Street Fighter: A multi-platform comparison
Capcom’s Street Fighter 2 (and its variations) is arguably the greatest fighting game ever made. The argument you’ll get will be from Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur or Tekken fans but even if you don’t believe Street Fighter 2 was the greatest, there’s no denying it was one of the greatest. With a diverse array of fighters and awesome locations and special moves, Street Fighter 2′s success was evident in the amount of gaming platforms it could be found on. Street Fighter 2 saw release on everything from the Gameboy to the Megadrive.
Read the f*cking manual!
Sunday is more than just a day of rest to the intrepid retro video game collector, it’s also – usually – market day. That glorious time of the week where you get to bump shoulders with misfits and Collingwood supporters as you delve deep into the garbage of others in order to find a bargain or two. I think today will forever more be coined “manual day” due to the inordinate amount of manuals found and picked up for a mere dollar or 2 each. Non-collectors will likely not see the value in scooping up fistfuls of game manuals without the games themselves, but to the collector it’s all about that magical word;
completeness.
Just as having a boxed game without its manual causes the die hard collector fitful, restless sleep each night, finding the manual to complete the box causes unmatched waves of sheer joy. Yup, that’s right – the weepy kind of joy.
So anyway, see the pics below for the smattering of manuals I picked up today. I didn’t check first to see if I had the games, I figure for that price they should all be snapped up, then the games found at a later date. Enjoy!
More C64 games
There are few sites as awesome as a big box of assorted C64 games. This delivery came Friday (the box complete with the same bugs and spiders it probably had when buried in someone’s garage) and I’ve just had a chance to open it and start playing through some of the titles today. A few of the titles didn’t load up, but I think that’s because my C128D isn’t the healthiest of beasts. I’ll plug in the Breadbin C64 over the weekend and continue my adventures then. In the meantime, please enjoy these shots of my C64 treasure hoard 
.
My beta preview of Guild Wars 2 is up @ Atomic
Just a short note of the non-retro variety to let you all know that my Beta Preview of Guild Wars 2 is up over at www.atomicmpc.com.au, so drop by, have a read and comment if you so desire. It’s safe to say that I’m impressed
The Collectibles Fair & Sunday Market
The collectibles fair I recently attended didn’t yield much in the way of retro goodies. From memory, I walked away with a boxed PS2 remote (oh joy) and an Xbox game (the admittedly cool Midway Arcade Treasures title). I did however find and snag something that – while it isn’t retro gaming in itself – has been used to great effect to display bits of my current collection. You’ll see in the pictures below what turned out to be the perfect Nintendo Game & Watch display case! It fits all of my dual screen G&W units perfectly into each stand, and even spins around (though manually, by turning a wheel at the top of the case).
I’m thinking a couple of neon or halogen lights would set this thing off perfectly, but I don’t know if I’ve got the handy man skills to put in any lighting that doesn’t plug into a standard power point.
Other than that, the regular Sunday market trip turned up a couple of N64 carts, Donkey Kong Country for the SNES and a couple of boxed NES games (Smash TV and Tecmo World Cup Soccer). Not a bad weekend, but the display case was the pick of the bunch….
Like this:
Bylines from a bygone era
Retro Gamer is a fantastic magainze, because it offers retro gaming lovers like myself a chance to get a current, freshly circulated magazine filled to the brim with opinions, news and features about the games and machines we love from days gone by. The writers do a bang-up job of hunting down the ex-employees of <insert defunct 8/16-bit game studio here> or waxing lyrical about a blockbuster title from when the Intellivision was the newest kid on the block.
But it’s not exactly the same as reading a gaming magazine from the 80s or 90s. For that, you’ve got to dust off, well, a magazine from the 80s or 90s. Luckily I have a box filled with them, so tonight I decided to drag them all out and have a flick through the pages of these colorful time capsules of video game goodness. It’s a treat, really.
Oh sure, Retro gamer will put out an amazing feature about the Mega Man franchise and how it rose to fame and glory on every console, but it’s almost too easy to write about retro gaming because you’re afforded a wealth of history and irrefutable opinion to back up anything you say. You can comfortably talk about the amazing titles and the woeful flops because it’s all there on the record, written about by hundreds of people before you.
It’s something else to read a fresh review – well, fresh back then – of Mortal Kombat II, or the impending arrival of the Sega Saturn. There’s an excitement surrounding these pieces that can’t be replicated by any nostalgic look back through time. Every game and console accessory is new and sexy, while gaming journalist are rife with speculation and conjecture as they examine some Nintendo oddity or handheld wonder-contraption. If you dig your old games, the only way to really immerse yourself in the vibe of the times is to hunt down as many old mags as possible and start reading. It’s a journey into gaming legend that’s far more satisfying than I can put into words here.
So do yourself a favour, and be on the lookout for old copies of CU Amiga, SEGA Megazone, ZZap 64 – whatever you can find. It’s worth it, trust me. If you’re lucky – like me – you’ll even come across some publications that still have crisp, awesome posters inside featuring all your beloved retro gaming franchises. I’ve just found a kickarse Mortal Kombat II poster inside an old issue of SEGA Megazone that’s just begging to be put up on the wall.
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A day of C128 love
I decided to wrap myself in some Commodore lovin’ on this freezing ANZAC day, so I pulled out my C128D to fire up a few random games from my ‘giant box of copied disks and tapes that I haven’t yet played through’. Why the C128D? And not one of my trusty 64′s? Simple really – the C128D is an easier affair to hook up on my desk by virtue of the fact it has a built in 5.25″ floppy drive. There’s nothing more space-hogging than a C64, tape drive and monstrous 1541 disk drive combination, so the 128D is the better choice.
Plus I like the comforting noise of its little in-built fan whirring away in the background.
Anyway, pictures paint the story here, I took a few happy snaps of the various titles I chucked on for a look. Some of the games featured below are Back to the Future (classic!), Transformers (confusing) and the oddly satisfying ‘Create with Garfield’ where you create pictures by putting together combinations of backgrounds, props, characters and blurbs from the Garfield series. I am deeply concerned by how much fun I had with that one. Deeply. Also, I find this link to be invaluable when navigating around the command line of any Commodore system.
Another boxed Super Nintendo to add to the pile!
It wasn’t enough to have the original Super Nintendo boxed, or the Street Fighter 2 edition. Nope, I simply had to pick up the Mario All Stars edition as well! It’s in fantastic condition with the All stars cart included (as well as some random boxed games you can see in the photo and a boxed Super Scope not shown) so as you can imagine I’m pretty chuffed.
It just occured to me how much more collectible and highly prized SNES consoles would have been if the special editions actually had different art or colors on the console itself. Could you imagine the worth of a Street Fighter 2 or Mario edition SNES if it had the actual characters plastered all over it? (Think Pokemon N64 console). Shame really, but the boxes are neat anyway.
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters
Found this little gem in my SNES collection and I didn’t even know I had it!
Taking the Street Fighter formula and throwing in some turtle goodness results in a surprisingly entertaining game. I’d go so far as to call it my fave turtle based game on any platform, though admittedly I’ve soured on the whole TMNT franchise after getting a healthy overdose of it as a kid (hey – what can I say, I was growing up when TMNT was new on the scene and the coolest thing on the planet to own a piece of).
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Gameboy Booster
If any appliance has a chance of turning a Gameboy into a Gameman, it’s the ‘Booster’.
This third party product – an fascinating monstrosity to behold – acts a a sound, image and control amplifier for the humble Nintendo hand held. You literally insert the Gameboy inside the Booster and hook into its internal speakers, joystick and even magnifying glass for the screen. A fascinating concept that didn’t do to well back when its released, the Booster is nonetheless a cool bit of gaming paraphernalia to own and creates a novel, chunky Gameboy experience.
As an aside, the boxed Booster I was given (procured from a local op shop) turned out to be stuffed with random Gameboy game manuals as well. Super extra happy fun time win!
