Commodore 64 collection all scanned!

January 6, 2016 by stopXwhispering

I’ve finally finished another library of games! Because of the hilarious and sometimes really pretty cover arts of the C64 cassettes I’ve focused on finishing this one first :) I’ve scanned every Commodore 64 game I have, a total of 144 games, well almost, when I just now finished I saw that I had missed about 10 games that probably had wondered off somewhere in the game room when I was scanning, but I’ll take care of those soon ;D

So check out all of the amazing cover arts of the C64 games I have here >>

Meanwhile, I would like to point out a few ones here that I am particularly fond of for various reasons ^_^Let’s start with Barbarian II!

I mean, just look at that actor they put in front of a camera! I don’t know if that look says “I will KILL you!” or “This is not what I had in mind…” XD

Trantor The Last Storm Trooper! Seriously?! Storm Trooper?! There were so many games back then that did everything to relate to Star Wars because it was popular.. but this guy is DEFINITELY no Storm Trooper! XD Here’s some other examples of “wannabe-Star-Wars-games”:

Star Paws – hahaha PAWS! XD

Death Star! Seriously?! This scene is strangely familiar..

Star Paws and Death Star!!!

You just gotta love everything from Llamasoft and Jeff Minter! XD Revenge of the Mutant Camels actually entails everything you see on the cover in the actual game!

Not to forget Voidrunner, also from Llamasoft, with a llama and a sheep in space suits! Brilliant :D

Hysteria.. yeah, that’s exactly what the cover screams! It’s hysterical! ^_^

Monkey Magic… are those supposed to be monkeys?? I love how one of them is just biting his thigh and he doesn’t even seem to care! XD

That’s EXACTLY how I pictured a Space Hunter….

OK, this is Star Wars.. real Star Wars… you can see that it’s R2-D2 and C-3PO in the picture.. but what are those other two generic 80’s futuristic disco people doing in the background?! I do NOT remember those two from the movies…

Strider 2! I love how everything had to be so over the top on the covers back in the day! He’s got a pony tail like Van Damme, a sword on his back, a laser gun in his hand while he’s flexing his other arm and jump-kicking some poor robot!! XD

In one of my Tetris games for C64 there was this little form you could send in to win a special 4 day holiday for 2 people in Moscow!! “Tetris – the first word from Russia” hahaha XD

The Halls of the Things… What things?!?!? Either they couldn’t figure out what they programmed was supposed to look like… or it’s a way to intrigue you to buy it, just to figure out what those damn “Things” actually are… I guess we will never know..

To check out all the scans of my Commodore 64 games, go to the Commodore 64 Collection ^_^ Also accessible from the menus :D

Atari Tetris Arcade from 1988!

April 13, 2015 by stopXwhispering

I got my first arcade cabinet! And it’s a classic! :D Also one of my favorite games ^_^ I have over 20 different Tetris games for various systems, and up until now my favorite has been Tetris BPS for the Famicom, but now I think my ‘new’ Atari Tetris arcade is my favorite! :D I might be biased, because it’s just so big and pretty and my highscores stay on there, but it’s definitely a great Tetris game!

The cabinet is in good condition. The control panel, the top light and the screen is in very good condition! But I will have to do some work on the sides to restore it to it’s former glory, it’s gotten a bit chipped around the edges. Nothing some wood filler and paint can’t fix ^_^ I haven’t moved it into my game room yet, I’m waiting to finish restoring it first.

The game is divided into missions, compared to regular Tetris which is usually just endless. The missions are to clear certain amount of lines, and the stages get harder by adding obstacles (bricks) in your path. You can play two people against each other and race to see who finished the lines first! :D

There’s also three different difficulty settings you can set it to. Easy, medium or hard. I’m slowly taking over all the previous highscores on the machine ^____^ Thankfully I can open the coin holder so I can re-use my quarters ;D

This Tetris cabinet was developed by Atari and released in the arcades back in 1988. This version of Tetris was later ported and released by Tengen for the NES in 1989. That’s one of the few Tetris games I actually don’t have yet :( But now I have the original version of it anyway ;D ……. writing about this here just made me go to eBay and pick myself up a copy of Tengen Tetris for the NES.. so I will have it soon ^___^

There was a lot of controversy around the Tengen version for the NES, after some legal disputes about publishing rights Nintendo won the publishing rights and Tengen had to recall their game from stores and destroy remaining inventory. There’s apparently less than 100,000 copies of the game in existence! I can’t wait to try the Tengen version out as well!

I love all puzzle games, especially Tetris! The objectives of this arcade Tetris game are fun and the music is great! It’s also very special to play on an arcade cabinet instead of through a console.. I think I might be hooked… already scouting for an SNK cab for my Neo Geo MVS games ;D

I will take some more pictures of my Atari Tetris arcade once I’ve fixed it up :)

Retrogathering 2014!

October 6, 2014 by stopXwhispering

This year was the first time I visited the Swedish retro gaming gathering called Retrogathering, and it was not a disappointment! :D They had loads of retro games for sale, games to be played, people cosplaying, lectures by people from the industry, competitions and of course the Swedish Pong championships that they host every year! (yes I participated, and no I did not win >_<)

Here’s some pictures to re-cap the event! First off is some of all the trading tables where people and companies sold retro games, consoles and merchandise. Everything from old Atari and computers to Nintendo, Sega, Playstation and Xbox! I personally found loads of fun stuff! Went home with over 70 games!! :D

They also had a huge setup of old systems that could be played. Loads of classics but also some more unknown systems that was very interesting to see :) The last two pictures are of a Swedish version of the Magnavox Odyssey, it’s called “Kanal 34” (Channel 34) and it’s from 1976.

They held two competitions apart from the Pong championships. These were competitions in Tetris for Super Nintendo and Tekken for Playstation 1. My friends over at GamingGrannar participated in the Tetris competition and came in both 2nd and 1st place! Congratulations! :D

The cosplays at Retrogathering were absolutely fantastic! All costumes were home made and stunning! It was so much fun to see them walk around all day and interact with people! There was an Alien (that seriously scared the shit out of me at several occasions!) accompanied by Ripley, a Stormtrooper, Bison from Street Fighter, a Rainbow 6 soldier and even Wheatley from Portal made an appearance again (saw him at Retrospelsmässan as well this year, lovely costume) ^_^

I’ll make another post soon with all my pickups from this weekend once I’ve got them sorted ;D Meanwhile I’m looking forward to what Retrospelsfestivalen has to offer next weekend!

Retrospelsmässan 2014 (Sweden’s retro gaming exhibition)

May 4, 2014 by stopXwhispering

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

If you wanna know more about Retrospelsmässan check out their webpage, you can also read about my visit to last year’s RSM here >>

Hebereke (へべれけ) for Famicom

May 19, 2012 by stopXwhispering

I recently got a new batch of Famicom games I had ordered:

The games are Dig Dug, Ninja-kun: Majou no Bouken, Tetris, Ninja Crusaders, Urban Champion, Karateka, Hebereke, Tetrastar, Wits, Bubble Boobble for Famicom Disk System and Jikai Shounen Met Mag Square complete with a guide book as well ^_^

I’ve played them all a little bit but what I would like to start reviewing is Hebereke. For those of you who didn’t know, Hebereke was released under the name Uforia: The Saga in the PAL region. I tried Ebaying it today but couldn’t find either Hebereke or Uforia, but they are usually quite expensive when you see them. I got mine for about 46 USD.

I hadn’t played Hebereke, or Uforia for that matter, before. It’s a platforming game where you play as Hebe, a cute little white penguin ^_^ He’s quite useless though, he has no attacks, he can’t swim, he can’t jump very high..

He’s cute though.

Even though he can’t swim..

The enemies are also really cute:

There are in total 4 playable characters, which you unlock through gameplay:

I only made it so far to get the second character, O-chan. You have to battle them to get them by your side:

She can swim through water at least! And walk on ice!! But she doesn’t have an attack either..

The whole game is a maze, where you will have to travel back and forth to find new places you couldn’t get to earlier. You will also bump into several dead ends that you can’t pass since you don’t have the correct character yet:

On your way you will find chests.

These are crucial, since you will find items helping you along your way, like for example health potions, increasing your health from 10 to 49.

You can switch between characters anytime in the select menu:

If you’ve found the chest containing the map you can also access it here:

And the first chest you’ll probably find will contain the item generating passwords for you, so you can restart where you left off. The passwords are long and confusing, however there are unlimited continues ^_^

I made it to some giant door, but it was locked and I needed to find a key I think:

I also made it to some mines where you could ride mine carts ^_^

I also found clowns! :D That shot bubbles at me :(

And a giant boss, which I couldn’t hurt.. I guess I have to find yet another playable character first.. maybe one that can shoot!! >_<

The funniest part of this game was the birds that dropped giant turds!!

I eventually got kind of stuck, having tried every possible direction and not being able to proceed.. I will have to give it another shot some other day..

Here’s a video I put together with some gameplay, check it out, it’s really cute! ^_^

Btw, I am now also writing a bit about Famicom games for FYIG (Find Your Inner Geek), you can read it here!

Gifts from Canada!

May 9, 2012 by stopXwhispering

Yesterday I also received another parcel, however this was not from Ebay or any other store, this was a beautifully wrapped red parcel filled with surprise! :D

I knew my friend Alana had sent me some NES games she had duplicates of, but there was also some cute Nintendo stuff! Like Mushroom and Mario straps, a keychain with Mario characters and a stuffed Koopa! :D The games were Tetris, Bubble Bobble, Kung Fu Heroes and Operation Wolf! So exciting! I didn’t have these for the NES before, I had some for the Famicom and one for Sega Master System, it’s going to be interesting to see if there’s a lot of difference ^_^

Thank you Alana (Retrogamergirl) for these wonderful gifts! Tomorrow a package is in the mailbox heading for Canada! :D

Here’s some happy ZX Spectrum music by X-Agon to share my joy ^_^