Tag Archive for 'retro'

My Sonic Adventure: Boiling Didn’t Work

Published by Scott on January 2, 2008 in Video Games. 6 Comments

I told my sad tale about the hoops I had to jump through to get an official copy of Sonic Adventure for the Sega Dreamcast. Let me tell you, that game is becoming my personal white whale. We broke it out at Christmas hoping for some high speed ring collecting fun only to discover it didn’t work. I couldn’t get it to load most of the time on either of our two “new” Dreamcasts. When it did finally boot up it would always freeze after the first battle against Chaos. The disc has a couple of tiny light scratches but nothing that should prevent it from playing.

I cleaned it up with a soft cloth first, naturally, but that didn’t have any effect on it. Next I bought a scratch repair / disc cleaning kit from Radio Shack. Still no improvement for Sonic but it did a nice job cleaning up Virtua Tennis and Rogue Squadron III, two other games we got that were in poor but playable condition. I should mention at this point that I didn’t bother contacting the eBay seller I bought it from because it had been quite a long time since I made the purchase and the game itself was only a buck-fifty. That’s how much it would cost to mail back and I’m sure I would have no chance of recouping the six bucks I paid for shipping and “handling.” (That’s how they get you!)

Then I remembered reading about how people got Xbox discs to work by boiling them in water. I figured it would be a fun experiment. Couldn’t hurt anyway. I did some some Googling to read up on people’s techniques and found this video on YouTube:

That’s pretty much exactly what I did, except I used a slotted spatula to lower the disc into the water. After drying it off and letting it cool, I stuck it in the Dreamcast and crossed my fingers.

At first I was really excited because it actually started up and and took me to the cut scene after my initial save point. “Hot dog, it worked!” I thought. My joy was short-lived however. It froze up while loading the Emerald Coast level and that’s all I was ever able to get it after that. Oh well.

I did some more reading around and found out that ten percent of the initial Sonic Adventure pressing was defective. Sega acknowledged it at the time and would replace the game with a working one. Something about the calibration being off on one of their gd-rom copiers. I figure I must be unlucky enough to have bought one of these bad discs. I guess they will play on certain machines without a problem though. No rhyme or reason to it, just a strange quirk.

I’m in no hurry to try to find a working copy of the game. Maybe some day it will turn up at Goodwill. I might even get the port for Gamecube since it’s generally cheaper and has a lot of extras. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. There’s plenty to play in the meantime…

Helen’s Big Score

Published by Scott on December 10, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 0 Comments
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Helen called me from the local Goodwill while out shopping yesterday. Seems they were having a little sale. Every now and then they’ll pull out a table from the back and cram it full of a particular item or a group of things that fit a theme. I’ve seen mini-sales for phones, rollerblades and sandals, coffee makers, vcr tapes, and books among other things. This time it was video game consoles and controllers! Controllers were $2.02 a piece and consoles, sans power cords or connector cables, only $8.08. She described to me everything they had and I had her pounce on:

  • NES controllers- There were five of these, which was perfect. We only have one official one plus a pair of crappy third party knockoffs. I have two extra NES consoles that I plan to refurbish some day with no controllers. That little problem is now solved.
  • Sega Dreamcast consoles- I’ve already written about the one I bought myself for Christmas. They’re versatile machines and I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a couple of spares for that price. Helen grabbed two of the three they had for sale. I plan on having mine hooked up to my computer monitor so I’ll give one to the boys. Unfortunately the other is in need of repair. It’ll boot up fine but I think the controller port is blown. I guess that’s a common problem in Dreamcasts and a simple matter of replacing a resistor. Sounds like a fun rainy day project to me. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with it after I get it going again. I may give it as a gift to a certain soon-to-be family member who would appreciate the NES emulation.
  • Dreamcast controllers- Duh. Needed these to go with the consoles. Helen bought the four they had.
  • Gamecube controller- We already have four in fine working order so we’ll either keep it as insurance or give it to one of the boys’ friends.

Helen also picked up four SNES games, but I’ll tell about those in a future post describing our obscene Christmas game haul. All in all, it was a pretty awesome day for a retro game fan down to the Goodwills. Thanks Helen!

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!

Gamegirls and Other Retro Treasures

Published by Scott on September 16, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 2 Comments

I stopped by Goodwill one day after work (as usual) and looked in the locked glass case where they usually keep the games. Didn’t see anything new but as I stepped away to leave I noticed a purplish bag out of the corner of my eye. It was on the top shelf hiding in plain sight. I asked to see it and discovered it was full of Gameboy accessories, an original Gameboy Advance, and several games with their directions. Except for The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons, which I was really excited about, the games were crappy. Still, after much hemming and hawing, I bought the bag of goodies.

Eighteen bucks felt pretty steep for one good game and a bunch of stuff I didn’t need but then I figured Hazel could have her very own Gameboy since she always wants to play Dashiell and Ray’s GBA SP’s and my very off-limits Gameboy Micro. (Hey, it’s fragile! I’m not being mean.) She’s pretty thrilled about it and likes me to link another Gameboy with hers so that we can fight each other in Godzilla Domination! “I’m really mad now,” she likes to say as she’s kicking my butt.

A couple of days before that purchase we found a pair of SNES controllers at the other Goodwill. I had actually been checking out prices for controllers that very week. We only had one and were looking to play some head-to-head Tetris Attack, Street Fighter II, and Ken Griffey Baseball. It’s funny because the two controllers actually cost a dollar more than we paid for the SNES system and one controller. Oh well. They’re actual SNES controllers and in decent shape. All of the ones on eBay are of the third party variety.

Later in the week Helen took the kids to the Twins Club sale for another score. The members of the local Mothers of Multiples club hold what amounts to a giant garage sale at a local church twice a year. Helen always finds a lot of good clothes for the kids there but this time she also found a white Gameboy Advance with a pristine screen. (The one I got Hazel has a few light scratches.) It came with four Gameboy/Gameboy Color games: Pokemon Red, Dr. Mario, Disney’s Tarzan, and Bugs Bunny 2: The Crazy Castle. The last two are garbage but the others were nice pickups.

When Helen paid for her stuff the woman looked at the kids and asked who the GBA was for, expecting one of them to want to carry it. Helen had to sheepishly explain it was for her. I thought she was kidding when she told me about the incident but sure enough she’s been playing lots of Dr. Mario ever since. I’m still pretty shocked by this turn of events but can’t say I’m not pleased. My wife is turning to the Dark Side! I’m going to have to pick her up a copy of Tetris Attack to really push her over the edge. And now we each have our own Gameboy, crazily enough.

Finally, yesterday we bought a NES Zapper at the Covington Goodwill. They saw it after the Twins Club sale the other day and for some reason didn’t jump on it. Fortunately it was still there as well as one of the seventeen titles that use the light gun peripheral, To the Earth. It’s a very difficult game, with space ships zipping across the screen launching missiles at such a rate it’s practically impossible to shoot everything. Much easier and a lot more fun is Duck Hunt, which we already had on a split cartridge with Super Mario Bros.

All in all, an awesome week of bargains for our newfound family hobby.

Retro Game Explosion Part Four: Nintendo 64

Published by Scott on September 15, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 0 Comments

A while back I stopped at Goodwill and saw they had Mario 64 for Nintendo 64. We didn’t have a N64 but I thought sooner or later we might come across one for cheap. It was only three bucks so I grabbed it. Just in case, you know?

Sure enough, about a week later they had a Nintendo 64 system with two controllers for twenty-five bucks. One of the workers insisted that he set it up to make sure it was fully functional. It was and I pounced. There were also a bunch of N64 games for sale so I picked up Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, the classic 007 FPS Goldeneye, and Pilotwings 64.

One of the controllers had a rumble pack attached to the bottom of it. Must have been a pretty novel accessory at the time. Nowadays of course that function is built into the controller’s innards. I thought this N64 one was especially funny because it’s HUGE and sticks out really far underneath. It’s totally awkward. Not only that, it requires batteries! I can definitely live without so I just took it off.

A short time after that Helen came across a batch of N64 games at the Covington Goodwill for ten dollars. The keepers included Wave Race 64, Mission: Impossible, Automobili Lamborghini, and the most awesome football game I have ever played, NFL Blitz. That game is so fun! I read a review somewhere that accurately described it as a football game that even a non football fan can enjoy. Seven players a side, thirty yards for a first down, and over-the-top arcade action.

The other games in that bunch were Madden 64, NFL Quarterback Club 98, and NFL Quarterback Club 99. NFL Blitz is truly the only football game I need so I’m hoping to get maybe four bucks for those as a lot on eBay.

I also picked up Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 during one of my compulsive visits to the Conyers Goodwill. It’s right around the corner from where I work and you just never know what treasures will be there! I’ll admit I’ve become quite the bargain shopping junkie.

To be honest, we haven’t really played all that much of our newest system. We’re awash in games right now and haven’t given any of the above titles much more than a cursory glance. Well, except for NFL Blitz. Did I mention how fun that game is? Still, we’ll eventually get around to them. Nintendo 64 seems like a solid system and I’m looking to getting the boys (and me) a few more games for Christmas, including Star Fox 64, Pokemon Snap, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Donkey Kong 64.

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 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

nes_pixel_art.pngWhen 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.