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2017 In Games

Tuesday, December 19th, 2017

You know you’ve been waiting for it, and here it is: the annual summary of my game purchases!

I won’t dance around the facts: 2017 was a ‘down year’ for game spending. I bought only 40 games in 2017, spending a total of $1291. This is the smallest amount of total purchases since 2012, and the smallest amount spend since 1994! Results like this threaten an existential crisis: am I still a gamer?

Of course I am! And we’ll get to that in a little bit, but first here are the pie charts everyone loves. First the games purchased; % by system:

And next the % breakdown by dollars spent:

(Yes I know the fonts are illegibly tiny; click on each for a bigger version.)

The pertinent points:
– I bought games for a few ‘dead systems’ this year: the DS, PSP and NES
– While I still bought Vita games, I bought less than half last year (10 vs 28). This is unsurprising; Sony declared this a ‘legacy system’ a couple of years ago now…
– The Nintendo Switch enter the charts! I bought one game….. but don’t have a Switch yet 😉

As far as overall gaming comments I don’t feel like I’m playing less than ever. I still play Puzzle & Dragons (and am coming up on 1700 consecutive days of logging in) and still enjoy it, and I still have a backlog of (good!) Vita RPGs that are unopened and should last me for years. But I have been playing less console gaming, and certainly spending less on consoles overall. The switch appeals to me for this reason, since I envisage myself more likely to play the games on the system in portable mode than on the TV.

On to my top games of the year, as usual sorted by system. Given the scant purchases for some systems I’ll only tackle the three major ones this time:

Toukiden 2 (PS Vita)

This is a Monster Hunter clone set in feudal Japan with crazy bosses and an emphasis on over-the-top attacks and destructible body parts (on the beasts). It’s an improvement on the already-great Vita original and I played it to death for a couple of months back in late Spring this year. In my opinion, one of the all-time best Vita games.

Monster Hunter Stories (3DS)

This is a pokemon-like game set in the MH world that was much, much better than I thought it would be. I played it like a fiend, only putting it down about 120 hours later. It had fantastic graphics and a great story but above all the gameplay loop was loads of fun and as a (insane) MH fan the appeal of the world was top-notch. Recommended.

The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild (Wii U)

You know how you’ve read/seen countless times that this game is one of (if not THE) best ever made and it’s so good it’s better than real life? Yep, it’s all true. This is the definition of a magnum opus, and a game that will be spoken about for generations to come. Easily the game of the year for me, and worth buying a Wii U/Switch just to play. (This is also likely the last Wii U game I will ever buy, and it’s certainly a worthy title for the system to retire on.)

I’m doing this a little early this year, especially since I have a inkling what’s under the tree for me and specifically that one of those ‘whats’ may even give Zelda a run for it’s money in the masterpiece stakes. Oh well, you’ll have to wait until this time next year to find out 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Games, Otaku, Tech | 1 Comment »

Space Crusher

Sunday, November 26th, 2017

I picked this up at a local con the other weekend:

It’s a Tandy/Radio Shack LCD game from 1985! “Penetrate Space City” the blurb says, fighting enemy spaceships and meteorites whilst enjoying ‘quick-action fire’ and ‘battle sound effects’.

Here’s the contents:

As you can see it’s in remarkable good condition as well as being complete in box. You’ll also note it has four-way control. What sort of game is this…?

A quick look at the manual revealed all:

It’s a Scramble clone! And – for an LCD game – a fairly sophisticated one at that.

And yes, it still works perfectly:

The field scrolls to the left continuously and you have full control over your ship. The controls themselves are weird (Nintendo had debuted the d-pad by now so they should have ripped that off) but they are responsive and the game speed isn’t too fast.

Strangely everything is worth 2 points, and the game ends when you score 2000 (or run out of lives of course). I haven’t played it enough to see how long that would take, but my guess is easily more than one full loop.

As a kid I would have loved this game. As an adult I love the purity of it. A real gem of a find at a local con 🙂

Posted in Games, Otaku, Retro, Tech, Toys | Comments Closed

Review: Game Poke

Saturday, October 7th, 2017

If you visit Japan, eventually you’ll see gashapon vending machines. They’re virtually everywhere, and a mind-boggling array of items can be obtained from them.

On our recent trip, one thing I got out of one such machine – for the princely sum of ¥500 – was this:

The ‘prizes’ are random, but this particular machine only had one thing inside. Here’s the contents:

And a detail of the device itself:

It’s a handheld video game called ‘Game Poke’! As you can see above, the instructions are in Japanese. But this is the Space Age and that’s hardly an obstacle any more:

Basic stuff really. The Rotate button allows us to ‘Bray the game’ (although it actually doesn’t), and the S/P button allows us to ‘game of the start or stop temporary’ (in actuality it does neither).

But who needs instructions?!? Batteries were included, so lets fire this thing up:

What’s this? This little Poke contains 99 games? The buttons allow you to select the different games, and there appears to be (up to?) 26 in total. However each game has variants as well, not to mention 99 (!) difficulties and a wide range of speeds. How much of these are actually different is difficult to tell, but there’s certainly an impressive amount of variety.

You can see it ‘fakes’ a larger display via a 10×20 pixel LCD display with status bar on the right. The LCD contrast is poor, with ‘off’ elements too visible, but there’s no way to reduce it.

The games themselves are, of course, abysmal. Consisting mostly of execrable pseudo clones of Atari 2600 Combat, unplayable ‘driving’ games and others that seem like pixels just randomly flickering on and off there’s just no way anyone would ever enjoy actually playing this thing.

But it does have (19 versions of) Tetris, and I’ll be generous and say they at least work. The device is speedy and the buttons are responsive and it even has a beeper for sound, but it’s extremely tiny and as a result very hard to control.

That’s a closeup of the status bar, which strangely features an awful caricature of a small Asian child (man?) who flaps his hands up and down endlessly while the unit is on. The scores themselves are virtually meaningless since it always and only increments by 100 regardless of game or what you do. I doubt anyone has ever cared about a score they achieved on this device.

Overall, to no-ones surprise – this is a terrible game machine. ‘One for the collection’, as they say, this will be stashed inside a box never to see daylight ever again 🙂

(Intriguingly I ended up seeing ‘Game Poke’ gashapon in a few places in Japan. On one of them a note was attached to the front explaining in English and Japanese that only one in five of the devices actually worked. The others apparently were fakes with stickers on their screens and intended solely as keychains. It seems therefore I got lucky?)

Posted in Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Tech | Comments Closed

My Collection: NES

Wednesday, May 17th, 2017

I owned an NES way back in prehistory (ie. ‘The Australia Era’) and – at the time – played to death all the classics like Super Mario Brothers, Zelda 1 and 2 and Metroid. A couple of years after arriving here in the US, with the SNES in decline and the Playstation and Saturn already released I bought my second NES. It was September 24, 1995 to be exact, cost me $49.99, and I also spent an additional $90.50 buying up a library of 15 games.

I unpacked the NES from deep storage last weekend for a whirl and was pleasantly surprised to find that it still worked, that I actually had a TV that I could connect it to (a non-trivial exercise in this day of HDMI-only ports) and that – most incredibly – the batteries on every single game still worked!

The NES was released way back in 1983, and discontinued in the USA in 1995. I actually bought mine in a fire-sale after it had been discontinued, and therefore mine is the last version of the console ever manufactured. It’s amusing to me that I owned both the first and last versions, and wish I still had the one I bought back in 1987 (when it was first released in Australia).

After the initial flurry of purchased in September 1995, I bought the odd game here and there over the next six months and then stopped. I remember playing it avidly during this time, and the save files on my games support this, with most of the RPGs having maximum-level parties saved. But I suspect somewhere during 1996 I packed it into storage and moved on to the 16-bit CD-based machines.

With the unusual exception of Christmas 2002 (on which day someone gave me Ultima 2 NES for a gift!?) I hadn’t purchased any new games until a couple of weeks ago, when I got these guys for $5 apiece:

This was mostly because I watch lots of retro gaming online, and wanted to try out some shooters on the NES. These three are all ports of fondly-remembered arcade games and are brutally difficult on the NES. I was laughing out loud as I was in some cases getting game overs within a minute of starting, and remembering how such difficulty was the norm rather than the exception in those days 🙂

Then I dug out the RPGs…

That’s my actual party in Ultima 2, strangely named after the noble gasses! The game is a reasonably faithful port of the old PC classic but runs so slowly as to be almost unplayable by todays standards. I found this to be true for almost all of the ‘CRPG-type’ games (such as Bards Tale, Ultima, Wizardry etc.) and since the games can’t be accelerated when played on original hardware I doubt they hold much appeal today.

There are however certain exceptions, such as this still-playable and wonderfully-packaged Japanese installment in the Might and Magic series:

Or Solstice, a game that has become a bit of a cult-classic among certain aging ‘isometric‘ fans 😉

This latter one is ludicrously difficult, and yet I recall spending hours upon hours playing it way back when!

Here’s a photo of most of my NES library:

Almost everything in the above photo cost me $5, with a few (DW4, Startropics 2, FF1) costing $10-15. About half of the boxed games were new (you can still see the plastic wrap on many) and include all the manuals, maps etc. Needless to say these are in pristine condition. Even many of the used games came with most of the inclusions as well, and everything in the photo still works and (if applicable) has a working battery.

As with much of my game collection a lot of this material has gained value over the years. While I didn’t exhaustively check, Castlevania 3 as an example cost me $5 new (the price tag was still on the wrapper!) and now would fetch twenty times that. Amusingly my most ‘valuable’ game may be Godzilla 2 (which was also purchased new): boxed copies on ebay sell for over $200!

If you’re wondering about the major gaps in my collection – SMB, Metroid etc. – I have ports of them on other systems so never felt the need to get them for the NES. As you can see I prioritized RPGs, and as such ended up building a collection worth a nice amount these days. But I’ve got no plans on selling it, and back into storage it will all go.

By the way if you have any requests for the next one of these posts let me know. There’s a great many systems left to cover (basically I own everything since the NES excluding the 360 and XBox1) and I do plan on getting to them all eventually.

Posted in Games, Otaku, Retro, Tech, Time | Comments Closed

Youtube Retro Gaming

Sunday, April 30th, 2017

If your a 21st century boy like me, you’ve turned your back on television and now watch content delivered almost entirely via internet streaming. As in Youtube and/or Twitch. I’m taking a moment here to plug some of my favourite creators, because you may enjoy them too.

A brief description though for the luddites out there who don’t know what I’m talking about (ie. born before 1970). It’s fairly common now for people to have ‘cut the cable’ which means no longer pay for television. In the USA almost no-one uses (or even knows about) TV delivered over the airwaves, so if you don’t pay for cable TV, you basically don’t have TV. This isn’t a problem though since many shows are available via the internet and you can watch them on your TV by connecting an internet-connected computer (or similar) to your set.

But in recent years people have been moving toward watching material created by ‘normal’ people and distributed via Youtube or a popular gaming site called Twitch. Viewership of these non-traditional entertainment channels has been skyrocketing and now rivals or (for certain demographics) exceeds viewership of traditional TV. And I suppose I am now one of these viewers. So here’s what I watch on Youtube…

Mamemeister

Mamemeister is a gaming geek in his mid 40s that lives in Scotland. He has created hundreds of Youtube videos about all sorts of games and game systems dating from the very early days to the relatively recent, with an emphasis on 8-bit UK computers. He’s relatively prolific, releases videos in numerous different series, is quite a character and reminds me a lot of myself. He’s also not very good at games, which can be a bit alarming to watch sometimes but quickly became part of his appeal for me.

Some representative examples:
– One of his worst game ever videos (for Green Beret on C+4)
– A chronicle of C64 game loaders (so much nostalgia!)
– One of his ‘They did what’ series videos (Llamasoft in this case)

In addition to the above he’s done massive series on arcade games by year, on shooters by letter, and many different ’10 minute mashups’ where he just plays a random game for 10 minutes. I’ve watched almost everything he’s done and he’s probably my favourite streamer.

Kim Justice

Kim is another game streamer, again with an emphasis on 8-bit classic computing but very much inclusive of the 16-bit and later years. She produces immaculately researched, edited and scripted videos which range from relatively simple game reviews all the way up to lengthy multi-part documentaries on game companies, series or individuals. Incredibly watchable; try some of her videos if you have even a passing interest in video games.

Examples:
– A documentary on ZX Spectrum cover tapes
– 75 minute documentary about Psygnosis
– List of best/worst wrestling games

Much like Mamemeister, almost everything Kim does is worth watching. His multi-part documentaries in particular are fascinating, with subjects such as Peter Molyneux, Gremlin Graphics or Jack Tramiel. He’s also done a lengthy ‘A-Z of video games series’ which is equally great. If you like the above three I’m pretty sure you’ll like it all.

The Spectrum Show

This is a 60-episode series all about the ZX Spectrum. The creator – Paul Jenkinson – has done a fantastic job and although the content may be a bit dry for most, I binged it all (probably 40ish hours) in only 4 days! He goes into exhaustive – obsessive maybe! – detail about all things Spectrum, and it’s a wonderful celebration of nostalgia and love for the computer I most wanted to own but never did.

Example episodes:
– An entire episode dedicated to Spectrum magazines (Episode 40)
– A review of weird hardware (Episode 51)

Despite the above examples, if you are interested in this show I suggest watching in order. I myself can’t wait for the next series!

Nostalgia Nerd

All about computing nostalgia, this youtuber (as with the others) creates documentaries and showcases of old hardware and software, again with a UK slant. He strays away from gaming more than the others, but at the same time tends to feature more obscure or interesting one-off videos. He may not produce as much as say Kim or Mamemeister, but I still watch almost everything he does.

Examples of his more unusual videos:
– Creating and testing a thermometer attachment for a C64
– Connecting an ancient phone to the internet
– Running a Y2K test in 2017

Although I didn’t include any examples, his game content is top-tier too. Check out his recent doco on the ‘Rise Of The Triad’ game for example.

Techmoan

This guy had loads of subscribers and you may already know about him. He makes video documentaries about ‘the best and worst of technology’ which are exquisitely made and extremely watchable. I particularly enjoy his videos on old or obsolete technology. If you have even a passing interest, check him out and get hooked.

Example of obscure tech documentaries (he covers brand new stuff too!):
– Minidiscs (I was a big fan!)
– A calculator watch from 1977
– Atari music visualizer (this one is just for you Sue!)

Don’t you love the crisp, white backdrops he uses? Techmoan is a strange name though, he obviously loves it all; the weirder and older the better 🙂

There are a few others I watch, mostly system specific stuff (such as Xyphoe for Amstrad) but these are the ones for which I pretty much watch everything they put out. Between all of them there’s a few hours every week, so it’s an easy replacement for TV.

We’re also getting a bit into Twitch streaming as well… but that’s another post 😉

Posted in Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Retro, Tech | Comments Closed

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