I’ve never been very interested in collecting pirated games for any of my retro consoles. I have always preferred original games, however lately I’ve accidentally come by a few pirated Famciom games. Like the Super Mario IV Armadillo hack, which is basically just the Armadillo game changed to have Mario as the main character, and Caveman Games, which is a NES release ported on a cart for the Famicom.
I know there’s a lot of people that prefer pursuing those rare pirated games, and lately I’ve begun to understand why that is. It’s quite charming, it’s a game just like all the other games I’m collecting, and somebody made it, made an effort to re-code an existing game to their liking, and it’s always intriguing since you never know what to expect form a pirate game. The pirated games are more rare as well, and usually unique, since they weren’t mass produced like many other original releases.
The Last Ninja was a game I saw on Ebay and it intrigued me since I wasn’t completely sure which game it was and also, my best friend NinjaBrite loves Ninjas! So I bought it hoping that she would enjoy trying it ^_^
So I cleaned the game up a bit and tried it briefly to make sure it worked and it worked perfectly on the first try ^_^ I looked it up as well and found out that The Last Ninja was actually released for the NES by Jaleco however the game was also firstly released on the Commodore 64 but it was called The Last Ninja 2.
I compared some screenshots from this version and the version on C64. It is lacking a lot of the details from the C64 version. Here’s the comparison of sceneries: (click to enlarge)
If only the C64 didn’t have such darn long loading sequences then I would probably be playing that more often than the 8bit systems! >_<
This weekend I went to a second hand store and found the most awesome thing I’ve found in years!! The second hand stores around where I live never sells games, I usually see antique stores and random charity shops to loot for decorative nonsense, jewelry and interior stuff like furniture and such (yes I do buy other things than games sometimes) ;D
But this time I found something that was completely and utterly useful and fit right into my Retro Room!! A vintage cassette rack box thingy!!
It’s all orange and pretty, which is the color I’ve been using in my gaming room ^_^ It fits right in!! AND now I have a really clever storage for my Commodore 64 games :D
And it looks awesome when it’s filled with some C64 cassettes ^__^
There’s even some room left in one corner so I can buy even MORE games for the C64 :D Any good suggestions of what the must-haves for Commodore 64 would be? ^^
I’ve been quite busy this last week, I’ve moved my previously tiny little retro gaming corner into a bigger room in our house! :D This was much needed since my games didn’t fit in there anymore O_o
My previous Retro Room (that’s what I call it due to the vintage interior design and all the retro video games) was quite narrow and I have been working for years adding furniture to the puzzle in an attempt of trying to make all my games fit in there. Here’s some pictures of how narrow my previous Retro Room was:
Eventually it was filled with so many games that I had no more room of storing them, they were lying all over the place and it looked messy :(
So my boyfriend and I decided to change rooms, he got my old one and I got our big work-room for myself! :D
It was a lot more work than I had anticipated, putting up new wallpapers, moving all the things out of both rooms and then moving stuff back in and arranging the furniture in a good way.. it was quite messy during the process:
But I tried keeping things organized since most of my games were already in alphabetical order..
So after a whole weekend of decorating and stuff my new Retro Game Room is finally finished! Here’s the results: Underneath the big TV int he middle I have 11 consoles all connected to it ^_^ (NTSCN NES, SNES, Twin Famicom, SMD, DC, PS2, Saturn, N64, SFC, SMS and GC) on the right TV I only have an NES and on the left TV Japanese SMD, SMS, PC Engine and Atari 2600. My 8-bit perler beads came in handy when decorating some dull spaces ^_^ My NES Zapper corner, along with some SFC, FC, SNES and N64 games ^_^ The painting here is made by a friend of mine and I love it so much! It’s some of my favorite game characters of all time ^_^ Samus Aran, Sephiroth, Master Chief and Lulu from FFX :D My Castlevania collection now takes up TWO shelves! and is the centerpiece of my collection ^_^ I have 4 large bookshelves next to each other on this wall, and on the last one I ran out of shelves because I used them all in the others. I am in the process of getting more shelves though, so soon I’ll be able to stack this last bookshelf full as well, I have one more box of games outside the room waiting to be unpacked ^^ My little space invaders shelf ^^ I used to have only Famicom games in it, but now I put my C64 games on the top compartments and my Famicom Konami games on the bottom (the bottom ones doesn’t have endlabels :( and also there’s a Wonderswan!) I also really love my new Nintendo neon sign! It really lights up the room ^_^ I have two more neon signs on the way, I’ll blog about them when they arrive :D In this corner I have my desk, hardly visible here though. I also have all my boxed GB, GBC and GBA there and some Famicom games ^^ Finally my Commodore 64 got it’s own place and didn’t have to stay on the floor anymore! :D I also have a few consoles which I have doubles of, and these I keep on the desk in case I want to record gameplay :) Like my Famicom with Disk System :D
I am incredibly satisfied! And I want to give out a special thanks to my wonderful friend Becky who helped me move and organize everything this weekend! :D
Starting the morning off with some coffee in my favorite mug…
Now today I got a package, my dear friend Mona had been to a flea market and found some Game Gear games and called me to see if I was interested. Since they were so cheap of course I wanted them! So she picked them up for me :D and today I got the package from her in the mail. I don’t have an actual Sega Game Gear yet, but now there’s even more of a reason to get one! :D
She had also gotten me a surpriser gift!
A C64 game called RED L.E.D! Can’t wait to try it out ^_^
Now I probably won’t be updating for about 2 weeks since I’m having a bunch of relatives visiting from the US due to a wedding, but I’ll be back soon ^_^
Today I got 2 more packages in the mail, and they contained the rest of the Commodore 64 games I had ordered.
The games are Driller, Batman, Shao-Lins Road, Batalyx, Steg the Slug, Fantasy World Dizzy, Revenge II, Voidrunner, Turbo the Turtoise and Xevious/Gauntlet in a double pack.
Three of the games are Jeff Minter games. I’ve heard a lot about him and his software company Llamasoft, but I haven’t previously played many of his games, except for Attack of the Mutant Camels on a PC ROM a long time ago and Space Giraffe for XBLA. So I’m excited to try these ones out! :D The ones I got that were Jeff Minter games were Batalyx, Revenge II and Voidrunner.
I love how most of his games are psychedelic trips containing either Llamas, Goats, Camels, Giraffes or Sheep! The artwork is just brilliant! Just check out Voidrunner:
A Llama and a Sheep in spacesuits! :D
Shao-Lins road I’ve played before in Game Room (the XBLA virtual arcade simulator) and I’m really looking forward to trying it on the C64. The Game Room version though is based on the Arcade version, so it might be disappointing. We’ll just have to wait and see, but anything from Konami is usually kickass! :D
The Batman game seems to be based on the movie where Jack Nicholson plays the Joker. The box was a bit scruffed around the edges, but apart from that everything else is in great condition.
Here’s the other side of the Xevious box, which contains Gauntlet:
I haven’t heard of Driller before but apparently it contains “SOLID 3 Dimensional Landscapes like you’ve never seen before. Thanks to Freescape – it feels like you’re actually there“!! …..wow!
It’s in such nice condition, I suspect that the previous owner hardly played it.. that’s usually not a good sign ;D
Well, that’s the games I’ve gotten today, now I’m off to try them all out! (hoping the loading times will we worth the wait..)
I’ve recently purchased a Commodore 64C with a cassette drive and joystick, but I didn’t get any games with it so I basically couldn’t test it.
I had also never played a C64 before in my life so I had no clue of which games to start looking for, however I got some advice on games to get from the nice people over at Retrocollect.com and then I started Ebay-ing…
The Commodore 64C I got was in quite good condition considering it’s age, but it had a bit of discoloration, but I don’t mind that, it just adds to the retro-feel to it ;D It’s also a Swedish version so it has the Swedish keyboard.
The Cassette Drive (I think it’s called Datassette) was in really nice condition! Compared to the console it had hardly any signs of wear, not even discoloration! Both came with original manuals, in great condition as well, but unfortunately no box..
The Joystick was pretty ^_^ It’s called TAC 2, I’m not sure whether this is something that originally came with the console or not.
So here’s the first bunch of games that arrived, some which I had been advised to get and other that just seemed interesting because of the titles and artwork and I was buying a bunch from the same seller anyway. The games are Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Return of the Jedi, Subsunk, Castle Master, Ghostbusters II, Bionic Commando, Commando, Hunchback, Monkey Magic, Se-kaa of Assiah, Booga-Boo (The Flea), Ring of Power, Impossamole, Little Computer People, Batman the Caped Crusader, Heroes of the Lance, Dizzy Panic, Buggy Boy, Blasteroids, Barbarian II, Bouncing Heads, 4 Most Cute and 6 Shooter (containing among others Wizball, which someone recommended).
For those of you who don’t know much about C64, the games come on actual cassette tapes. I didn’t know they could program games on those, I thought they were only for music back in the day! It’s baffling to me ^^ There is also games on floppy disks for the C64, but I don’t think I can play those without getting some kind of disk drive to connect to it first..
I haven’t been able to try them all out yet, mostly because of the outrageous loading times! It took me 10 minutes of this:
Then I got to the starting screen and the Ghostbusters soundtrack started playing, and it said “PRESS ANY KEY”, after listening to the song for a bit I pressed a button and was greeted with another 10 friggin’ minutes of a flickering loading screens!
After that finished I got to the story of the game. A still image of some person with what I guess was a ghost attacking, and a text that started scrolling telling the story with the ghostbusters soundtrack playing. At this time I had just been waiting too long so I just wanted to start actual gameplay so I pressed start again… and once again.. 10 minutes of: So after a total of 30 minutes I finally got some actual gameplay. Stage one was so hard I couldn’t beat it.. >_< And every time I failed a screen popped up with a text that read: “You are a worthless slimeball! … but you have 2 more chances, press fire to try again”
That is NOT very encouraging!!! >.<
A game that I really enjoyed though was Commando, mainly because of the extremely groovy and catchy music! :D I recorded it and posted it here for your enjoyment:
I also tried some Star Wars the Empire Strikes back.
It was a space shooter, and the music was a nice impression of the original soundtrack. What I found odd though was that they had those AT-AT walkers from the Snow area of the movie, but they were flying around in space o_O
And here’s Bionic Commando:
This was really cool! And just like in the other Bionic Commando games you can only move upwards by using your grappling-hook-thingy. I made it a couple of stages but then I quit to try other games.
I’ve only been able to try out about 8 games so far, and today I got another bunch of 6 more games, and I’m still waiting for 10 more to arrive:
The games were Bubble Bobble, Dizzy, Camelot Warriors, DJ Puff, Rainbow Islands and Rick Dangerous.
Retro Video Gaming 