Tag Archive for ‘Gaming’ at Groovy Kid Stuff

Tag Archive for 'Gaming'

Santa’s Bag o’ Video Games Part 3: Xbox and Gamecube

Published by Scott on December 25, 2007 in Holidays and Video Games. 0 Comments

Okay, here’s the last post of this year’s surfeit of video games for Christmas. I scored a bunch of these at Blockbuster of all places. I must have stumbled upon some sort of clearance sale of former rentals because usually the store I go to doesn’t have a very good selection.

Xbox

Sega GT 2000 / Jet Set Radio Future
Two bucks for two games? Count me in! I love racing games and Sega GT 2000 is supposed to be decent. That was a throw-in though because I was really after Jet Set Radio Future, which is an urban adventure that has something to do with graffiti tagging. Sounds promising.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Dashiell and Ray love to play co-op games so I know they’re going to be into this. It’s a beat ‘em up featuring the full stable of Marvel heroes. It got great reviews.

Psychonauts
I’ve read that some of the content on this one is inappropriate for the younger set so it’ll be for me. From what I understand it’s a platformer of sorts with clever writing and a cult following.

Need For Speed Underground 2
Another racer, this time of the illegal street variety. I’ve never played any from the Need For Speed series but for two bucks I couldn’t pass it up.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
I cannot wait to play this game! It’s a role-playing action adventure set in the Star Wars universe. I’m actually just as excited about this one as I am about finally playing my Dreamcast.

Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu
Another co-op superhero beat ‘em up. The lads are going to dig it.

Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter
Still more co-op play, this time a Star Wars space shooter that’s supposed to be less difficult than Rogue Squadron.

Gamecube

Viewtiful Joe
A classic Gamecube title that I’ve been interested in for awhile but never got around to buying. It’s a 2D beat ‘em up with a time shifting element.

Kirby Airride
Avatar: The Last Airbender
We already gave these to the boys for their birthdays. They played Kirby at a friend’s a few weeks ago and had been talking about it ever since. They’ve been having a blast with it for the past few days. Even Hazel plays. It doesn’t really appeal to me but whatever. They’re into it. They haven’t given Avatar much more than a few minutes but they’ll get to it eventually. We’re all huge fans of the show.

Santa’s Bag o’ Video Games Part 2: Dreamcast

Published by Scott on December 24, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 5 Comments

I’m really excited to officially break out the Dreamcast tomorrow. I already had a sizable stash of games to go with it but I’ve picked up a few more since then. One title I really wanted to get was Sonic Adventure. I got it but what an ordeal! I took a chance at half.com and bought it from the person that had it listed cheapest. This seller only had feedback from four people, but all were positive. Turns out he is selling bootleg copies of games and trying to pawn them off as discs sent to reviewers.

The Sega Dreamcast can play cd-r’s but all of their games were released on the unconventional gd-rom format, which can hold up to 1.2 GB of information. The disc I got from this shady dealer was most definitely a cd-r. It says so right on the transparent ring in the middle! I know from poking around an underground game sharing network that Sonic Adventure is too large to fit on a regular cd-r. I could have downloaded the same free copy this person did, with deleted cut scenes, music downsampled from stereo to mono, and who knows what else hacked out. That’s not what I wanted and I certainly wasn’t going to pay for it. I didn’t call the guy on his bullshit but did tell him I thought I was buying the official release and requested a refund. He gave me my money back without argument and I soon found a “Buy It Now” deal for the real thing on eBay for about the same price.

I read about a similar scenario on the racketboy forums, did some sleuthing, and discovered they were talking about the same fellow. He’s got lots of rare Dreamcast games listed for cheap on both half.com and Amazon. So buyer beware! Here’s a comparison of the copy (left) and the official Sega release:

I had a much happier experience purchasing a lot of Dreamcast sports games on eBay. I was looking to buy one of the 2K hockey games, which go for next to nothing by themselves. For twenty bucks (including shipping) I found not only that game, but seven more titles plus two VMU memory packs. That was an excellent deal, especially considering that the VMU packs normally sell for around $6-8 each plus shipping. The games came with their instruction manuals and jewel case inserts too. Score!

I also bought a VGA cable from the racketboy store so I can plug the Dreamcast directly into a computer monitor. I haven’t tested it out yet but it’s supposed to offer a clear, crisp picture. And finally, I found a third party light gun for a couple of bucks from Goodwill so I can blast some zombies in House of the Dead 2.

Santa’s Bag o’ Video Games Part 1: SNES and N64

Published by Scott on December 23, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 0 Comments

I’ve been stockpiling games for about three months now and have to admit the Christmas haul is ridiculously large. We’ll have enough “new” retro titles to occupy us for a long, long time. Here are the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 games that will be under the tree and some brief thoughts about each:

SNES

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Yoshi’s Island
We have both of these fantastic games for the Gameboy Advance. It will be fun to play them on the big screen.

Super Mario All-Stars - I talked about this one in a recent post.

Super Star Wars
Spider-man & Venom: Maximum Carnage
These are both supposed to be difficult but very good.

Street Fighter II: Turbo
Mortal Kombat II
Final Fight
I have been a Street Fighter II: The World Warrior junkie for the past couple of weeks. I’d never been a fan of fighting games before but all of a sudden I’ve developed an appreciation for the genre.

Shadowrun - A highly regard role playing adventure.

Donkey Kong Country - Platformer with everyone’s favorite oversized video game gorilla.

Starfox - I’m curious to see how this series began. I know they put in an extra chip for this game to push the graphics of the SNES to the limit.

Uniracers
Stunt Race FX
These arcade trick/racing games look fun. There’s a good review for Uniracer at racketboy.

Mega Man X - I have never played any of the Mega Man titles so I’m looking forward to checking one out.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time - From what I’ve read this is a good co-op beat ‘em up. Ray especially likes those kinds of games.

Super Game Boy - Not a game but an adapter cartridge that allows you to play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games on TV through the Super Nintendo. We only have a few of those games but I thought it’d be worth checking out.

N64

Starfox 64 - I was really excited to find this at Goodwill. I was seriously considering buying it online before it magically turned up last Saturday. It’s an on-the-rails flying space shooter, just like the best parts of the two Starfox games we have for the Gamecube. Unlike in those games though, he stays in his ship the whole time.

Pokemon Stadium - We have Pokemon Colosseum for Gamecube and I expect this is probably pretty similar. It wasn’t well received during its release but I couldn’t pass it up. We love Pokemon!

Diddy Kong Racing - Gamespot describes it as “a cross between Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64.” They don’t score it very well but it sounds promising. I’m sure it’s at least three dollars worth of entertainment.

Star Wars Episode I: Racer - The pod racing sequence was kind of lame in the movie but I’ll bet it’s fun as a game.

Retro Game Explosion Part Five: Sega Dreamcast

Published by Scott on October 28, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 4 Comments

Just before we took our trip to South Carolina, the local Goodwill got in a stack of Sega Dreamcast games and put them for sale at three bucks a pop. The only thing I really knew about the system was that it was beloved by longtime gamers. Went home and did some reading at Racketboy, a simply amazing retro game resource, and decided I should probably pick up a few in case I ever came across a Dreamcast. I put together a list of recommendations from that site and bought:

Crazy Taxi
Tennis 2K2
SoulCaliber
The House of the Dead 2
Resident Evil Code: Veronica
Sega Rally 2
Cannon Spike

After a couple of weeks of monitoring Dreamcast auctions on eBay, I saw what looked like an awesome deal. For $41 including shipping I got a Dreamcast, two controllers, one VMU memory card, two rumble packs, and three games: Quake III Arena, Silver, and Shadow Man. All of this stuff plus the initial games I purchased are my Christmas present. I figure we’d gone a little crazy with the retro systems since June and another one now would be a bit much. Plus it gives me something to look forward to.

I have been sneaking it out after the kids go to bed however. Again thanks to Racketboy and this article, I have discovered the seedy underworld of emulation and ROMS. The Dreamcast will read CD-R discs without any chip modifications, making it possible to play NES games on it. Pretty darn cool. I’ve tracked down all of the necessary software and figured out how to burn a self-booting disc consisting of an amazing collection of NES games.

There’s also a homebrew scene in which people have developed their own Dreamcast games. DCEvolution has free collections of these games where you simply have to download an image file and burn it to a disc. As recent as last year there were commercial releases of homebrew games. Kind of crazy, considering the Dreamcast came out in 2000 and has been out of production since 2001.

And if great commercial games, emulation, and homebrew weren’t enough, techno smarties have long since figure out how to rip backup Dreamcast games. I found a little group that shares torrents of impossible to find or prohibitively expensive games like Ikaruga and REZ. No, it’s not even close to legal but I’m not losing sleep over it. Instead I’m counting down the days until Christmas when I can break this awesome system out permanently!

This Week’s Retro Game Treasures

Published by Scott on September 23, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 0 Comments

Compulsive Goodwill stalking turned up these items:

NES Advantage Controllers
We went to the one of our local Goodwills yesterday and they had an unmarked pair of these out on the shelves. I asked the cashier how much they were and she didn’t know. They’re not supposed to sell stuff that’s not priced so she sent them to the back and said they’d be out on the floor the next day.

We returned today and they were nowhere to be found. I got a woman from behind the scenes to poke around. She found them and surreptitiously slipped them back into the electronics section. They’re not supposed to bring stuff out to customers so that was her workaround. I appreciated it, all the more so because they were only $3.54 each. I expected to pay a lot more.

I didn’t even know there was such an accessory. Basically NES Advantage is the joystick version of the regular controller plus some speed manipulating features. I don’t know if I like it better yet but it’s a cool option to have. They’re definitely solid and responsive.

Hazel and Ray are in the picture above trying them out in a game of Super Dodge Ball.

Spider-Man (2000, Playstation)
They had this a couple of weeks ago but when I looked in the case, it wasn’t the right disc. This time everything checked out so I snatched it up. It’s really fun to play as Spider-Man, swinging on webs and crawling up the sides of buildings. Lots of heroes and villains from the Marvel Universe too. The kids especially like Venom. A nice bonus is the “Kid Mode,” which is the complete game on a very easy setting along with a slightly modified control scheme to make Spidey’s abilities a little less complicated.

Metal Gear Solid (1998, Playstation)
I only knew this game by reputation so I’m glad to have a chance to play it. Great story with a very cinematic feel. I’ve played a couple of Splinter Cell titles and can see how influential it was on that series. It’s rated “M” so I have to wait for the kids to go to bed before I can see what Solid Snake is up to next.

ActRaiser 2 (1993, Super Nintendo)
I’d never heard of this one but grabbed it anyway because I saw it was published by Enix. They have a reputation for putting out good games. You play as some sort of mythical winged hero with a sword and shield. Looks great but it’s really hard. Haven’t quite got the hang of it yet.

Retro Game Explosion Part Three: SNES

Published by Scott on August 27, 2007 in Video Games. 0 Comments

Man, I love the Goodwills! A few weeks ago we made our regular visit to the Covington store after the library. That’s our usual big Saturday day on the town. The kids and I were looking at books when the manager announced 25% off all electronics for the next ten minutes. I thought I’d mosey over to check out the speakers since I could use one more pair for my current setup. On the way to that section I reconnected with Helen who had found a Super Nintendo system. She’s been an amazing good luck charm for our recent retro game renaissance.

The SNES with one controller was only $12, minus a quarter off. They had one SNES game there, Madden ‘94, that the cashier sold to me for two bucks. It didn’t have a price on it so she just made that up, which was fine by me. Took it home, plugged it in, and it worked great. I never owned a Super Nintendo when it was a current system so I was really excited.
The following week we went to Goodwill again after the library and there was a stack of seven SNES games taped together for all of $10. Score! The games were:

Super Mario World- Another Mario classic. We have the port of this for the GBA but it’s extra cool to play on TV.
Tetris Attack- Wow! Not a whole lot like Tetris but an equally awesome puzzle game. We absolutely love it, even non-gamer Helen who has become quite a junkie.
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior- Great fighting game.
Aladdin- A movie game that’s actually a very good platformer. From what I’ve gathered it’s pretty well regarded. This was the boys’ favorite of the batch.
The Lion King- Another movie tie-in, again not horrible. It’s actually pretty hard.
Pro Quarterback- Ho hum, more football.
Dirt Trax FX- Dirt bike racing. It’s okay.

The next week, Helen took a solo trip while I stayed with the kids. She came home with a dozen SNES games for the low, low price of just fifteen dollars. There were actually some sucky games in this batch that we’ll try to sell on eBay, including Wing Commander, Boxing Legends of the Ring, George Foreman’s KO Boxing, NHL Stanley Cup, and another copy of Madden ‘94. The keepers:

F-Zero - Excellent futuristic racing game. We’ve got other titles in the series for GBA and Gamecube.
Cybernator- A sidescroller from Konami in which you pilot a giant 100 ton robot set loose in an alien stronghold.
Mechwarrior 3050- Similar to Cybernator only in primitive 3-D.
Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball- Fun baseball game with kind of a funky soundtrack.
Bill Walsh’s College Football- Exact same game engine as Madden for SNES, but college teams instead of pro.
Captain America and the Avengers- Beat’em up with superheroes. I don’t care for it but the boys think it’s cool.
Cliffhanger- Another beat’em, this one based on the ‘93 Sylvester Stallone movie of the same name. No, I’m not kidding. Again, Dashiell and Ray like it but I’m less than impressed. They laugh their heads off stabbing the bad guys (no blood!) so I guess it’s worth it.

I also bought a copy of Super Metroid from eBay. Haven’t really taken the time to dive into it yet but I can’t wait. We love Metroid and that title is by all accounts one of the best in the series.

I’ve been swinging by the Goodwill next to my school almost daily after work but haven’t come up with any more SNES games. Kind of a dry spell, unless you count the Nintendo 64 system and handful of games I picked up. I’ll write about that next in Part Four…

Retro Game Explosion Part Two: PS1

Published by Scott on August 7, 2007 in Games and Video Games. 2 Comments

While I was tipping over wheelchairs and shoving old ladies out of the way to get to the NES games at the garage sale I mentioned the other day, Helen was on the other side of the driveway scoring a Sony PlayStation. I had actually won a lot of Lightspan games on eBay earlier in the week and we were planning to buy a PS2 to play them on. It never occurred to me to seek out a PS1 for which the Lightspan games were designed. Duh. It was perfect timing stumbling across this one. For thirty bucks we got the PlayStation with one controller, five PS1 games, and 6 NES games. Pretty sweet deal, especially considering all this stuff was in mint condition. Helen also found a second controller for a buck at another garage sale too.

One of the games we bought was WWF Smackdown. I’m not a wrestling fan but there were four of us thirty something dudes at the in-laws and we were looking forward to some ridiculous fighting action. I set everything up and then discovered the case was empty. Bummer. Not-quite-Uncle Dan brought his Gamecube though so we had a Tiger Woods golf smackdown instead. The PS1 games that were in their cases, plus one we found at Goodwill the other day, include:

Crash Bandicoot: Warped- a fun 3-D platformer
N2O Nitrous Oxide- like a 3-D version of the arcade classic Tempest
Lego Racers- racing game, Lego style
A Bug’s Life- lame movie tie in game
Pandemonium!- we haven’t checked this out yet

I mentioned that we won a Lightspan auction, which consisted of 32 PlayStation educational games. The boys haven’t really looked too closely at them yet. I had to track down a memory card first, again via eBay, so they could save their progress.

I must say I’m a little disappointed by what I’ve seen so far. I guess I expected them to be a lot better than the computer games my school uses. I was led to believe by what I read that they were more like “real” games than digital worksheets. They seem to be on par with the current Math/Reading Blaster series. Perhaps they were superior to the educational software available at the time of their original release. Then again we’ve only explored a couple of titles so maybe some of the other ones are better. Not that they’re bad or anything. They’re just not what I had hoped for. I will say that Dashiell and Ray were engaged and enjoyed playing them. That’s really the whole point of our Lightspan experiment.

And now we’ve added a PlayStation to our growing video games collection. I’ve never owned or even really played any Sony consoles before. I found this awesome source for classic game recommendations and will be looking out for more PS1 goodness on future Goodwill runs. Maybe Helen will run across some at garage sales too. I’d better stay away though or I might hurt someone.

Retro Game Explosion Part One: NES

Published by Scott on August 5, 2007 in Games and Video Games. 1 Comment

We’ve stumbled across some amazing deals at garage sales and Goodwill over the past month. As a result our classic video game collection has increased significantly. I’ll break it down into three parts instead of one super long post. First up, our NES acquisitions.

While in Michigan Helen and I ventured out alone to scope out the local garage sales. Crazy, huh? It’s extremely rare that we do anything without the kids so naturally we spent such an occasion combing through other people’s junk. As we walked up the driveway at our first stop, I complained about how uncomfortable I felt gawking at stuff while the owners looked on. I had hardly finished my thought when I saw an NES motherload- a box with about twenty games inside!

The problem was that another guy was looking at them. Now Helen will tell you that I elbowed him out of the way to get to those games. It wasn’t quite that extreme but I was pretty aggressive. I got in his personal space and asked if he was going to buy them. He mumbled something about not being sure which system his kids had and slinked away so I could pounce. Clearly I meant business. Turns out a lot of it was garbage like Home Alone but for two bucks each I grabbed:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Mario Is Missing- a geography adventure game w/ Mario
Dr. Mario- Tetris like puzzle game that I used to have
Bases Loaded II
Skate Or Die- pre Tony Hawk skateboard game
The Simpsons: Bart Vs. World

Each was in pristine condition and came with directions. These people really took care of their stuff. Looking back I’m kicking myself for not buying their NES system they were asking ten bucks for. I figured I already had a working system but I should have grabbed it anyway. It even had a case for it! Helen went back the next day but it was gone. The one that got away or something.

Then a week and a half ago a sizable lot of games turned up at one of our two local Goodwills. Helen saw it while I was at work down the street. At the time my computer/email was out of commission and I stupidly had my cell phone turned off. Ended up making a special trip back later that evening instead of waiting until after work the next day. I bought a handful, wrote down the names of the ones I wasn’t familiar with, and have gone back twice to buy more after doing research. Some absolute classics in this batch, all at three dollars apiece:

Ice Hockey- so much fun! I played tons of this back in the day
Contra- up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start
Ninja Gaiden- only familiar with it by reputation
NES Open- golf with Mario and his pals
Tecmo Bowl- football
Rush’n Attack- killing Russians, cold war style
Excitebike- motocross racing
Adventures of Lolo- puzzle adventure
Zoda’s Revenge
Superspike V’ball / Nintendo World Cup- volleyball and soccer twofer
Low G Man
Renegade- beat ‘em up

I just picked up those last six and haven’t played them yet. They need to be cleaned before they will work. I should be getting the Nintendo 3.8mm Gamebit Security Tool I ordered in the mail tomorrow, which will make that process much, much easier.

Also, at Goodwill yesterday I snagged a Game Genie. I was pretty excited, even more so later when I got it to work. It’s a cheating device that allows you to enter codes to alter games, giving you unlimited lives for example. Some of those old games gave you a code after you finished a level so you could pick up where you left off. A few even had a battery. But most of them you had to start over after you turned the console off. Unless you had a lot of time and mad gaming skills, you might never get through to the end. It will definitely come in handy.

To top it all off, Helen’s friend gave me two NES consoles along with copies of Dr. Mario and Super Mario Bros. that were stored away somewhere at her extended family’s home. Both power up but neither will play games. I’m sure it’s only a matter of restoring or replacing the pin connectors. They don’t have controllers or A/V cords either so I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with them. I might try my hand at some mods or fix them up and give them away.

Refurbishing Our NES

Published by Scott on June 27, 2007 in Video Games. 4 Comments

When I went to play those NES games I bought at Goodwill the other day, I couldn’t get any of them to work. Not only that, but suddenly none of the games we already had would work either. I did some searching around and found an awesome step-by-step DIY article with photos at a site called Good Deal Games. It didn’t look too complicated so I dove right in with a Phillips screwdriver and took the console apart.

The problem was that the connector pins were bent out of place so they couldn’t get a good read on the cartridges. It’s a very common occurrence with the NES system and one Nintendo tried to rectify with a top loading version called NES 2. Basically all I did was remove that part from the console’s guts and bend all the little pins up.

The only tricky part was getting the cartridge tray to sit right when I put it all back together (sans the top.) If the front screws that hold the tray in place were too tight, the spring system wouldn’t work. If they were too loose, the game wouldn’t fit into the connector right unless you physically pushed down lightly on the cartridge. It came down to a lot of testing and little quarter turns of those front screws.

After all that, our new games still wouldn’t work. Following the tips from another article at the same site, I tried cleaning the metal contacts on the cartridges with a 50/50 solution of water and rubbing alcohol. A few dozen filthy Q-tips later and voilá, they all played.

It was a very satisfying little project. I fixed our NES and got five grungy games to work! Helen was less than impressed but I felt pretty cool. I love doing stuff like that, especially with successful results.

Video Game Bargains

Published by Scott on June 26, 2007 in Video Games. 1 Comment

We picked up a bunch of games while out and about yesterday:

Rampage (Gamecube)
Dashiell and Ray have been dying to get this. We found a used copy at Gamestop for $10, which is the cheapest I’ve seen it. Basically you play as giant monsters and destroy famous cities. Looks repetitious but they’re nuts about it. I like how the campaign mode is multiplayer co-op so they can play at the same time.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell (Xbox)
Project Gotham Racing (Xbox)
My friend Steve lent me these titles when he first gave us his old XBox, so I’ve played them both extensively. I finished Splinter Cell before but would love to play through it again, especially now that I know what to do for each mission. They’re both really good games and for $2.99 each, again at Gamestop, I couldn’t pass them up.

Balloon Fight (NES)
Blades of Steel (NES)
NES Play Action Football (NES)
T&C Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage (NES)
Xenophobe (NES)
Helen mentioned in her last post that we actually went back to Goodwill to pick these up. I hesitated on our first visit but later figured that $3 each wasn’t much of a gamble. Even if we only play each a couple of times we pretty much get our money’s worth. Cheap thrills. I really wanted Blades of Steel, which is a hockey game I remember playing back in the day. We already had Balloon Fight through the Gamecube game Animal Crossing. The boys really like it and having the actual cartridge is kind of cool. Football looked okay from the few downs I played. Xenophobe, not so good. Killing aliens is always pretty fun but it turns out the game is laughably basic and dated. The “Wood” part of Wood & Water Rage is an entertaining skateboarding game while the surfing game “Water” is almost unplayable.

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