Dragon Punch

Import - Export

2011-11-21T00:02:00.001-05:00

This arcade stuff is not easy. With the little man in our lives now there is no real free time so I've been focusing on some buying and selling with very little playing. Thankfully Ted makes it over some times for a couple hours!

Recent purchases like Asterix, Stone Ball and Bomberman world get little play but we have managed some fantastic matches in Fist of the North Star which looks and plays wonderfully.

Also new is a system 246 board that works.... Sometimes. This ended up being true, but I think its not a tough fix. We'll see!

I'll be selling a couple cabs to make room for something .... wonderful!

Oops

2011-10-17T20:21:00.001-04:00

I should re-name this my neglected blog, but then readers wouldn't know which I was referring to I guess.

The gaming world keeps on spinning despite very little time to play games! Fortunately things are looking up as my protege may have seen the light!!

After quite some time buying a few very nice bulk deals I finally started to sell off the surplus or extra pieces that I'm not really into, so far so good and it should help fund the next round.... BEGIN!!

I finally managed to source a proper CP for my Progear overlay! Still need sticks and buttons but man, it will look good!

Restore continues...

2011-08-02T10:19:00.001-04:00

Well I successfully managed to seal the extra holes in the panel. I think it looks great now! Still need to source a CPO and more clean up, but the little cab is looking good!

Game room updates

2011-07-14T23:54:00.001-04:00

It's been way to long since I updated, do I have any readers left?

First up is the new cab! Neo 25, quite rare, very nice little machine. Planning to restore it a bit and put a Neo Geo 4 slot in it. Big jobs are to restore the control panel (next pic) and then do something about the marquee.

New Art!

2011-04-01T10:18:00.001-04:00

So the basement arcade has been busy lately, I've been trying to take care of as many projects as possible since time is in short supply.... Best one this week was that I finally sorted out an audio problem with the Blast City cabs. Also picked up some awesome art work.... all of it is original side art and in great shape.

I've also been refocusing my arcade collection.... selling off the games I don't really play and buying a few of the ones that have been elusive.

The other big project lately was rotating the monitor on the Naomi Universal. My GOD that was a huge pain in the butt!! There was a huge metal cage around the monitor and a few cables were too short to actually allow rotation! But, it's done and it is good.

2011-02-03T04:10:00.001-05:00

Quite surprised to find that someone was making reproduction marquees for the New Astros. Originals are impossible to find and never in good shape so this service is quite needed and I assume the guy is doing well with it. What I really enjoy about it is showing off the art for the games and it really completes the look of the cabs. The 3rd Astro has one too, but I'm waiting for some art for it.

2011-01-17T19:31:00.001-05:00

Wow, has it really been that long? How did that happen?

Oh right......

So yeah, not as many games being played lately. But I still have stuff to talk about! I want to make it more of a priority!

So, 2011.... Curious what the year will bring for games and I, Stanley will be too young for me to use him as an excuse to buy stuff, so I'll need to keep saving for some of the last arcade boards I'm interested in. Will get off my butt and sell the remaining stuff I'm selling as well.

In the industry, I guess there is the PSP phone and PSP 2 on the way, curious if they will be compatible or not, my guess is no and that Sony will regret it.

Nintendo's 3D handheld looks neat, very curious to see it, but would I buy one? Hmmm, thinking no.

I suppose Apple will continue to take a bite out of the gaming $$$, curious to see how long they can keep up the hardware redesign/upgrade/release rate they are
on, is there no end??

Location:October?

Cabs

2010-10-08T22:55:00.001-04:00

It's been a busy arcade basement time! Been selling stuff and rearranging the games room to ensure things are easy to get to and play, also to make sure it's a bit more baby proof.... Or baby resistant.

While all this was going on I got a cool CPO, all I need now is a blank CP to apply it to.

Nothing really new on the news front, been slowing on the 360 lately, the arcade stuff has all my attention!

Shooter

2010-09-05T13:00:00.001-04:00

Well I'm still getting caught reading about a new 'shooter' only to fund it's a FPS instead of a shooter shooter, guess I need to adjust to the shmup term.... and fast.

Not a lot to chat about right now, should be getting another Blast City cab in a bit, that'll be sweet and almost finish off the basement/arcade/cave of joy.

Hmmm been playing a bit of Limbo lately on XBLA, very good game! Also just got Scott Pilgrim vs the World... Retro goodness!

Seems I'm playing more small games rather than full games lately.

Death Smiles?? Really??

2010-07-14T22:18:00.004-04:00

So.... my love affair with shooters continues, sorry... shooters seems to have been a name taken over by FPS fans, so I guess I should say that my love affair with SHMUPS continues.

The latest one is Death Smiles. I decided to get this for the 360 instead of the arcade and this choice saved me like $1000 (no, literally).

This one is also made by Cave, they are pretty much the place to go for over the top screen full of bullets shooters. Although slightly pervy... I gotta say that I am not a huge fan of the theme. These are young teen girls/witches who fly around blowing stuff up. I'd prefer space ships and military stuff I suppose.... just makes more sense to me. Also I don't like how the characters are standing quite vertically in the air when they fly, seems weird to me.

Gameplay wise this one is TOPS and I am pleased to get to play it!!

On the arcade side there hasn't been too much new, bit of cool art and I re-purchased Dimahoo (another shooter). I guess shooters is what happens when you buy all the fighters you really want.

Shooters!

2010-06-09T23:45:00.001-04:00

It's been a while since I got into a good or modern shooter since I tend to stick to fighting games. Then a strange thing happened, I bought most of my favorite fighters and suddenly shooters started to take hold...

It started with Sidearms, a favorite from high school days and hitting the Broken Cue. Great game and one that I actually finished back in the day on one quarter. I have not yet repeated that feat, but still pretty cool stuff. Other notables are R-Type and In the Hunt, all had a place in my past and all really cool.

I have recently started to play Progear, from 2001 I think as well as DoDonPachi 2. Both are more modern shooters and fall into the bullet he'll style as the screen fills with nice paterns of bullets that you must dodge as you fire back, they are insane.

Progear in particular is quite amazing, beautiful game with accesable yet rewarding gameplay... SO GOOD. The above pic is from that game.

One thing I am trying to do with both games is to avoid pushing continue ever, this way I must learn the game and I'll most likely get my $$'s worth.

Bulk Deals

2010-04-26T23:35:00.001-04:00

Man do I love the bulk deal. If you have the cash it's a great way to get some cool games at a slightly reduced price. The downside is getting some crap along with the cool stuff, but there are always people out there who are completists who gotta have one of everything, so therefore everything has a market.

Beyond the very nice stack of games in the pic I also got a bunch of ZN2 games recently, only one motherboard but thankfuly they swap out easy enough, and it's great to play these games again! Many had been porter to the DC back in the day after all.

Toronto Trip!

2010-02-22T00:35:00.001-05:00

Well, this was my 4th trip to Toronto for games that involved driving there and back the same day.
Turns out it was also almost exactly a year since Ted and I last man the trip. Obviously a big thanks goes to Ted for the assist and to Paul for the loan of some materials.

I'll have to expand on the details of the trip soon, for now here are some pics.

Coffee Table

2010-02-18T00:14:00.001-05:00

Well, thanks to Lynne and her glass connections I now have a very respectable nerd coffee table. The centre piece of the soon to be redesigned basement (more news and pics soon!) this table looks pretty good in person.

Sadly life has been quite busy lately so it's tough to get the time I might like to play more games, but I squeeze it in when I can.

The Battle of the Consoles

2010-01-19T22:33:00.002-05:00

Check this out....(click thepic to make it bigger).... these stats are quite interesting, especially when compared to how things were 5 or 10 years ago. The video game market place has changed A LOT. The most surprising thing in my mind is how the average age of the gamer is now 32. Back when I started playing games I imagine that the average age was closer to 15. It's great to see that even with more households than ever playing games that the ones who started it all are still at it. Yeehaw!! Old Gamers!!

The number of gamer girls is also refreshing to see, clearly there is no longer a significant gender divide.

I am also jealous of the 18 hours a week people get to play games.... 18 hours a week??!?!? I wish.

Street Fighter IV!

2009-12-15T23:04:00.001-05:00

Ok, I've owned the game for a while now and just recently started to play it again..... Why? Well it all has to do with the Internet. By the power of xbox live and the voodoo contained within Ted and I can play quality rounds of SFIV against Scott in Japan! Sweet.

It turns out that the game is WAY better in two player than it is against the computer and playing against and talking to Scott makes it much cooler as well.

It will not replace SFA2..... But it is way better than expected!

Nerd Blog!

2009-11-22T23:30:00.001-05:00

Been way too long since I posted (again) and for that I am sorry.

I even have some good nerd stuff to blog about too, not the least of which is that I'm writing this on my phone now.... and it actually work pretty well!

Actually the iPhone in general has been pretty sweet so far. There really is an "app for that" it turns out and the thing is slick.

On the home arcade (home-cade??) front things are going well, been selling off the console stuff slowly but surely to both pay off and fund purchases. It's going really well. It turns out I'm awesome at cps2 battery swaps, the last one took only 10 minutes and was a success, yeehaw, my skilz improve!

Next up on the big project list is doing a cap kit on a monitor chassis for one of the New Astro's and holy moly is that daunting.

Check out some street art from Montreal, above and some pics from an actual arcade in Montreal! SF3:TS, SFIV, Tekken 5 and 6, Virtua Tennis 3 in a Naomi cab.... All very nice.

2009-10-09T23:41:00.005-04:00

ok, I totally suck... it's been way too long and I've completely neglected the blog. I have no excure REALLY other than this.

Yep... the iPhone.

Is it the most amazing phone in the history of the world.....? maybe.... is there an app for that? YES. yes there is. Ok, so the thing REALLY needs a flash, really needs to be able to have more than one app open at a time, and somehow be smudge proof.

The games on it are actually pretty good, but you have to choose wisely. Galcon and Geo Defense are the stand out favorites and are very cool. I guess I don't have much more to say on this, yet.... it's still the first week and I'm all nerd happy with it, probably not objective at all.

In game and arcade news, Super Street Fighter IV has been announced... I guess that is not a surprise. The gaming council and I (sorry Scott and Ted, that's what I've now decided to call it) have decided that SFIV was/is broken and actually requires an update. It really should have been better.

Other stuff I have my eyes on....

Muramasa, Tatsunoka vs Capcom, Front Mission Evolved, The Last Guardian and maybe Castlevania: Lord of Shodow... though I am scared of the possible Castlevania: God of War that it may turn out to be.

ok, that's all I got right now. Update entered..... superficial promise of more frequent updates applied.

Mr. Chuck E. Cheese

2009-08-20T21:46:00.005-04:00

History lesson for all.... I never got to go to Chuck E. Cheese as a kid. The folks thought it was crappy and always shot down my suggestion to go to the nice family eatery. Years go by and I would sometimes see a Chuck E. Cheese at the side of the highway or something, but never at the right time or anywhere close to where I lived. It was really upsetting.

So imagine my surprise when I saw a Chuck E. Cheese close to me... at long last a sore point from my childhood would be addressed, I was even hungry for pizza!! Amazing... the stars were aligning, this was really going to happen.

To get there was a long walk, but I was brave... I was also getting more and more hungry.... and the weather was starting to look bad, the wind was picking up and things were starting to look sketchy. Because of where the place was I decided not to change and drop off my computer bag, this was a bit of a bummer cause I REALLY wanted to go there wearing my Atari logo t-shirt... You see Nolan Bushnell, who started Atari, sold all his shares at some point and opened Chuck E. Cheese, I thought it would be a fitting tribute.

The good news is that I got there! I have to say I was a little surprised at the set up. I thought this was a restaurant that had games, it's actually an arcade and kids play land that has pizza... AND if you go there on your own as a man over the age of 12, you feel kind of weird.

So, I got over being totally out of place and looked around, not a bad selection of games actually, I was surprised in particular at these ones:
Metal Slug 6!! The Sega Firefighter game!! So cool.....

At this point I decided I needed some tokens... and I was still starving so I ordered some pizza too. As soon as I got my tokens......

...this happens. Black out, HUGE rain and lightening storm started up, little kids were screaming and it was dark in there. I later found out that there were many reports of multiple tornados, 1 person died, power lines were pulled from the ground and roofs were ripped off houses!! I just wanted my pizza...

Fortunately the worst of the storm was not right above Chuck E. Cheese but man... there was a lot of lightening and the rain came down in buckets. Once the power came back on all was good (other than 20 minutes of the fire alarm going off right after a huge and close lightening strike)

So, I ate my pizza, which was like a cross between Pizza Pizza and Pizza Hut, and played some games.... all in all a good time. Not sure if I'll be eager to go back soon, but it was a crazy experience.

Below are some more pics, the oddest of them was the Namco "Flamin' Finger" game. I was very confused by the choice to add a game with this name to a kids arcade.... =)

2009-08-19T19:57:00.005-04:00

what's this? another post so soon after the last one?? Yes. It's true.

So... control panels... these have been such a money pit, new sticks new buttons new overlays new harnesses blah blah $ $ $. This time I got a good deal, actually a very good deal.

What you see in the pic is a Sega made 2L16B CP (2 player, 8 buttons each) for the New Astro City and I think it's quite rare. When these cabs were new the Sega Saturn was around and Sega didn't miss an opportunity to exploit the popularity of the cabs. They created a 2 player joystick that included this panel and had a New Astro City style dedicated fibre glass casing. These things were EXPENSIVE and they are still very collectible.

But despite this someone broke theirs apart!! Out of that I got the CP and the Saturn connectors/wires. These were pretty easy to take apart and then I just put the CP into the cabinet. This CP will allow me to keep the cab it's for looking like the others but also provide an extra level of flexibility. SWEET!

Another new thing in my world of arcade enjoyment is NOS side art. NOS stands for New, Old Stock. SO this stuff is factory original just never used. The side art is the big sticker that they would attach to the side of the arcade machines back in the day. I think I may start to collect some of this cause it's really nerd-beautiful! The one I got is not the best one ever, but it's really fun and it's for a VERY fun game. I'll post pics if I come across any more of this....

Playdium!!

2009-08-17T23:03:00.005-04:00

I rarely go to a real arcade, but if I do I really need to take some pics and take some notes. This time I did both... sort of.

First some observations. For a business owned, at least partially, by Sega..why are there no Sega branded toys shirts or anything for sale?? These guys have tons of characters and loads of products around the world, yet none in the arcade. Total RIP OFF. I almost cried, almost.

I wandered the floor of the place and found very little of real interest. I saw a Namco/Pac Man coin game, which was cool and a Sonic and Tails spinner thing which was sweet!! Sadly it was hidden behind a pole. ???

I have to admit I entered with high expectations....so I should not be surprised that they were not met. There were no really sweet cabs there, the closest would be the Tekken 6 cab, which was decent, the pic id not turn out well though, sorry about that.

Street Fighter IV should have been the highlight and centre point of the arcade, but it was in some weird new version of a Showcase cab but with LCD's... the LCD's were a decent size but ended up looking tiny and weak.... as well as weird. The control panel area may have been some strange factory original I really couldn't tell. At least there was some nice art on it, but too many people around for me to get a pic with the flash.

What the place did have was a lot of gun games and a lot of racers, some very new and potentially very cool. The gun ones all had big fat machine guns on them mostly attached as though they were a turret or were mounted on a jeep....neat and all, but I was not in the mood I guess. Maybe next time!!

2009-08-03T23:08:00.002-04:00

ahh video games... I do enjoy them ever so much!

Check this out! After far too many issues and having to order each part from a different country I finally sorted out a nice, clean Net City CP. This one is on the Naomi cab (obviously) and replaces the VOOT CP when I don't have that game in the machine. I think this means I need another machine actually...... =)

Any way, so this is obviously a standard CP for normal games. Been playing Virtua Fighter 4: Final Tuned as well as Capcom vs SNK 2. Both are really cool and I look forward to getting better at them. VF4 is a really deep game and that will take forever to learn, so far I am an effective button masher, but I would really earn no respect at all in Japan or if there were REAL arcades around here still.

In other video game news I am SLOWLY going through MGS4, great game!! I also picked up Battlefield 1943 for some quick pick up and play run and gun action.... very cool stuff!

In the Hunt

2009-07-16T22:19:00.002-04:00

I picked up a VERY cool game today for the arcade. In the Hunt.

This game has been elusive my whole life, every time I found it in an arcade I had no cash, or the arcade closed shortly after. I also had the hardest time finding the PS or Saturn version of this, every time I saw it I had no cash. I guess it's not an epic story full of heart break but still, it's a major coup to find it.

In the bundle of games I also got Superman (sweet!!) and WWF Super Stars (??). I bet one of my few readers Ben will be excited by that one. Finally I got Kageki, I have never seen this game before and will probably sell it quickly.

better late than never

2009-06-14T12:28:00.003-04:00

Please forgive the lack of updates. I have been horribly depressed in a video game sense due to destroying a rare and expensive piece of art and wasting $150 in the process.

So, while scanning local garage sale type sites I come across an ad for Street Fighter 3 in an arcade cab with a couple other games. I call and talk to them, make arrangements to buy the Street Fighter 3 game... turns out it's Street Fighter 3: Third Strike and worth like $400+

Of course there is a catch.... CPS3 boards have a nasty suicide battery that was designed to ensure that the game code and the game could not be pirated. The battery only lasts so long and if it dies the game is dead cause Capcom no longer takes them in to reprogram them.

I opened the game up and saw that the battery was dated 1993... years before the game was even made so not only did it have it's original battery but the battery was old to begin with. Not good.

Some people smarter than I had figured out how to swap the battery though so I read up on that and begun.... this did not go well. I was using a solder wick to get rid of the old solder and it turns out that the wick is also conductive since it's made of copper... and I shorted the whole thing out and lost the game. FRIG.

VOOT

2009-04-30T23:15:00.004-04:00

ok, no excuses... VOOT has been in for a while and I neglected to post about it.

Here are pics!

The game is fantastic and way deeper than I had thought. I've had the Saturn and the Dreamcast versions of Virtual On, but never had the proper controller. You REALLY need the proper controller for this game, it makes all the difference!

The path to getting this game was BRUTAL. Took forever to find, took forever to get the cash sorted out, finally got it only to find that it would not work on the New Astro City cab. That was a shock. After piles of troubleshooting it appeared that I needed a dedicated Naomi cabinet.... which is pictured above. That was a whole other story. This thing is HEAVY, not as bad as the Neo Geo but it almost killed Ted and I as we moved it (thanks for your help Ted!)

Any way, it's in and it's glorious! Just in time for the game to be released on XBLA... but it's not the same dammit! True arcade or nothing! (as much as possible)

Oh yeah, and this kid tried to run me over.

SEQUELS

2009-03-30T23:38:00.002-04:00

I've been thinking about this for a bit, so please be patient with me cause I'm sure I'll ramble.

In general a sequel to a great movie will not be that good. It will be a cash grab or a story that is just tacked on and doesn't really make sense or seem planned from the beginning. (Empire Strikes Back is the exception to the rule, but then the sequel trilogy really supports this)

Albums are the same deal often, the first one represents years of the artist's struggles and song writing and perfecting a small group of songs. Then suddenly they have a year to write the follow up while sitting on, potentially, millions of dollars.

In games the trend seems to be the opposite, the sequel will often RULE. I think this mostly holds true for fighting games actually.... and I think I know why. The first game seems to be more of a proof of concept type of thing. I suppose it has a low budget, smaller team and shorter development cycle.

Then something happens in the 3rd and subsequent versions where they loose sight of what made the second so awesome, it's a shame.

Now, I'm open to being in the minority here but check this out:

Street Fighter 2 > Street Fighter
Street Fighter Alpha 2 > Street Fighter Alpha
Virtua Fighter 2 > Virtua Fighter
Dead or Alive 2 > Deal or Alive
Samurai Shodown 2 > Samurai Shodown
Tobal 2 > Tobal No.1
Capcom vs SNK 2 > Capcom vs SNK

I think it's a significant trend....

In other news....
Virtual On: Oratorio Tengram is not yet up and running... but I have no given up.

2009-03-12T23:23:00.002-04:00

VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT VOOT

...soon.....VOOT!

Astro, the third

2009-02-16T20:46:00.003-05:00

It was a bit of a crazy weekend, road trip to Toronto and back with Ted (thanks Ted!!) bit of confusion with the pick up, bit of a problem with the monitor. That said I ended up with a very nice cab and a nice chunk of the basement filled with gaming goodness.

The new one is the one in the middle, notice the vertically aligned monitor, this cab is for shooters.

The challenge with this one is that there is a bit of a monitor issue, things are a little bit wavy which is weird, I assume I'll need to do a cap kit on it which will be a scary and new experience for me. If I have to do that I'll post pics and stuff.

Arcade Stuff

2009-02-10T22:32:00.005-05:00

So, I was out at a movie and came across this (see pic) it was shocking! There is actually a 3 screen F355 from Sega in Ottawa at the theater in Bayshore. The game appears to be in good shape too, they also had a 2 player Daytona 2 with the cars that have the hydrolics. So cool.

There is really no point to this post other than to just say how cool it is. I guess I could start on about how there are no arcades in Ottawa... but it seems to be useless to even talk about it. Arcades are not doing well the world over even in Japan where Sega is going to close 110 of them. 110!! Holy crap that's insane. The only silver lining there is that maybe some of the cabinets will end up with resellers in North America. Not that I'd want to buy another cabinet....

Dig Dug Update

2009-01-19T22:04:00.002-05:00

Well, not much has changed. Jeremy is the current leader with over 144,000 and finally today I managed to challenge him a little bit by getting 139,000. I lost my last man when I got stupid and greedy chasing a bonus item that would have put me ahead of him. A fool and his quarter were soon parted.

NEWS FLASH!! Scored 165,000 today, sweet.

Arcade Boards

2009-01-11T14:58:00.004-05:00

There is something to be said about watching someone go through box after box of arcade PCB's reading off names like Q-Bert, Zaxxon, Donkey Kong, POW and Choplifter to name only a few. I was over at a friends house and his business is to put arcade machines into bars and such and also service those machines and the machines of other people. He's been in the arcade business for about 20 years or so and his place is INSANE. It is full of amazing machines, pieces of machines and PCB's.

Walking through the basement was a minefield of my past... careful, don't step on the Pole Position control panel.... so cool. (the pic is not his place by the way, just a cool pic)

It was a very good way to spend a Sunday morning going through all those boards, after testing a bunch I bought 6 and did so very happily. Really loving the arcade hobby.

Also it turns out he worked at the Imperial Arcade for like 10 years, that place was an Ottawa institution, lots of quarters went through their back in the day.

Nerd Blog!!

2009-01-05T20:53:00.004-05:00

It's an affectionate name I have for this blog. The plan has been to make it much more detailed with actual reviews and such, but that has not happened yet. It may still faithful reader so don't give up on it.

The Dig Dug competition heated up since the last post, Jeremy foolishly took some vacation which allowed me to build some skill and pass his mighty score with my own.... 112,420!! I was pleased with this one. He's only been back for a day and only had 1 game today so I can't really sit back and enjoy the success yet.

I finished Gears of War 2 for the 360, GREAT GAME. I am shocked by the fact that my guy can't jump, but otherwise loved the game. It was on the easy side, but over the top and had an arcade type of sensibility to it. Easy to get into and get hooked.

I got Locks Quest for the DS for Christmas and am looking forward to working through that one, so far it is a mix of Rampart and a strategy RPG of some sort.

On the arcade scene all is pretty good, Ted dropped by on the weekend and we put the "Player 2" side of the machines through some actual use which was nice.

I also decided to rewire the 2nd Astro City. It's in good shape but sometimes there is a slight short somewhere, I am sure of it. Also the wiring is somewhat suspect so I think it's worth the few hours and $10 for the new JAMMA harness. Will hopefully tackle that this weekend.

Also gotta say that Vampire Savior 2 RULES, I love the style of this game.

Dig Dug!

2008-12-13T11:49:00.002-05:00

As a fund raiser for work events we now have 3 coin operated machines at work, there's a Demolition Man pinball machine, a Big Buck Hunter, and a multi game machine with thirty-some different old school games on it.

I quickly got blown out of the water on the pinball, the current high score for the building is 1.68 billion, on my team it's 900 million, my highest is about 360 million, yeah, left in the dust.

BUT, I have had some success with Dig Dug!! I currently have the high score with just under 50,000 points and I've made it to stage 10, no where near the world record of over 4 million at stage 256, but still.

Dig Dug RULES.

Together at last!!

2008-11-13T20:57:00.002-05:00

Got the cabinet this morning at about 6am, HUGE thanks go to Damon who had it picked up from his place later than planned. After work Cara and I moved it downstairs and into place.

There is a bit more cosmetic work to do than I had expected mostly clean up, maybe some new joysticks and add the kick harness at some point, also get rid of some "goo".

All in all.... EXTREMELY HAPPY!!

2008-11-05T12:33:00.003-05:00

Well things are moving forward!! The new New Astro City has made the journey from London, On to Toronto, just a couple more steps and it'll be in the basement beside it's more beat up twin. =)

Recently I managed to screw up the Jamma harness on my current cab, seems some of the wires were left a bit taught when I set it up and I must have pulled something cause the display went a bit nuts on me. So I ordered another Jamma harness and redid all the connections last night while watching the election results come in. Thankfully it appears that the work paid off and all is good again!!

Man o man, can't wait to get the new cab in there, will post pics of the games room once it's in!

The Twins

2008-10-28T15:24:00.003-04:00

Well this has been an interesting couple of days. There I am deciding to sell some more stuff to try and build a bigger arcade and BOOM, I see a post on a site selling another Sega New Astro City cabinet. After some fancy footwork we came to an arrangement and I will soon be the owner of TWINS!!

One will be my CPS2 cab and one will be my low res Naomi cab. It's like heaven.

The new one appears to be in better cosmetic condition than the old one, so I have decided to name them Bob (old one) and Vincent (new one). Curious if anyone will get that reference... nerds.

Funny story, upon hearing the news Cara asked if this meant that I would have the three cabinets I wanted... I corrected her to say that it means I will have three cabinets that I want. Saying "the three" sounds way too restrictive and generally dishonest.

Sega Naomi !!

2008-10-24T20:55:00.003-04:00

man o man, this whole arcade thing just gets better and better.

I traded away some of my seldom used console stuff and managed to pick up a Sega Naomi board for the arcade cabinet. What is the Naomi board? Well, it's basically a Sega Dreamcast, but the arcade version and it takes carts. It is super sweet.

So many amazing games are on this thing too, Capcom vs SNK, Power Stone, and Project Justice to name a few. Perhaps someday I'll get myself a cab with a Hi Res monitor and get the GD Rom attachment to open up all the glory that the Naomi can offer!

2008-10-10T12:49:00.002-04:00

Short post... just can't wait to play Street Fighter IV

New Astro City Update

2008-09-25T12:51:00.001-04:00

There seems to have been so much work to get this thing going the way I want....

So far:
-I have reworked the wiring for the Jamma harness more than before, it's nice and clean now.
-I adjusted the +5v setting on the power supply so it's at +4.99v with a load on it, was at +4.8v before this adjustment. (doing this was scary!)
-I fixed a possible sound issue and resoldered a connection (long story, there was actually no sound issue, I was just a moron.)
-I added the PHOENIX chips to the CPS2 games (Marvel vs Capcom and X-Men vs Street Fighter) sadly busting a pin on one, in my defense it was an old crappy chip.... ordered a replacement cheap so all is good.

All I need now is to get the CPS2 Kick Harness and set it up! Any day now... can't wait!

It .... LIVES

2008-09-17T22:57:00.004-04:00

Well, I did some serious wiring. First up was ripping out as much as possible without screwing things up too much. Here is the pile of wires I harvested....

Up next was the work, the confusing and bizarre wiring. I seriously need to take an electronics course or something to actually understand what I did. The results were actually pretty good, not as clean as I wanted but pretty decent.

and here are the results!! All I need now are the new joysticks and buttons.... sweet!!

SEGA NEW ASTRO CITY

2008-09-08T21:35:00.004-04:00

First things first... gotta thank BEN!! Ol' SBP really came through and went beyond the call of duty and drove to Toronto and back with me taking up his entire Sunday in the process. His reward? Some heavy lift and 15 seconds of Street Fighter II. oh yeah!! It also turns out he was highly contagious and exhibiting the first symptoms of chicken pox, (just diagnosed today).

With that bit taken care.... on to the story....

I had to rent a car to make the voyage, sadly the VW just couldn't handle a load of this magnitude. So, here is the rental beast, a nice huge van. Neat story, a van like this is actually a lot cheaper to rent than a cargo van, plus you get more km's for free. Since I was going to Toronto and back I decided to spend the $5 on the 3000km package.

I picked up the car and then picked up Ben and some snacks, of course I folded up the seats so we could fit the machine, negleected to tell the rental company about that part since I assumed they would frown on it.

One million hours later we arrived in a small town way north of Toronto.

Moving the cabinet into the car was actually extremely simple, it only weighs about 250 pounds and has wheels on the back as well as handles at the back on top. The drive back home was pretty smooth, poor chicken pox boy was a bit quieter though, I assumed at the time that it must have been day 3 of a 3 day hang over.

Got home around 9:30pm I think, moving the cabinet in was as easy as could be. I was an extremely happy man.

Then I opened it up. Seems the guy I bought it from neglected to mention that the Street Fighter II board was loose in the cabinet. Frig. It seems to have bounced around, cut a few wires, made a mess of the "creative" wiring someone had done in the cabinet and possibly busted itself (won't know for a while).

So, I ordered a new JAMMA wiring harness and have been doing some reading on how to rewire this thing, gonna do it right and clean. Also will have to get some new buttons and joysticks as these are a bit sketchy. So, it will be a bit of work but the end product will be worth it for sure! I remain positive.

Once it's done I'll be plugging in the X-Men vs Street Fighter board. SWEET.

more counting chickens

2008-09-04T20:38:00.003-04:00

I admit it rarely happens, but sometimes you count your chickens before they hatch and count wrong, but then weeks later it turns out you counted them right the first time. =)

So, a while ago I did miss out on getting this machine, the guy sold it on ebay or something while I was trying to get the cash together. BUT as fate would have it the guy on ebay never paid up so here I am... I have paid for a glorious Sega New Astro City Cabinet with a 29" monitor and all I have to do it pick it up.

Thankfully Ben has offered to road trip with me to Toronto. Gonna be a long drive but well worth it. The machine comes with Street Fighter II for some nice retro goodness and I picked up a copy of X-Men vs Street Fighter for an awesome deal so that will quickly replace the SFII.

Once I get the cabinet I'll be learning how to solder so I can phoenix the X-Men vs Street Fighter (I'll post an update on that process when I try it).

Another project in the works will be repairing a Virtual Boy, from what I've read that means I get to take it apart and bake some of it in the oven. Should be cool.

Science Ninja Team Gatchaman

2008-08-08T22:55:00.007-04:00

Yeah, that's right.... Science Ninja Team Gatchaman.... that might be the coolest name for anything ever.

Turns out this is the original name of the awesome cartoon, G-Force or Battle of the Planets. One of coolest cartoons that totally does not hold up at all in any way. Damon got me a DVD of G-Force: Battle of the Planets for Christmas one year and I watched it.... BIG MISTAKE.

BUT, they are making a new CGI movie remake about them which I hope will be totally cool and will be as awesome a show as I hoped the real one was. Not sure that makes sense, but basically I want it to be awesome.
The people making the new movie have started a blog about it, some new pics and stuff...
http://felixip.blogspot.com/2008/08/gatchaman-screenshot-02.html

The thing I am hoping for most is that the movie will do well and ensure that Capcom brings Tatsunoko vs Capcom out in North America!! That game is gonna be AWESOME.

R.I.P. Sega Astro City cabinet

2008-07-15T07:36:00.002-04:00

It would have been so nice, but alas, someone else bought it. May be all for the best though, the person was very difficult to deal with in general.... still though, would have been so nice!

chickens before they hatch!

2008-07-13T13:24:00.003-04:00

Isn't it beautiful? This is the cabinet I am trying to work out a deal for. I'd give it a 50% chance of happening at this point... which isn't too bad. The cabinet is a Japanese style cabinet, shorter than the stand up US ones, it is meant to be played sitting down on a short stool or chair. It also has a 29" monitor (sweet!!) . If this all works out it will become my Capcom cabinet... Street Fighter!!

In other gaming news, E3 is almost here, very curious what announcements will be made. So far a small price drop for the 360 and a few new games. Hoping there are some really wicked announcements soon.

Here are a couple cool pics....

2008-06-21T22:37:00.006-04:00

Well summer is in full swing and the garage sales have been disappointing so far.

But there is cool stuff going on, for one I found a 360 HD-DVD player for $20, yeah HD DVD is a failed format and all, but at $20 I can easily make up the cost by buying some of the movies I want on HD DVD and since the format is dead they are dirt cheap. Yeehaw!

First 2 pics are for a new Capcom game Tatsunoko vs Capcom, totally excited about this one!! It's got a pile of good Capcom characters fighting the guys from G Force and other shows. I hope it comes out here, but accept that it may stay in Japan. Fingers are crossed. Importing possible.

Went to Dave and Busters in Toronto a while ago, awesome place, sure was nice to see an arcade again! They even had some classic games there, well, only 6 of them, but still.

2008-06-03T22:54:00.001-04:00

Look at me and my new art!

Ross, too kind buddy, not sure what else to say, so generous of ya!!

Nerd Envy

2008-06-01T19:21:00.003-04:00

Today I was over at a buddy's house. In his house is every game ever made for the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES. So amazing. All but 12 have their original boxes and he's working on getting those, we met cause I sold him one that he was missing. There were over 700 games released for the NES in North America some are extremely rare, selling for $1,000's now. (in the last 2 years many of the REALLY rare ones have more than doubled in price.)

It was an amazing sight for a nerd such as me, not something I aspire to, but holy crap was it cool.

Here are some pics of the arcade on Younge St. in Toronto, I meant to post these earlier....

2008-05-20T21:06:00.001-04:00

Something cool is in the mail to me.... something very cool....

Boxes!

2008-05-17T16:55:00.002-04:00

ok, I am a sucker for game console boxes.... but can you blame me? check out these ones!! The Metroid Gamecube one is super cool, I remember this came out right after I bought my Gamecube... I was not happy about this. Samus stares at me now and it makes my life better.

On a similar but different note is this Sega Dreamcast box from Japan, check out the cool pictures of the Sega President! How could a company this cool ever fail?? That just seems impossible. Sega rocks, wish they did cool stuff like that in North America.

2008-04-27T19:36:00.002-04:00

Couple things... for starters, here is a release from Nintendo on their earnings:

Nintendo has announced their financial results for the full fiscal year 2007.
Total sales rose 73%, up to 1.67 trillion yen ($16.1 billion).
Profits are up 47.7 percent from last year, up to 257.3 billion yen ($2.5 billion)

On the DS front, the little handheld sold another 30.31 million units, giving it a total worldwide sales count of 70.6 million. There are now fifty seven 1 million plus selling games on the DS.

Holy Smokes is that ever crazy!!

In other news, I got my new buttons and joysticks for the arcade, it is all with original colours now!! Is this important? Not really... Is this cool? I think so!!

2008-04-20T21:36:00.002-04:00

Not a heck of a lot to report on lately... nothing controversial in the gaming world really. Still feeling the need for a 360, that thing is getting a lot of great games, especially for download. Ikaruga, Street Fighter HD, Pac Man CE, N+, Geometry Wars, Carcassonne, Catan, and REZ HD. Man, I wouldn't even need to buy a 360 game at retail!!

I did get a nice stool for the arcade machine today at Canadian Tire, on sale from $40 to $15!! It's sweet vinyl with nice chrome legs. Also should be getting the new buttons soon.

Victoly!!

2008-03-25T18:20:00.002-04:00

This morning I got a nice surprise, Paypal pressured the scammer to refund my money... YEEHAW!!

2008-03-12T22:22:00.005-04:00

Dammit, I was doing so well there for a bit.. ok been a while since there was a nerd post.... so here you go.... not much is new.

Seems I've gotten ripped off with an online purchase, had to happen eventually, but this one really sucked. Lost out on 3 Neo Geo games for the machine and those 3 were all ones that I could see leaving in the cabinet for a long time. DAMMIT! So, I will purchase the games somewhere else after saving up for them. At least the cabinet has some decent variety in it right now with SNK vs Capcom, Metal Slug X, King of Fighters '98 and Samurai Shodown 5.

What I seem to need right now is a cool Neo Geo friend... Ted has disappeared and Scott is in Japan still so I am out of luck... DAMMIT ONCE AGAIN!!

I also got a new IKEA shelving thing for the consoles and currently have managed to have 13 consoles attached to a single TV. SWEET! The basement rocks. (edit!! Added a pic!!)

Next post I will have to put some pics of a Japanese Dreamcast I got, Sega Japan sure knew how to make some cool box art.

Games you play vs. games you finish

2008-02-11T22:31:00.000-05:00

There are really two types of games (ok, there are piles of categories, but go with me here).... there are games you play for the sake of playing much like a board game or sports where there is no real story or narrative and therefore no real finish... then there are games with a definite beginning, middle, and end.

I have come to find that I really play a lot less of the "games you finish". I've been playing through Ico and Metal Gear Solid 3 for ages... both are AMAZING games and truly the height of their craft, but I just don't have too many days where I have 2 or 3 hours straight to devote to a game like that.

The games that I end up playing more are fighting games, shoot em ups, and FPS shooters when there are more people around... generally more arcade style games... I can pick them up and play, sweet!

When I do have the time to actually play through a long game though, I get sucked right in...

Not exactly sure of my point here... but I feel guilty for not making it through so many of these cool, but long games... the "to be played" stack is growing.

Always proof read your work

2008-02-03T17:51:00.000-05:00

I was going through some of my game related stuff when I stumbled on this page from a Gamefan magazine.

Hopefully the scan will do it justice, not sure if you can read it or not.. not sure if you should read it or not.... the article is misplaced in the magazine, it's supposed to be about sports but instead it's about an Ace Combat game and it's a bit offensive. I remember finding it really hard to find this issue of Gamefan, turns out it was because they pulled it from most distributors as soon as they noticed the mistake. The next issue had a BIG apology to everyone. Neat bit of crazy history and the end of a game reviewers career... as well as an editors I'm sure.

In Neo Geo news, not much is new... got Samurai Shodown 1 and 4 last week for cheap, so now my machine is mostly all Samurai Shodown which while cool is not the goal... gotta get some variety in there!

2008-01-27T17:01:00.001-05:00

Hard to believe it's been a week with the Neo Geo cabinet... still very happy with it...

Played around with it a bit and fixed one of the coin doors, adjusted the monitor a bit, disconnected the mini-marquee panels at the top. The insides of the thing are very cool and well thought out, it's a mess of wires and PCB's all over the place but everything seems quite logical. Gonna try and get a couple new carts tonight, and soon enough will replace the buttons with new ones of the original colour.

Neo Geo has arrived!!

2008-01-19T16:19:00.000-05:00

Drove up to Petawawa to pick up the machine and check it out first hand and it's in fantastic shape, I was completely happy with it.

Thanks go out to Dad, Paul, Chris and Mark (the seller) for the help loading and unloading it, the thing weighs about 800lbs.

The only things I will have to do with it is get proper, original colour buttons for it and ideally find a plate for the memory card and ear phone slot.

Stuff!!

2008-01-12T15:14:00.000-05:00

Well, the basement has undergone a rearrange and it's going very well, gotta make room for the mighty arcade machine that is coming....

Not too much new since I've been working on saving for the Neo Geo. CES was last week and there were a lot of very cool toys to be seen... of note was how HD-DVD died at the show with everyone moving over to Blu-Ray.... I guess that puts a damper on my hopes of an HD-DVD 360 by Toshiba... that would have been cool....

The PSP is still getting a lot of play, I finished Warhammer Squad Command, very cool game... so shocked that it's gotten such bad reviews...

2007-12-19T21:51:00.000-05:00

Well it's been an interesting time since the last post... for starters, I checked on eBay and sure enough, there was a posting for the Telstar Combat... in it's box.... SWEET!!

Then I also saw a posting for the Neo Geo Arcade Cabinet... so guess what I'm saving up for?

2007-12-09T21:02:00.000-05:00

The glory of the video games!!

=)

Nothing too new to report on currently, trying to close a deal on a Sega CD v.1... it is one of my favorite systems ever, just super cool. I used to have this one before, I bought it at a clearance price when the Sega CD v.2 came out.... like a fool I sold it in a purge years ago, then I bought it another time off of eBay, that was a learning experience since it arrived busted and I got screwed over. Fingers crossed this one goes well.

I've also realized that I would like to make getting a Telstar Combat game more of a priority... this was the first video game I ever played... my Dad got it when I was a kid and I got hooked!

Keeping my eyes peeled! Also debating trying to save for an arcade machine again....

2007-11-25T16:41:00.000-05:00

Steel Battalion has arrived!!

Cool game too... it's totally a simulation of piloting a giant mech robot. I wish it was more arcade style, but it's still awesome. My favorite button on the controller is still the windshield washer one.

2007-11-21T22:21:00.001-05:00

I remain a nerd-blog-slacker. The worst part is that I have loads to write about, but I seem to lack the time/desire to get it down here... guess I would make a lousy video game journalist.

The PSP continues to rock, lovin it... and currently playing it more than the DS, but that is no surprise since I have new games for it.

Tomorrow should bring me STEEL BATTALION!! Total nerd living room take over!! Will post pics of that for sure.

Also when it rains it pours as 2 trades I was trying to work out actually worked out and I suddenly will have 2 copies of Dragon Force. One of the best games EVER...or is it evar?? Happy to have 2 copies, might end up trading one.

Speaking of trades, I went through my collection to weed out the stuff I don't actually "require" and have a decent stack.. gonna post on CGCC and see what I can trade for... cause you never know.

More news and pics shortly... gonna make this blog the next massive video game site!! (yeah, right)

2007-10-22T20:52:00.000-04:00

New stuff!!

It's been a long time since I posted.... my apologies to my fan. =)

OK, so first up is the LaserActive Laserdisc player.... it's totally old technology and laserdiscs, while really cool, are kind of lame BUT there are benefits... the first is that the BEST quality version of the Original Star Wars movies is avail. on Laserdisc. That's right Han shoots first and they are better quality than the "bonus" versions on the latest DVD's.

The second reason why this is cool is that this particular model has a slot where you can put a Sega Genesis PAC or a Turbo Grafx 16 PAC.... and it's totally rare (cause it was very pricey at the time).... turns out it's also HUGE.

.... and then there is the PSP.... new slim version, in white with the sort of cool sort of lame Darth Vader art on the back battery cover (which will be replaced when avail!!)

After playing the PSP for a week or so I've got some conclusions on it when compared to the DS.

1. the PSP screen is awesome.
2. the DS is a better overall system mostly cause it has more good games, and more games that suit a portable system better.
3. the PSP does not fit as comfortable in the hand as the DS.
4. the PSP is totally worth getting and it doubles as an MP3/video player/internet browser, which is kind of cool.

It's getting late so I don't have too many more observations... oh yeah!! Sony totally dropped the ball and have very few accessories of the new slimmer system, makes no sense to me.

AND the PSP is getting a Castlevania game soon! Yeehaw!!

2007-10-16T21:53:00.000-04:00

Curses!! Almost at a month with no new posts..... got lots to talk about too.... Laseractive, PSP Slim, weeding out the collection and some upcoming games... will actually post soon faithful reader.

Atari Jaguar

2007-09-17T21:32:00.000-04:00

OK, I bought an Atari Jaguar... I was excited to get it until I started to try out the games. They are horrible.... like really bad. The graphics suck, even for the time, they are not good... roughly on par with the Sega 32x, worst thing is that they tried to do 3-D with it to prove the POWER of the beast. Not a good idea. The beast has no power.

The best games on it were Tempest 2000 and Aliens vs Predator, surely those could hold my attention and love...... if only. They are cool and I appreciate where the market was when they came out, but overall they don't really hold up.

Funny thing about the history of the Jaguar is that they were trying to compete with the Playstation and Saturn (both 32 bit), so they kept going on about how consumers should "do the math" since they claimed the Jag was 64 bit.... it had more bits, how could they go wrong?? oh right, it was a hotly debated topic... was the Jaguar actually a 64 bit system?? You'll notice how consoles today don't really count bits any more...

Next up.... Laser Active.

The Future of Nintendo

2007-08-27T23:00:00.000-04:00

Nintendo is starting to scare me.... I have the feeling that they are getting cocky and that will not be good for gaming. Nintendo as the underdog is the Nintendo I love, they innovated and focused on gameplay and new experiences.

Now they have more money than any other company on earth and I fear they will start to tell gamers what they want again (shades of N64!!). I have no real evidence yet, but I see that they have not yet released the DVD drivers for the Wii, they force games on the system to use the Wii-mote instead of the classic controller...even when the classic controller makes the most sense... (fortunately Guilty Gear, a fighter, will use the classic controller, so all might not be lost.)

I'm also shocked that they haven't addressed the supply problem yet... but I don't think that is really "strategy" yet.

In the end I'll just wait and see, I already own one after all, hopefully they'll keep the games coming and make it easier for 3rd parties to make good games....

In other news, the next article should be on the Atari Jaguar... the worst console on earth?? .... maybe!!

What's old is new again....

2007-08-12T22:33:00.000-04:00

Check out this pic...... it's the box for the old Atari (sweet!) but take a close look at the pics... Grampa and some kids, some Dad's playing against each other... all family fun and generally something that we haven't seen since then, till the Wii came along.

When was the last time two Gramma's played PS2 against each other? But you take something like the Wii, which is fun to pick up and goof around with and suddenly the old Atari box shows us how when games were new everyone played them and the industry kind of got away from that...

2007-07-31T22:28:00.000-04:00

ok, so E3 has come and gone and there were a few good announcements!!

They announced the PSP redesign, not too much new about it though, bit slimmer, better battery, and video out to a TV... gonna get me a white one!!

They also let people finally play some of the new Wii games like Metroid... that will be awesome!!

Sony had some weird price cut news that also included how they'll stop producing the model that they are discounting... weird.

The 360 will be $50 cheaper soon... once they start making it with the smaller chipset then I might get one, just too many good games out and coming soon... oh and I need a new TV to take advantage of it... that might delay it a bit.

p.s. DS RULES!!

2007-07-10T22:12:00.000-04:00

Ah yes... a new post..... and it's only been like a year..... I honestly doubt anyone is paying attention any more, but here it goes...

the PSP - I'm hoping that there will be an announcement for the redesigned version, that way I can finally get me one and play the games I've been wanting to, after I save for it. Nothing really controversial here or anything... but I really hope Sony announces it soon, I want better battery life and shoulder buttons.

Vectrex - loving the Vectrex!! Got a decent deal on some of the games so I can now play some stuff on it, all very arcade style games but so cool! Pics soon maybe...

XBox 360 - They may be reducing the cost on this one as well as fixing the overheating problem by improving some of the chip manufacturing techniques. I'm loving the games they have coming on their online service, the redone Street Fighter might be SUPER SWEET!!

Other than that the Flea Market and garage sale season has been awful, I think the issue is that I'm too damn busy with the yard and outside stuff... that's actually part of the reason for the lack of posts, I expect more game stuff soon enough...

2007-05-22T22:29:00.000-04:00

Most exciting game stuff lately? hmmm not so sure.... I like that they have announced some HD remakes lately for cheap through some of the download services like X-Box 360's live. Bomberman and Super Street Fighter II Turbo sound great!

Found some cool Sega CD fighting games at the Flea Market on the weekend highlight was Samurai Shodown, which I love!! Speaking of which a few weeks ago I bid on and won a copy of Samurai Shodown for the Japanese Gameboy... nerd cool? yep! But I thought it never came out here.... oops... totally wrong.. still cool though....

Currently playing Final Fantasy III for the DS and Trauma Centre for the Wii... totally different but both really good, turns out that surgery is hard... also both birthday presents.... weird.....

next up, I will try to finish Ico then move onto Shadow of the Colossus, we shall see!!

Will put up some pics soon!

2007-04-30T20:20:00.000-04:00

ok, 3 weeks between posts, not quite a daily update and I seriously doubt my fan still checks the site, but I will continue to post... I am just that dedicated. =)

Haven't posted stats on how the machines are doing in a while.. so here you go!

Japanese console hardware sales for the week of April 16 - 22:

NDS Lite - 172,359 [2.345,334] units

Wii - 77,913 [1,248,230] units

PSP - 29,459 [770,363] units

PlayStation 2 - 11,398 [297,205] units

PlayStation 3- 11,000 [391,291] units

Xbox 360 - 2,307 [87,183] units

Nothing too surprising here... portable gaming REALLY has picked up, is this cause we're still "between generations?" - meaning that the current new generation of machines is not quite in mass market pricing... or is it that the portables finally provide some decent and immersive graphics?

The PS2 is beating the PS3... isn't that interesting... I wonder how pissed Sony is at that... and is that a sign that the new generation hit too soon? Other than being prettier does the new generation offer anything that the old one can't?? Are people going to be slow to pick it up?? Nintendo kind of banked on the ability to create good enough graphics, your eyes won't bleed from their games, but your EXPERIENCE will be different from the previous generation....

Personally I just think Sony needs some good games out there, something worth paying $700 for.... and if Metal Gear comes out for the 360 as well... then they might be in for a rougher ride than they were with the PS2.

2007-04-09T21:09:00.000-04:00

Vectrex!!

2007-04-09T16:53:00.000-04:00

Yeehaw!! Part of the glory of the 80's was that the videogame industry had pretty much no idea what it was doing. This little gem is the hard to find (cause it was unpopular) VECTREX!! It was a self contained, sort of portable video game machine that used true vector graphics like Asteroids did in the arcade.

The controller was built in, only 20 some games were ever made for it, and if memory serves, it looked REALLY cool in the consumers catalog back in the day.

fun facts
--this system had a true analog stick .... way before the N64!!
--it did not have a colour screen, but you could add a plastic screen over the screen to simulate colour... awesome.

STARBURST!!

2007-03-15T20:31:00.000-04:00

OK, this will be in place of the big post that was planned.... why "in place of"? Well, it has a sad ending.... I did not buy an arcade machine as planned. So, the goal was to get either a Neo Geo 4 Slot or a Capcom CPS2 machine, in good shape and ideally with a 25" monitor with no burn in.

The pictures tell a lot of the story, the day was as awesome as it was long, foolishly bookended by a few drinks. Sadly there were not a lot of games that fit the bill for me, in fact there were exactly 2 that I was a bit interested in... then one of them died right in front of me, not ideal... the last one had a problem with the monitor that I was just unwilling to put up with.

So, other than an interesting time and some QT with Dad and Chris my $90 in gas got me an old arcade token from the parking lot. Better luck next time!!

Enjoy the pics!!

Glory Days??

2007-02-27T20:23:00.000-05:00

Recently I came across a pile of old EGM magazines, I was about to pass them by when I saw the Feb 1992 issue... what makes that issue so sweet?? It was the first issue of EGM I ever bought! (Street Fighter II cover) I picked it up for a bus trip to Toronto and it kind of got me back into video games and led me to the far superior Diehard Gamefan magazine (essentially, now called "Play"). Flipping through the old magazines really shows how things have changed, some of the reviews are particularly sweet as the reviewers rave about the glorious 8 and 16-bit graphics... there is even an expose on the features of the Genesis and SNES explaining why 16-bit is so superior. Check out the awesome black acid wash jeans, beauty sweater and mullet the Genesis guy has... I am speachless. Ideally I will take some time to show more of the old school glory contained in these fragile pages.

Finally.. big news is coming... perhaps my biggest blog story yet.... might take some time to get it all down, but I will work on it.

5 more black box games!!

2007-02-27T20:18:00.000-05:00

Bringing the grand total to 6, not fast progress but on a budget not really that bad at all....

Kung Fu is the sweet one of this lot, never was a huge fan of the sports games on the NES though, seems I was wrong about a detail as well. These Black Box games are all by Nintendo and were released through the life of the NES, I had thought they were simply the first pile of games for the system... weird...

2007-02-22T22:31:00.000-05:00

Got a Wii!! Yeehaw!! So far it's a very cool, played the Sports game and Wario.... looking forward to playing it some more!! Will post some embarassing pics of family and friends as soon as I can!!

Wii !!!

2007-01-31T20:23:00.000-05:00

Well, here we are weeks past the holiday rush and yet I have this pic to share...

It was taken at 8:45am outside of Future Shop yesterday (Tuesday), they open at 10am, and it was about -45 degrees outside. The event was not the launch of Windows Vista. All the people were there cause they knew that Future Shop would have 10 Wii's that day. YIKES. I think Nintendo needs to make more.....

Black Box!!

2007-01-29T20:08:00.000-05:00

No, not the 80's band, as good as they were that is not the "Black Box" I'm referring to...

These are the first Nintendo made/published games for the NES when it came out. The boxes were very cool, they told what kind of game it was and gave you one sweet taste of the pixelated graphical glory that you would find inside. You couldn't claim that they overstated the look of the game like Call of Duty got sued for that's for sure.

So, this is one of them, Super Mario Bros. very popular game obviously, there are 29 others plus 3 "silver" boxes that I guess I will have to track down as well. Are they particularly good games? No. Do they look cool? Yep! and I remember pressing my noseup against the glass of Miracle Mart at Bayshore wishing I had the millions needed to buy them at the time.... now that millions is down to mere hundreds to complete the collection. Let's hope this summer will be a good one for garage sales.

2007-01-20T18:30:00.000-05:00

Straight from 1983... Zaxxon, the board game....

A very bizarre Value Village find and $3.99 well spent in my mind. Someday I may actually play it, but something tells me it won't be as exciting as I hope.

NegCon

2006-12-18T23:44:00.000-05:00

I am a fan of $10 games. It's pretty much the magic number for old games and I. Ideally they'll have their boxes and stuff and be at a garage sale of some sort.

Any way, I came across a NegCon for $10 and I am very happy. This is not a game, it's a rare cool controller that came out when the PS1 was young... and it's sweet! Also works with a good group of games like Ridge Racer, Wipeout and even some PS2 games.

To learn more please see Wikipedia!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeGcon

Not too much else new on the gaming front... but the Christmas season is heating up in Japan... check out these numbers for Dec 4 - 10!! Man, I wish I knew where to get numbers like these for North America.

Platform	Sales	Total
DS Lite	309,603	6,441,813
Wii	85,439	435,797
PlayStation 3	50,171	237,967
Xbox 360	35,343	145,846
PlayStation 2	30,460	1.328,827
PSP	28,930	1,592,948

2006-12-07T20:01:00.000-05:00

Platform	Sales	Total
Wii	350,358	350,358
DS Lite	176,901	6,132,183
PlayStation 3	31,436	187,796
PSP	23,917	1,564,018
PlayStation 2	23,115	1,298,367
Xbox 360	4,053	110,503

The above stats are from Magic Box again (love that sight!) Pretty cool to see the numbers, obviously they are, once again, heavily skewed by the supply of the PS3, but still interesting... also of note is that the 360 will soon have a sweet RPG that the Japanese are gonna love, I'd love to know what MS paid to get the team that it to make the game.... Blue Dragon is coming, should do well over here too!

In other news I got a copy of Wipeout for the PS, pretty sure it was a launch title way back then and one of the good ones! The weird thing is that it came out it came with a paper wrap over the box with different graphics. The one on the left is the wrap, the one on the right is the actual box. Seems like someone at Sony had a change of heart at the last minute. Both represent the game well but the one on the right is far more stylish... just like the game.

2006-11-26T20:43:00.000-05:00

Just cause I'm really enjoying them here are the latest Japanese console hardware sales from Magic Box for the week of November 13 - 19:

Platform	Sales	Total
DS Lite	128,621	5,753,904
Playstation 3	42,099	123,738
PSP	16,690	1,509,286

Of course these numbers would be different if Sony could make enough PS3's to satisfy demand. I'm sure they'll be able to get it together soon enough, and with the Japanese not likely to get behind the 360, the good games and series will be on the PS3 and the creative ones will be on the Wii in Japan.

Then again the DS Lite has an amazing lead that just keeps growing... and how much longer can Sony hold off on the redesigned PSP.... man, they are getting some good games now, probably going to buy ones of those before a 360 or Wii....hopefully they'll announce something after Christmas.

Finally some sweet box art to highlight the glory days.... the cheesy, cheesy glory days.

2006-11-19T16:37:00.000-05:00

PS3 and Wii launch! Well the PS3 launch went well, that is.... all the units were sold out quickly and ended up on eBay for a pile of cash, it will be interesting to see how much the premium on the PS3 drops when people realize there are few, if any, games to make it worth the premium yet. At least the Wii launched with Zelda.... though to less fanfare... and less of a shortage.... (not to mention less violence!)

From Magic Box (link to the right)
Japanese console hardware sales for the week of November 6 - 12

Platform	Sales	Total
DS Lite	148,174	5,625,283
PlayStation 3	81,639	81,639
PSP	19,123	1,492,596

OK, I don't think the PS3 was out for the whole week and they were in short supply, but it's still pretty cool that a handheld beat the PS3 first week... it would really be something if it's able to do that 6 months from now.

They also reported on the game sales figures for the same week... #1 to 8 were DS games selling between 100,000 and 23,00 copies. This was followed by Ridge Racer 7 for the PS3 at over 21,000 copies and Mobile Suit Gundam at a few copies less. From what I gather the Gundam game is pretty bad and Ridge Racer is pretty sweet. Nice that a RR game takes top spot at launch again... ahhh memories of the PS1....

Went on a Value Village binge recently, picked up some goofy old stuff... very fun but nothing too exciting.

2006-11-14T14:53:00.000-05:00

OK, just have a few minutes to get a few things down on this to share with my massive fan-base.

1. rumour is that Microsoft wants to buy Capcom. I hate this idea cause Microsoft is a Corporate giant and Rare hasn't really shined since Microsoft bought them so it's easy to blame Microsoft's culture for that. Now, if this is true and if it does happen... I will buy a 360. Capcom is awesome they have so many amazing games and series under their belt that it would be tough for Microsoft to screw it up... tough, but not impossible.

2. PS3 launch in Japan went smoothly... no reports of failed hardware... WTF. PS1 and 2 both had serious problems at launch, so did the X-Box's, if the PS3 remains stable from launch onward then I am super impressed! Of course the quantity of hardware at the launch is scarce but for a device that expensive and complicated that is not unheard of. It'll be cool to see how the North American launch goes.

3. Got a new phone with a better camera in it!! (and it plays games!!)

4. best pawn shop find of my life... for $3.00 each I got loose SNES copies of Final Fantasy II, III, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Mega Man 7, and Mega Man X. It was a good day.

Ok, that's all I got for now...

2006-11-03T18:03:00.000-05:00

Look at this, a month hasn't even passed and here is another post!!

Of course I have nothing that important to say... you would think that with the launch of the PS3 and the Wii weeks away that there would be lots of news.. sadly there isn't. Currently thinking I'd dump my cash into some more older stuff then maybe get a Wii in April or so.... for the launch titles all that really grabs me is Zelda and Trauma Centre, and I can handle waiting for those.

Been finding some great deals on Dreamcast stuff lately, most of the prices have really dropped, I guess less people have been buying them.

Actually that brings up an interesting point... the collectibility of games. From what I've seen you will almost never make your money on a new release game unless you don't open it. That sucks for someone who is unwilling to pay $70 for something as an investment that might not pan out at all.

So, I try to wait at least a year before I buy a new game.. and sometimes I seem to wait 10 or so....

Coming soon.... more box art...probably...

Box Art Part 1

2006-10-11T17:23:00.000-04:00

Here we have 4 fine examples of box art... I don't have much time here so ...straight to the point.... old box art ROCKED!! It had little to nothing to do with the game and it would usually only elude to what the designers wished the game would look like ... but somewhere along the way, it went downhill. Check out the difference between the Defender cover and the Street Fighter Alpha one... Defender has a chick in all her late 70's glory running from an alien invasion. SO COOL. Then flash forward a number of years to Street Fighter Alpha.. what the hell happened. The box art was obviously done by someone's kid, certainly not a professional artist... and this was for a game that was renowned for it's art!! Plus the Japanese and arcade versions had great art!! At least they learned a few things when the same game was released as part of a collection, finally caught on to the fact that paying more than $5 for cover art might be worth it. I'll post more examples and stuff another time, but for now just know that American box art peaked with the Atari.. and is just now catching up, there are some rare examples of good stuff in between but WOW.... it's rare.

TGS 2006

2006-09-26T10:25:00.000-04:00

Man, time keeps flying and I haven't been keeping this updated very well... to my reader... I apologize. So, I didn't really follow the TGS very well this year but from what I gather Sony did an ok job, they reduced the price of their base PS3 (in Japan only) and uped the features of it for everyone. This base model seems to just be made to make the 360 look like a chump, and with 20 gigs it does highlight the fact that the 360 base model doesn't have a hard drive... so if you were a game developer would you make a 360 game that requires the hard drive knowing that less of the market has it? nope....

The Wii of course continues to look pretty decent, and certainly awesome for the price. I don't think I'll buy one on launch day, bit too nervous about problems with untested hardware, though Nintendo has a far better track record than the others.

In other news I took some pics of some sweet box art... there will be an article soon on this... should be fun for my reader. =)

Wii

2006-09-14T22:07:00.000-04:00

Details were announced today, release date of Nov. 19 for North America and $250 US with a pack in game.... very curious to see how it sells compared to the other systems.

PS3

2006-09-06T19:36:00.000-04:00

From the Magic Box today.....

*****************************************

- Sony has pushed back the Euro launch date of PlayStation 3 from November 2006 to March 2007, while the US and Japan launch dates remain unchanged. The reason is due to a bottleneck in the production of the Blu-ray drives and the extra time to prepare for the multilingual European versions.

- Sony will ship 400,000 units of PlayStation 3 to US at launch on November 17, and 100,000 units in Japan. 1.2 million units will be available in Japan by the end of 2006.

*****************************************

WOW..... seems Sony is having trouble with getting the units made, I wonder what will happen if they miss holiday season all together?? This season should give the Wii and 360 a nice chance at gaining a very strong foothold in the market as well as taking some steam out of the PS3.

When the 360 was launched the units immediately hit eBay and were selling for twice the price in stores, probably more at times....Is it possible that Sony's very high launch price is designed based on this? They know that there will be limited consoles as well as a limited number of people that wil pay the high price, so why not milk it? In spring or summer they can claim that the manufacturing costs have been greatly reduced and they will pass the savings onto the consumer, basically just skimming the fat off the top of the market to maximize their profits and trying to avoid taking too much of a loss on every unit sold... but could all this backfire for Sony?

The market will be very different this year than any other, the Wii is going with low price and innovation out of the box and the 360 will be a traditional competitor at a lower price.... to me, Sony seems too cocky.

a little perspective....

2006-09-05T12:42:00.000-04:00

Also from Magic Box... I assume that the numbers in brackets are for the year so far or something. So 160,000 for DS in a week and 30,000 for PSP?? and 12 for X-Box?? =)

Here are the latest Japanese console hardware sales for the week of Aug 21 - 27:

DS Lite - 163,274 [3,967,887] units
PSP - 29,945 [1,228,844] units
Playstation 2- 21,829 [957,440] units
GBA SP - 2,719 [189,191] units
GB Micro - 1,819 [117,560] units
Xbox 360 - 1,197 [68,677] units
GameCube - 837 [63,116] units
Nintendo DS - 410 [952,959] units
GBA - 14 [3,013] units
Xbox - 12 [1,649] units

DS RULES

2006-09-01T10:23:00.000-04:00

This really surprises me... the Magic Box (awesome site, link on your right) usually reports the sales numbers for game software in Japan.... well it seems that for the first time I can recall it is all about one system.

Here are the latest Japanese console software sales for the week of Aug 21 - 27:

Final Fantasy III (NDS, Square Enix) - 503,051 units
New Super Mario Bros. (NDS, Nintendo) - 65,556 [2,901,264] units
Rune Factory: Shin Bokujou Monogatari (NDS, Marvelous) - 42,210 units
Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju Kanshuu: Motto Nouo Kitaeru Otona DS Training (NDS, Nintendo) - 41,784 [3,073,195] units
Shaberu! DS Oryouri Navi (NDS, Nintendo) - 37,326 [384,045] units
Tamagotchi no Puchi Puchi Omisecchi Gohi-Kini (NDS, Namco Bandai) - 30,504 [430,934] units
Mario Basket 3-on-3 (NDS, Nintendo) - 30,355 [233,762] units
Oide yo Doubutsu no Mori [Animal Crossing: Wild World] (NDS, Nintendo) - 30,023 [3,149,130] units
Kawashima Ryuuta Kyouju Kanshuu: Nouwo Kitaeru Otona no DS Training (NDS, Nintendo) - 22,866 [2,736,150 ] units
Eigoga Nigatena Otona no DS Training: Eigo Duke (NDS, Nintendo) - 17,465 [1,401,669] units

Behold the lock Nintendo has on Japan.. the home of the majority of good games...

To me this assures a few things will happen... first of all Sony will revamp it's PSP into something smaller and cooler (rumours of 8gigs built in and smaller are everywhere) and that we are going to get a PILE of new DS games in 6 months to a year as every game maker will look at these numbers along with how relatively cheap it is to make a DS game and sign up. Gonna be a great year for the DS!! Momentum like this is hard to loose.... though Nintendo messed it up before... time will tell.

Paving Over the Dirt Path : Part 1

2006-08-27T21:54:00.000-04:00

OK, this article is long over-due and will probably take a few tries to really get it right....

The idea here is one of the few pearls of wisdom I actually got from University. The theory here is that when a new campus or housing development is built, you should wait a year before paving the walking paths. After the first year the people will have chosen where they want to walk, this ensures that people will actually use the paths.

How does this apply to video games?.... as soon as I have a chance I'll write PART 2.

Holy Smokes

2006-08-17T14:41:00.000-04:00

ok, it's almost been a month since I posted last... I blame summer... glorious summer..... but there are articles I've been mulling over, just gotta get the time to write them. Here are some upcoming titles to look forward to:

Pave Over the Dirt Path (this will be a huge article I think)
Box Art Expose and Gallery

I have a couple other ideas, doubt I'll write reviews or anything on this site, but if I do there won't be a stupid 8.5/10 style rating... I think a simple Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down along with some text should suffice...

Speaking of reviews... Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow.... THUMBS UP!! I am a sucker for good Castlevania and this game fits the bill perfectly.

Other little notes....

Microplay has some import DS games, but no Bleach yet.
DS Lite still rocks.
Castlevania: SOTN on X-Box Live Arcade.

2-D vs 3-D | Style vs Realism

2006-07-25T21:02:00.000-04:00

This is more of an observation.... I find it odd that 10 years ago technology was limited and yet games had more style. Animation styles were perfected and creativity was easier to find. Of course there were the rare combinations of amazing style and gameplay... (Castlevania SOTN comes to mind along with many early RPG's).

My point here is that 2-D art was most often an expression of style over reality. There was a brief time where Mortal Kombat and Pit Fighter were an amazing sight... but it was short lived.... and never stuck.

Now games are primarily in 3-D.... with 3-D it seems far more common for the goal to be realism instead of 3-D style... and when 3-D is done with a more stylish flair it seems to be cell-shaded designed to appear 2-D....

Why? I want to see more stylish 3-D that isn't cell-shaded in a game made for someone at least in their teens. There are examples now, but not too many come to mind....

Superman Returns Sequel

2006-07-25T20:53:00.000-04:00

OK, this is not game related, but I wanted to get my 2 cents down cause I think I know where they are going to go with the planned sequel.

I read that an alien threat will be at the heart of the story and I think they either hinted at Zod or someone drew that conclusion and people on the net jumped at it.

I don't think we'll see Zod again though... I think the alien threat will be Braniac... and it will have something to do with those crystals that Lex's lady dropped onto the kryptonite island (which is now in space).

My guess is that either Brainiac followed Superman from the area of Krypton when he was there, or Superman threw the island to where Brainiac is, or Brainiac grew from those crystals in space....

One rule of movies seems to be that they never show you anything just for the sake of it... and they really focused on her dropping them on the island and on the fact that Superman wanted them back... BUT he never found out where they were dropped, at least not in he movie... it just seemed like a set up to me.

The Nintendo DS Lite

2006-07-22T16:58:00.000-04:00

Nintendo's new machine... about half the price as the PSP with twice the screens. It's a nice little machine and a step above the original DS. It's also selling like crazy in Japan which should mean increased support and more high quality games.

My only concern is that Nintendo is pushing companies to use the touch screen in new ways... I'm all for inovation but not if it hurts how the game plays. Take the newly announced Starfox for example.... touch screen controls... no mention of using the d-pad... at least give me the option of using the d-pad. The touch screen is a feature of the DS not the reason for owning it.

Support for the GBA has slowed which means that the DS is the new Gameboy.... unless there's a new Gameboy in the works at Nintendo, they did claim the DS was a 3rd pilar device to go along with the home console and the Gameboy line. So as the new Gameboy it should be getting a lot of ongoing series newest versions and I'm worried that they'll push it to fit with the touch screen.... ideally they'll just work with the better processors and push out some amazing and creative games while using the touch screen when the game demands it.

It begins....

2006-07-19T12:57:00.000-04:00

Just a spot for me to geek out and ramble about games and stuff..... no idea who will ever bother looking at the page... and that's ok.