I just bought some Castlevania games I didn’t previously have. Another Castlevania collector were selling off a lot of his collection on Facebook and I managed to snag a few of them :) Since I have recently acquired an MSX I thought it was time to get Castlevania for it, even though it was a bit overpriced.. It was still sealed though, but I’m gonna have to open it up, because I want to play it!! XD I’m not sure if my MSX is an MSX 2 or not though.. I hope it is so I can play it >_<
MSX 2 – Akumajou Dracula
MSX 2 – Akumajou Dracula back
There were two other games he was selling that I had never seen before, probably because one was a pirated game and the other one was a hack. They still looked pretty cool and weren’t too expensive so I picked them up as well :) One is a russian pirate of the Sega Mega Drive game Castlevania the New Generation, and the other one is a hack of Castlevania Dracula X called Castlevania Dracula X Evil Trevor, starring Trevor Belmont. This last one is also sealed, but I’m just gonna have to open it up to see what it’s like XD
SMD – Castlevania The New Generation Pirate
SMD – Castlevania The New Generation Pirate back
SNES – Castlevania Dracula X Evil Trevor
SNES – Castlevania Dracula X Evil Trevor back
I also picked up two copies of Lament of Innocence on PS2, because the one I had is a PAL version and these were NTSC and NTSC-J, with completely different cover art than the PAL game :) I don’t usually buy the same game just for various regions, but since it was Castlevania and these two were really cheap I couldn’t pass them up XD
PS2 – Castlevania Lament of Innocence US
PS2 – Castlevania Lament of Innocence US back
PS2 – Castlevania Lament of Innocence JP
PS2 – Castlevania Lament of Innocence JP back
I also bought a Japanese Symphony of the Night, or Akumajou Dracula X Gekka no Yasoukyoku as it’s called in Japan ^_^
PS1 – Akumajou Dracula X Gekka no Yasoukyoku
PS1 – Akumajou Dracula X Gekka no Yasoukyoku back
And the final new addition to my Castlevania Collection was a Soundtrack CD with music from the first three NES games, it’s called “Akumajou Dracula Famicom Best” :)
Akumajou Dracula Famicom Best Soundtrack
Akumajou Dracula Famicom Best Soundtrack back
The guy selling these games also had Castlevania for Sharp X68000 for sale, it was extremely expensive though, and I don’t have the system to play it on.. so it didn’t feel worth it..
I’m happy with these new additions to my collection :) I haven’t bought any new Castlevania games in a while. I’ve updated my collection page with these new ones already though ^_^ Check out my entire Castlevania Collection here >>
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
So I just got back from Tokyo 3 days ago and I’m still a bit jet lagged, and also very sick >.< But I refused to miss out on 2014’s RSM (Retrospelsmässan), Sweden’s yearly retro gaming exhibition in Gothenburg. So I drove there yesterday to see what they had to offer.
The setup was similar to last year, the biggest improvement though was that they had more registers at the entrance (6 instead of 1 or 2 last year) so the massive queues went a lot faster (but they were still there). Last year I waited almost 4 hours before I could get in, this year it took a little more than one hour. The last 1/5 part of the queuing
There were as usual loads of cosplayers running around. It’s always nice to see ^_^ Here’s a few of the characters I managed to capture on camera: It’s a me! Mario!
Street Fighter and Kingdom Hearts cosplay
My personal favorite: Wheatley from Portal ^_^ Brilliant!
Zelda & Link cosplay
At the fair there were loads of things to do. They had competitions, hundreds of systems, arcades and pinball machines setup to be played, artwork being made and sold, speedruns, street fighter tournaments, traders selling retro games and stuff and lots more.
And Charles Martinet was there (the voice of Mario & friends) and you could get his signature…
…which I did ^_^ He was very friendly and funny :)
I came in quite late since I had to drive for 2 hours to get there, so I didn’t have time to browse around a lot through the games. I also think that most of the good stuff had already been picked out, but I did manage to find a few things :) I found Sunset Riders for Sega Mega Drive, Wolfchild and Prince of Persia for Sega Mega CD. I’ve been curious about the Mega CD version of Wolfchild ever since I made the review for Wolfchild on Master System. I found it disturbing that the game lacked music, then someone told me that the Mega CD version had music, so I had to hear it ^_^ Sunset Riders has also been on my radar for some time but it has always been so pricey on eBay. I got it for approximately 40 GBP (or 69 USD).
I also found a mysterious Famicom pirate game which had no name, just an image of Tetris and airplanes?! So I had to buy it to see what it would be like ^_^
It turned out to be just Tetris, but I haven’t seen a Tetris that looks exactly like this one before. It had loads of gameplay options like 1 player, 2 player, cooperative, versus etc.
It also had loads of russian songs to choose from ^_^ Troika is my favorite :D
That’s it for now, soon i’ll make a big post about all my pickups in Japan, and also a small guide of Akihabara’s great assortment of retro game shops ^_^ But first I will have to sort out this mess on my desk of over 100 games that I bought during my 2 weeks there… o_O
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! >_<
Retro Video Gaming 