Retro Boy Advance

I almost forgot that the Lunar New Year is upon us. I'm heading back to my wife's hometown for a while but I'll probably have more updates up next week. Got more stories I want to write for my ongoing Tales of the Famiclone series, so look out for that!

I wouldn't get my own famiclone (we kids just called it the Micro Genius) until late 1993 and by then the Super NES (not to mention the Sega Mega Drive) would have been in full swing. But I'm getting slightly ahead of myself. Rewind back a year to 1992. It was the new school term, I was in Standard 5 and there was a new kid in my class. His name was Azmi and a bunch of us was chummy with him. He had a Micro Genius with a bunch of games and invited us to come to his house and play. When a bunch of people come over to play video games, the games of choice would of course be multiplayer games and so one of the games we played was Double Dragon II . To say the game blew me away was an understatement. The games I had played prior to this were simple one-screen games like Donkey Kong , Popeye , Tetris and like I mentioned in my previous post , Battle City . Double Dragon II had a story (which I could not understand due to it being in Japanese) told in cutscenes, something ...

My first memory of video games was in 1990. I was 9 and my family had just moved in to a new house. Our neighbours had this new thing called a "Micro Genius" plugged into their TV and their kids were playing a game where you controlled some fat guy with a mustache. Yep, the Micro Genius was a famiclone and the game was Super Mario Bros . I given a chance to play that game but when I pressed right on the pad, I died at the first goomba. I hear everyone dies at the first goomba. I instantly took a dislike towards the game. The next game they gave me to try was called Battle City . I've never actually heard or seen anyone talk or write about this game but when I first played it I thought it was the bee's knees. You (or with a friend) controlled a tank and your mission was to protect your base from being attacked by enemy tanks. The base was represented by an eagle at the bottom of the screen and it was surrounded by a wall that could be shot down by either you or t...

So I've been thinking about what games I would want to get for the 3DS at launch but none of them really excite me. The only game I can even consider buying and actually enjoying would be Piloteings Resort but ehhh, I dunno. I've never really played the previous Pilotwings games and from what I know about them, it doesn't really make me want to play them. I'm willing to give it a chance though. I just wished there were other games in the launch day lineup. I was really hoping Ocarina of Time and StarFox 3DS would make it for the launch day but now Nintendo is only saying sometime "before June". I want those games when I buy the system dammit! Yes, I'm impatient. The other two games that have me excited for the 3DS but have left me disappointed because they're not at launch either are actually the two announced Virtual Console games, Super Mario Land and Zelda: Link's Awakening . What does that say about me? I can't wait to get the ...

So currently I own: 1 x Game Boy Advance (JP, Indigo, melted screen) 1 x Game Boy Advance (EU, Indigo) [added: 22/03/2011] 1 x GameCube (NTSC, Indigo) 1 x Game Boy Player (NTSC, Black) 1 x Game Boy Micro (EU, Silver) 1 x Game Boy Micro (US, 20th Anniversary Edition) [added: 22/03/2011] 1 x Wii (NTSC, official Malaysian unit) 1 x Nintendo DS Lite (Crimson Black, Korean) I know it's somewhere, I just have to dig around a bit: 1 x GameBoy Pocket (Yellow) So yeah, not a particularly impressive collection but I am planning to get some older consoles down the road, whenever the time is right. I will update this post when I obtain them. My current wish list: Famicom Nintendo Entertainment System (NTSC) Super Nintendo (NTSC) More GBAs (regular or frontlit/backlit SPs) Virtual Boy (haha, well, we'll see) I will try do a list of Nintendo-related games I own but that will have to wait, I think. I just moved and I'm still getting my house into some semblance of order...

I know I said this blog would be about old games and old game consoles but with all the recent hoopla regarding the 3DS, I just can't help myself. I'm not a true Nintendo fan if I don't gush over newly-announced Nintendo handhelds, amirite? So now that the US price has been announced ($250) and launch date has been confirmed (27th March 2011), what do I think? I guess the price is fair, considering the amount of tech the 3DS has within its guts. 3D screen, 3D-capable cameras, touch screen, gyroscope, accelerometer, pedometer and an always on tag mode (now called StreetPass). That last point I find quite intriguing because the most interesting feature in Dragon Quest IX was its tag mode ability, which allowed you to trade maps and add other players' characters as guests in your game. Unfortunately this was hampered by the fact that you had to actually stop playing and specifically set your game to tag mode. I found this slightly annoying because the most likely place...

Hello world! I was talking to a colleague and the conversation hovered over an issue of Retro Gamer and that soon led to our mutual love for old Nintendo consoles, mainly the Super Nintendo. Well, for me it was the Super Nintendo, for him it was the Super Famicom. We grew up in the same country but apparently we grew up with different consoles. So anyway, soon he made the suggestion that I should start a blog about retro games, seeing how I love retro gaming so much. This blog will not concentrate on just the Super Nintendo/Famicom however but will cover mostly the GameCube and GameBoy Advance-era games and occasionally I will branch out and touch upon the other retro consoles. So why make yet another blog about retro games, specifically Nintendo ones, which many people have already poured thousands upon thousands of words over? Because I love Nintendo and just one more blog about them can't hurt, right? In any case, this blog will be a catalogue of sorts for my passion (or...