Zoids Densetsu for Game Boy

April 5, 2015 by stopXwhispering

I recently got Zoids Densetsu for the Game Boy. I didn’t think much of the few Zoids-games I’ve played for the Famicom, but this one got recommended to me, so I thought I’d give it a try ^_^

It’s amazing! A side-scrolling shooter where you play as various “Zoids” (giant robots), dodging blocks and vulcanos and killing enemies! The music is also extremely catchy! I spent quite a lot of time with it in the couch last night, and I managed to get past the first boss and make it to the third stage. The difficulty increases fast though, and I haven’t gotten past all those erupting volcanos on stage 3 yet >_< This is definitely a challenge I will re-visit and try to beat! :)

You can check out some of the gameplay that I recorded here:

This week I also got a few other games in the mail. They were all NES games, Challenge of the Dragon, Super Turrican, and two pirated games with 32 in 1 and 40 in 1 ^_^ Challenge of the Dragon was a really shitty game! But the box looks awesome ;D

Pickups from SciFiWorld! Games & Star Wars crap :D

March 1, 2015 by stopXwhispering

So here comes my pickups from yesterday’s Sci-Fi convention Sci-Fi World in Malmö :D I bought quite a few games for various systems, mainly Sega this time! But let’s start off with some odd stuff that I just felt compelled to get!! Like these Star Wars Bend-Ems figures from 1993 with bonus trading cards! The poses of these figures are ridiculous! :D Look at that Stormtrooper!! ^___^

Then there’s this awesome Samus Aran fuse bead lamp made by Pappas Pärlor ^_^ It looks great in my game room! I also got a pair of Game Boy earrings from him! Thank’s Johan! :D

This figure of Sepiroth was not possible to pass out on! So cheap, and so cool ^___^

I also got some stuff from Webhallen :) Mario, yoshi and toad PEZ dispensers, a Mega Man energy drink and a mushroom ^_^

After this it was all games! :D Let’s start of with Sega! I got four Sega Master System games, Monopoly, Golfmania, Prince of Persia and G-Loc. Prince of Persia had such an awesome cover! He looks like a scared Luke Skywalker! :D

Then I also got G-Loc for the Sega Mega Drive, and Super Hang On, Normy’s Beach Babe-O-Rama and Mario Lemieux Hockey. Probably not the best games, but I didn’t previously have them, and my fiance only plays hockey for the Sega systems ;D And I got Strider II which I hope is as awesome as the first one! ^_^

I also got a Sega Mega CD game that had two games in one, on one side there’s Cobra Command and on the other side there’s Sol-Feace.

Let’s move over to Nintendo. Here I got three NES games, R.C. Pro Am (which I was sure I had before, but I couldn’t find it in my list, so I guess I was wrong..), Mad Max (probably extremely shitty since games based on movies usually are ;D) and Defender of the Crown.

I also got three SNES games, first up was Kirby’s Ghost Trap. This one is interesting since I had never heard of it before, but in the morning before the convention I was at my friend’s house and she had it, I got curious since it looked just like puyo puyo so I needed it, then I looked it up on eBay and considered buying it, but didn’t. Then when I came to the convention I saw it again! So I bargained with the guy and got it! I’m super excited to try it out now! :D Then I also got Q-Bert 3 and Dragon’s Lair, I’m wondering whether it’s as hard as the NES version ;D

I found some cheap Super Famicom games as well, but they’re hardly worth mentioning ;D Soccer, Baseball and racing Z_Z boring..

That’s everything I got at the convention! I also popped by the GAME store afterwards, and got some more stuff ;D But I’ll make another post of that later ^_^

Retrospelsfestivalen pickups!

October 29, 2014 by stopXwhispering

So here’s the games I picked up at Retrospelsfestivalen, due to the proposal the day ended quite quickly so I didn’t have time to buy much more, but I did find a few interesting things ^_^

First off I found a guy selling off some of his japanese games. I picked up Chitei Tairiku Orudora & Super Boy Allan for Famicom Disk System. Both complete in their big boxes :) I already had Chitei Tairiku Orudora, but not in it’s big box, so I couldn’t stay away from getting it ^_^

I also found a Jajamaru game I didn’t previously have :D They’re usually quite cute platforming games so I picked this one up as well. It’s called Jajamaru Gekimaden Maboroshi no Kinmajou.

He also had a bunch of PC Engine games, most of them I already had, and some were just a bit too expensive. But these two I got at a reasonable price :) Avenger and Prince of Persia.

Another seller had a Power Pad for the NES! I’ve always wanted one but never found one at a good price. It’s bigger than I expected! :D

I’m really excited to finally try these two games out for the Power Pad! :D Athletic World I’ve had for about a decade (!) and Dance Aerobics I got the weekend before at Retrogathering. Look at those hilarious 80’s kids posing in aerobics positions! hahaha ^_^

And here’s a closeup of the Dance Aerobics label!

I also got an NES game called M.U.L.E. It’s a US release only I think, never heard of it before but I’m excited to try it out! The box art is amazing! :D It’s a freaking Space Cowboy!!! :D

The final game I bought was from a friend of mine that was selling off parts of his collection. I finally got around to getting Sonic 3! (Yes, I did not previously have all the Sonic games… shame on me…) I’m glad to have it now though ^_^

This weekend I’m heading to Gamex/Comic Con in Stockholm, so the update on this previous weekend’s visit to a Sci-Fi convention in Helsingborg will have to wait until after this weekend (and yes, I found games there too!!) ;D

Cartridge Comparison: NES vs Famicom

July 28, 2013 by stopXwhispering

I don’t usually intend to buy games for various platforms if I already have them for one, unless I know that there are major differences in the game. However, sometimes it happens that I buy a game I already have since the name and label are completely different, making me think it’s a completely different game..

Here are some examples where I haven’t realized it was the same game until I actually played and recognized it! :)

Xexyz VS Kame no Ongaeshi Urashima Densetsu
Xexyz is the american NES release, and in Japan it’s called Kame no Ongaeshi Urashima Densetsu.. I did not see that one coming ^_^ It’s great platforming fun though!

Rockin’ Kats VS Nyankies
Rockin’ Kats is the PAL NES release, and when I got Nyankies (which it is called in Japan) I first thought it was some sort of sports game, since it made me think of the New York Yankees (I think that’s a team in some sport.. not my field of expertise though) ;D Man was I happy to realize it wasn’t a sports game but a fun platformer, a bit less exciting that I already had it though … >.<

The Krion Conquest VS Magical Kids Doropie
Here I actually got the Famicom game first. I had never seen it before and got really excited when I discovered a copy on eBay.. I paid looots of moneys for it >_< It was fun though! Kind of like a female Mega Man, but harder. Just like a month later I found The Krion Conquest, never heard of that one either, and bought it quite cheap at the Swedish Retro Gaming Exhibition.. when I popped it in I realized it was the same game that I had just spent a fortune on >-<

Dino Riki VS Shinjinrui
Here’s another example of the same game bearing a totally different name. In this case however the cover has similar artwork, a boy raging on a dinosaur haha ^_^

Air Fortress VS Air Fortress
Of course sometimes I do buy games knowing I already own another version of it.. just because it’s a good game at the right price, or perhaps because I’m curious to see if there are any differences in game play ^_^ Like Air Fortress, I enjoy it and didn’t mind owning it on the Famicom as well.

Hector ’87 and Starship Hector

May 14, 2013 by stopXwhispering

From May 10th until May 17th HiscoreHeroes are hosting a competition on Instagram to celebrate Hudson’s 40th anniversary! This is the main reason why my interest and also frustration has grown for this game called Hector ’87, also known as Starship Hector in the US.

The goal is to get the best score in the 2 minute score attack mode in either the Japanese version of Hector ´87 or the NTSC NES version Starship Hector. I had the Famicom version since before, never paid much attention to this game until I saw this competition, but I decided to give it a go!

Another very important rule to the competition is that you are not allowed to use any type of turbo fire, you must button mash! So, the right button fires bombs to hit ground targets and the left button fires shots to hit flying targets. After several evenings of button mashing until my entire arm was sore I managed to reach a score of 296.000. But other people have over 350.000!! I know how I could get at least 30.000 more, but the problem is THIS BASTARD:

I’ve tried playing the game with turbo fire just to see if he’s even mortal, and yes he is, but he takes soooo many shots! I haven’t even been able to kill him a single time without turbo fire!! The second problem is the letters.. There are hidden letters under little mud piles that you can collect by bombing with a LOT of bombs, and the last letter will give you 100.000 points! Here’s where you will find them, what the piles looks like and what it looks like when the letters are revealed:

However, the last letter is located right next to the mid-boss-bastard, so without turbo fire, even if I would be able to kill the bastard, I would have no time to collect the last letter! >_< THIS GAME IS STUPID! IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY! I don’t understand how it would be possible to do both, unless you can button-mash in an incredibly stabile and super-fast-turbo-auto-fire speed! Can you???
I sure as hell can’t… :(

After seeing photos on instagram of all the people reaching scores way above 300k I realized they were all playing the NES NTSC version, Starship Hector. This made me wonder if there were any differences between these two games. Maybe I was playing the more difficult one?? :D So, when going to the Swedish retro gaming exhibition this saturday I only had one big objective, which was to find an NTSC version of Starship Hector. AND I DID! :D

That evening me and my friend NinjaBrite played Starship Hector with big hopes of reaching even higher scores . but.. it was just the same. Just as hard, same enemies, same fire rate, same speed, same ship, same damn score, same everything! >_< I give up…

If you have a copy of Hector ’87 or Starship Hector and you want to compete, then you can read more about the competition on HiscoreHeroes instagram :) I hope there will be more competitions soon, this was great fun, even though it has been incredibly frustrating o_O

Some other advice for people trying to reach the high score (cause I’ve given up..)
Don’t kill the bunkers immediately, they will keep spawning flying spike-bombs that explode, however if you manage to shoot and kill one it gives 2.000 points!
There are hidden triggers in the ground that will make everything on screen on the ground explode if you reveal and destroy the triggers with 2 bombs. (You will still get the same score as if you would have shot the enemies) I have found 4 of them and they are in these locations:

And here’s the points you get for various enemies:

1st letter 10.000 2nd letter 20.000 3rd letter 50.000 4th letter 100.000	Mid-boss 20.000	This guy 10.000
Mr. Guy’s tiny friend 5.000	Big Amoeba 5.000	Spike-bombs 2.000
Squiddy 2.000	Angry crab-head 2.000	Boss Cannon 2.000
Bunkers 1.000	Tiny Amoeba 1.000	Ship thingy 500
Round ship 500	Cannons 500	Boss 500 points (x4 for each bomb-thingy)
Health bars (if you have full health) 500	Boss shots 0 points :(

At least this is what I could figure out when watching my replays. Feel free to correct me or fill in if I missed something ^_^

Retrospelsmässan 2013 – Sweden’s yearly retro gaming exhibition

May 12, 2013 by stopXwhispering

Yesterday I went to Gothenburg with my friend NinjaBrite to attend Sweden’s yearly retro gaming exhibition ‘Retrospelsmässan‘. This is the 4th year in a row that they’re hosting this exhibition and I think it’s a GREAT initiative! I was there 2 years ago as well, last year I missed though since I was in Japan. It has grown immensely in these past years, and it will probably be even bigger next year. The amount of people who came was way more than they had anticipated, even though they had hired larger facilities people were still quieing for hours to get in! I myself had to que about 4 hours (arriving at 12, two hours after they opened). It was ok though, since Nintendo was hosting a Streetpass competition everybody had brought their 3DS and so did we, so we kept busy ^_^ And also met some awesome cosplayers, like Pixelninja dressed up as Megaman :)

This year on the exhibition they had all the old consoles displayed and connected to TVs so you could try everything out, everything from old Pong consoles and Odyssey 2001 to the Atari Jaguar and everything Nintendo and Sega of course. They also had a corner for speedruns where you could watch some of Sweden’s fastest gamers ;D They had a Doom LAN, Cosplay competitions, arcade and pinball corner, game competitions and stands with companies and people selling retro gaming stuff and of course games! :D

Of course I had to pick up some games ^_^ I was looking for one game in particular, which was Starship Hector, but I’ll write more about that in a later post, that’s a looong story ^^ But I found it at this exhibition! And I also found Ninja Kid, Power Blade, Castle of Dragon, The Krion Conquest and James Bond JR. All were NTSC NES and I didn’t previously have them! (I am proud of myself that I brought a PDF of my collection in my phone, because I always tend to buy doubles unintentionally when attending places like this)… ;D
So here’s a little photo shoot I had of my latest pickups ^_^