I want to play, but I don't see the need to resent a particular company for trying to make their console successful. There are far better ways to waste time and energy than arguing about games, like playing them.

Yeah, I know that feeling. Check these out that I haven't opened yet, more or less because I forgot about them: The top two pics were games I found in my stash a few months ago that were sealed. About half the games in the bottom pic are still sealed, including those PS2 ones up above. There's a Gradius V sealed hanging out up there too just out of frame that I'm almost afraid to open at this point. I also have a ton of 360 games, some Wii titles (including Fire Emblem!) and a handful of DC and PS1 titles still in the wrapper. I picked up a lot of these when FYE and Hollywood Video were going under for dirt cheap.

I have an insane backlog of games right now. Whenever a console's retail generation ends, I'm there to pick up the scraps, which I've been doing since the days of the PS1's demise. Did the same thing for the past two generations, and still doing it now by snagging all the PS3, 360, and Wii games I never bought. I was actually going to post a similar thread about my backlog of games last week. I was really sick and quarantined to my house for a week, so I started actually playing some of those games!

Yes, I still have one. It's a Samsung 25" I bought in the late 90's. It's alright, but it only has RF and Composite A/V inputs, so some consoles look muddy. It really reaches its limit on PS2/Xbox/GC games. They definitely looked a lot better on my parents' old Sony Trinitron 32" with S-Video and Component R/G/B. I've honestly been thinking about replacing it with the 42" Panasonic 1080p plasma from my living room when I upgrade that TV in the near future, if it fits in there. I have a small Apex 13" that could serve for light gun and early console stuff when needed.

Blazing Lazers, all day, every day. I'm a huge fan of the Zanac/Aleste Compile shooters, and that one is a blast.

I thought I posted earlier in the thread, but apparently not. Weird... ANYWAY... Yes, I've been disappointed. Here's some examples: -NES consoles that wouldn't reliably play games for a variety of reasons (failing 10NES chips, dirty games, bad 72-pin connectors) were the bane of my existence. I figured out how to fix all of this later, of course, but as a young kid in the late 80's/early 90's, I sent more time looking like Louis Armstrong with NES carts attempting to get them to fire up. The worst was when I bought the game Super C. Not even a month after buying it brand new from Child World, the cart wouldn't work anymore. Didn't work on friends' NES consoles either. I was IRATE! I even bought the NES Cleaning Kit, which wouldn't revive Bill OR Lance. Many years later, I bought a security bit, took the board out, cleaned it up the right way, and it's worked perfect ever since. -The N64. I've never been a huge fan of the console. I wanted it to play Ocarina of Time and the upcoming (at the time) Final Fantasy VII. Well, you know how that went: Zelda was great, but FFVII instead made its way to the Playstation. I felt betrayed! Also, the controller sucks. -The Saturn and how short-lived it was. The Sega arcade ports for it were awesome, but no true Sonic games? Barely any of the awesome Japanese titles ported over? WTF Sega... -The Dreamcast and how short lived THAT was! Such a great console, such a short life span. Makes me sad. -My early "Fat" PS2. I bought one as soon as I could find one (shortages made them unavailable around my area until March 2001), and it broke about a year and a half later thanks to DISC READ ERROR. I tried all the tricks: cleaning the laser, putting scotch tape on the games for added "weight" so they would spin up (this strangely worked for a while), and more. All worked for a little while, but then one day it gave up the ghost. I got so mad that I gave up on the PS2 until the Slim came out and played my GameCube and Xbox until then. And here's where I get all "get off mah lawn!!!"... -Newer games and their complexity. When you step back and look at it, we do live in an unbelievable time when it comes to gaming. Old consoles are being supported by homebrewers and the aftermarket, and new consoles with unbelievably immersive games are a marvel of technology. But with complexity brings issues. Major titles now take a huge team of people to make, and games are bigger and more complex than ever. They are typically broken in some way upon release for a variety of reasons, making it annoying for early adopters until patches come out. I understand the need for the updates, but it can be annoying and kills the mood. I found myself in this situation while playing some backlogged PS3 titles last weekend. I had to wait over an hour to play one of them!!! Most of the time, I wait for the "Game of the Year Edition" so it has the latest patches and extra content at a discount rate. -Another thing about modern games: playing them. Learning how to play these games sometimes requires hours of tutorial time, which is a PITA when you don't have much time to game. When I do have time to play a game, I don't want to sit there for 2 hours and feel like I did nothing to progress the story along. I'm sure many of you know this feel.

I bought a cheap aftermarket 320GB drive for my 360 Slim a few years back and it died and took out all my saves, including over 100hrs of Skyrim gameplay. Buyer beware. That said, if you can find a reputable 3rd party drive with decent reviews, you should be able to get one on the cheap these days.

I picked up a New 3DS XL last fall, and it's a great handheld. Since picking up my Switch, it's been hanging out in its case, but I'll revisit it soon. So far, I recommend the following: Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: It's really great, especially if you played A Link to the Past back in the day. The merging into the wall gimmick is cool and makes some aspects of puzzle solving a lot of fun. Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D: It's every bit as good as the N64/GC versions, if not better. Seems like they cleaned up the graphics a bit, and it looks fantastic! Shantae and the Pirates' Curse: If you like 2D MetroidVania games, this is a must own. Gameplay, graphics, and music are all great, and the game is genuinely funny. Shovel Knight: While I haven't played the 3DS version, I have played through the game on the PS3. Everything I said about Shantae above also applies. This is one of my favorite games in recent memory. Add to that the fact that it plays DS titles, and it's a great little system!