Coming soon - my personal Top 50 all-time favourite retro games!

Yup, this is the big one! My very personal Top 50 all-time favourite retro games! I plan to split this into two parts over two weekends, you won’t want to miss these posts! I’m sure there will be a few surprises! Stay tuned!

Book Review : Vita Means Life

Well I backed it on Kickstarter and it’s finally here - Vita Means Life, the complete unofficial history of the PlayStation Vita and it’s been worth the wait!

The book runs to an impressive 440 pages and is of extremely high quality.  It is written by Sandeep Rai who runs the 2old4gaming website.

It begins with the full story of the events leading up to the launch, the launch itself and events afterwards including the battle with the Nintendo 3DS for gamer’s wallets and finally the events that led to it’s ultimate downfall.

Also included in the book are interviews with leading people involved with game development on the Vita and the book finishes with a detailed retrospective of the best Vita games.

Included with the book as an extra is a pocket-sized Vita Collector’s Handbook, useful for ticking off the games you already own.

Sandeep has done a truly outstanding job with this book and is already planning his next book, a complete history of the PlayStation 3, to be launched on Kickstarter later this year which I shall definitely be supporting!

Vita Means Life is available to purchase from https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1164535506/vita-means-life-hardback-book-detailing price £27.00 and if you’re even the slightest fan of the Vita it’s an absolute must-read!

As a postscript to this Sandeep has also made some manuals for selected PS Vita games including Uncharted : Golden Abyss and Unit 13.  I have the Unit 13 manual (pictured below) and it is excellent, of great quality, fits perfectly inside the Vita game box and contains information about the game types, controls and the story.  The manuals are available from https://www.2old4gaming.com/store price £3.00 each.  Also available is a one-off digital PDF PS fanzine called VitaZine price £2.00 and PDFs of his previous three Vita books, PS Vita : Year One, PS Vita : Years Two and Three and PS Vita : The End price £3.00 each.

GBA Rarities!

Over the years gaming has thrown up it’s fair share of unusual cartridges which have gone on to become really quite rare and now fetch high price on eBay, an example of this is some games on the GameBoy Advance.

The first is WarioWare : Twisted! - this was unusual in the fact that the cartridge had a built-in gyroscope meaning you controlled the characters in the game by tilting the machine left and right as required, surprisingly thanks to the fact that my Powkiddy X18s handheld has gyro support I’ve actually got this working on that machine and it’s a lot of fun but then again the WarioWare series of games has always been a favourite franchise of mine!

Next we come to Boktai : The Sun is in Your Hand and Boktai 2 : Solar Boy Django - these two games were unique for the fact that both game cartridges had a built-in light sensor which encouraged parts of the game to be played in direct sunlight.  I have, with a bit of a workaround, managed to get both games working on one of my handhelds although for best results the cartridges are probably the preferred option.

And lastly we come to the excellent Drill Dozer - considered by many one of the best GBA games of all-time and unusual for the fact that rumble support was built-in to the cartridge.  This game however does work perfectly on emulation handhelds (without the rumble support obviously) and I have to agree it is one of the best GBA games and highly recommended.

As I mentioned at the start boxed and mint examples of these are now quite rare and highly sought after by collectors, so if you want one be prepared to pay quite a lot on eBay!

The SuperFX chip - a good idea but not enough games! ** MY 50TH POST!!! **

Regular readers may already be aware from previous posts that the first ever console I owned was the SNES which is still one of my favourite machines to this day to play on my emulation handhelds with an excellent and diverse library games it’s a winner!

Shortly after it’s release Nintendo had the idea of packaging an extra chip inside the cartridge of selected titles to allow for better graphics and performance which was to be called the SuperFX chip.  This in practice sounded like a great idea but in reality only two decent games were ever released with the chip inside, Starfox (aka Starwing) and StuntRace FX.  There were a couple of others released but they weren’t great games.

I’m sure both Starfox and StuntRace FX will be familiar to a lot of you and you may even have memories of playing them (as I do!), Starfox was a space themed shoot-em-up and StuntRace FX was a cartoony racing game.  The latter is still one of my all-time racing games to this day, the graphics are just such fun, the game is a blast to play and with a catchy soundtrack!

It’s a shame Nintendo never made more out of the SuperFX chip for the SNES, it had great potential but in the end was massively underused, an opportunity missed for sure…..

One of the best things about retrogaming is discovering a gem of a game!

For me one of the best things about retrogaming is discovering a gem of a game that you never played first time around and absolutely loving it! Recently I’ve discovered three such examples, one on the GameBoy Advance and two on the Nintendo DS.

The first is on the GameBoy Advance, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, now although this game may be familiar to many of you it somehow has passed me by until now.  The game is the sequel to the GameBoy classic Donkey Kong (which also has some of the best Super GameBoy enhanced borders around) and consists of a series of puzzles which you must solve to clear that level, the graphics are excellent and of that typical Nintendo Mario style and I’m having a total blast playing it!

Now we move on to the Nintendo DS and Mario vs. Donkey Kong Mini-Land Mayhem and Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 : March of the Minis.  The best way to describe these games is a Mario version of the famous game Lemmings.  You must add and remove platforms to guide the clockwork Marios to the exit.  This is a lot harder than it sounds but is highly addictive fun in both games!

I have been meaning to try these three games out for some time and I’m so glad I did as they’re some of the best Mario games around and I highly recommend you give them a try!