Retrospelsfestivalen 2015 – the loot!!!

October 13, 2015 by stopXwhispering

This year’s retro gaming convention in Malmö (Retrospelsfestivalen) was awseome! I didn’t have much time to buy stuff though since me and my Geeky Gals spent most time hosting competitions and stuff on stage. It was a lot of fun though ^_^ And we got to meet so many cool people :D I did however get half an hour off at the end of the day where I did some speed-shopping for retro games! haha :D

So here’s what I found ^_^ Not bad for 30 minutes huh? ;D

I’m thrilled to have found a Neo Geo game I didn’t already have! Less thrilled to find out that it’s a fighting game (like every other game on that system >_<) instead of a platform game, like the previous Karnov games on NES for example.. but I got a fair price so I’m happy :) I have a lot of friends who enjoy fighting games, so I’ll pop it in my new cab ;D (I’ll tell you more about that in a later post..)

I was also happy to stumble upon some PC Engine games, they’re quite unheard of here in Sweden. But Japon carried a few titles ^_^ I got Gokurake Chuka Taisen on HU card :) I love the other games in this series so I hope this one will be as good, if not better ;D

Apparently Rock n’ Roll Racing for SNES is supposed to be rad, haven’t tried it yet, but I’m looking forward to it ^_^ It’s NTSC, but now I have an NTSC SNES so I feel comfortable buying this region as well :)

I found these C64 carts that I jus thad to have, since they had such amazing artwork haha ^_^ I love how the guy on the cover of Saboteur is both jumping, kicking and shooting a gun at the same time, with such precision! hahaha :D

I also got some games for the Nokia N-Gage, a few weeks ago I bought two N-Gage systems so now I also have games for them ;D It’s Sonic and Crash Bandicoot, so hopefully they haven’t screwed that up..

Sonic N – Nokia N-Gage

Crash Nitrokart – Nokia N-Gage

Nokia N-Gage

From MXS I bought two handheld Game & Watch clones, one was called Hungry Elephant and the other one Sky Invaders. Unfortunately Sky Invaders didn’t have a hatch over the battery slot, and it didn’t seem to work when I held batteries in there :/ But I got them really cheap so I’m happy one of them worked :) I also bought a Tetris Jr. from Pixel, so cute! ^_^

Hungry Elephant handheld game

Sky Invaders handheld game

Tetris Jr keychain game

I also found a Famicom pirate called Mechanized Attack II, I liked the cover and was curious of what was on it :) And I found a Game Boy game from Japanspel, I mainly bought this one for the ridiculous cover XD It’s called Tasmania Monogatari. Apart from this I found a cheap Sega Master System game I didn’t previously have.

Tasmania Monogatari – Game Boy

Tennis Ace – Sega Master System

I got some gifts from friends, like the Famicom matchbox from Pappas Pärlor and the mushroom and Sonic pin från Pixel K.A.F.E :) Thank you!! And I bought an amazing album that I have been listening to all week on Soundcloud from Professor Sakamoto! :D He performed at the festival and also at the after party ^_^ So talented and an amazing composer of chiptunes! At the bottom here I’ve embedded a few videos I filmed from his performances :) Go check him out!

Apart from all this my friend David showed up with all the ZX Spectrum games and other stuff I had bought from him earlier :) So I came home with 42 new Speccy games! (which I’m pretty sure is more than I paid for ;D) Thanks David! Apart from the Spectrum games I had bought a perfect case for storing Atari 2600 cartridges, or Famicom games :D But preferrably Atari 2600.. and a Neo Geo MVS game, Super Sidekicks 2. It’s football >_< but it was cheap :)

Hunchback II, Devils of the Deep, Wally Kong, Don’t Buy This – ZX Spectrum 48k

Tapper, Wanted Gunfright, Mikie – ZX Spectrum games

Atari 2600 cassette case

ZX Spectrum games

Super Sidekicks 2 – Neo Geo MVS

This year at Retrospelsfestivalen I also had a table where I sold off some doubles, I’m happy with how my table turned out ^_^ First time ever selling games!! It’s hard since I’m a hoarder by nature ;D hahaha! I set up a PC Engine with Coryoon so people could try out this awesome game ^_^ Unfortunately I didn’t sell too many of the japanese games, a lot of people don’t have the consoles for it here. Most people are into PAL NES and SNES.. :/ Also my fiancé was taking care of the table all day, and he is completely clueless when it comes to games! LOL! I appreciate his support though, and people told me he was friendly ^_^

Coryoon for PC Engine

My table at Retrospelsfestivalen 2015

Mike the clueless Beyoncée ;D

Here’s the videos from Professor Sakamoto’s performance at Retrospelsfestivalen 2015! Check them out! So much awesome!! :D

Famicom pirate games #1 – The Last Ninja

February 22, 2013 by stopXwhispering

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! >_<

Pirated Famicom carts – Super Mario IV 4 Armadillo & Caveman Games

September 25, 2012 by stopXwhispering

I’ve never been into Pirated games, but the other day I found these quite cheap and I was in a Famicom-cartridge-shop-a-holic state of mind and they just happened to slip into my possession thanks to my itchy auction-bidding-index-finger ^^

The name of the first game intrigued me, so I googled it. Super Mario IV (4) Armadillo is actually the Armadillo (アルマジロ) game for Famicom that has just been hacked to contain Super Mario as the main character instead. It’s basically the same game, I suggest getting Armadillo instead, the cartridge is prettier ^_^

The original Armadillo cartridge looks like this:

And this is what the pirated fusion of Armadillo with Super Mario Bros 3 looks like compared to the original (the original is on the left):

Mario cannot kill enemies by jumping on them, he has to transform into a ball like in the Armadillo game.

When you turn into a ball to kill enemies it’s basically exactly the same game.

They haven’t even bothered to change the life icon from Armadillo’s head to Mario’s..

Caveman games was released for NES with the same name. It’s a fun sports mini games type of game set in the stone age with cavemen. You can choose different characters and different game types.