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Sunday, September 28, 2008

SNES Cool Spot

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Cool Spot is another food-related platformer from Virgin Games. It's probably remembered best for the awesome song that plays during the bonus levels.

Anyway, this run gets the best ending possible - that requires you to beat the game on hard with no continue and beat all the bonus levels, a significantly more difficult task than beating it on normal.

This is a pretty good game, but man is it ever long. This is a pretty good run, and I don't waste any time, but it still takes close to 2 hours to beat the game.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

PSX Bishi Bashi Special 2

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Bishi Bashi Special 2 is a minigame collection. A crazy, heavily Japanese minigame collection. This run has been updated and now shows both modes.

Okay, so this is a strange pick, but I wanted something to test my method of recording PSX games. There's another game there I've been working on, but it's hard, and I wouldn't want to go to all that work to beat the game and then find out that it produced a bad video.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

NES The Little Mermaid

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Okay, I hadn't been having great luck with my game runs lately, so I went to something I knew I could do in a few hours to placate my audience while I work on the other ones.

This is another one of the Capcom Disney games, but it's actually even easier than Rescue Rangers. It's still not bad for more advanced gamers, though, because there's a lot of secrets hidden in the levels.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

The Battle for Battle City

Well, I spent all night tonight putting the finishing touches on my secret project.

As you may or may not be aware, NES games and Famicom games are extremely similar in nature but they have a different number of connector pins, and thus some kind of adaptor is needed to play one type of game on the other hardware.

There are also certain NES games that are basically just a converter with a Famicom game inside. This was apparently done due to a shortage on NES boards for some holiday season. As such, if you got a hold of one of those, you could switch the enclosed Famicom game and you'd have a method of playing Famicom games on an NES.

It sounds easy in theory, at any rate. The game I wanted to convert is Battle City, a classic arcade game that has never been available in America in any form despite being totally in English.

The first challenge was to get the games apart. NES games are easy since they have screws, but Famicom games are designed with all sorts of tabs that fit into each other, clearly never meant to be opened. I had to use a lot of prying and sawing to get Battle City Open.

Here are the two carts side by side. I already removed the original famicom game.

Now I just had to put them together. This requires a lot more force than you might think.

Here is the assembled unit.

So we're done now, right? Wrong. First of all, the case wouldn't shut - you can see a little plastic piece that goes through the middle of the famicom cart on the grey NES case in the first shot. This doesn't go in the right place for Battle City, so I had to snip it off.

After closing the case, I tried out the game, and it gave me the purple screen of death. I took it back apart, cleaned both the NES and the Famicom games until the pins sparkled, and still nothing.

The problem is actually that the Famicom cart was UPSIDE-DOWN. Yes, it looks normal in the second picture, the chips face the front of the cart like every other NES game and like the Famicom game that was originally in there, but it's wrong. Namco manufactures their chips facing the other way, I assume only to confuse you. You clearly weren't meant to get the game open.

This is the way it needed to go.

This worked first try (of course).

So in the end, I got my NES cart that plays Battle City, but man, it was a lot of work. And expensive. I don't really want to say how much this project cost in total, but suffice it to say it probably would have been substantially easier and cheaper just to get one of those "1000 in 1" pirate carts that always contain this game.

Oh well, Classic Gaming is always a labour of love. And intense frustration.

(I apologize for the poor picture quality. Gaming is where my skill lies, not photography.)

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

NES Jetsons Cogswell's Caper

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(Warning: This game makes frequent use of a strobe-like effect and those who are photosensitive probably shouldn't watch it).

This run was a LONG time in coming. Seriously, I've been working on this one for about 4 months and I've probably attempted it at least 150 times in that period. This game is really, really hard.

This still isn't the world's best run, but I'll take it. Two levels are less than great, but I don't think I die anywhere on the other nine.

Wow, it feels so strange to have this run finished. I feel like I still need to work on this game.

What's On:

NES:

Adventure Island 3
Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers
Contra
Darkwing Duck
Die Hard
Double Dragon 2
DuckTales
DuckTales 2
Eliminator Boat Duel
Felix the Cat
Galaxy 5000
GI Joe: A Real American Hero
Hi no Tori
Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road
Jackal
The Jetsons: Cogswell's Caper
Journey to Silius
KickMaster
The Little Mermaid
Little Nemo the Dream Master
Low G Man
MC Kids
Megaman 2
Metal Storm
Ninja Gaiden
Paperboy
Power Blade
Rampart
SCAT
Shatterhand
Snake Rattle n' Roll
Stunt Kids
Super C
Super Mario Bros
Super Robin Hood
TaleSpin
Widget
Yume Penguin Monogatari


Master System:

Wonder Boy in Monster Land
Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon's Trap


SNES:

Aladdin
Battle Dodgeball
Battletoads and Double Dragon
Biker Mice From Mars
Bonkers
Bubsy
Cool Spot
Demon's Crest
Dolucky's A-League Soccer
Donkey Kong Country
F1 ROC 2 Race of Champions
Ganbare Goemon 2
The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse
Megaman X
NBA Jam TE
Pac Man 2: The New Adventures
Pieces
Plok
Pocky and Rocky
Sparkster
Super James Pond
Super Mario World
Tetris Battle Gaiden
Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose
U.N. Squadron
Wario's Woods
Yoshi's Cookie


Genesis:

Alien Soldier
Castlevania Bloodlines
Chiki Chiki Boys
Cyberball
Knuckles Chaotix
Puggsy
Rocket Knight Adventures
Sonic the Hedgehog 2


N64:

Bust a Move '99
Diddy Kong Racing
Mario Kart 64
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon
NFL Blitz Special Edition
Penny Racers
Pokemon Puzzle League
Sin and Punishment
Snowboard Kids
Super Mario 64


PSX:

Bishi Bashi Special 2
Bishi Bashi Special 3
Choro Q2
Monster Rancher 2
Pocket Fighter
Snowboard Kids Plus
Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage


GC

Sonic Adventure 2 Battle


PS3

Puyo Puyo Tetris


GB

Batman
Megaman V
Trip World


GBA

Megaman Zero
Summon Night Swordcraft Story


DOS:

Holiday Hare
Jazz Jackrabbit
XMas Skyroads

Community Access Channel

Here I've listed a handful of games I've considered doing runs for. If you have a particular preference for one of these games, you can vote for it here. There's no guarantee that a game that gets a lot of votes would get done right away, but it might influence me when picking the next game to do.

Should I switch to using Youtube?

Player Info:

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I'm just a guy who plays far too many video games. I own an Intellivision, NES, SNES, N64, Playstation, Playstation 2, Gamecube, Dreamcast, Wii, Gameboy, Gameboy Colour, Gameboy Advance, DS, and PSP, as well as far more games than I could count.

I started doing these game runs both as a way to show off and to challenge myself. Mostly the former, though.