Retro Modern Pick-Ups: Black Friday Madness!

Today was Black Friday, as I'm sure we are all aware. What exactly is Black Friday? I hear many asking. Well, apparently, it's a holiday where many stores have discounts and sales. I only heard about it 2 years ago, and I had no idea what it, or the fuss, was about. Until now.

GAME was one of those stores, they had a great deal on a Wii U game I wanted: Rayman Legends, they had it, brand new, for only £15! The deal was only available for an hour, so I quickly got the bus, and went into game to pick it up, and the place was packed! The line went all the way to the entrance! There was no room to grab the game, since the line covered the Nintendo section of the store, so I had to stand in the queue and get it on the way there, while I was there, I found another game, Ninja Gaiden 3, for, yet again, only £15 brand new, so I thought "What the hell!", and got that as well!

I wanted to get Call of Duty ghosts as well, but GAME never had it, even when I specifically asked if they had it, the cashier who served me didn't even know of any other store selling the Wii U version! Shocking! It's no Wonder the Wii U version is selling poorly! You need to sell it, Activision! You can't just expect sales without any effort on your part! Maybe they wanted it to sell poorly, to give them an excuse to not develop for (or rather publish to) the Wii U...

HMV had the Wii U version for sale, though, for £50... f*ck that!

I also got a game in Tesco, I got Wii Party U, with a free Wiimote, for £30, £4 off... okay that wasn't a great deal, but do you know what was great? The game itself!

A wee problem arose, I wanted the white wii-mote package (Nothing against blacks, honest! I already had a black wii-mote, I wanted to distinguish, that's all), but Tesco only had the black one, the website, which I checked before going to Tesco, never had the game listed at all!, so I asked one of the staff about it, their database never specified the wii-mote colour, and checked the back to see if there was any, there wasn't, they tried contacting another store that I can go to to see if they had any, no dice! So I guess I was stuck with the black wii-mote, oh well.

Rayman Legends was pretty good, Ninja Gaiden 3 was great! Wii Party U was awesome! I had a game of Wii Party U with my brother, and we had a lot of fun with it! It's not a good as Mario Party, because it's more based on luck than skill, but it was great fun, I wouldn't say it was worth £30, though, I would wait until it reduces, if it ever does, this is Nintendo we're talking about... Well, I guess the free wii-mote helps justify the price...



Amazon had some great deals as well, they had 007 Legends for £9 and ZombiU for £15, and I thought I might as well get Call of Duty Ghosts as well, even though that was £45...

So overall, I think it's been a good day today, I think I'm going to enjoy these Black Fridays!

Mystery Console Revealed

Remember in my last Retro Diary, I mentioned that I was getting a new console, but never revealed what that console is? Well, it's here, so I'll reveal it, drumroll please...

...

...What, no drumroll? Ah, screw it! The console I got was...

That's right, It's a Super Nintendo! For those unaware, no, this is not a Japanese Super Famicon, the PAL SNES' had same design, the differences I'm aware of, are obviously the name and the Super Nintendo logo on it, and that the cartridge door has "PAL Version" written on it. I'm thankful we got the Japanese design, because, I think the North American design is really ugly, and dull, no offence to any American SNES fans watching,

I am quite exited to have this, I've always been wanting to play the Super FX games on it, and this game happened to come with one of them, or should I say two of them...

...Ha, get it? It's because I got two copies of Starwing (That's what Starfox is called in Europe), that makes two, but it's only reall- ah forget it!

For those who haven't seen a SNES before (The SNES did poorly here (at least compared to Mega Drive), so people like that exist here.), you probably think the cartridges are pretty bug, and you'd be right, they are, for those who make the argument of "They were small for their time", the Mega Drive came out 2 years before and had much smaller cartridges, and I've heard they can actually store more, here's a size comparison I made:



It also came with 3 controllers, although only 2 work, and only one of them had a functional start button...


Finally, here's a photo of the SNES all set up, ready to play Starwing!

One thing I like about the SNES, is it's eject button in the centre, it's just so satisfying to push and watch the cartridge pop out!

So I've played the SNES for a bit, and it's a pretty good machine, the controller feels great, and considering I can only view it from an RF output, it looks great on my TV!

So I'm going to play Starwing some more, BYE!

-Cobra!

Retro Diary - 10th November 2013

I'm not being very consistent with this retro blog, am I? Well, the reason I haven't posted anything for the past few weeks, is because I don't have anything to post! That is not the case this week! I have some big news... sort of, to report!

Monday 4th November 2013
I was at CEX today after college, and I had found a great deal, I found 2 games for sale, Ace Lightning (Remember the show?) and Mall Tycoon, both for PC, and guess how much, in total, it costed me to buy both games... No, go on, guess... 45p! Ace Lightning costed 15p and Mall Tycoon was 30p! I thought that was a bargain! That was until...

I had installed both games, and I can see why they were both so cheap... Ace lightning was absolutely atrocious! I feel like I had been ripped off, that 15p could've bought me... erm... they have me there...

How bad is it? How does this sound? No mouse support, Tank style controls coupled with a Mario 64-esque camera, respawning enemies, space to jump, ctrl to shoot, and alt to swing your weapon... You have to do the spock hand to play this game, and it really puts a strain on my fingers after a while, and on top of all that, the game is boring to play... To give them credit, they captured the atmosphere of the show quite well, it feels like an Ace Lightning game. Another thing of note, they never got Ace Lightning's original voice actor for the game, instead, they got who sounds like Tom Clarke Hill, the voice of Cortez from Timesplttiers, the game's credits didn't mention the voice actors, and IMDB and Wikipedia have nothing on it either, so I'm not 100% sure, but I swear, it sounds so much like like him!

Mall Tycoon isn't a classic either, the controls are loose and clunky, and adding walls to is an absolute nightmare! For 30p, though, I can't complain, I got a bit of fun out of it once I got used to it... I tried a trial of Mall Tycoon 3 after playing it, and it's so much better, It'll be hard to go back to the original, so I uninstalled it...

Thursday 7th November 2013
I was at CEX again, and I saw all of the Smackdown Vs. Raw games as well as Smackdown: Shut your Mouth and Wrestlemania 21, all for £1 each, so I decided to nab all the games I didn't have, sadly, Smackdown vs. Raw (original) and Wrestlemania 21 don't work, everything else works perfect, though. Does anyone know if I have to go through buy or sell, or can I go through either to take what I bought back?

Friday 8th November 2013
I got a new console off of eBay, it came with 9 games (Including 2 copes of one game, the game I wanted this system for!), and 3 controllers, I thought I got a great deal on it.

I was never fussed about this console before, but then I saw someone put for sale on what's called "Facebay", which is a Facebook group where people from a certain city (they have groups for each city, I believe), sell stuff, for others in that city to buy and pick up at a meeting point, and vice versa, you can buy someone and go to a meet up point.

Anyway, someone was selling this console there, for a good price, it came with 4 games, and 2 controllers, so I was trying to make a deal with him, but he declined everything I offered, saying he'd get more on eBay and that he'd be "missing out", I got so exited to be getting this console as well, so I decided 'Screw it! I'm getting one off of eBay!' ...so I did.

What console am I talking about? I'm not telling you, I'll reveal it once it arrives... I bet youse are tempted to know what is it, aren't youse? No? Well, screw youse, I'm not telling youse either way!

Sunday, 10th November 2013
I had brought the Dreamcast to Grans this week, we didn't play much, though, I played a bit of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 with my brother, then I played a wee bit of Shenmue 2, I didn't get much further in the story, though.

Then I played a game of Chu Chu Rocket with my cousin: Steven.

Then my cousin: Giancarlo, came in, and we played some Ready 2 Rumble Boxing (Rumble Bumble!), and we had a blast playing it, then me and my (other) brother had a few matches. The graphics for that game still amaze me to this day, it looks like any regular PS2 or Gamecube game from the mid 2000s, and runs at 60fps, and this was in 1999, I can definitely imagine, somebody being blown away by the Dreamcast version of this game! I know I would've, it amazes me now!

The I had a wee game of NBA Showtime... that is all.

That's all we got up to this weel, maybe next week, I can bring that mystery console to grans, who knows?

Until then, BYE!