The japanese Famicom is the equivalent of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), they later released a Disk System to go with the Famicom, and after that Sharp produced this Twin Famicom which had the Disk System integrated with the console so you didn’t have to have two power adaptors. It was first released in 1986 :)

I recently bought three more Twin Famicoms! Don’t ask me why I need to have four Twin Famicoms, but they are just all so pretty! And I really love the Famicom so I just figured I’d collect the hardware as well ^_^ The Twin Famicom is definitely my favorite Famicom system :) Then again, I don’t have the toploader to compare with yet.. I think I’m only missing one Twin Famicom now though :)

Two of the consoles are Twin Famicom Turbo systems :D This means that the controllers have built in Turbo buttons. One of them is pale orange, I thought it was sunfaded but was told it comes in this color! The one I had before is brighter red. They also have different colours on the controllers. You can see the difference here, the right one is my old one, the left one is the new Twin Famicom Turbo:

I will call it orange from here on. The orange Twin Famicom Turbo from Sharp has a darker red eject-button and beige / blue-grey elements. This one is called Sharp Twin Famicom AN-505.

Another system I got was the darker version of the Twin Famicom Turbo. This one is black with green and grey-purple elements. This one has the same name as the orange one, Sharp Twin Famicom AN-505.

The third one I got a bit earlier is a regular Twin Famicom without Turbo buttons on the controllers. This one has a matt finish in dark grey with pale red and green details. This one has the same “Famicom” text on the top as my old red one. I like the design of this text better than the straight one on the Turbo’s. This one is called Sharp Twin Famicom AN-500B. The name differs from my first red one which is called AN-500R, but I’m not sure what the technical differences are.

What’s interesting is that all the Twin Famicoms have led lights in the power button, except for my red Twin Famicom. Here’s the various fronts of the consoles:
Edit: The dark grey Twin Famicom is supposed to have a red power button without the light, it’s been modded ;)

And here’s some more pictures to compare the versions:

Now I just need to find some space for all these beauties in my game room ;D Also if you wanna see some more pictures of my red Twin Famicom that I got a long time ago you can find them here >> 

So which one is your favorite? :D

In celebration of May the 4th (Star Wars day!) I thought I’d share some of my beloved Star Wars retro games! ^__^

First up is the weirdest Star Wars game I have, Star Wars on Famicom:

This is a really interesting game! I think it’s a fun platformer, but it gets very challenging after a while. It’s got some really weird things in it, like Darth Vader magically transforming into a scorpion or crab-like creature or Luke Skywalker having black hair in game but yellow in the cutscenes haha ^^ It’s definitely an interesting game though that I urge any Star Wars fan or 8-bit platforming action game fan to try out! It’s also a great addition to any collection with it’s sparkly silver cartridge :D So pretty ^__^

Next up is the Super Star Wars thrilogy on Super Famicom:

These three are amazingly well done and really fun ^_^ Sometimes a bit challenging, for example, I got stuck on the Empire Strikes Back and couldn’t get past one of the later levels because there was a jump that was nearly impossible to make! Otherwise they’re well rounded and stay fairly true to the movies :) I also have the first one on Super Famicom, I have been considering getting the other two as well, but it’s not really necessary since I already have the games ;D I do enjoy the Super Famicom artwork a bit more though…

Next up are some Nintendo 64 games with Star Wars. These I haven’t played a lot, basically just started them to make sure they worked. I’m not really a fan of the N64 :/

One Star Wars game I have that I haven’t even been able to play is the Star Wars Arcade for the Sega 32X. I don’t have the 32X expansion for my Sega Mega Drive yet :( The artwork looks amazing though!

I also have Star Wars games for several other platforms, but I chose to picture the ones that are nice and complete ^_^ There is another one that I find really charming though, The Empire Strikes Back for Atari 2600 :D So I pictures it here with my awesome Darth Vader lunchbox! :D

I hope you have enjoyed some retro gaming Star Wars love! On our Geeky Gals instagram account we’ve also shared loads of various geeky pictures related to Star Wars today! Go check it out here >>

May the Fourth be with you!! ^____^

So  here’s the final part of my RSM loot! All the games!! :D Apart from the Atari Lynx games that I mentioned in the first post..

I got quite a lot of C64 games since these were cheap ^_^ Scramble Spirits, Pac-Mania and Cosmic Causeway were really pretty big boxes ^_^ Scramble is always fun! Pac-Mania looked like a cool 3D version of Pac-Man, I’m sure I have it for other systems already but it’s always fun to try out various ports ^_^ Never heard of Cosmic Causeway but I love the artwork! On the screenshots it kind of looks like some kind of Space Harrier game ^_^

I also found these 4 big boxes, I’m hoping this C64 JAWS is better than the NES version ;D Killer Ring looks to be some kind of shooter, Terry’s Adventure was just cheap and I loved the tacky James Bond montage on the 007 License to Kill cover ^_^

These C64 boxes were a bit different! Frost Byte and Kong Strikes Back were in soft plastic, the screenshots and artwork intrigued me ^_^ Creatures had a really pretty cover! It’s a paper box, and it looks like an amazing side-scrolling platform adventure ^_^

I also got Wibstars, Chuckie Egg (a classic that I actually didn’t have before), Herobotix and a Christmas Collection containing 6 games. Herobotix had such a cool name and an awesome robot on the cover! :D Had to get it ^_^ The Christmas Collection contained a game I’ve been wanting to try out for a long time now! I bought Exolon on Amiga 500 a while back and it never worked, the seller kept sending me new floppy disks but none would load :( So hopefully this cassette will and I’ll at least get to see what type of game it is! :D

I got a few PC Engine titles as well. There weren’t a lot of PC Engine stuff at RSM, but I did find these three titles that I didn’t previously have, pretty cheap ^_^ Master of Monsters, Ballistix and Babel.

I bought an expensive N64 title, Paper Mario! I have never played any of the Paper Mario games and everyone tells me they’re good. I’ve recently found out that they’re kind of RPG games as well.. which I don’t like >_< So I have no clue what I will think of it.. I guess I’ll just have to try it out and see for myself ^^

There were more japanese stuff at RSM, and I found some Sega Saturn games :D Pretty nice titles I think as well :) Vampire Hunter, Bubble Symphony & Saturn Bomberman Fight :D

Another system I got a few games for was Playstation 1. Both Puchi Carat and Parappa the Rapper were cheap :) I’ve actually never played Parappa the Rapper, I have a Playstation 2 version, but it was Japanese so I didn’t have a system to play it on until recently when I got a modded one. Haven’t gotten around to trying it yet though.. Now I will though ^_^

I’m extremely happy to have found a Neo Geo AES game that was affordable and NOT a fighting game!! :D I found this game called Puzzled ^_^ It’s quite fun and very challenging! It’s falling Tetris pieces that you need to put in place to remove the obstacles that is keeping your ship captured at the bottom. Once the ship is freed you clear the stage. I love puzzle game like this! :D It’s also in really nice condition ^_^

I also found some NES games, there were LOADS of NES games for sale at RSM, but I didn’t dig too deep into all the piles. I found these two that I didn’t previously own and was curious to try out ^_^ Tom & Jerry and… Barbie! haha

Tom & Jerry was a fun platformer, kind of hard though. You could only take three hits and there were so many things that would hurt you >_<

Barbie had extremely stiff controls and animations. It was extremely simple and stupid haha ^_^ And it got difficult only because of the stiff controls..

I also got a really cool looking NES game called Defenders of Dynatron City! I had never encountered this one before! :D And I got a pretty good deal from KCL to by this minty complete game ^_^ The cover art is amazing!! The game was also pretty cool, but the hit detection was extremely off, which made it frustrating in the long run >_<

You can choose from 3 various main characters, and while in game you can change between another three companions. There’s 6 characters in total, Jet Headstrong, Radium Dog and Ms. Megawatt are the three main ones, out of these I prefer Ms. Megawatt ’cause she has the best and fastest attack ^_^ The three other characters you can always choose from in game are Toolbox, Monkey Kid and Buzzsaw girl. It’s got a pretty cool setup, you have to clear all the streets of the map from robot enemies, once you’ve cleared a stage the shops open up, they’re also filled with enemies, but once killed you can get an item. The item is either a clue, money, food for health or some item you can use. Once all streets are clear you’ll find a boss, when killed he takes you to the next stage, which is inside a mall where you can use the money to buy more items ^_^ It’s got a lot of depth and nice graphics with a lot of various locations but falls short on the horrible hit-detection..

I only found one Famicom game that I didn’t already have. There wasn’t a lot of Famicom at RSM though. The one I found was Sanrio Carnival 2 with Hello Kitty ^_^ My friend Mattias also brought a Pachiottokun game for me which I didn’t have :) Thanks!

I found only one Sega Mega Drive game.. Granada, which is a japanese release. This was a cool tank shooter ^_^ I reached the first boss but he killed me >_<

And I got some Game Boy games, all japanese ones ^_^

Apart from all these games I got a few other goodies from various people or from the Asteroids competition I came in second place in ^_^

I’m extremely happy with this years RSM! Had a great time! Met loads of nice people, bought massive amounts of cool retro gaming stuff and had a blast! :D

This year’s retro gaming convention in Malmö (Retrospelsfestivalen) was awseome! I didn’t have much time to buy stuff though since me and my Geeky Gals spent most time hosting competitions and stuff on stage. It was a lot of fun though ^_^ And we got to meet so many cool people :D I did however get half an hour off at the end of the day where I did some speed-shopping for retro games! haha :D

So here’s what I found ^_^ Not bad for 30 minutes huh? ;D

I’m thrilled to have found a Neo Geo game I didn’t already have! Less thrilled to find out that it’s a fighting game (like every other game on that system >_<) instead of a platform game, like the previous Karnov games on NES for example.. but I got a fair price so I’m happy :) I have a lot of friends who enjoy fighting games, so I’ll pop it in my new cab ;D (I’ll tell you more about that in a later post..)

I was also happy to stumble upon some PC Engine games, they’re quite unheard of here in Sweden. But Japon carried a few titles ^_^ I got Gokurake Chuka Taisen on HU card :) I love the other games in this series so I hope this one will be as good, if not better ;D

Apparently Rock n’ Roll Racing for SNES is supposed to be rad, haven’t tried it yet, but I’m looking forward to it ^_^ It’s NTSC, but now I have an NTSC SNES so I feel comfortable buying this region as well :)

I found these C64 carts that I jus thad to have, since they had such amazing artwork haha ^_^ I love how the guy on the cover of Saboteur is both jumping, kicking and shooting a gun at the same time, with such precision! hahaha :D

I also got some games for the Nokia N-Gage, a few weeks ago I bought two N-Gage systems so now I also have games for them ;D It’s Sonic and Crash Bandicoot, so hopefully they haven’t screwed that up..

From MXS I bought two handheld Game & Watch clones, one was called Hungry Elephant and the other one Sky Invaders. Unfortunately Sky Invaders didn’t have a hatch over the battery slot, and it didn’t seem to work when I held batteries in there :/ But I got them really cheap so I’m happy one of them worked :) I also bought a Tetris Jr. from Pixel, so cute! ^_^

I also found a Famicom pirate called Mechanized Attack II, I liked the cover and was curious of what was on it :) And I found a Game Boy game from Japanspel, I mainly bought this one for the ridiculous cover XD It’s called Tasmania Monogatari. Apart from this I found a cheap Sega Master System game I didn’t previously have.

I got some gifts from friends, like the Famicom matchbox from Pappas Pärlor and the mushroom and Sonic pin från Pixel K.A.F.E :) Thank you!! And I bought an amazing album that I have been listening to all week on Soundcloud from Professor Sakamoto! :D He performed at the festival and also at the after party ^_^ So talented and an amazing composer of chiptunes! At the bottom here I’ve embedded a few videos I filmed from his performances :) Go check him out!

Apart from all this my friend David showed up with all the ZX Spectrum games and other stuff I had bought from him earlier :) So I came home with 42 new Speccy games! (which I’m pretty sure is more than I paid for ;D) Thanks David! Apart from the Spectrum games I had bought a perfect case for storing Atari 2600 cartridges, or Famicom games :D But preferrably Atari 2600.. and a Neo Geo MVS game, Super Sidekicks 2. It’s football >_< but it was cheap :)

This year at Retrospelsfestivalen I also had a table where I sold off some doubles, I’m happy with how my table turned out ^_^ First time ever selling games!! It’s hard since I’m a hoarder by nature ;D hahaha! I set up a PC Engine with Coryoon so people could try out this awesome game ^_^ Unfortunately I didn’t sell too many of the japanese games, a lot of people don’t have the consoles for it here. Most people are into PAL NES and SNES.. :/ Also my fiancé was taking care of the table all day, and he is completely clueless when it comes to games! LOL!  I appreciate his support though, and people told me he was friendly ^_^

Here’s the videos from Professor Sakamoto’s performance at Retrospelsfestivalen 2015! Check them out! So much awesome!! :D

I’ve amassed quite an extensive Tetris collection by now. I always buy a Tetris game if I don’t already have it, and man! There’s a lot of Tetris games out there! Tetris is such a fun game, you never get tired of it, and I think it’s so exciting to try different versions :) So here they are! You can click the pictures to view them larger if you for example want to see the screenshots on the back of the box ^_^ I right now have 86 different video game versions (including 3 arcade games) of Tetris and 5 board games :) These picture below are already outdated and missing around 30+ games from the collection XD

Atari Tetris Arcade

My most proudest Tetris game is definitely my dedicated Atari Tetris Arcade from 1988. It’s so much fun to play against friends ^_^ And it has the unique gameplay where you have objectives instead of just endless mode with increasing difficulty. You can read more about this one in my blog post about the Atari Tetris Arcade >>

Sega Tetris Arcade

My most recent Arcade pickup is the Sega Tetris PCB. This is not a Jamma standard, but fortunately I got an adaptor with it so I can play it on my Blast City cabinet :) It has these photorealistic pictures in the background, so awkward XD And when you die this disappointed monkey is disappointed in you… haha XD

Tetris Plus 2 Arcade

I also recently got a PCB of Sega Tetris that I can use with my Blast City arcade ^_^

C64 Tetris

I have two different editions of the Tetris game on C64. The gameplay is the same, it looks like on the back of the big box one (it’s almost all in black and white), the screenshots on the back of the smaller one are taken from a different system.

ZX Spectrum Tetris

I recently got the ZX Spectrum version of Tetris on cassette tape as well. The packaging looks exactly the same as the C64 version, but the graphics should be quite different because of the hardware. Haven’t had time to try this one out yet. I’ve also bought a copy of Welltris for ZX Spectrum as well. Since the colors are so different on this system I can’t wait to see what it looks like compare to the Atari ST version :D

Tandy CPC Tetris

Someone on Instagram showed me that there was a version of Tetris for the Tandy CPC, I don’t even know what that is!?! But I found a complete version of Tetris for it on eBay XD So now I have a Tandy game, but nothing to play it on >_< I’m hoping I’ll eventually bump into one.. I think it’s some old type of computer..

Amiga Tetris

I’ve begun finding Tetris games on Amiga as well ^_^ So far I have two versions of Tetris, one released by Spectrum HoloByte (I love the box art on this one :D) and one released by Infogrames, and I have Super Tetris also from Spectrum HoloByte. The Infogrames one I bought from an eBay seller in Australia, but I don’t think it’s an Australian copy, unless it was exported there since they are also a PAL region. Infogrames is French, and on the back of the game it has German, French and English language. I’ve never seen this box art before though.

Atari ST Tetris

I recently got myself an Atari ST 1040, an so far I only have like 5 or 6 games for it, one of them is of course a Tetris game ^_^ This one is called Welltris and it’s like playing Tetris in a well :D Read my review of this game here >>

CDI Tetris

I also have a Tetris version for Philips CDi. Just bought myself a CDI last week, so I’ll be able to try it out now ^_^

Famicom Tetris

Moving on to 8-bit Tetris we have a couple for the Famicom :D The BPS Tetris is by far my favorite, mainly because of the fucked up controls XD A fun challenge, and the Technotetris soundtrack is awesome! ^_^

NES Tetris

I also have the NES versions that I’m aware of. Here my favorite is by far Tengen’s Tetris, since they have this awesome co-op mode that is incredibly fun! You either work really well together with a friend, or it’s a train wreck, or you start fighting about the score and try to work against each other XD

Game Boy Tetris

Then there’s the handhelds! Tetris for Game Boy was a classic ^_^ But even more versions were released! I’m still missing Tetris 2 >_< But soon!

Game Boy Color Tetris

For Game Boy Color there was Tetris DX! This I accidentally bought for both PAL and JP region, usually I’m content with having the game from just one of the regions.. as long as I can play it and it’s the same game then I don’t really care for which region I have it :) I also have a version of Disney’s Magical Tetris Challenge for Game Boy Color, this game was released on many systems, like PS1 and N64 as well :)

Game Boy Advance Tetris

I also have one for Game Boy Advance :)

Pokémon Mini Tetris

Continuing on handhelds I also have Pokémon Tetris for the Pokémon Mini. Unfortunately I don’t have a Pokémon Mini console to play it on :(

Wonderswan Tetris

I found that there was a Tetris game released for Wonderswan Color as well, so of course I had to get it ^_^ It’s merely called “Tetris”

Tetris Jr.

I also have this tiny little Tetris Jr. handheld keychain ^_^

The first one is distributed by Bergsala in Sweden, I also have a second one that is still sealed, published by Squaresoft.

Super Famicom Tetris

On Super Famicom loads of various Tetris versions were released, like for example Tetris Battle Gaiden which brings RPG elements into it. In Super Tetris 3 you can play up to 4 people versus each other, I usually bring this one forth during the finals of my Retro Rumble competitions ^_^

SNES Tetris

On Super Nintendo we didn’t get as many Tetris versions. I don’t really want to add Tetris Attack to this collection, but I will, just because people always mention it when talking about Tetris on the SNES. I don’t think it’s a Tetris game though, in that case I would have to add every other puzzle game I have into this category. Tetris Attack is just Panel de Pon where they added Super Mario characters and called it Tetris because it’s a puzzle game, but it’s nothing like Tetris.

Sega Mega Drive Tetris

Nintendo was the company that acquired the license for Tetris back in the 80’s, therefore Sega was not allowed to release Tetris games, they created their Columns instead, which wasn’t as popular. They did however make a Tetris game for Sega Mega Drive, but they got sued and it got pulled out of production immediately. However a couple of copies made it out. There’s less than a handful known copies which sell for ridiculous amounts of money when they go up for sale. I do however have a bootleg/repro of this Sega Mega Drive Tetris game, just so I could play it and see what it was like for myself :) It’s a Chinese copy so it’s not very pretty, and doesn’t look like the original, but the game plays well ^_^

Nintendo 64 Tetris

Moving on to N64, there were a couple there as well.

Virtual Boy Tetris

Nintendo’s Virtual Boy didn’t get a lot of games (like maybe 15 in total), but two of them were Tetris! In North America they got 3D Tetris and in Japan they got V Tetris. The two are completely different games ^_^

Sega Saturn Tetris

Sega Saturn was popular in Japan, and so was Tetris. I guess Nintendo lost the exclusive license for Tetris by then O_o  I have a few Tetris games for Sega Saturn, not sure if I’m missing any..

Dreamcast Tetris

For Dreamcast there were quite a lot of Tetris games as well. I don’t know if I’ve found them all yet, but I have 3 different ones so far :)

Playstation Tetris

Some of the ones released for Dreamcast also came for Playstation. I have The Next Tetris on PS as well, but also a Deluxe version :D Then there’s Tetris X, both in normal and “Playstation best” edition and I also recently found out from a Facebook friend about this Japanese Tetris game called Tetris with Cardcaptor Sakura Eternal Heart XD Quite different :) I have just picked up a lot of 3 Japanese Playstation Tetris games I didn’t have, even though I had a few of them for different systems I still felt like I needed them ^_^ These were The Tetris, Tetris Plus and Magical Tetris Challenge. All three were in excellent condition and even had the spine cards ^_^

Playstation 2 Tetris

I’ve finally gotten a few Tetris games for the PS2 as well ^_^ These are Tetris Worlds, which has also been released for various other systems, and Sega Ages 2500 Tetris Collection from Japan :)

PS Vita Tetris

I’ve finally gotten around to getting the Tetris game for PS Vita as well. It’s Tetris Ultimate, basically the same as on the 3DS and on Xbox One (where I have it digitally).

Wii Tetris

The Wii got a Tetris game called Tetris Party Deluxe. In this one they also have a co-op mode (just like in Tengen Tetris for NES)! So much fun! Two pieces on the board simultaneously ^_^

Nintendo DS & 3DS Tetris

Then there’s Tetris on DS. I’ve now found most of the Tetris games on DS and 3DS. Do you know of any other ones I’m missing on these systems?

Xbox & Xbox 360 Tetris

Tetris Worlds and Tetris Evolution got released on multiple platforms, I choose to get them on Xbox and Xbox 360 since that’s what I’ve mainly been playing on when it comes to the newer generation consoles. I recently found out about the Arcade Tetris game called Grand Master Tetris, never tried it, but I did find that it was also released for Xbox 360 in Japan, so I got it ^_^ Unfortunately the game is region locked and I don’t have a Japanese Xbox 360 to play it on :( yet… Meanwhile I’m also on the look out for the Arcade version!!!

Xbox One Tetris

The latest release of Tetris I imported from Japan for the Xbox One. It’s Puyo Puyo Tetris! You can choose to play either pure Puyo Puyo or pure Tetris, or you can play Puyo Puyo Tetris where they have merged the two! :D It’s awesome ^_^

PC Tetris

I’m not really a PC player, I’ve always preferred a controller to mouse and keyboard. But when I stumble upon really cheap PC games with TETRIS on them I just can’t resist XD I’m gonna have to get myself an old computer with Windows ’98 so I can play it hahaha! XD Especially since I found Tetris CD III!! Look at all the different versions of Tetris that it contains!! Some of the names on the back are: 1993TRIS, FINTRIS, HEXRIS, BALLTRIS, PRYCHTRIS, TEAMTRIS, INFINITRIS and many many more! I really wish I could try these out RIGHT NOW!!!!

Tetris Consoles & Handhelds

I’ve bought a couple of Tetris clone systems from China XD I just had to try them out. They supposedly had 9999 versions of Tetris in one! Hahaha! Basically what they count as various versions is if you start the game on various speed levels from 0 – 9, and then multiply that by a couple of different version and multiply it by the various amount of lines at the bottom that you can start with, then I don’t know.. maybe you reach 9999. The first time I tried it out though I managed to find a version where you were playing Tetris upside down, the block was falling from below instead of above, and as soon as you put it down the blocks at the top moved a step to the right and came out on the other side. This made it quite difficult to plan ahead XD An interesting version indeed ^_^ These were really cheap so I bought several in the hope of getting them in a couple of different colors, they ended up also being in a few different editions. Two were a bit smaller, and there’s other differences as well, like some have a super mouse logo and some have a smiley face making peace signs XD There’s even two different versions of the box. They feel extremely cheap but it’s still interesting to try out the various types of Tetris that you don’t really see anywhere else. The controls are surprisingly responsive and good :)

I also got a Tetris clone handheld called the POP Station value pack. It’s so cheap and barely weighs anything XD It’s supposed to look like a PSP I guess, but it only contains that same program which the Brick Game with 9999 versions of Tetris in 1 has XD I would even say that the controls and buttons feel better on the Brick Games..

Tetris Game Watch by Nintendo

The best birthday gift I’ve ever gotten was this Tetris Game Watch! Still sealed in new condition :D I’m using it every day ^_^ It tells the time AND you can play Tetris on it! :D

Plug & Play Tetris

I found this plug & play Tetris game called Arcade Legends Tetris. It has 5 Tetris games in one, one is called Garbage Tetris XD It’s basically just Tetris but starting off with a few blocks in the bottom.. The controls look really nice with a Tetris theme, but they are AWFUL! You steer left, right and down with the red square in the middle, but you ALSO turn the pieces with the same button by turning it clockwise or counter clockwise! Which means you almost ALWAYS turn a piece right before you put it down, unintentionally >_< Not a recommended purchase…

Tetris Board Games

And here’s my board games. It’s Tetris by Tomy, Jenga Tetris and a Nintendo licensed Milton Bradley Tetris! :D

Now if you know about any Tetris video game that I don’t have yet then feel free to give me some advice on what to look for next ^_^ Meanwhile, try out some Not Tetris 2, I blogged about it some years ago and it’s still hilarious ;D

It takes time going through, cleaning, testing and taking pictures of 105 games, a few consoles and other things.. that’s how much I came home with after this years Retro Gathering XD Anyway, let’s get to it! I mainly focused on cartridge based games this year, I found a whole bin full of cheap Atari 2600 games to start with ^_^ In the bottom were even some boxed ones :D I tried all these ones out tonight and some that stood out was Planeten Patrouilie and Sub Scan, these were fun and intuitive :) Fatal Run was also interesting, it had the most advanced tunes I’ve heard in an Atari 2600 game so far! Unfortunately it only played the music when you got Game Over XD Superman was probably one of the worst Atari 2600 games I’ve played.. I didn’t even understand what the hell I was supposed to do…

I found these two little handhelds that were super cute! I love how “Hero and Princess” is such a total rip-off from Donkey Kong Game & Watch, it’s even dual screen! XD And the gorilla looks totally derpy XD

I finally got myself the Zapper for Famicom! It’s so funny how this one actually looks just like a regular gun, while we had to have the “kids-version” XD

I managed to extend my Tetris collection a bit, but not with a game.. a music LP and an old ad! My friend Marcus sold it to me and he also had a few other cool EP’s with video game reference :) I also bought a cute Dreamcast game from him called PenPen ^_^

After getting to know a lot of other retro gamers online I tend to usually have some deals waiting for me once I meet up with these friends at a convention :) Anders was kind enough to sell me a Video Computer VC4000 game which I didn’t previously have. I just got into this system thanks to an old high school teacher that found this system in his attic XD I also met the guy behind arkadbutiken.se on instagram who had a PCB with Hatris for me :D Can’t wait to try this one out, the arcade version must be so much better than the Famicom one ^_^

One of the things I bought from Zeela was this really cute little Pong clone called Las Vegas Super Color Teve-Spiel :D I tried it out tonight and it was fun, I didn’t see the colors though because apparently the TV was black and white XD I’ll try it with another TV next time… what I really liked about this Pong version is that the joysticks also go horizontally, so it actually resembles Tennis even more :) You can run back and forth and not only up and down XD It has SO MANY BUTTONS on it though! I had to read the instructions just to figure out what they were all for..

I also bought a bunch of games from Zeela, he has such good prices on old cassettes that it’s hard to resist XD So many pretty covers! I also got some extra memory for my VIC-20, which is probably the reason why I haven’t gotten more than half of the games to work on it so far XD He was also kind enough to dig out a few Jeff Minter games! Hell Gate and Gridrunner ^_^ I also picked up some Amiga games.

I also found a bunch of Videopac G7000 games that I was lacking ^_^ Some I bought from my new found retro gaming friend Jack :) Thanks for bringing them for me!

Some other things I found were a Case Boy that Söders Spel & Skivhandel thought would look great in my Castlevania collection because of the Castlevania screenshot on the box :D I also bought a reproduction of Trip World, mainly so I can play the game.. I’m probably never gonna spend that much money on the original.. I also got some cheap Famicom pirates, I thought they were quite funny since they read “4 in 1”, then “39 in 1” and finally “1000000000 in 1”!!! I’m skeptical to whether it actually contains that many XD Apart from this I picked up a bunch of other games, like Hao-Kun no Fushigi na Tabi for Famicom Disk System, Slider and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on Game Gear, Puzzle Figher II on Game Boy Advance, Cobra Command on NES, Puyo Puyo on N-Gage, a hombrew game called Photon for MSX a few other games and I also got two ZX Spectrum games for free ^_^

There’s not a lot of Japanese games at this Swedish convention, but I did manage to find a few. I found some cheap PC Engine games I didn’t already have, and also Super Darius which cost a bit more. I also bought some Japanese Sega Mega Drive games from my friend Karl ^_^ And I found some really nice Super Famicom games! :D Yoshi’s Cookie, Yoshi’s Island and Super Bomberman 3 which completed my Super Bomberman set ^_^

Now this wasn’t the entire loot.. I’m saving some of the best parts ;D I’ll be back soon with part II of the l00t!

Last weekend I took a roadtrip to Vetlanda with my friend Matt, because we had heard that they were arranging a retro game market! I actually didn’t have too high expectations in sellers and visitors attending, both because of the lesser known town of Vetlanda, but also the amount of retro gaming conventions that had been taking place in the recent couple of weeks. I still needed to check it out though!

I was pleasantly surprised that it first of all was indoors (it said Retro Game Market in the Park, so I was afraid it would be outside in the cold of Swedish November XD) but also what a big number of sellers that were there! We first found a small room with only one seller who had set up 8 tables filled with games from the NES to PS2.. but we later discovered there was a whole other giant room filled with loads more! And there were lots of people that I’ve gotten to know from previous conventions ^_^

It was a lot of fun just talking to everybody, but I also ended up finding and buying way more than I had expected XD My biggest find was a boxed Japanese Virtual Boy! I now have 4 Virtual Boys XD But only one is boxed and it’s American. I’ve always liked the Japanese box design, but didn’t think I would find one at a decent price. This time I couldn’t pass it up though :D I also found a cute little arcade thing, the screen is smaller than a Game Boy Advance, but it carries similar graphics and has 108 games in 1! One of them is “Falling Blocks” which I also have on another system, it’s the most frustrating Tetris-like game XD The blocks are ridiulously shaped!

I also found loads of games for various systems. A few 16-bit games for Super Famicom and the Sega Mega Drive. I’m sorry about the upside-down photo of Raiden Densetsu, I just keep wanting to see it the opposite way! Haha! And I couldn’t be bothered re-shooting.. I don’t really like RPGs as many of you know, but I couldn’t resist price-worthy Final Fantasy games, it’s the only RPG series I’ve at least played a few games from.. and the box arts are so pretty ^_^ Super Family Circuit looked kind of like micro machines :) And the two Mega Drive games were in really nice condition and I didn’t have them before, platformers are always fun ^_^

I also got some Famicom and Famicom Disk System games that I didn’t have :) Fun to run into Tom & Jerry in the wild like this, you don’t see it every day ^_^ I have Baseball, but not he pulseline version. It’s hard not to pick up Famicom games when it’s something I don’t have XD

I also got a bunch of Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Advance games, and found an Amiga CD32 game called The Chaos Engine. I vaguely remember somebody telling me about it once.. saying it was good.. I guess we’ll see ^_^ I also bumped into a Tetris game I didn’t have! I didn’t even know Tetris Attack existed on Game Boy! It’s not really a “Tetris” game in my oppinion, but I can’t argue with the name XD

I’m really happy to see that so many Japanese Nintendo games have made it to the Swedish market! But the prices of them are also increasing.. The only negative thing for me with this Swedish market, just like a majority of the Swedish retro game events and conventions, was the giant focus on Nintendo.. I would like to see more varied things, like Atari, PC Engine, Commodore, and other more obscure systems, but I guess the interest in those things is just smaller :/

Other than that it was a pleasant surprise to see such a niched event pop up further south and I hope it will continue! They said they were looking at having another retro market already in spring next year :D

I have quite a lot of Famicom games, over 900 unique ones, and when I sometimes search for information about some lesser known titles on the internet it usually won’t give a lot of rewarding results. So I thought I’d start a series where I do short first impressions of all of my Famicom games so people get a feeling of what type of game it is, if it requires Japanese knowledge to play or not, and what the gameplay looks like :) Since I have so many, this will be a long term project XD But hopefully since the reviews will be short I’ll have time to squeeze some in now and then :) So here’s the first in the series of Famicom Impression! :D

So first up is Captain Tsubasa! Released by Tecmo in 1988. Just looking at the cart I was pretty sure it was a regular sports game, soccer to be exact, but it’s not really.. It’s about playing soccer, and you play soccer, but not like regular sports games where you control the character. This is RPG SOCCER!!! O_o Two of my LEAST favourite genres put together! Ouch…

Instead of steering your character and pushing A or B to dribble or shoot you get menus to choose various actions from. Now if you’re not that familiar with the Japanese language this might prove to be difficult XD I have some basic knowledge since I’ve studied it for 4 years, so I remember how to read Katakana and Hiragana, but I’ve completely forgotten all the Kanjis. Thankfully most 8-bit game menus mainly contain Hiragana or Katakana, but then there’s the issue of also knowing what it means XD I managed to figure this much out:

The only live action you get is when you receive the ball, then you get to run towards the goal, at first I wasn’t even sure which way I was supposed to score XD Another issue with that part is that you also don’t see anything on the map of the field except yourself, so how the hell do I know if I’m not running straight into opposite players?!

The game seemed quite unfair in general.. or maybe I just sucked at it.. but it seemed like the opposite team catched every single ball I shot or tried to pass, while they managed to pass and score without any resistance >_<

Here’s a video of my first and most likely only attempt at playing this game:

This really was the worst of two worlds for me.. sports and RPG elements >_< bleh… I don’t recommend it.. unless you’re a hardcore soccer fan who fancies RPG’s and happen to be fluent in Japanese!! Then you might actually enjoy this ^_^

Next up for Famicom Impressions is King of Kingsキングオブキングス. It was a game I didn’t have, looking at the artwork on the cartridge made me quite positive it was some kind of strategy game (I’ve learned to tell the difference on these Japanese games with their beautifully deceiving artworks XD). But you never know! I could be wrong, so I had to try it out for myself to be sure :)

Just as I thought, it was some kind of strategy and turned based war game. I was quite clueless to begin with, I tried pushing all the buttons and got to various menus. Thankfully the menus were not as extensive as in many other strategy games. I tried various options and figured out that I could buy troops for my King! I bought some of each kind and started placing them out on the map, moved my king around to various towns on the map and got to raise my flag :D

Then it took a while before I could figure out how to end my turn.. I eventually found it in the Select menu, the second from the bottom. And here’s where the game got reeeally boring and long >_< Once it was the computers turn I had to sit and wait for him to do ALL of his moves with ALL of his characters.. each turn he had he got more and more troops and his turn just grew longer and longer. And it wasn’t sped up or anything, he was just as slow on deciding as me almost!! I couldn’t press anything to skip it :/

There’s of course battles as well, but they’re all randomly AI controlled, you can just sit and watch and hope for a positive outcome.. In this game you don’t do anything except move around characters on the board and buy more characters.. as far as I could understand at least. I made the mistake of moving my King too far from my main castle, because that’s the only place you can buy more troops..

I managed to withstand 3 or 4 turns of my own.. then I was so bored out of my mind that I just shut it off.. I would say it’s fairly playable, even if you don’t understand Japanese, just guessing your way through menus gives figurative results so you can understand what you just did basically. But it’s definitely not fun in my opinion.. just boring.. I’m not much for strategy games in general though. It was probably great at it’s time for people into that kind of stuff :P

Here’s a video of my first attempt at this game. I’m surprised I didn’t shut it off sooner XD

The next Famicom impression is on Suikoden: Tenmei no Chikai 水滸伝・天命の誓い (KOE-XJ) by Koei from 1989 and… I seriously have no clue what is going on in this one..

It’s some sort of RPG/strategy/story-telling nonsense about ancient dudes in China.. so.. yeah.. this:

I don’t know if I chose the wrong menu or if there’s some kind of intro that just lasts FOREVER.. but I didn’t even get to do anything! I just looked at the numbers scrolling in the bottom left, and once in a while a dude popped up, with numbers attached to his card, and that was the only time I got to interacet: I pressed a button and his card went away and the numbers began scrolling again until another dude popped up. FUN!!! *not*… I hate strategy… especially non-interactive types…

Here’s a video of the few minutes I could stand of this game… at least some of the music is decent! o_O

I managed to find a Dragon Ball game for the Famicom that I didn’t previously have! This time for Famicom Impressions I tried out Dragon Ball Z Gaiden: Saiya Jin Zetsumetsu Keikaku ドラゴンボールＺ 外伝 サイヤ人絶滅計画 (BA-DBZ4) released by Bandai in 1993. Dragon Ball games usually have pretty colorful artwork containing silly anime characters with funky hair, and the manga/anime series has a pretty big fan base from what I understand.. I’ve never been that into anime or manga though.. but I’ve always hoped for a good Dragon Ball game! This is not it though..

From what I’ve figured from the series the Dragon Ball story is about guys that are flying and fighting. This game is pretty much based on that as well. Unfortunately the action is not controlled by you, it just has a lot of cool looking fighting cutscenes. Instead you control the characters like in an RPG, choose which card to use, pick an action and so forth.. I hate menus.. I want live action!

At least the game has some pretty rad tunes ^_^ Check out the video below to listen to some of the music :) It’s awesome! Apart from that I wouldn’t really say it’s playable or fun without an extensive knowledge about Dragon Ball lore or the Japanese language.. In the main fighting menu the only thing I understood was ステータス (status) and アイテム (item). The others seemed to be various attacks or card picking.. I have no clue what the cards are about, some of them seemed to give me special attacks.. at the end though I just fought for my blonde dude to get killed so I could turn it off XD

I got to see a dragon though, who gave me free cards! The game really has some nice sprites :)

Check out my first attempt at this game here, and listen to the nice music at least ^_^

Out of the last couple of Famicom games I picked up, this was the most playable, until the 2nd stage at least…. This is the Famicom Impression of Pooyan プーヤン (HFC-PO) released by Konami in 1985. An arcade-like platform game. It was I think an arcade game before it was ported to console.

You can really tell the difference between games released in the more than 10 year span of the Famicom’s lifetime. This one is from 1985, and the Dragon Ball Z game I made an impression of yesterday is from 1993. Just compare the graphics! And this is Konami, which has given us amazing things such as Castlevania, TMNT, Parodius, Contra, Crisis Force and many more..  most of these games are from the very late 80’s to the early 90’s though.

So basically the game is about shooting the balloons that hold the wolves so that they fall to their death instead of climbing up the ladder to eat you and your family alive. Fairly easy concept, but there’s loads of wolves coming down simulateously, and eventually they get different colored balloons, some will shoot back at you so you have to dodge as well. Once I got to stage two though I got stuck. HOW THE HELL DO YOU SHOOT THE BALLOON OF THE PINK WOLF?!?!? As you can see in the video below the pink wolves block every single arrow I shoot at them! >_< Since I couldn’t kill them 5 new enemies spawned every time I let one slip, and there was always a new pink one there! It was destined to fail..

Apart from that no Japanese language is needed to play this game, it’s not the best game on the Famicom, but certainly not the worst, however I’m fairly sure it’s the worst Konami game every made >-<

Here’s the video of my firtst attempt:

Next up on Famicom Impressions is a racing game called Nakajima Satoru F-1 Hero 中島悟F-１ヒーロー (VRE-F1), released by Varie in 1988.

I’m not that into racing games, but I gave it a shot.. You can choose between “Warming Up”, “Battle Mode” or “Grand Prix Mode”. I began with Warming Up, then I got a guy, who I presume was Nakajima Satoru, explaining the stage I picked and all the tips and tricks of how to get around the corners. This was all in Japanese though so it didn’t do me much good XD It was almost impossible to stay on the track! I haven’t played much racing games, but the only one I can compare it too is Super Monaco GP on Sega Mega Drive which is WAY easier in comparison! Here you only had two buttons, accelerate and break, and I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong in the corners, I tried button mashing the steering, I tried speeding up and slowing down, breaking, releasing.. nothing seemed to work..

Now that I come to think about it, it’s pretty similar to Super Monaco GP on Sega Master System which I only tried out once with my friend Becki, and I completely sucked at that too XD I even have video proof of that here >> if you fast forward 10 minutes into the clip you’ll get right to it ^_^

After this I went into Battle Mode. At first I assumed it was two players, since one wasn’t moving, after a little bit I realised I WAS THE ONE not moving! I didn’t understand why so I quit and went on to Grand Prix Mode.. Then my car wouldn’t move either! Until I realised that I had to use up and down to shift gears all of a sudden. Why wasn’t this in Waming Up mode?!

After having qualified with the shittiest time it went on to the competition, I was looking forward to racing against other cars.. but alas.. all of a sudden I’m not in control anymore?! An AI has taken over my car and is driving it extraordinarily awesome! Why?? Maybe they felt sorry for me being so shitty at this game… :/

See my complete failed attempt at this game here:

A guy recently contacted me because he saw that I had some games for trade on my blog, we started emailing back and forth and he actually had a bunch of Famicom games and a few other games that I didn’t have, so we made a nice deal ^_^ He received a few boxed Sega Mega Drive and Master System games for a few loose Famicom and Game Boy carts. I’m really happy with the trade, especially with the cute handheld I also got! It’s TETRIS :D And I played it for almost 2 hours when it first arrived XD

What’s odd about this Tetris game is that it only gives you points for each block you place, you don’t get points for making rows or even a “Tetris”.. it’s seems to be more mission based, once in a while you level up and they clear the board and give you a piece of the rocket it seems :) Then it starts over, slightly more difficult. It also took a while to get into the controls, since it doesn’t have an up or down button, at least down I’m used to pressing when I wan’t them to go a bit faster, here there’s only left and right. Instead there’s a drop-button where A or B usually sits, I accidentally pressed this one so many times and just threw the piece down XD It was a nice challenge though!

The Famicom games I got were mainly the ones you’ve gotten to see my first Famicom Impressions posts of ^_^ There’s yet another one coming soon ;D

I picked a bunch of Game Boy games that I thought looked interesting, these Japanese carts still deceive me though XD Only a handful were playable, the rest were mainly RPGs or some kind of strategy or weird Japanese game that was just boring.. Maybe I should start making Game Boy impressions as well :)

The final one  among the pictures above is a game by Konami called Hunter X Hunter: Hunter no Keifu, not to be confused with Hunter X Hunter: Kindan no Hihou. I briefly looked up the gameplay beforehand, which I usually never do, and I thought this was an awesome Castlevania-like sidescrolling platformer (which Kindan no Hihou is), but this one is not that… I don’t even know what genre this specifies under.. RPG/Strategy/walk-around-pointlessly-on-grids-without-any-action-what-so-ever?!? Anyway, below is some gameplay from it.. it has some nice music that quickly becomes repetitive, but apart from that I’m completely lost to it’s purpose.. I have since ordered Hunter X hunter: Kindan no Hihou through eBay, can’t wait for that one to arrive! :D

Oh no, it’s time for another sports game! It’s not an RPG this time though, just PURE AMERICAN FOOTBALL in Tecmo Super Bowl テクモスーパーボウル (TCF-4U) on Famicom, released in 1991.

It has some nice graphics in the intro, and I really kind of liked the music in game, the little that I got to hear of it.. because every time something happened on the field (which I felt I had no control over what so ever) the freaking song started over again! The stupid screen popping up every 10 seconds asking me for a strategy is SO ANNOYING! I would call this a strategy/sport-simulator game, no action at all, I got control of the ball (or whatever you call it in American football) once, and no matter where I tried running the opposing team caught up and threw themselves on top of me, suffocating whatever nice feelings I ever might have felt towards this game >_< booooo

At least no Japanese language is necessary to play this, only an incredible infatuation with sport-strategy ;P

Here’s a video, judge for yourself.