Drixxel

A damp (with water!) paper towel? Wrapped around a butter knife? Jabbed against the cart contacts? Good lord, way to encourage corrosion and gunk shit up with residual fibers.

That was a great tour of your game room, thanks for sharing! Excellent breadth of stuff you have there, and some very well thought-out solutions to dust and storage. That PC nook caught my interest the most of all your stuff, that's the sort of setup I've been contemplating for playing DOS and '90s Windows games. I can somewhat feel your pain of having unthinkingly disposed of all those jewel cases, the vast majority of my PC game boxes were lost in a basement flood my family was unprepared for many years ago.

Methinks Austin meant 'first' in the sense of 'the former', rather than it alluding to release date or number in a series. It's hard to say which of these three I'd choose as best RPG of its era, but of the group, the one I'd most be interested in starting a playthrough of right now is Phantasy Star. Dragon Warrior retains a certain nostalgia for me, but it's undisputedly the most primitive and least polished of this match-up.

There's a lot of potential for randomosity to improve the longevity of games in general, I think, and the idea of incorporating random elements into games that didn't feature them previously has definite potential. Things like randomized item placement and AI behaviour are some of the simplest ways to inject ongoing freshness, and while it's obviously pretty common to find that sort of thing, it's also rarely enough to hold player interest once the potential for surprising results becomes exhausted. Attempting to take it further are games like Azure Dreams, F-Zero X and Diablo that boast randomly generated content (dungeons and race tracks), but I find that these tend towards level designs that bore, feel thrown together and seem somewhat predictable despite the possibilities. Having random content be the game is definitely a risk, as it's hard to consistently replicate the result of thoughtful and deliberate level design, but it's definitely cool when a developer offers a tangent mode like the aforementioned random track generator in F-Zero X that helps retain interest beyond the main game. A bizarre example occurred to me from the OP's mention of randomizing play control, I'm imagining a 2D platformer where the rates of player acceleration & deceleration are randomly set every time a new game begins. You might wind up a practically immovable object, or slick as a man wearing mucous shoes, or, once you get going, unable to change direction or even stop. Something as unpredictable as that would impose tricky restrictions on level design, resulting in stages that are purposely bland (in order to remain functional across the range of random outcomes) or rendered impossible (because they don't properly account for the randomized controls). Worse still, if the stages were randomly generated on top of that, you'd have such a huge amount of variance to take into consideration that you'd probably end up with shit as boring as Rastan Saga 2 in the majority of instances, assuming that all unsolvable stages be discarded. There's no limit to how sophisticated random level generation can be when you combine talented programming with a large assortment of highly versatile level design elements, but more randomness does not necessarily mean more fun. More junk, though, that's nearly guaranteed.

The first of the three GBA Metroidvanias, Circle of the Moon, is quite a good, long, and even challenging game of this style. While it lacks the sprawling inventories and sheer variety of collectibles of SOTN, Aria of Sorrow and others, it's rather a quality effort and my vote for best game among the early days of the GBA. If you do give it a spin, try to resist using the glitch that lets you equip card combos you shouldn't have access to yet, it's (obviously) not as rewarding a play that way.

Having just gone to check it out with my copy of the game, I can confirm that your emulator experience is accurate. Tempest X3 only accepts left and right d-pad input for movement. Could always hold the controller at a 90 degree angle, I suppose.

Good lord, I haven't thought about Tomy Pocketeers and their facsimiles since I was a kid. Haha, I remember being fascinated by these things and feeling inspired enough to draw up plans for my own pocket-sized mechanical games, most being high on the physical implausibility scale but tons of fun to imagine (and imagine playing!) at the time. As shallow as the gaming experience is that these dealies offer, they are undeniably cool, if only for their appealing, compact designs and tangible nature.

Right on, a highly enjoyable read and a cool continuation of your top 100. Dr. Mario on GB has got to be my favourite way to play Dr. Mario, and I agree with your assessment that the colour limitations of this version are never a problem for differentiating pills. While it isn't colourized like the Euro release, the Japanese Konami GB Collection Vol. 3 is a bit more affordable and maybe even on par with what Parodius alone goes for, with the added bonus of being bundled together with Belmont's Revenge, Antarctic Adventure and Yie Ar Kung Fu; altogether, it's a really neat package and even has SGB support. I didn't realize that Pac-Attack was tucked away in GBC Pac-Man, I'll have to keep my eyes open for that one!

From the perspective of the cardholder, yeah, it's as easy as a phone call, but the credit card company definitely doesn't encourage this sort of behaviour. It's a hassle for them and I wouldn't be surprised that a cardholder with a history of initiating chargebacks against retailers might start getting some awfully curt treatment when he or she calls in to customer service. A chargeback also means a fee for the retailer in question. Everyone can appreciate how it sucks to be burned by an uncool return policy, but for the sake of greater happiness in the world, this course of action is probably best saved as a last resort.

A cool idea for a Castlevania run, but waiting to run out the stage timer is proving to be a serious drag.

In the case of NesterJ and the like, the ol' drag and drop should work just fine. There's no installation, it's just an executable file. The latest version of Stella I downloaded just the other day, on the other hand, did have to go through a proper installation. As previous posters have said, this sounds like a 32-bit OS/64-bit program mismatch, either that or the files on that burned disc are fubar'd. Are you getting the same error message that's coming up with Stella for each emulator you're trying to run, the "not a valid Win32 application" blurb? Also, have you copied the emulators over to your Windows 7 machine's HDD, or are you trying to run them off the CD? EDIT: Unless that particular burned disc is your only option for getting files onto your Windows 7 machine, downloading different versions of the emulators in question, matched to the bit-ness of the version of Windows 7 you're running, would be the simplest course of action by far.

Very cool, this definitely gives the impression of a laboured over product. The sprites, monster art & tiles look nice and clean, and those battle backgrounds are awesome. Nice job on the Turbo CD packaging and presentation!

I played this a bit last night, it's a fun bit of DK. A slick homebrew, most definitely.

In my area, at least, a vendor asking $5 for an average cart is doing fair business that I'm willing to support, I'm in no position to be staking out auctions on a regular basis so I can appreciate a used game dealer's efforts to refresh their selection and turn a small bit of coin while doing so. Unless you're these resellers' only customer at the flea markets they sell at, preventing these vendors from restocking may be impacting casual collectors in the area that might not take the same objection to their business as you do. Capitalizing on loaded garage sales through Craigslist misdirection is one thing, but vendors acquiring games for resale through channels that the average collector won't typically access doesn't bother me. EDIT: Reading through your more detailed impression of these guys, yeah, they sound fairly unscrupulous.

I'm quite partial to Mouse Trap and Pepper II, those would have to be my favourites above any of the Pac-Man games, even.

A sad announcement. Psygnosis games have been the most consistently imaginative and stylish of any studio I can think of, and few have made as elegant a transition from 2D to 3D game development as did Psygnosis. Their catalog is huge and they will be remembered!

Of the proposed solutions to the $200 problem, this console-and-portable setup with a focus on emulation is the most appealing, in my opinion. Any extra scratch could reasonably be put towards component hookups for the two, assuming the TV we're starting with here isn't some junker. For the sake of true thrift, one might opt for a soft modded Xbox over a Wii.

Pong on PSX is actually pretty good. The visual style's on the cartoony/childish side, which is a bit of a strange interpretation, but there's an interesting variety of obstacles and game modes that really jazz up the Pong formula.

Tempest X3, PSX -- While I have a certain sentimental attachment to T2K on the Jag, my Jag's out of commission at the moment. Light nostalgia aside, I'd have to say that X3 is arguably just as good if not better. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, 2600 -- Always a fun one to pick up for a quick play. Swordquest: Earthworld -- As little as I care about the room to room item swapping, I do rather enjoy all of Earthworld's game rooms.

Looking forward to it, Satoshi! Your piece on Dr. Wily's Revenge was a good read, I'm curious to see which of the GB Mega Man games you end up including on your hundred count megalist and how they rank.

On the topic of finding an appropriate controller to play the PSX's Tempest X3, I gave the Agetec fishing controller a test drive this morning and found that it works reasonably well. I was kind of hoping the reel action would be magically converted to rotary-style control but that was wishing for too much. The analog stick gives a sense of smooth movement around the webs, and even if the thing's merely being handled as a digital controller, it feels better than a stock PSX d-pad for Tempest purposes.

Funny, as I have the complete opposite experience with the game. It was a favourite of mine as a kid and I still enjoy playing it now. I remember, as a wee lad, coming across an ad for this game in an old GamePro and really wanting to play it. After stumbling upon it many years later, it reminded me instantly of another Game Boy title featuring a similar digging mechanic, Heiyankyo Alien. That one's much faster paced and considerably more arcade-y than Boomer's. Worth checking out, I'd say. Having completely missed the bit in the thread title about GBC, if there's but one Game Boy Color game I'd want to draw attention to, it would have to be Deja Vu I & II: The Casebooks of Ace Harding. A complete no-brainer and really cool package for any fans of ICOM Simulations adventure games, but perhaps nothing special for anyone else.

I happened upon a video showing this game off awhile back and was immediately impressed by the in-game art, the sprites and backgrounds just look awesome. I'd love to give this one a spin, it may bring little to the table that the Turrican games haven't already but there's something awesome about classic game designs getting this sort of souped up homage.

The Game Boy is one of my favourites to delve into, it's no small feat to assemble a thoroughly researched & tested top 100 from a library this huge! Here are ten games I'd readily submit for closer scruity: Atomic Punk - It's more or less just Bomberman on Game Boy, but the "story mode" is a little more fleshed out. You're able to choose the order in which you tackle stages and each presents a different power-up reward. Avenging Spirit - Not as good as the arcade original Phantasm, it's still an entertaining and well done platformer where you commandeer the bodies of your enemies, each offering a slightly different play style. Burai Fighter Deluxe - I've always enjoyed Burai Fighter on NES and the GB port is a good effort, maintaining the 8-directional shooting and general feel. My only gripe is that sprite flicker can be a bit of an issue causing enemy projectiles to occasionally phase out of view. Daedalian Opus - A devilishly puzzling game of tetronimo placement. Some of the stages are seriously time consuming brainbusters that provide a definite sense of reward upon their completion. Double Dragon - A slow but satisfying take on Double Dragon with more depth of combat than the NES version. Duck Tales - Both of the Duck Tales games on GB are worthy ports of the NES originals and are at least a little less famous than Capcom's GB Mega Man conversions. Duck Tales 1 is perhaps more enjoyable here than on NES as it's easier to jump attack. Elevator Action - It plays far more fluidly than the arcade/NES versions and offers a fun arsenal of weapons to switch between. Mercenary Force - Something of a strategic horizontal shooter, the game has you hiring a stock of mercenaries, each with a different attack style, that move as a group and can be rearranged on the fly. Troops need to be continually rehired between levels, paid for with the money collected throughout the previous stage(s). Parodius - While slower than other/better versions of Parodius, this is my favourite shmup on the handheld and a respectable take on the game. Star Sweep - A Japan-only puzzler that does something different with its falling blocks, there are versions of the game that can be found elsewhere but the GB really is the place for a good puzzle game to be.

A cool find indeed and a historical curiosity, for sure. It makes me wonder how large their office library was (at least 68 games, I assume) and what other titles they kept on hand.