KIWASABI

Yeah I think Mario 2 is the best out of the 3 NES Marios by far. It's definitely leaps and bounds better than the japanese version as well. Adding the dark (bad) mushrooms was really bad game design. Aside from that, there wasn't much that separate that game from the first Mario except for increased difficulty and trial and error mind-numbingly hard puzzles in the final castle.

Thanks for the responses, guys. You have certainly provided me with very valid reasons to get a Vectrex . Is it best to get a flash cart for the system? How much is a flash cart?

I've been pondering getting a vectrex for a very long time and I think I may be getting close to that time. It's a worthwhile system to have, isn't it? I love vector games and arcade style games, so it seems like a good fit for me. What are the best games for the system? I watched a youtube video of Star Trek and that looks pretty fun. -Adam

What kinds of interviews do you have? I'm not too interested in game music, but I'm very interested in video game history.

Well that's something you don't hear every day. But I think that I played the Pac-man port on my friend's Atari when I was 10 or 11 (back in 96 or so...yeah a long time after it actually released ) and didn't think it was too bad. But I guess I didn't really have much of a quality standard either growing up with the SNES and whatnot. Anyway, I hear people mention all the time that they love E.T., but I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they like the Pac-man port. How old were you? Did you play the arcade game a lot?

Intelligent Qube (though I know this game has become a cult hit since it came out) Elemental Gearbolt - This is a great guncon lightgun game with a fantasy theme; definitely unique compared to all the typical military/cop lightgun games out there. Tempest X3 (Though Tempest 2000 on Jaguar is definitely better) Unfortunately I don't have much experience with the PS1; I was more into the N64 back in the day.

Gauntlet is up there. I don't think it's actually possible to beat, but I could be wrong. I loved the game as a kid, but unfortunately it was just too hard. You had unlimited continues in the second one so you could get as far as you want, but for some reason I didn't like that one as much; I think it might have played slower. I did love the digitized voices though: "Blue wizard needs food badly" "Blue wizard is about to die".

What does that have to do with the results of those two polls in the first two links? They simply asked 6000+ and 8000+ console gamers the question and in both cases, 20% replied that they played pirated games. There was no targeting console gamers who own 100's of games. Alright, fair enough, I didn't read your references, I only looked at your figures, which I interpretted as 20% of console games are pirated, not 20% of gamers play pirated games. My question is this: what percentage of those 20% are playing their friends' pirated games? And what percentage of those gamers are playing emulators for NES? I've had friends with pirated systems, and I've played their systems, so that makes me part of that statistic. However, I do not pirate games myself. So how exactly is that statistic even useful if it doesn't refer to the percentage of players who actively pirate games? By the way, I'm going to point out the obvious here and make it clear: this is a pointless "argument" (I don't even know what we're arguing here...that console piracy is more prevalent and widespread than I think it is?).

I can't narrow it down to one, but I can rank them in order of want level: 1) Super Contra / Contra 2) Joust 3) Discs of Tron 4) Tempest I currently have a Neo Geo MVS with about 20 games, and I love it. It's a huge space saver since it saves me having 20 dedicated machines :-p. In the future though I definitely want to get a vertical jamma machine that I can use for Super Contra, Contra, and Mercs (I already have a Mercs jabba board). Apparently Contra and Super Contra didn't do so well in the arcades out here since the machines are very hard to come by (I've never seen one for sale in the past 3 or so years that I've looked). I think it has to do with the fact that the machine limited you to only 3 continues. While this works great for the console versions to maintain replayability, it's rather lame to have an arcade machine basically tell you that it doesn't want to take your money anymore. In games like this players should always be able to see the end of the game so long as they're willing to keep dropping in quarters. -Adam

It will turn up online eventually I'm sure. In the meantime you should definitely check out this other documentary about Pac-man from G4's tv show Icons:

Yeah, unless you're trying to make money off of the MAME machine you won't have any legal issues (though it is technically illegal). Keep in mind though that even businesses sometimes have MAME machines, which I always think is just ludicrous. If I'm going to pay to play a game on an arcade machine than it better be playing with the original hardware dammit... /end rant Anyway, let me give you a quick (non-legal) warning about MAME. What I've found with setups like these, whether they be emulators, modded consoles, etc where you have unlimited access to any game you want, is that since it's so trivial to acquire any particular game, you start to take it all for granted very quickly and you lose interest rather quickly. I've seen this happen with every single friend of mine who has owned a modded xbox; they played it a lot less than people who had a legit xbox with legit games. I've found that I play my Neo Geo machine a lot more than I'd probably play a MAME machine just because I can remember where I got each game, how much I paid for, how well the seller treated me, etc and that all adds up to make each game experience more special. This all seems very hokey but I do believe it to be true. I highly recommend a Neo Geo MVS arcade setup to anybody and everybody since the cartridges are only $20-60 for the most common (and best) games. MAME is kinda a headache to set up and, in the end, I think it means less than having the real hardware. -Adam Edit: What I was going for with this preaching session is that having every game ever gives you "rich kid syndrome" (aka spoiled brat syndrome) where you lose interest in everything quickly since you have everything and no one game seems very special. A rich kid is much less likely to care about any of his stuffed animals if he has a room filled with 100,000 of them. However, a kid growing up in poverty who receives his first teddy bear from his uncle when he's 3 is bound to cherish it for the rest of his life.

I disagree. I tried Operation Wolf. I thought it sucked with the controller. Or maybe I just sucked at playing it with the controller. The cross-hairs never moved fast enough or accurately enough for me. But then, if you played with the Zapper, didn't you still have to press a button on the controller to launch the grenades? I used to play it a lot in the arcades. Loved those uzis. I always thought it was better with the controller, but can't exactly remember why. Didn't you have to keep pulling the trigger rapidly instead of just holding down the trigger for rapid fire? Given the limits of the technology behind the zapper, I'm pretty positive that's the case. So because of this, it's a lot more effective to use the controller and just hold down the button to shoot. Using the gun A) Introduces a whole new level of ridiculous difficulty since you can't shoot as fast and B) It gives you carpal tunnel really fast (even when I was 7 this game hurt my hand too much to play it with the zapper). -Adam

What do you base that on? http://play.tm/news/5345/console-piracy-on-the-rise/ http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/the-co...-piracy-squeeze They are talking about piracy rates in excess of 20% on consoles. If 20% of console gamers are playing pirated copies, then the number of modded consoles logicaly can't be that far behind. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/10/10/fa...-the-xbox-360/1 20,000 downloads just in a few hours. http://www.tomshardware.com/console-piracy,video-310.html Video discussion on console piracy, how easy it is, and other odd tid bits. No real numbers or anything, but it doesn't play it down at all. Look at usenet and torrents. Activity is very high. I doubt people are downloading these huge files just to "have", but rather to play which means they have something to play it on. I think that these numbers are pretty skewed and here's why: Game pirates tend to end up "owning" WAY more games than they would ever normally buy. It's not unlikely to see someone with a hacked xbox with 100 games for it. Now, if that person hadn't modded that xbox and instead just bought games, he probably would've only bought around 10 games, just like the average gamer. So just right there you can see how the numbers can be very skewed. One person is bootlegging the equivalent of 10 average gamers' game collections. So what does this mean? This means that this person is bootlegging way more games than he would ever actually buy, so the amount of money that is actually being "stolen" from the publisher's pockets is a lot lower than it seems (The 100 games he bootlegs is actually only preventing 10 games from being sold). That 20% figure up there is probably a lot closer to 2% based on this hack observational logic of mine. There's no way that 20% of game consoles are modded. It's easily under 5%. -Adam

Jaws is an old favorite of mine too. It's kinda like a classic arcade shooter kinda game but set in the ocean with a diver instead of a ship and crabs, jelly fish, and sharks instead of enemy ships. The only downside of the game is the final encounter with Jaws has really bad collision detection and it doesn't seem fun at all. Other than that though this game is fun and intense.

If you're curious enough about it, definitely ask around and see what you can dig up. There is absolutely nothing available online so it looks like talking to people on a forum like nintendoage may be the only way to find anything out. It looks like you deleted most of your post somehow.

Actually, the window seat concept is very true. The Japanese are so passive aggressive that instead of telling you how dissatisfied with you they are, they'll do some pretty hurtful things akin to the silent treatment. A very famous example of this was when Gunpei Yokoi created the Virtual Boy. The executives at Nintendo didn't like it and were positive it was going to fail. Because of this, they made Yokoi show off the Virtual Boy at E3 by himself; they wouldn't even associate themselves with him or the project. After the Virtual Boy released and failed, they assigned him to meaningless work indefinitely, which forced him to quit and create the Wonderswan. Sadly, he died in a car accident shortly thereafter. Anthony: I'd be interested in hearing what those board games are, but if you haven't talked to that guy in so long it's probably not going to happen . -Adam

Thanks for the info! That's all not very surprising; such is life in the corporate world. Any idea what board games were created by Nintendo at that time though? It would be cool to track them down and try to guess what he worked on. -Adam

Hey everybody, I heard on an episode of G4's show 'Icons' that video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of such video games as Mario, Zelda, Star Fox, Donkey Kong, etc) got his start at Nintendo working on card games and board games. I looked up all board games listed under Nintendo on boardgamegeek.com and unfortunately there weren't any listed from the late 70's / early 80's. Anybody have any ideas as to what games he might have worked on? I did some google searches but didn't find anything promising. Any ideas would be very appreciated. -Adam

Piracy isn't that widespread in console games really. Piracy requires a mod chip these days, which is something that I'm guessing less than 1% of all next gen consoles have. Of course this is a different story for PC games. On a related note, the reason Nintendo decided to go with cartridges for the N64 rather than cds (and lost Final Fantasy 7, Metal Gear Solid, etc) was due to fear of piracy. It turned out that piracy wasn't that much of a problem for the Playstation, which went on to sell over 100 million units while the N64 only sold around 30-35 million. One of Nintendo's biggest mistakes ever (the Virtual Boy being another of course). I wish this never happened because this is when Nintendo started losing all of its third party support, which is still something it's trying to recover from.

Wow I had no idea there were so many NES zapper games. I definitely have to check out To The Earth. Gumshoe looks interesting too.

I didn't know that Chiller is 2-player, that's really cool. I didn't even know that the zapper supported 2 player simultaneous play. From your list I've played Gotcha, Operation Wolf and Duck Hunt, but not Freedom Force or Gumshoe. What do you think of the ones you own? I also own Mechanized Attack and Hogan's Alley. Here are my thoughts on the ones I've played: Operation Wolf: Great game, but MUCH better with the controller. I found it was almost impossible to get through the game using the zapper for some reason. Gotcha! I bought this one probably 15 years ago and returned it within a week. This one got old really fast. I think that there was a distinct lack of challenge. Duck Hunt: Everybody loves Duck Hunt. It's all about the hatred of the dog. Mechanized Attack: This one I highly recommend. I think that this is the best light-gun game experience on the NES. I read that it's the spiritual successor to Operation Wolf. This game seems to be a pretty good port from the arcade game. This is worth picking up. Hogan's Alley: This is a collection of mini games similar to Duck Hunt. These are pretty good overall, but nothing too special. I've always wanted to check out Chiller since it's the only NES game that lets you blow off specific body parts :-p. It's not supposed to be that good though. I had a teacher who worked on that game actually (I went to Digipen for a while, which is basically Nintendo's school) and he was going on and on about how horrible it was and the only good thing it did was cause a bunch of controversy. It was pretty funny hearing him go on about it.

The snake level isn't too bad once you memorize all of the patterns. It becomes pretty intuitive over time. I agree that that Terra Tubes is one of the hardest levels because of all the stupid sharks, eels, and fish that bump you into the spikes. Also, the rubby ducks that just autokill you are completely ridiculous. I think that the unicycle level isn't too bad once you get used to it. I just hate the boss. It's a big electrically charged sphere; how much more boring of a boss can you get? So for me I suppose that the Terra Tubes is one of the hardest levels. Rat Race used to be really hard for me but once I got the hang of it it wasn't too bad. Overall Battletoads is actually an extremely fair game; it just requires tons of practice. I think that Battletoads was a very interesting and very successful experiment. Basically to me it seems that the game designers made the game as hard as possible while still keeping the game fair (for the most part).

That's really lame that they destroy their games for fear of competition getting them. What the hell is that all about? Based on what I've seen arcade games aren't THAT hard to come by. There used to be a whole lot more demand for them back in the day, and so lots of those games are still around. The philosophy behind this destruction is completely flawed. I agree that the ticket system is "kiddie gambling" and it isn't healthy. I realized this very recently when I went to my local Nickel-a-Play and played the ticket games there for the first time since I had a bunch of nickels lying around the house. To make the story short it didn't take too long before I was way more concentrated on finding the most exploitable machine and getting as many tickets from it as possible. The ticket system is very unhealthy and it sucks all the fun out of the whole experience. I'd rather stick to video games since with those the rewards are intrinsic and thus much healthier and satisfying. As for the kids; don't blame the kids, blame bad parenting. Kids are just a product of their environment. Their mannerisms are merely a combination of traits from each parent. Granted, some kids are born more hyper and whatnot, but generally speaking the parents are to blame for kids that are out of control. Also, yeah, Chuck-e-Cheese sucks now. However, I do have fond memories of the big shooting gallery type game they used to have (or still have?) that shoots tennis balls which you use to knock down fuzzy stuffed heads. No arcade game can beat that, in my opinion.

The original Battletoads is the best 2d game ever made in my opinion. Battletoads/Double Dragon NES was also good. Battletoads in Battlemaniacs wasn't so hot, but the arcade Battletoads is pretty awesome. I would also love to see a true sequel to the original. There never was much of a sequel, just the spinoff Battletoads/Double Dragon and the rehash Battletoads in Battlemaniacs. Rare's too busy making crap these days though to make real games.

Since you're a Konami fan, don't miss out on these games (both of which are actually conversions as well): Jackal Rush 'n' Attack Another good conversion is this: Guerilla War I'll post more conversions as I think of them. As for general NES staples, there are a million of them, but my favorite by a long shot is Battletoads.