Skippy B. Coyote

This week reminded me of three of the great and longstanding truths of video gaming: 1. Shooting things is fun! 2. Animal Crossing is terrible for your social life. 3. Collecting games is expensive. Ineligible Animal Crossing: Wild World (Nintendo DS) - 455 minutes Call of Duty: Black Ops (Nintendo DS) - 22 minutes Clubhouse Games (Nintendo DS) - 54 minutes Dementium: The Ward (Nintendo DS) - 35 minutes Doom (Game Boy Advance) - 55 minutes Ōkamiden (Nintendo DS) - 57 minutes Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (Nintendo DS) - 145 minutes Game Boy Boggle Plus - 13 minutes Operation C - 33 minutes Game Boy Color Monopoly - 48 minutes NES Dragon Spirit: The New Legend - 30 minutes Xevious - 17 minutes Xevious (Played on Classic NES Series: Xevious for Game Boy Advance) - 11 minutes PlayStation Area 51 - 29 minutes Doom - 356 minutes Total Play Time This Week 1,306 minutes (21 hours 46 minutes) [537 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week Nintendo DS: 714 minutes PlayStation: 385 minutes NES: 58 minutes Game Boy Advance: 55 minutes Game Boy Color: 48 minutes Game Boy: 46 minutes The second was especially true for me this week, with Animal Crossing: Wild World on the Nintendo DS making up the bulk of my gaming time. I was waiting to dive into this game until my brand new crimson & black colored DS Lite arrived in the mail, which it did a week ago today, and ever since then I haven't been able to put it (or Animal Crossing for that matter) down! I did devote a little time here and there to continuing to play through the stories in Ōkamiden, Doom, and Dementium: The Ward; but the majority of the time I had the shiny new DS Lite in my hands it was running Animal Crossing. The first truth I mentioned was much more applicable to my wife this week, and with that in mind she ended up logging nearly all of my household's tracker eligible playtime this week playing Doom on the PlayStation and Xevious on the NES. I spent a little time with both of those systems myself, getting a few quick fixes of Area 51 and Dragon Spirit: The New Legend, but the credit for the vast majority of my household's tracker eligible time this week definitely goes to the misses. Next week looks to be pretty similar for us, with me still getting bit hard by the Animal Crossing bug and my other half still greatly enjoying her playthrough of Doom on the PS1. She just finished the Ultimate Doom section of the game (on Ultra Violence and with an arcade stick no less) earlier this evening, and she has every intention of playing through the Doom II portion of the game next week. Lastly, the third truth will soon bring about a big gaming related change in my household this week that is sure to affect our tracker participation—and especially the pictures I post every week—over the coming months. After a lengthy debate with the misses over the financial cost of my collecting hobby vs the variety of games we have to play, it has been decided that we will be slowly transitioning to using flash carts for all our cartridge based systems. To start things off, this week I ordered an original R4 card for my DS Lite, then if that works out well next month the misses will be getting an R4i Gold or DSTwo for her DSi XL and I'll pick up a EZ Flash V expansion cart for my DS Lite's GBA port. From there we'll be saving up as a couple to get an Everdrive N8 for our NES, an Everdrive MD for the Sega Genesis, and lastly a Everdrive GB for my Game Boy Color. We both feel that transitioning to playing games off flash carts on original hardware will be the most economic way to expand our library of available games while still conserving money and allowing us to save up for important non-gaming related events coming up this summer. This doesn't mean that I'm going to completely stop collecting cartridges for all our cartridge based systems though, it just means that I'll be able to start collecting more slowly and causally while I set aside money for other things. With all the cartridge based games I've ever wanted to play already at my disposal I think it'll help me relax a lot and not stress out over collecting, so I can just play whatever games I want to play whenever I want to play them and eventually pick up the physical carts for them as I stumble across good deals over time. And that feels like a very positive note to end this week's post on!

It's definitely a great game for avid shoot 'em up fans who have a lot of experience with the genre, but be warned that Zanac will pretty much eat anyone else alive within the first few minutes. For a more approachable hidden gem I'd recommend Dragon Spirit: The New Legend. It's like Xevious with dragons (which would be pretty awesome alone) and power-ups, plus it's got some really cool and diverse level designs, end bosses for each level, and a neat story to tie it all together. Zanac is probably the premier "hardcore shmup" on the NES, but Dragon Spirit is a game that everyone—expeienced shoot 'em up fans and casual players alike—can enjoy.

Hey there everyone After a long while pondering the subject I've decided that I'd like to purchase flash carts for all the cartridge based systems I play regularly, and most of the flash carts I'm interested in have been easy enough to find information on through forum searches and Google, but I still have a few questions about the Everdrive MD that I'm hoping to find answers to before I buy one. So, of anyone could help me out with any of these questions I'd sincerely appreciate it! 1. What Genesis and Master System games will not run properly or have reduced function (not being able to save normally, graphic or audio glitches, etc.) on the Everdrive MD? I've been able to find thorough game compatibility lists for every other flash cart I've looked at, but I can't seem to find one for the Everdrive MD. 2. Can I play non-NTSC Genesis and Master System ROMs on the Everdrive MD when using a NTSC Sega Genesis? For instance, I'm very interested in playing Duke Nukem 3D and that game was only released in Brazil. I know many flash carts for other systems can bypass the usual region restrictions, but can the Everdrive MD do that? 3. I know the Everdrive MD uses a small battery in the cartridge to create save files on the SD card, in the same way that many Genesis games (I.E. Sonic 3) used batteries in the cartridges to store save files. If I need to change the battery in the cartridge 5 or 10 years down the line, will my save files be lost when the battery gets swapped? 4. Does the Everdrive MD care whether my Genesis ROMs are in .gen or .md format, or will it play either? Thanks for taking the time to read my questions and if you happen to know the answer to any of them then I would greatly appreciate your insight!

And now I'm going to have "Tiny Toon Adventures! What!? What!?" stuck in my head the rest of the day. In any case, great video and game recommendations! I had heard of a few of those games before but most were totally new to me and looked like a lot of fun. As far as recommendations for the next time go, I'll toss in votes for Zanac, Freedom Force, and Mechanized Attack. Zanac has got to be one of the best and most affordable shmups on the NES, and provides one of the most intense frenetic 8 bit shooter experiences you'll find outside of the insanely rare and expensive Summer Carnival '92 Recca on the Famicom. Freedom Force and Mechanized Attack are both awesome and largely unheard of light gun games that were clearly designed with the NES zapper in mind. They both look and sound great, and they play even better.

If the default difficulty was too easy then you can raise it in the options menu. To access the options menu hold down A, B, C, and Start at the title screen then release A, B, and C. Also, big thanks to Parallax for the great articles! Thunder Force III on the Genesis is by far my all time favorite horizontal scrolling shooter (with possibly my favorite soundtrack of any game ever) so it was a real treat getting to see all this literature for a game I so adore!

I'm definitely going to pass on this one. Since I don't own a PS4 it would be a minimum of a $650 investment for what will (in my ever so subjective opinion) amount to a nausea inducer. A nausea inducer with a small library of titles to choose what kind of subject matter you want to get nausea from no less.

Hey there everyone I'm making this post because I'd really like to have a nice DS game case for my R4 flash cart to display on my shelf and store it when not in use, but unfortunately I lack both a high quality color printer to print the case artwork ( http://www.thecoverproject.net/view.php?game_id=2902) and the ability to cut a straight line. I'm not kidding, I couldn't cut paper straight and clean if my life depended on it. So, I'm wondering if there is anyone around here with some spare DS cases, a photo quality color printer, and the ability to cut out the case artwork straight and cleanly who would be willing to take on the project for a fee? I'd gladly pay whatever the person doing the project felt was a reasonable cost for the time, effort, and materials to have a nice R4 cart case on my game shelf. Just drop a post in this thread or shoot me a private message if you're interested in helping me out.

After spending much of the night reading up on DS flash carts over at GBATemp.net I ended up ordering an original R4 card with a 2 GB Sandisk Micro SD card from a reputable US based shop. The total came to $19.49 shipped, and for that price I think I'll have a lot of fun with it. I really just want it to expand my DS Lite's capabilities to play original Game Boy, Game Boy Color, NES, and Sega Genesis games in addition to it's native GBA and DS compatibility; and with the Wood R4 firmware it should do just that. I'm also digging the homebrew software that will let me run the original PC Doom WADs in all their glory on my DS Lite. That should beat the pants off of the GBA version of Doom that I usually play! If I end up getting a lot of use out of my R4 and want a flash cart for the current generation of New 3DS systems I can always save up and get a more expensive cart like the DSTwo, which will have enough extra memory to run GBA and MAME games and can sneak around the current 3DS anti-piracy software. But that would be an $80 investment after the cost of a big 32 GB Micro SDHC card, so for the time being I'm just going to play around with R4 and see if I end up using it enough to warrant shelling out the big money for a more powerful flash cart.

After going through 5 different brand new in box DS Lite systems, I finally found it! My personal holy grail! A brand new Crimson & Black colored DS Lite with zero defects whatsoever! No dead or stuck pixels, no loose wobbly D-Pad or shoulder buttons, no screen alignment or backlight leakage issues, a flawlessly even finish all the way around, and a everything is just... just... perfect! My personal quest of 4 years for a perfect Crimson & Black DS Lite has at last been completed! New in box system collectors, avert thine eyes... ... So, what's the first thing I did with this gloriously perfect piece of gaming hardware after charging up the battery and configuring the system settings? I wonder if there is a place where all the bad Animal Crossing villagers go when they die.

Thanks for the reference to gbatemp.net! I'll head on over there and check out what emulator options are available. I already know about not asking for ROM links, but I sure would appreciate recommendations for brands and retailers to buy a DS Lite flash cart from. I've been scouring Google for a while now, but being so new to this topic I've got no idea what features to look for in a cart and which retailers are reputable to buy from. For most of the systems I enjoy the answer is pretty simple: "Buy an Everdrive straight from Krikzz". For the DS Lite though there isn't an Everdrive, and there are so many other options that my head is just kinda spinning trying to figure out what my best option is going to be.

Hey there everyone Lately I've been interested in finding emulators for other systems that I can run on my DS Lite, so I was wondering if anyone here might be able to recommend the best flash cart option for a DS Lite and some reliable emulators for other systems that I could run on it? The systems I'm most interested in emulating on my DS Lite are (if possible) Game Boy, Game Boy Color, NES, and Sega Genesis. I know that for a long time R4 cards were pretty popular but these days it seems like there's so many clones and knockoffs using the name "R4" floating around that I really don't know what the best option to go with is going to be. This will be my first foray into flashcarts so I'd really appreciate some guidance if anyone can offer it.

For me it's just a pretty simple matter of keeping all my handhelds, when not in use, in soft padded cases that were designed so that nothing other than a soft fabric surface contacts any part of the system. For certain systems it can be a little tricky to find cases that fit the bill, but usually taking half an hour or so to sift through the results of an eBay search for "__insert system name here__ case" turns up some suitable options.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't the lifespan of the type of flash memory used in DS cards dependent on the number of times data is written to it? From what I understand flash memory will generally retain save data for 10 to 20 years, but that 10 to 20 year clock resets every time save data is written to it; and DS cards support several thousand saves before the memory begins to degrade. So, in theory at least, as long as you pop the game card in a system once every decade or so and re-save your game on it then the memory should last thousands of years.

But three of those games on the left side of the picture aren't cartridges... they're Game Paks. *runs*

Ōkamiden (Nintendo DS) Dementium: The Ward (Nintendo DS) Doom (Game Boy Advance)

Time for a really big weekly post from my household! Not quite as big as BurritoBeans' 3DO extravaganza, but still one of the best weeks we've had in a while in terms of both overall play time and tracker eligible time. Ineligible Call of Duty: Black Ops (Nintendo DS) - 86 minutes Clubhouse Games (Nintendo DS) - 54 minutes Dementium: The Ward (Nintendo DS) - 160 minutes Dementium II (Nintendo DS) - 85 minutes Doom (Game Boy Advance) - 69 minutes Mario Kart DS (Nintendo DS) - 25 minutes Ōkamiden (Nintendo DS) - 508 minutes Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (Nintendo DS) - 142 minutes Arcade Ms. Pac-Man (Played on Namco Museum for Game Boy Advance) - 8 minutes Game Boy Boggle Plus - 29 minutes Game Boy Color Monopoly - 192 minutes NES Castlevania (Played on Classic NES Series: Castlevania for Game Boy Advance) - 91 minutes Xevious (Played on Classic NES Series: Xevious for Game Boy Advance) - 15 minutes PlayStation Doom - 192 minutes Total Play Time This Week 1,656 minutes (27 hours 36 minutes) [527 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week Nintendo DS: 1,060 minutes Game Boy Color: 192 minutes PlayStation: 192 minutes NES: 106 minutes Game Boy Advance: 69 minutes Game Boy: 29 minutes Arcade: 8 minutes Oh man, this was such a big week for my household that I hardly know where to start! I think the best place would be with the silver colored DS Lite pictured above, since that is what the vast majority of my gaming took place on this week. While I've been waiting for my new in box crimson & black DS Lite to arrive in the mail from Canada, one of my good friends ended up gifting me his old silver DS Lite as a belated birthday present towards the beginning of the week. Now that I finally had a system that was small and light enough for me to comfortably hold for long periods of time, and didn't have to borrow my wife's DSi XL to play DS games anymore, I dived back into Ōkamiden and some of my other recent DS favorites. I finished off Dementium II, then for nostalgia's sake I decided to go back and play through the original Dementium: The Ward to see how it compared. While definitely not as polished and refined as Dementium II, it's still a great game and I've been having a ton of fun playing through it again. I also put the DS Lite's GBA port to good use with several different titles, most of which were actually tracker eligible due to being direct ports of games on older platforms. I had an awesome time playing through and beating Castlevania again, Xevious is always fun, and Ms. Pac-Man is one of those games that just never really gets old to me; even on the small screen. The one GBA game that wasn't eligible though was my old favorite Doom, and after hearing the sounds from me playing Doom on the GBA for half an hour or so the misses felt inspired to get out the original PlayStation port of Doom and spend some time playing it again herself. So, we've got two different ports of Doom to list time for this week but only one ends up being tracker eligible. The other game that my other half spent a fair bit of time with this week was Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords on her DSi XL, which she's still enjoying quite a bit and will probably be playing for many weeks to come. And, as usual, I ended up playing a good 3 or 4 games of Monopoly on the Game Boy Color as well as a little Boggle Plus for the original Game Boy during smoke breaks. Just like Ms. Pac-Man, I'm starting to think those are two games that I'll just never get tired of playing. That about covers it for this week!

What an awesome week of gaming! I've never played the 3DO myself, but it does look like a really cool system with a nice little library of games to choose from. And hey, any system with Wolfenstein 3D on it is a keeper in my book! I thought I logged a ton of time this week, but your 64 hours totally blows my times for the week away. It's going to be a late night around here tonight so I'll be getting my household's times posted around midnight. That way I won't end up oversleeping tomorrow and missing the cutoff.

My personal Top 10 is a little eclectic, but after thorough consideration of all the games I've played over the last 26 years or so here's the list I've come to: 10. Castlevania (NES) 9. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Xbox 360) 8. Tomb Raider (PlayStation) 7. Star Fox Adventures (GameCube) 6. Ōkami (Wii) 5. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles (Sega Genesis) 4. Mortal Kombat (Sega Genesis) 3. The Ultimate Doom (MS-DOS) 2. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (Game Boy Color) 1. Resident Evil: Director's Cut (PlayStation)

Awesome video! I had been hoping you guys would do a GBA or DS buyers guide for a while, and you did a seriously great job with it! As far as my recommended day 1 pickups go, there's... Doom & Doom II To me one of the coolest things about the Game Boy Advance has always been that it was the first portable system that could play first-person shooters really well, and the GBA ports of Doom and Doom II are both excellent. They did change around a few of the levels to accommodate the hardware limitations of the GBA, and the blood was made green to snag a Teen rating, but they're still outstanding ports and one of the best ways to play these classics on the go. If you like these two then Duke Nukem Advance and Wolfenstein 3D are well worth checking out as well. Iridion II Every system has a one or two standout spaceship shooters, and Iridion II is the premier shmup on the GBA. It's a vertical scrolling shooter with some really gorgeous graphics, tight gameplay, a large variety of weapons to choose from, and a pretty approachable difficulty curve. Definitely pick this one up if you're a fan of the genre. Mazes of Fate Anyone who likes first-person Western style dungeon crawling RPGs like Eye of the Beholder can't go wrong with Mazes of Fate. The game looks great, the real time first-person combat is tense and fast paced, and it's got an engaging story with numerous sidequests to tie it all together. And it's pretty cheap to collect to boot! Need For Speed: Underground 2 While Mario Kart: Super Circuit might be the most obvious choice for a GBA racing game, NFS: Underground 2 is not to be missed for fans of the genre. It's got a huge variety of cars and customization options to choose from, several different gameplay modes (Circuit, drag, drift, etc.), plus a whole bunch of different minigames to unlock new tracks and upgrades for your cars. And did I mention that it is possibly the best looking game on the GBA graphically speaking? The polygonal graphics in this game will absolutely blow you away and make you wonder how they ever got it to run on the GBA, with zero slowdown no less! I really can't say enough good things about this game. Sonic Advance 1, 2, & 3 If you're like me and grew up with Sonic on the Sega Genesis, then it's probably been a while since you played a Sonic game that really felt like the Genesis originals in terms of gameplay and overall quality. For me, the Sonic Advance series were the sequals I was always waiting for ever since the days of the Genesis. They look, sound, and play so similarly to the original Sonic series on the Genesis that I honestly felt like these were the first "real" Sonic games to come along in a good decade or so when they came out. In short, they're darn good and well worth picking up for any fan of the Sonic games on the Genesis; or if you just like solid well made platformers in general. Street Fighter Alpha 3 And one for the fighting game fans! When I played Street Fighter Alpha 3 back when it originally came out, it was first time that I ever played a fighting game on a handheld that didn't feel like a watered down port of a home console version. Alpha 3 on the GBA looks and plays every bit as well as it's home console brethren, and it (along with Super Street Fighter 'II Turbo Revival) is definitely one of the top fighting games on the GBA. Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance isn't too shabby either for the MK fans.

Ōkamiden (Nintendo DS) Classic NES Series: Castlevania (Game Boy Advance) Call of Duty: Black Ops (Nintendo DS)

I definitely get where you're coming from. Early 2000's handhelds like the Game Boy Advance and WonderSwan Color do have a decidedly retro feel to their game libraries due to the more limited processing power of handhelds compared to the home consoles of the time. The Game Boy Advance is basically a portable SNES, and even the later Nintendo DS from 2004 is pretty much an original PlayStation with a touchscreen in terms of it's graphics and game library. But I also feel the same as you about home consoles from that time period. The PlayStation 2, XBox, and GameCube were the foundation of the modern gaming era, with vividly detailed polygonal graphics and dual analog stick controllers. They just don't feel "retro" to me in the same way that handheld systems from that era do. Obviously what systems are eligible for the tracker is completely up to you since it is your project, but you'd certainly get no complaints from me if you made a few of the early 2000's handhelds eligible at some point.

10. Classic NES Series: Castlevania (Game Boy Advance) Every year I do a full play through of the original Castlevania in some form, and 2016 is no exception! While I usually do the NES version, this time I decided to play the GBA port since a friend recently gifted me his old DS Lite for my birthday and I wanted to put it to good use. I gotta say, Castlevania is quite a bit more difficult on the smaller screen! I usually breeze right through the final boss (Dracula) but I had a heck of a time beating him this time around. I think it took me a good 14 or 15 tries. Nevertheless, victory was mine in the end!