WEEK TWENTY-THREE

I think I spent longer putting the video together this week than I did playing the actual games!

What did you think of my Mona Lisa? I was quite proud of that!

You know, some people think it's a bad thing that each Mega Man game bears a resemblence to the others. The REAL fans understand that this is actually what makes the series great; every game has its own individuality in its levels, bosses and tone, but at the same time there's always a familiarity to them. There's things that you know to expect. I think MM4 is one of the serie's best. What do you think?

Well, that wraps up another week. Take it easy.

SUPER PLAY CORNER - DECEMBER 1992 / JANUARY 1993

Welcome to Super Play Corner. Let's see what was going on in the Super Play pages in December 1992...



Okay, so that's... entirely random...

 

(You'll have to click on these two pages to view them full-size)

This is an update on the Super NES CD ROM add-on that was planned for a long time, eventually scrapped and in the meantime singlehandedly created Nintendo's biggest ever rival... If you couldn't be bothered reading, here are a couple of quotes:

"The other big reason for the delay involves a serious amount of corporate politics. The original CD ROM development plan was a joint Sony/Nintendo effort - many people expected this to lead to the development of an industry standard. However, things soon went wrong. Sony's own plans with its Super Famicom/CD ROM hybrid, the Play Station, created a rift between the companies, until things reached a point where a new alliance was made with Philips to develop the unit instead...

But since then a lot has happened. On 1 October 1992 Nintendo announced a revised deal with Sony, taking the project back to them. The new system is now said to be fully compatible with the Play Station - this way Nintendo benefits from Sony's expertise in compact disc technology, while Sony gets the chance to unleash a video games machine with a huge potential market...

Don't hold your breath waiting for the CD ROM system. However, do expect it to be stunning when it eventually appears. The technology is there, the talent certainly is, and Super Scope aside, Nintendo has yet to release something that wasn't worth waiting for. Sega knows this more than anyone."

I find it fascinating to read news like this and imagine how the gaming world would be different if Nintendo had just released the CD ROM system. The entire PlayStation brand most likely wouldn't exist. (Well, not as we know it, anyway) Perhaps Sega would be leaders of the console market today. The Super CD (or whatever it would have been called) might have been a dismal failure like the Mega CD. Who knows?

OMG...

WEEK TWENTY-TWO

Another week, another two games crossed off the list! Here's Castlevania and the Ninja Turtles.

Before I get to the ratings, I urge you to read on below, to see the new segment of the blog!

And now to see what Super Play was saying in November/December 1992. Welcome to the...

We're looking at Issue #2 this week.

 

First up...

 

The beginnings of the Multi-Tap. Of course, from the Nintendo64 onwards, Nintendo would include 4 controller ports by default.

 

This was exciting news that came into amazing fruition. In hindsight, we now know that the processor chip that's mentioned is the Super FX chip, which would make games like Starfox, Stunt Race FX and Yoshi's Island possible! Nothing became of that second rumour, as far as I know.

 It's amazing really, that in this day and age games aren't much more expensive (and in many cases, are much cheaper) than they were back in the early 90s. Either we were getting really ripped off, or we're getting an amazing deal now. Probably a bit of both. And lastly...

This kind of thing always baffled me, since here in Australia, games were always available to rent from any video library you walked into. For the poor kids whose parents didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars upkeeping their expensive hobby, it was great to rent a game for the weekend for a few bucks and then take it back. If rentals weren't allowed I wouldn't have played many games at all back in the N.E.S. era...

Well, that's it for this week. I'll have some more Super Play anecdotes next week. Any comments (feedback is always great!) leave a message. Happy gaming! :-)

WEEK TWENTY-ONE

Last week's games took quite a while to complete. This week's games, in comparison, were all fairly short, so here we go...

Konami really did release a lot of early Super N.E.S. games, didn't they? I suppose the releases were more spaced-out in Japan... After all, the Super Famicom had already been on the market there for a year and a half before we got our version here.

Which would you choose? Contra or Probotector? Not that it really matters; they're both exactly the same game. I heard a rumour that it was the German censors who didn't like the Contra image. Perhaps they're to blame.

I'm working on a new section of the blog for next week. I've been meaning to do it for a while. Hopefully it will add another dimension of retro-ness (and nostalgia!) to the Year of Retro Gaming.(TM) ... Actually, that's not trademarked, I can't really claim that.

Have a good week!

DORKLY STRIKES AGAIN

While I'm playing Sonic 2 this week, I got a good chuckle out of this. Enjoy! ^_^

WEEK TWENTY

Playing through all four of this week's games took quite a bit of time... especially since they fell on such a busy week. Bleugh. Real life! Who needs it, eh? ;-)

Do you have any memories of any of these games? If so, leave a comment. Did I completely misjudge Smash T.V. or The Addams Family?

Here are the standings.

Wow, two "falling" games? The last game to "fall" was Golden Axe at the launch of the Mega Drive! Honestly though, I just couldn't play those two. Joe & Mac was a pleasant (but frustrating) surprise though.

Next week I'm continuing on with the platforming. Hopefully these games should take a lot less time than this week's did!

HOW'S YOUR JAP KNOWLEDGE...?

Played Legend of the Mystical Ninja lately? Have no idea what most of it means? (Like me?)
Check out this webpage. I found it really interesting, and I was frankly stunned by how much iconic Japanese imagery was included in the game!
ANNOTATED GUIDE TO LEGEND OF THE MYSTICAL NINJA

I'm still playing through this week's games. Not really close to finished yet, since y'know, there's FOUR of them. It's also been a really busy week. But hooray for the weekend!!

WEEK NINETEEN

Just realised that I forgot to put the "standing" for Mystical Ninja into the video. Oops. Ah well.

Apologies for my no-doubt terrible Japanese pronunciation. Here's this week's results:

How's everyone holding up in this full-on year of gaming? I finished Portal 2 the other day. Brilliant stuff, can't wait to get into the co-op. Er... I mean... back to retro gaming!   <_<