Games from Before My Time

A blog by HDN

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About this blog

This is a blog where I review classic and retro video games. A great many of the games I play come from WAY before my time. Growing up at the tail end of the seventh generation and the eighth generation, many people my age have grown up with games like Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Minecraft, Call of Duty, and Five Nights at Freddy's. I grew up playing the old stuff like NES, SNES, and Nintendo 64. Mainly I used my Wii for emulation of NES and Atari 2600 games when I did get it near the end of its life. While my friends played non-Nintendo games on other systems, I was stuck playing completely different games. I have always loved retro games, and so I thought I would start a review blog of games that were popular before my time and see if they still hold up today.

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The SNES Tracks | Super Circuit Annex

Last week I reviewed my newly-acquired copy of Mario Kart Super Circuit. I had mentioned in that review that I couldn't properly rank it in my Mario Kart series rankings as I had only been playing it a short while, though I thought it would rank high. I had also mentioned that until the DLC came out for Mario Kart 8 on Wii U, this game had the most tracks of any game in the series as it included all 20 of the tracks from the initial Mario Kart game on the Super NES. At the time I had written tha

HDN

September 28, 2020

The Ingenious Design of the Nintendo 64

Hello all. Here I am again with yet another weird spinoff entry. Take a look at this console, the Nintendo 64. Released in 1996, this system helped pave the way for modern 3D gaming with revolutionary titles such as Super Mario 64. It also has an ingenious bit of engineering in it that I have yet to see in any other console. However, on the surface, the thing may not look too terribly well designed, and for the most part that is correct. To start, let's look at what is by far the

HDN

January 7

Superman for Atari 2600 | Man of Stella

I'm not a big comic book fan. I remember reading some DC comics (Detective Comics comics?) that came out of a box of cereal when I was around seven or eight and being too bored to finish it. All of my subsequent efforts to get into comics have more or less ended the same way. Most recently, I got some comic books with my 2600 stuff back in March. Four vintage Superman comics were mixed in with the manuals, from around the same time the movies were coming out (as there were a few advertisements i

HDN

December 2, 2020

SOS | Save our SNES!

So the other night my family and I sat down and watched the hit 1997 film Titanic. My parents always talked about how much they hated it, but last night is when us kids finally got the chance to see it. I will say, parts of the movie are really well done. I have always thought the Titanic disaster was interesting, and my mother has as well. She knew a lot about it, to my surprise, and pointed out a few Easter eggs in the movie that would have gone over my head otherwise. For instance, ther

HDN

November 3, 2020

So About Super Mario 3D All-Stars...

Disclaimer: At the time of writing this, I have not played Super Mario 3D All-Stars for the Nintendo Switch. I have, however, played all three games included in this collection. This blog is about my thoughts on the game from things I have seen online. For this blog, I will not be covering the original titles in this collection, rather focusing more on the collection itself. So, Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Right off the bat, that's a very misleading title. The original Super Mario All-Stars,

HDN

September 30, 2020

Ranking the Classic 2D Super Mario Games!

Today's entry of GFBMT is going to be a little different. Today, I will be ranking the Classic 2D Super Mario games from best to worst. I won't be going in-depth here, just listing the games. We'll be ranking the pre-NSMB (New Super Mario Brothers) era Super Mario games that appeared on Nintendo systems (Sorry, Super Mario Brothers Special!). We will also only be talking about the mainseries Super Mario games, not any of the spinoffs. Mainly, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and Wario Land: S

HDN

December 9, 2020

Miniature Golf on Atari 2600: A hole-in-one or a bogey?

I love the sport of Miniature Golf. Well, is it even a sport? Golf is, so Mini Golf is, there. The brightly-colored balls, the sound of the artificial water streams, oldies playing quietly on speakers mounted proudly on tall wooden posts... Each course is filled to the brim with its own personality. I've gone to many places to play and I find the smaller ones to be the best. If a place typically has more than one thing in it besides mini golf (like batting cages or go-karts), I find it to have l

HDN

September 22, 2020

Mario Kart Super Circuit: On-the-Go Kart

In today's entry, we won't be going back too far before my time like we did with Miniature Golf, rather we will only go back a single generation. Today we will cover the first Mario Kart you can play on the go, Mario Kart Super Circuit. In January of 2013 I got my first handheld console, the almighty Nintendo DSi. Although the successor, the 3DS, was out for nearly two years, I specifically asked for the DSi. I really hated analog sticks and circle pads (I still kind of do), and I didn

HDN

September 23, 2020

I'm thankful for Tunnel Runner

Thanksgiving was always a holiday you had to wait for. Unlike something like Christmas Day, where the whole day is sort of celebrated, Thanksgiving is a mostly uneventful day until people start coming over, at least for us kids. Mom didn't trust us in the kitchen with Dad (she's a massive germophobe) so for most of the day we helped her clean the house. She suffers from extreme anxiety so everything had to be perfect for the guests or they wouldn't like it, so she thought. At about 4, most of th

HDN

September 28, 2020

Flinging food in Food Fight

So this blog entry is a little special. Today, I will be covering a video game that I got through the I/O on the I/O! I bought this game and a few others from the one and only @chas10e a few weeks back. He's a great guy to deal with. When you think of classic arcade titles from the golden age, several come to mind before others. In my mind, there are divided into several tiers based off of popularity. Allow me to go off on a little bit of a tangent, but I feel that I need to list them.

HDN

October 28, 2020

Flag Capture on VCS | Hard to Capture in the Wild

Recently, I have been thinking of my favorite games on the Atari VCS and coming to the realization that I have some pretty unpopular tastes. Pac-Man, the "worst video game ever", in my number two spot? Donkey Kong closely behind at number three? Artillery Duel in the top-ten? Video Chess near the top of my most-wanted list? These are some pretty unpopular, if not downright hated games. What's more, some of the 2600's most beloved games, like Yars' Revenge, Adventure, and Pitfall!, aren't near th

HDN

November 30, 2020

Don't go into a dark Alleyway because you won't be able to see your Game Boy screen.

This January I finally completed my North American Nintendo Game Boy launch lineup. I have said in the past that I have been collecting games for the original Game Boy since August of 2015, though that's only half-true. In August 2015 I bought my first DMG Game Boy game on 3DS Virtual Console. Not a physical cartridge, though since I did pay money for it, it sort of counts in my eyes. The first game I got on 3DS was not any of the GB NA launch games, rather it was a very late release, Game and W

HDN

September 24, 2020

"Rasteroids" on the Atari 2600

Asteroids was a game I had played before on my Wii 2600 emulator, but I didn't really start enjoying it until I got my Jakks Pacific 2600 Joystick Plug 'N' Play. Sometimes when you have less games to choose from it helps you appreciate the ones you have more. Whenever I'm exposed to an emulator or something and I have a folder with hundreds of abbreviated ROMs, I often just play the same two or three games over and over again until I get bored. When I have less games availiable to me, I often en

HDN

September 25, 2020