Category: Games

Atari Baby

March 9, 2007

So I have a big box of Atari now…the same secret source that provided me with that 25 year old Lego kit supplied it. Here’s a shot of the entire bundle, including Yasuda:

< Yossie Loves Atari And here are some detailed shots:

The first is a historic piece of video game history – it’s Nintendo’s first US release. None other than an Atari VCS version of Donkey Kong, which was released under license by Coleco. Interestingly enough, Coleco’s main US plant was in Amsterdam, NY, only a hop and a skip from where we live now. It was at that very plant that they manufactured not only Colecovision systems but also the product that made them truly famous – Cabbage Patch Kids.

The middle picture is a shot of the Atari game Yar’s Revenge, or rather the circuit itself sans plastic case (it is about an inch square). As a child, Kristin found this in a ditch (or something like that) and it still worked fine. It may even work to this day…

The third picture is a shot of some of the basic programming products in the stash. Two cartridges are shown – one for the VCS/2600 and one for an Atari computer (the 5200?) as well as the keypad overlays. We also have a fascinating programming manual which includes details on how to write a basic program that allows the user to program in machine code (ie. You would use the basic cartridge to write an assembly language compiler).

The big question is how much of this stuff still works? And unfortunately I can’t answer that because not only do we not have a TV with the required inputs, the box didn’t include the necessary output cable for the Atari itself. Furthermore, a fair amount of the cartridges are for different systems than the one we have (a vanilla VCS), which are known to have been discarded, unworking, years ago.

So this box will enter the abyss of my attic, lost to future time, until the day arrives that someone else makes a similar blog entry to this one…

This One’s For Bernard

December 19, 2006

Hideo Kojima is one of those handfull of famous game designers, most known for his Metal Gear Solid series. However he’s also made a lot of other games (the awesome gameboy Boktai series included) and is about to release (in Japan) his first Nintendo DS game:

It’s called Kabutore (geddit?) and is a stock-market simulation game. Players buy and sell and whatnot, and the game apparently contains data taken from the Japanese Nikkei index since 2000, so it more or less simulates a ‘real’ stock market.

It’ll never come to America. But if it does, maybe this will be the straw that finally convinces Bernard to buy himself a DS 🙂

To end today’s post, here’s a shot of the awesome 2D art in the recent GBA release Yggdra Union (which is sitting on my shelf waiting to be played):

Game Boy

December 6, 2006

The year is almost over, and the game-buying year is over. Although I know I will be getting some games for Christmas, I will not be buying myself any more games between now and the end of the year. So it seems perfect time to do my gaming year-in-review.

During 2006 I bought 91 video games, for the following systems:

Nintendo DS (31 games)
Gameboy Advance [GBA] (24 games)
Playstation 2 [PS2] (17 games)
Playstation Portable [PSP] (8 games)
Neo-Geo Pocket Colour (4 games)
Gamecube (2 games)
XBox (2 games)
Gameboy (2 games)
Bandai Wonderswan (1 game)

I also bought 2 systems (a white and a pink DS lite, one of which was for KLS). I also paid for 3 months of a World Of Warcraft subscription during the summer (total: $45).

The average price paid per game was a very low $21.67. That is a record for the 13 years I have been keeping records (I originally started records for tax purposes, now I keep them because it’s a pleasing way to keep track of my hobby). This is partially because I am trending towards playing more handhelds (compare the DS/GBA totals in the list above) and partially because the current crop of consoles are nearing the end of their lifespans and retail prices on older games are decreasing.

The least paid for any single game was Y100 (about 90 cents) for Uzumaki for Wonderswan. The most was $60 for the Final Fantasy 12 collectors edition.

16 games were purchased during my Japan trip.

To date, about a dozen of the games I bought this year are ‘unplayed’. Six of these are still sealed in their shrinkwrap. The principle reason for not playing a game is lack of time, but others include a language barrier (in the case of Napoleon and Magical Vacation, two Japanese GBA games), desire to keep the games ‘collectable’ (my sealed Japanese Wizardry GBA games) or because I am waiting to play them on better hardward (2 recent Gamecube games that I intend playing on Wii).

The game I played the most would be World Of Warcraft (over 1200 hours logged on my character, about 400 or so this year). Runners-up would be Monster Hunter Portable (for PSP) and Final Fantasy 12 (PS2), both with savefiles in excess of one hundred hours. I fully expect FF12 to exceed 150 hours when I am ‘done with it’ (ie. killed the god-dragon Yiazmat and the esper-king Zodiark).

The best game of the year…? A very tough question. I’ll answer this in a future post.

Robot Claw