HDN

I thought I would post this on my "What game should I get" topic but ultimately decided that it deserved its own topic here in Prick Check. Game Trade is the name of my local game store I won't shut up about. It's great there. Some people were interested in their 7800 lineup, so I went there to pick up my free game and take some pictures. Ultimately, I decided to buy Crystal Castles, though they did have a marked down copy of DK Junior as well which really tempted me. I decided on CC because Junior has a much better version on the 7800 I would rather get. It's a Tramiel Cheap-O copy. This will be my last game before the Christmas season, though I might trade the Tug of War album code with @RickR for another 2600 game later on. So, here are the cheaper 7800 games. These go for $10, though there are a few for $5. Those include PPII, Karateka, Hat Trick, Touchdown, and Choplifter to name a few. Apparently, it is rare to find a lot of 7800 titles like this. Below them are some cool Odyssey 2, Intellivision, Colecovision, VIC 20, and I believe TI-99 or some other Texas Instruments computer games. I love this store. I wish I could buy it all! Here are some of the pricier 7800 titles hidden inside of this glass cabinet. These are $15 and up. Some interesting 7800 titles I saw were Mario Brothers, Donkey Kong Junior, Motorpsycho, Ace of Aces, Alien Brigade, Ghostbusters, Rampage, Mean 18, and Dark Chambers. Some other goodies include 2600 Miner 2049'er Volume II, Pitfall II, Montezuma's Revenge, and I believe Crazy Climber. Please excuse the glare. I didn't look hard at these before I took the photos as I was in a bit of a rush. Please, zoom in and look around! I took some other pictures as well, though the combined file size is too much for one post alone! I thought some of you would like to see what this place has to offer. I will try to post some more pictures of some of the interesting things I saw on this final voyage.

The polls are in! And it seems that we have a tie! In third place, with a quarter of the total votes, we have Hat Trick on Atari 7800! Tied for first are the error copy of Crystal Castles and Missile Command! I am most likely going up to the video game store today. I made a deal with my dad that he'd drive me there if I did all of the chores by 5:00. That wouldn't be too difficult, but I have to mow both ours and the neighbors' lawns. Not hard, just time-consuming. I think I can get it done if I start immediately after school ends at 3:30. Mow the lawn first as that takes the longest and then do the rest of the work. I have my camera charged up with new batteries and ready to go to take pictures of some of the things you are all interested in. I will have to explain why I'm going around taking pictures of the unpopular games... I/O promotion! Let's see, I have to take photographs of the 7800 and Channel F games. Might take a few others along the way, like their console wall. I will post them here in this thread when I get home. So it seems that most people want either Crystal Castles and Missile Command. I might buy one or the other or neither. Really this poll was just an experiment and a fun little thing to do, not a real opinion changer. I will look through the 7800 game library as well and see if there are any other $5 games to get, and I will also look through the GBA library perhaps. And I will have to check what is on clearance. Oh, so many choices! I'm at a point where I don't own a lot of the commons for some of the systems I have, so $5 can get me a pretty decent game yet. But I will share what I get here. I don't know how long it will be before I get my stuff back. My mom has not been to kind recently to any of us. She wants to sell my collection and buy me "better things" like musical instruments and crap. She really doesn't like that I'm the way I am and I'm not a musical or athletic guy like she wants me to be. There's no reasoning with her. So thanks for being reasonable people I can talk to. Life at home is very tough at the moment. It seems like my mom's desperately trying to change my personality. It's a little late for that.

The Sears Tele-Games version was Pong Sports. Atari owned the name for the Tank arcade game, too, but made the home port Combat. Sears, again, called it by the proper name, Tank Plus. Sears often called it by the wrong name, so it's weird seeing them be right for once. Ah, how could I forget? Slot Racers on the Atari 2600 What you expect: A game about slot racing! You know, those cars on those tracks where you have to make sure they don't fly off by regulating the speed? What you get: This piece of garbage game where two Harry Potter sorting hats drive around a city shooting hadukens at eachother.

It is probably the RF switch. Try getting a coax adapter. I think AtariAge sells them for only a couple bucks. Otherwise you can put together a makeshift one with parts from your local hardware store, like I did. Though my woody had very similar problems when I got it and none of my cartridges worked on it. I opened it up and it was super corroded. Someone spilled Coke or some other dark pop in there many years ago. There was a high-pitched sound on the black screen as well. I scrubbed away at the board with baking soda, alcohol and vinegar for a long time to get all the gunk off. It took a while, but it paid off and my woody works now. That's probably why my dad's cousin had that other Atari 2600, a vader model. Could you Intellivison perhaps have some corrosion on it?

Atari 2600 Video Olympics (Take note, @nosweargamer) What you expect: Something like Activision Decathalon, Track & Field, Summer or Winter Games, something like that. What you get: P o n g I really love this game. Though when I first played it on Atari Anthology, that is what I was expecting. I didn't know they even had Pong on the 2600 at this point. I think most of the fifty "video games" are excellent. The title would have made more sense in 1977, I believe, than it does now.

Really all of those old Atari 2600 games are false advertising. "112 Video Games", "8 Video Games", "16 Video Games"... They never said "variations", always "video games", implying that there are multiple separate games on the cartridge. In the early days, the 2600's main competitors all used multiple games on their game cartridges. The Odyssey 2 was doing it with games like Speedway! Spinout! Crypto-logic!, the Studio II was doing it with games like Gunfighter/Moonship Battle, the Astrocade was doing it with games like 280-Zzzap!/Dodgem, the Channel F was doing it with many of the early Videocart games, and so on. When Atari said "video games" instead of "variations", it implies that they put several games on each cart, when in reality they are all minor differences of the same concept. Breakout is a good example; all of the different "video games" are just different versions of the base games like Breakout, Breakthrough, and Timed Breakout. Some games are worse examples of this than others; like how Star Ship, Space Race, and Lunar Lander are all different enough to be considered different video games. Though in these examples like Star Ship the number of "video games" is still inflated from 3 to 17.

I've got a few: Pinball Challenge on Fairchild Channel F This "pinball challenge" game is just your average Breakout clone. Here's another pinball game-- Thunderball on Magnavox Odyssey 2 This pinball game is not based on the James Bond movie of the same name.

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 enjoy the games I have access to more and appreciate them more for what they are. That's part of the reason I love physical cartridges. Like I said, I mostly played it on the Joystick Plug 'N' Play. We had this CD+G karaoke machine that we got in around 2011 or so for Christmas that happened to have some composite ports on the back of it. The machine had maybe a five or six inch monochrome screen. You know how some of those old computer monitors had green phosphor to make it easier to see text? This one had a blue color palate going on. In retrospect, I'm shocked that they were still making tiny CRTs for karaoke machines in the early 2010s, much less monochrome ones. Sometimes I'd sneak that bulky thing in my room and play some Atari games on it. I remember the display being very crisp. Monochrome displays often are. I used that karaoke machine as a psudo-television in my room. I had been begging my parents to let me put up this crappy twelve-inch Hitachi CRT in my room since I was 8 years old. I had this really strict doctor that I hated. He was a good doctor from a parent perspective, but he was so boring and overexplained everything and made each appointment about twelve times longer than it had to be. He convinced my parents to not let me have a television in my room. He said if it was there I would never leave my room and just stay there and watch TV all day. I couldn't get it through to my parents that all I wanted to use it for were my old video game systems. Six years. It took until I was fourteen to finally get it through to my parents that I wasn't going to use it to watch TV on it. It took two years after we stopped getting analog TV through coax and needed digital adapters in order to watch TV. All of my friends teased me for having a "stone age" TV in my room and for getting it so late, but I never minded. I have always preferred CRTs to modern displays. I used to have my Wii up here, then switched to Wii U, then added NES (for zapper games) and finally replaced it with my 2600 when I got it. I have put another 12-inch downstairs to play those Zapper games in my main gameroom. Now that I have older systems in my room, I have no intentions of getting a newer TV. So, back to Asteroids. I loved this game. One of my favorite 2600 games growing up, along with Pac-Man, Adventure, Space Invaders, Pitfall II, and Keystone Kapers. I didn't discover Tunnel Runner until later. I will have to cover that one soon. Asteroids on the Jakks Pacific Joystick wasn't actually an emulation of the 2600 game, rather it was a recreation of the game using a NOAC (Nintendo [Entertainment System] on a Chip). The game looks the part and sounds the part to a casual gamer who hasn't played Atari in years, but diehard Atari enthusiasts like myself might find the minor sound and graphical alterations to be a deal-breaker, though since I grew up with some of these games on here it doesn't bother me much. The sounds in Asteroids are a bit different than the 2600 version and there is less flicker if I remember correctly. But we can't talk about the 2600 version of Asteroids without talking about the original. Asteroids was released for the arcades in 1979. It used a vector display. I assume most people here at the I/O know what a vector display is, but I am just going to explain it anyways. A vector display meant instead of pixels the cathode ray was directly controlled to just draw lines on the screen. Back in the day, this was heavily used in certain arcade titles. On the plus side, vector games had much crisper graphics and could handle 3D games much better with wireframe models. Vector games could also handle scaling effects much better than games that used a raster scan in the early days. On the downside, vector games were rarely in color. Mostly the games that utilized this display method only drew white lines. Many games had overlays over the cabinet screens, like Star Castle. Later on, vector games started appearing in color. Games like Major Havoc and Star Wars Arcade used color vectors for their graphics. The problem with color vectors, however, is that the backgrounds were still all black and there wasn't really a good way to fill in the blank spots in the graphics. Plus, vector games typically flickered more as there was only one line being drawn at a time. Eventually, once video games evolved and pixel based games had more to work with, vector games fell to the wayside. After pixel games started having polygons and whatnot, it was all over for vector graphics. However, vector graphics are still special to this day as there is no way to accurately reproduce them on modern displays. If you want to play a vector game the correct way, you have to find an old arcade system or a Vectrex. There's just no other way to get the real vector experience anymore. Unlike its 2600 adaptation, which uses the standard Atari joystick controller, Asteroids' arcade conversion consists entirely of buttons. There are two buttons for rotating the ship, one button for thrust, one for fire, and one for hyperspace. I was fortunate to have played the real arcade cabinet before at an arcade exhibit at a museum. There really is nothing like a real vector display. The owners of the cabinets were there and they were kind enough to give me a bit of a tour after most people left. I was lucky enough to see such great games like Burgertime, Gran Trak 10, Major Havoc, an early prototype of Bubbles, Donkey Kong, and even the elusive Death Race. Only a few cabinets were available to play on as most were roped off for display purposes only. Though I did sneak in a game of prototype Bubbles. SHHHH! I really enjoyed the arcade version of Asteroids when I played it. It was on free play, and most people wanted to play Pac-Man, Burgertime, and Frogger, so I mostly had the game to myself. So, now that we have gotten some background knowledge on where this game came from, we can talk about the 2600 version in greater detail. Right off the bat, the game is obviously going to be different from the arcades graphically. I know that's very shocking news for you all; "Oh no! The 2600 doesn't have arcade graphics?!?". But here, it's actually impossible to reproduce them. The 2600 hooks up to a television set, and consumer TVs use a raster scan instead of a vector one, hence the title of this review, "Rasteroids". Though it doesn't have the same graphical fidelity of the arcade game, it does add color which the arcade vectors lacked. The object of Asteroids is to, well, shoot all of the asteroids without getting hit yourself. When you shoot an asteroid, it will split up into smaller chunks. If you hit one of the medium size space rocks in the coin-op version, it will split in two, though on the 2600 it just grows smaller. Occasionally there are UFOs and satelites that show up in the arcade version and try to shoot you down. I thought for years that they weren't in the 2600 adaptation until I read the manual when I first got my system. That was a completely mind-blowing moment for me. So yeah, they are in the game after all if you flip the difficulty switch into the A position. The 2600 cartridge features 66 game variations, including variations that change the amount of points you need for an extra life (if any at all), variations that swap out your hyperspace function for shields or 180 degree turning, and variations that change the speed of the game. The Asteroids cartridge has a copyright date of 1981 and is notable for being the first 2600 game to use bankswitching. Bankswitching allows for games to have file sizes of over 4 kilobytes. It played a massive role in the long lifespan of the Atari VCS. The controls for Asteroids at home are obviously going to be a bit different than in the arcades as it uses a standard joystick controller instead of a button-only layout. Left and right on the stick, as expected, rotate your triangular spaceship, which on an unrelated note is the same spaceship sprite used in the system's adaptation of Spacewar! three years earlier in 1978. Up on the joystick is your thrust, which can be a problem as one could easily thrust by accident right into an oncoming asteroid. Down on the joystick is different depending on which variation it is in, but in the default mode it is the hyperspace function. This will make your ship temporarily disappear and reappear somewhere random on the screen. This could theoretically place you right by an oncoming asteroid that would almost assuredly kill you, but it can help in certain situations if you are lucky enough. And the button, shockingly, fires your missiles. On the default variation you get an extra ship every 5,000 points. Now, I was pretty excited to play this game again when I got my 2600. At this point, I hadn't played Asteroids for a while. This was one of the first games I played when I got the 2600 controllers fixed and the system set up. This was actually the first game I wrote down on my high score notebook. I played the game again on the default variation (B/B on the difficulty switches) and really enjoyed it! I got 14,720 and I thought that was pretty good. On my next attempt I got 48,590! I thought that was great! So I stopped playing for a few days and when I picked it up again I rolled the score over and got 114,250. The reason I got only 114,250 is because I quit because my index finger hurt way too much. I normally play Atari games with the joystick resting on the desk in my room and playing it kind of like an arcade game, so I use my left index finger to shoot. I needed a higher difficulty in Asteroids, so I tried with the UFOs. But I still quickly got bored of the game. I never found the same enjoyment I did when I was younger with 2600 Asteroids again. The pattern was just too predictable. In the arcade version and most other versions, the asteroid chunks fly off in all directions when you shoot them. But not here. Here, it seems like most of the asteroids fly in the same downward path at a slight diagonal angle. Once you get a pattern down, you can comfortably last for a long time. And soon, for me at least, it just gets boring. I know this game is popular and beloved by fans of the 2600, but I just don't like it that much anymore. It's way too easy and predictable. The arcade version has so much going on at once; all asteroids hurling towards all in different directions, but here on the VCS it's monotonous and machine-like. I want to love this game again, I really do, but I just can't get into it again. I'm sorry, everyone, but I have to rate this game a 5/10. I'd rather play E.T. or Pac-Man again. If you don't already have this game (which is honestly hard to believe if you have the system), it goes for about $5 if you get the Black or Sears label varients. The silver label is a bit pricier at a whopping $20. AtariAge gives it a rarity of 1 for the Atari picture label version, 2 for all of the Sears versions, 3 for the silver label variant and a rarity of 5 for the red label cartridge. I'm sorry, but this game just doesn't do it for me anymore. I will need to try the 7800 version someday and the homebrew Space Rocks. I have the ROM, but it doesn't seem to work on my emulator. I'm all Asteroided out for now. Now, I'm going to leave and play Super Meteorite-- I mean, Super Metroid.

It's weird that this XP laptop isn't much older than my main computer I use running Vista.

Yes, I have heard about your Channel F podcast. Never listened to it though. It's cool that you got to speak with some of the team members. Channel F is on my list of consoles to get. Since I've got machines capable of playing almost any non-Virtual Boy Nintendo game, I need to be on the lookout for some more obscure systems. My dad got really nostalgic a few months ago before the pandemic started, and put himself on the list for an Odyssey 2. The store hasn't gotten one in for three or four years. Good thing we are the only people on the list for that and won't have to wait a decade! Channel F is a system I would like to get someday. Not something I am going to go out of my way for, but if I found one for a decent price I might pick it up. Do you have any childhood favorites you'd recommend? If I ever get one (probably not anytime soon) I would like to know some cool games for it. While I'm at the game store getting my free game (hopefully tomorrow) I will take a look at their Channel F offerings for you @Willie!. Poll is closing soon, guys! If you haven't voted, please do so soon! RIP Jerry Lawson :(

@nosweargamer has influenced a few purchases of mine, mainly his podcast did. His glowing review of One-on-One Basketball is one of the reasons why I chose it over Xevious. I can't wait until I get that one. I have never been a big Xevious guy until fairly recently. I was never a big sports guy, but I really like One-on-One. It's probably my favorite game I've played on the system so far. He also influenced Home Run to a degree. I watched his video on the game and thought it looked like fun. I played it on Atari Anthology with my dad and had a blast playing it. I wasn't going to get it on cartridge until I saw it for only two dollars. My dad bought that one "for himself". Also, @socrates63, I didn't realize you had so many duplicates! Trade some of those in and get some new games! Like SNAFU. Did you get the system yet? I assume not as you didn't mention it.

First off, great job on your Intellivision purchase! A few years ago I got an Intellivision Flashback for my birthday. I love that thing! I find the disc controllers rather comfortable. They work better if you rotate them like a steering wheel rather than using them like a d-pad. Some games only use four directions and there are sixteen on the disc, so if you rotate it you will be able to accurately cover all of them instead of accidentally not going in a certain direction and dying. Good on you for doing the right thing and playing Super Metroid first. I enjoy the Intellivision quite a bit from what I have played and I would like to get an Intellivision 1 someday. I don't want the model 2 as the buttons seem more painful on the controller and I would love to try out the system's port of Venture, which is one of the Coleco games that doesn't work on the model 2. But each console has it's Super Metroids. Must-have games that you need to get as soon as possible. You know the 2600's Super Metroid--Tunnel Runner. Well, actually on the Intellivison I can think of two Super Metroids. Like the SNES's Holy Trinity of games, but this one is only a Holy Duology. You need SNAFU and Shark! Shark! as soon as possible! SNAFU is like the Tron lightcycles or Surround on 2600, only its about 1000x better than both combined. The music is amazing and is constantly stuck in my head. The game goes for about five to six dollars. Shark! Shark! is a game where you are a tiny fish and you have to eat the fish smaller than you. The more you eat, the bigger you get. The crab and shark can kill you regardless, however. It's a very fun game with two players. It goes for about $15.00, so it's a bit pricier. SNAFU is a better game in my opinion, plus it's cheaper, so get that one first. But please, do play the actual Super Metroid first!

Sometimes that's just the case. Money can be tight, especially for me as I don't have a job. Until recently I couldn't buy retro games with cash as I didn't know of a store closer than an hour away that would sell retro games. So I had to save up Christmas money and do chores and things to get my dad to use his credit card to redeem 10 or 20 bucks on the 3DS eShop. I would get two or three Virtual Console games, mostly Game Boy as they were cheaper and I didn't have any other way of playing Game Boy games at that point. Very rarely did I ever get full price games for modern systems. I bought Pokemon Moon at launch as I was very into Pokemon at the time. I got about $80 in GameStop gift cards in 2018 and purposely saved them for nearly a year just so I could get Luigi's Mansion 3 at launch. My parents were kind enough to buy my sister and I Untitled Goose Game at launch as well. There was a launch sale at the time so it was only $15. Geese are probably my favorite animals. My sister and I love that game. Most of my "beatable" games have been beaten several times. I typically try to get the most enjoyment possible out of them. I try to get every penny's worth by re-beating them over and over again. In something like Super Mario 64 where you can 100% complete it, I will try to go for that on one of my subsequent playthroughs. In something like Luigi's Mansion there are like 12 endings and I will try to get each one. In the 3DS remake it will save all of your endgame mansion portraits in the gallery. I also 100% Luigi's Mansion 3 when it came out as well. I lost my original copy of Super Mario 64 DS and when I bought it again I made sure to collect all 150 Power Stars. I looked that game up on pricecharting.com and saw that I paid more than double the going rate at the time when I bought it used from GameStop. I am permanently boycotting them now and strictly shopping at my new favorite store. What about games that can't be beaten? How do I get my money's worth out of those? Take Atari 2600 games for instance. Very few of those can be beaten. Most of the games are high-score attack games and arcade conversions. So what I do is I keep a high score record in this little notebook. Whenever I get a new score for a game, I highlight the old one and write down a new one. I have several pages of scores and I feel that has kept my interest in those games for longer. It's harder to get bored when I have a goal to beat. Another way to get more for your money is multiplayer. You can have hours of enjoyment added if you play with friends and/or family. Plus, it can be more fun in a lot of cases. Multiplayer Warlords from what I've heard is a blast, though two-player Super Mario Odyssey is WAYYYY worse than playing just by yourself.

That's sad. I always assume I'm going to want to replay the game again. I must have beaten Luigi's Mansion 30 times by now. It's not a very long game. Though I won't ever sell it. That game right now goes for about $40 according to pricecharting.com. I could use that money right now to buy several other games that I want, like Ballblazer for 7800, Missile Command and Bowling for 2600, and Wave Race 64. I even have the 3DS remake so I could still play it in one form or another. Though I'm not going to do that. I'd much rather wait a few months until I can afford to buy those games than get them now and say goodbye to Luigi's Mansion. Another good example is Super Metroid. I've been replaying that game recently to help out others who might want to pick it up for the first time. It can be rather confusing to newcomers used to simple Atari games. Super Metroid is one of the pricier SNES games, going for about $50 at the moment. That's almost enough for a Nintendo Switch game. I could emulate Super Metroid, and I do have it on my 3DS's virtual console, but it's much cooler to say "I have this game" than "I have the ROM for this game on my 3DS". The rarest game I own was one my dad's friend had and gave to him when he was done with it. Conker's Bad Fur day typically hangs out around the $80 range. I don't much care for the game, though I haven't really invested time into it. I think it's funny, but the game play isn't great. For Conker I could buy about 16 Atari 2600 games that I would probably enjoy more. Maybe I could even get a new system if I found one for cheap. I've always wanted an Odyssey 2. But what if someday I feel like playing it again? For most of my life, I hated Super Mario Sunshine with a passion. This June, I sat down and played more Sunshine than I ever had and had a blast. I never got around to beating the game, so I will have to continue on someday. What if Conker's Bad Fur Day is like Mario Sunshine for me? You know what I mean?

Just wanted to update you all on how this pilot is going. It's a Space Invaders review in which I mostly focus on the Atari 2600 version. I have filmed lots of the non-review parts so far but I can't work on the animated parts or the video game footage until I can get my 2600 or 7800 back. I would also like to review the arcade version briefly, but my mom also took the XBOX. Heh. I can't believe I actually want to play that thing for once. I also can't animate a segment near the end of the video yet. I was planning on making a scene near the end of the video in which I need to animate some Space Invaders. I use Flipnote Studio to animate. That's on the Nintendo DSi. It's very primitive as you can only use a few colors on the screen at once, though all I would need for this segment are black and white. It's very limited in its capabilities, but it gets the job done and I know how to use it. I have seen many talented people on YouTube make beautiful animations with this. My animation isn't going to be as fluid as those, but that's mostly because I'm sticking to the two-frame animation cycle seen in the 2600 and arcade versions. It will look okay when I am done. Problem is I can't animate without my DSi as my mom took that too. She's had my stuff for close to two weeks. It's going to be a while before I get them back I feel, and by extension the pilot episode isn't going to be out for a while. She hasn't budged when I have asked for them back and I have tried getting some other hobbies and things, but she doesn't feel like I have done anything. I think she wants me to be like those other kids who are into sports or play music and stuff. When I was littler she often compared me to her coworkers' kids who did stuff like that. I'm not the sportsy athletic type, though I do like being outside and taking hikes in the woods and stuff. And I can't tell the difference between a C or an E or a D#. All I hear in my head is "Doo do do do doo". It sometimes is hard to tell whether the notes are going up or down from the last if they are close enough. I'm trying to learn the ukulele a little bit so I can have my stuff back. It doesn't help that everyone else in my family is pretty musical. On a positive note, I did get an audio file from my secret helper. I won't tell you who helped me with the video, but I will say that it is someone here on the I/O. I'm also pretty sure I'm getting help from one of my in-person friends. He's a retro gamer, but he is mostly a Sega fan. He's not on the I/O, though I have been trying to convince him to join! He would like to offer an outsider's perspective on Space Invaders. I have also plan on filming a few scenes today where I'm not on camera. I have gotten this pretty horendous haircut and would like to wait for it to grow out before I do any more in-person shots. Except I think I will do the scene at the end. There's this joke at the end I'm planning on where I powered up to do something that I won't spoil here and now that I have this terrible haircut I think I will make a joke that the power up makes me look super weird. Unfortunately for the power up gag I will actually need my Atari 2600. I think I will just make this transitioning shot from normal me to a superpowered version of me pointed away from where the 2600 will be. Today I also decided on what game I am going to cover in my first "real" episode, Karateka on Atari 7800. I might change my mind on that as time goes on however, but I am planning on it at the moment. I think I am going to do this process a little more scripted when I start doing the real show as there is no precise script for the vast majority of the review. Mostly the script consists of bullet points on a piece of notebook paper. We're looking at a pretty long wait until the video comes out. Plus it is going to be a decently long video. We are looking at about 20 minutes here.

When I got Wario Land 3 from them, the battery was dead. They tried putting it in the normal way but it was very stubborn. So they used electrical tape like you said. It's very obvious as WL3 is a Game Boy Color only game (not compatible with original GB hardware) and those games came in clear cartridge shells.

I don't mind flash carts. They're a great way to be able to play rare games or homebrews on original hardware. I'm just saying if I had to pick, I'd pick the physical game over the same game on a flashcart. I don't have that much space right now either, but I also don't have the funds to build up a massive collection like all of you have! Space won't be a problem for a while. Invaders, on the other hand... I'm not too scared of the batteries on my games going dead. It's an inevitability with those older games. Thankfully my local game store can replace them for only a couple bucks. I'm pretty sure I am going to have to start bringing games in sooner or later. I can tell Super Metroid doesn't have much longer. It's saving fine now but it wiped all three save files of my data before I started replaying it again. Not a big deal really.

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 Watch Gallery. Later in September I bought the amazing Metroid II: Return of Samus (Lots of backstory about that game) and Super Mario Land, the latter being a launch game. I didn't get a means of playing official Game Boy cartridges until Christmas Eve of 2016 when I got my Super Game Boy. Earlier in August while on vacation at Blue Harbor in Sheboygan, WI we were shopping at the only retro game store I knew of at the time. I believe it was called Freaktoyz or something. Anyways they had an SGB there for $15, the exact amount of money I had brought with me on vacation. I was seriously considering it. My dad used to have an original Game Boy in college that my mom sadly threw out in the early 2000's. I assumed he had some of his original games with him still somewhere in the house. I had been on the lookout for them for years since I have always been fascinated by the original Game Boy. I was pretty sure they were somewhere, but as I had been snooping around for them for years at this point I didn't want to risk it, so I opted for StarTropics on NES instead. I kid you not, two days later we were cleaning the basement and what did I find? A cloth bag thing filled with Game Boy games. I couldn't believe it. I had been looking for these for years, and right after I saw a Super Game Boy I found them! Only one of the games my dad remembered wasn't there, that being Centipede and Millipede. I assumed that one was in the Game Boy when my mom threw it out. But all of the other games were there. Here are all of the ones I remember being there: Tetris Baseball Play Action Football Sports Illustrated Golf The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening F-1 Race So right off the bat I had two of the launch lineup. Plus at that point I had Super Mario Land on 3DS. I didn't get another physical Game Boy cartridge until last year because I was never around any game stores (or at least I didn't think I was), but I did get a few more games on the VC, including Tennis. When I discovered my new regular game store, Game Trade in DePere, WI, I had recently gotten a Game Boy Advance system and was getting in to collecting for the Game Boy DMG, Color, and Advance, though mostly the OG. I had gotten some money for Christmas to fuel my collecting. Some of the first games I got were games I had loved on the 3DS VC and wanted to play them on somewhat original hardware. In the clearance bin I saw a very beat up copy of Tennis, so I decided to pick that up. I had enjoyed the game quite a bit on the 3DS and since it was so cheap, why not? When I got home I got on the list for a physical cartridge of Super Mario Land. That was the last physical cartridge I picked up, but today's game, Alleyway, was the last of the GB launch lineup I actually played. I picked that up on maybe my second or third Game Store run for five bucks. Anyway, let's actually talk about Alleyway. Alleyway was a launch title for the original Game Boy in North America, Europe, and Japan. Here in the states it launched in 1989. Alleyway is a breakout-style game. Note that I did not say Arkanoid style game. Though this game came out several years after Taito's 1986 classic Arkanoid, which heavily expanded upon the format seen in Atari's Breakout and Super Breakout. Arkanoid added things such as powerups, weapons, and enemies to the mix. Alleyway does away with many of these, though it is still obvious that it was inspired by Arkanoid. For instance, each level is distinct in its layout. Super Breakout had some distinction, but that game did it very differently. Super Breakout's level design was much simpler in comparison and a lot less varied. Plus, to my knowledge you couldn't progress from level to level like you could in Arkanoid and Alleyway. I believe if you beat, say, the cavity screen for instance, you didn't transition to the progression or regular Breakout screens. At least I don't think you could. I've never been very good at the arcade version of Super Breakout or on any home system. Like Arkanoid and the earlier Breakout games, different shades of blocks earn you different amounts of points. In this case, the darker the shade of puke-green the more points you will get. The darker blocks also increase the speed of your ball, though it is nowhere near as noticeable as it is in some other block-breaking games. Also like the original Breakout, starting on the fifth stage, if your ball hits the top of the screen, your paddle will shrink in size.There are also some indestructible blocks in the game like those seen in Arkanoid. In short, Alleyway is like a midpoint between Super Breakout and Arkanoid. The game's progression consists of three stages using the same basic structure followed by a timed bonus stage. The four-level setup is reminiscent of the world layout of the original Super Mario Brothers on the NES. The first level in an Alleyway "world" is a basic level with nothing going on. The blocks stay still for this level. On the second stage they wrap around the screen horizontally. In this mode it is easy to get the ball stuck in a pattern and wipe out many bricks at once. The third stage appears to not move at first, but occasionally the blocks will descend another step towards your paddle. Nothing bad happens if they reach the bottom; they just disappear. This mode is a straight ripoff of the progression mode in Super Breakout. The fourth mode, as I previously mentioned, is a timed bonus stage. These stages feature cameos of Super Mario characters and items in block form. The player has about a minute (in real time; the seconds on the clock move way too fast) to clear out the entire field. This is much easier than it sounds; the blocks disappear in a Breakthrough style. Though it still can be a little challenging at times. The game sessions in Alleyway tend to last pretty long as I can play for quite a while without Game Over-ing. The sound and music in this game are quite nice. This early Game Boy title takes full advantage of the stereo headphone jack, providing some great musical ditties. The title theme especially gets stuck in my head. I also enjoy jingles between levels, before the bonus stage, and during the bonus stage. I really dig the music in this game. The sounds are your typical Breakout sounds. The Game Boy tries its best to provide an echo effect on some of the block-breaking sounds. I thoroughly enjoy the music and sound in this game and highly recommend using headphones while playing. The packaging of the game is also very cool. I like the behind the paddle perspective and the stellar color palate. It really gives of that intergalactic vibe. I don't know what it was with Breakout games and outer space. Super Breakout was about the interstellar adventures of... was it Captain Jack Chang? I remember it was Captain something Chang. Arkanoid also has a space theme, where you control the spacecraft Vaus jettisoned from the mothership Arkanoid after it was destroyed and caught in a space warp. This game appears to take place in outer space as well, though with a twist. The pilot of the spacecraft is none other than our man Super Mario. Or maybe just Mario, as the opening cutscene of the game shows a sprite of Mario hopping into the paddle that appears to resemble his pre-Super Mario Brothers appearance. He looks like a bootleg version of himself. Oh, early Game Boy graphics with your tiny, creepy little sprites... Game Theory time: What if this game was the inspiration for Super Mario Galaxy? I mean, they both take place in space. Maybe that's a bit of a stretch. Even when this game was first released in 1989 it was an incredibly basic and simple take on the genre. It didn't have the little nuances that made Arkanoid so great. It didn't even have a single powerup in it. If this game were released at any other time than at the very start of the first mainstream portable game system's life, it would have been laughable. But the Game Boy was a new concept for most people. Sure, the Microvision and Adventurevision predated the Game Boy by several years, and the former predated it by a good decade, but those consoles were for the most part failed attempts at bringing the console and arcade experience on the go. Plus, I feel that Alleyway was a good way at getting more casual non-gamers to play the Game Boy. Compared to the NES, Nintendo's handheld system offered a much more all-inclusive experience with typically easier and simpler game experiences. Tetris sold many systems to the non-gamer crowd, and Alleyway probably had a few copies bought by those Tetris players. So why play Alleyway now? This game has nothing to set it apart from the crowd. There are much more complicated and engaging Breakout style games out there nowadays, so why pick this one? I'll tell you why: The controls. In all of my life, I have never played a better controlling Breakout style game that uses a D-Pad. The controls this game has are second only to the paddle controllers seen on the 2600 and other potentiometer-based knob or dial controller. The control you have over the game's paddle is exceptional. I have played many other Breakout games with digital-style controllers, like Arkanoid on NES, 1001 Blockbusters for DSiWare, and others, but nothing comes close to controlling better than this game. The paddle moves at the absolute perfect speed for the game. It's honestly hard to explain how good it feels; you need to play the game yourself. If the paddle's base speed is too fast or too slow for you, never fear. The face buttons are here! In this game, the A button will "accelerate" the paddle while the B button will "break". That's how I remember their functions. Though I don't often use the face buttons in the game, they can come in handy in the later levels. So how would I rate this game out of ten for the system it's on. Sadly, I have to put it pretty low as there are so many better games on the system like Metroid II, Link's Awakening and Super Mario Land 2. If I had to I would probably rate it a 6/10. The game is really good, but there are so many other games on the Game Boy that are better. Though I rated it somewhat low, I still recommend picking it up. It's not in very high demand. The controls are exceptional enough to make the purchase worth it. The controls alone turn this game from yet another boring Breakout clone I played to one of my favorites in the genre. All in all, Alleyway is a game I love to "Breakout" and play a few rounds of from time to time.

This is sort of a sister topic to @Kid A'a post on keeping or selling valuable games. I am a firm believer in not selling my games. Always have and always will be. Though I have heard some of you haven't always felt that way. Maybe you sold your childhood system or got rid of a rare game for too low of a price, but whatever it is please post about it here. Mine isn't about me but my dad. I really wish he kept his childhood Odyssey 2! At least his cousin kept his 2600 stuff (which now happily lives in my home). Thankfully my dad kept all of his other systems and games including some of the pricier titles such as Super Metroid and Conker's Bad Fur Day. His original Game Boy is no longer with us but at least he kept most of the games. I have a Super GB and GBA now to play them.

Precisely. Super Mario 64 DS comes to mind. Super Mario Land and its sequel are nostalgic atom bombs. Kid Icarus Of Myths and Monsters is a recent one I played but I'm already a bit nostalgic for. If I cover that one I'll tell you all why it happened so soon after I played it. It involves many intertwining memories based on where I played it. One of those memories is of Versus Super Mario Brothers, the first game I have ever played and one I will need to "blog about". Getting that again was one of the first things I did when I got my Switch. Sadly the Versus machine is no longer with us. I'll also have to cover All-Stars and Super Metroid, Link's Awakening and 2600 Pac-Man, Pitfall the Mayan Adventure, regular Adventure, Tetris, Space Invaders, Columns III, Yo! Noid... I guess I have a lot of things ready. Do you have any other suggestions for me, @RickR? I'd love to hear some of your favorites and maybe some of your stories with the games. I'd love to be able to share other members' stories on the blog. As long as they're games from before my time, they qualify! Except for, you know... a select few 2600 games for more... er... mature audiences. I would like to avoid those games and keep it nice and PG.

Tunnel Runner? I have a story for that one. Such a nice memory. I could also do Luigi's Mansion, though that story is so long I could write a novel. I'm thinking tomorrow I might talk about the first game that I was ever grounded from, Namco Museum 64.

You got most of the Nintendo games with that. DK, DK Jr, Mario Brothers-- even Sky Skipper is there! Plus the DK games are all red labels. Fast Food and Skateboardin' are there too! Lots of the more obscure titles there. Nice find! Heavy sixers look nice. Great shelf material right there.

I would much rather have the physical cartridges than a menu on a flash cart. Growing up with a modded Nintendo Wii filled with abbreviated ROM names on a lackluster list on emulators, I would often fantasize about having a massive shelf full of NES or Atari 2600 games. I often saw them on YouTube channels. If I have the physical cart, I will use it 9 times out of 10.

Hello everybody! I would just like to mention that I have a new blog, Games from Before My Time. It's a game review blog where I talk about games that preceded me. I plan on covering games from the second to sixth console generations. Growing up, I mostly played older games compared to what my friends have played. In the blog I plan on talking about my personal experiences with the games and also reviewing them. At the end I give them a score out of 10 compared to other games on that system. So far I have covered two games: Miniature Golf on Atari 2600 and Mario Kart Super Circuit on Game Boy Advance. For this blog I would like to mainly stick to games I have played before. So that would be mostly Nintendo and Atari stuff. I have played a few XBOX and Genesis games before as well as Game Gear, but never any Playstation games before my time. I also would like to review some games I am nostalgic for to really get that personal connection down. So I'm just asking: what stuff would you like me to review? Please suggest them below! Oh yes, and here's a link to the blog itself! Feel free to comment and things there as well.