Retro Diary - 8/1/12 - "He is okay, Wo-mon!"

Dear Diary, I've had a busy week this week...

On Wednesday, my cousin, Steven, came over to fix a problem with my mum's Paypal, so I can get a copy of one of the old McDonalds demo disc 1! I invited him up to my room to play a few games.

First, we had a few game of the infamous Rise of the Robots on the Amiga CD32, being that he was the 2nd player, he got to choose the opponent, I couldn't. I had to stick with the Cyborg.

The first match, he went as the Sentry droid, a.k.a. "Rook", he won that match.
The second match, he went as the Soldier droid, a.k.a. "War", I won that match.
The third match, he went as the Builder droid, a.k.a. "Ape" or "Prime-8", it turns out that Ape didn't have any aerial attacks, and since the game usually consists of them to win matches, that was a bad thing, I won the match because of that.
The forth match, he went as the Sentry droid again, I won again.
It was 3-1 to me, yes!

Next we played World Tour Racing for the Atari Jaguar CD, it turns out that the control setting only apply to the first player, even if it's the second player choosing them, that sucked! We raced in England, which didn't look like England at all. However, we were amazed at the graphics, they were great for the Jaguar, it was a fully 3D textured-polygon game, which is rare for a Jaguar game.

Next, Steven had to help my brother in Portal 2, but as well as do that, he showed us a secret level, which was cool!

We then went on Garrys Mod on my PC, because I said to him the face poser in the game didn't work, it turns out they didn't work with the Team Fortress 2 characters.

We then had another race at World Tour Racing, nothing to say about that.

Then we had a game of wipE'out 64 for, what else, the Sega Saturn!... Wait, that's not right...

2 player in the game was surprisingly smooth and fast, I might even go as far as to say it runs faster than single-player!

After that, he had to leave.

In short, here are the game we played:

In the order we played them:
• Rise of the Robots [CD32]
• World Tour Racing [JagCD]
• Portal 2 [360]
• Garry's Mod [PC - Steam]
• wipE'out 64 [N64]

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The next day, my sister came over, and she discovered that I had a Mega Drive, she had, what is called, a "Nostalgia-gasm", which means, she got a memory triggered of something she remembers dearly, and get exited to play it again. She said for a joke that she wanted to move back into the house.

I popped in Sonic 2, and she pretty much played it all night.

It was probably the first time my Mega Drive had been booted up in years!

She said that she's going to buy a Mega Drive off eBay, and asked me if she does, if I would go over to her house to help her set it up, I said I would, it wouldn't be a problem.

She took a photo of the Mega Drive on Facebook, and said it was okay if I posted it here, so here you go:


She got to Zone 3 Act 2 before she had to leave.

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Friday was an awful day, it was the day my Sega Saturn died, I was trying out Sonic 3D, and it didn't read it, so I cleaned the lens, the outside, pushed the lens to the top, left it for a few hours, even opened it up to see if the drive was connected properly, but none of those worked, it wouldn't read anything...

R.I.P. my Sega Saturn, 2008 - 2012... Oh well, time to find another on Amazon and eBay.

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On Saturday, me and my cousin, Steven, were having a Robot Combat battle on Gmod, can can find more info on that here.

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Today, at Grans, it was 3DO week, and it wasn't as fun a I hoped, but I had a good time nonetheless.

We started off by playing Corpse Killer, which is one of those it's-so-bad-it's-good FMV games, my cousin, Steven got up to a fortress level of sort until it became too hard, not in the challenging way, they just threw too many zombies at him, most of which were invulnerable to bullets, which isn't fair!

If you didn't know, Corpse Killer is an FMV game that tried to be a rail shooter, but fails miserably, the main protagonist, apart from your character, is a one-dimensional stereo typical Jamacan man, who's always saying stuff like "Foo-pah!", "He is okay, Wo-mon!", there's a female character by the way, who has no personality whatsoever, at least not that I've seen.

Next, he played a race in The Need for Speed, not to much to say about it, except while he was playing it, we were writing that Gmod article I linked to above.

Then we played Twisted, we never finished the game, we had to leave before we could, but we enjoyed it.

In summary, here are the game we played:

In the order we played them:
• Corpse Killer
• The Need for Speed
• Twisted: The Game Show

I had a great week this week, next week was supposed to be Saturn week, but as we know, my Saturn died, so we're skipping to Playstation (1) week!

Random Photo (I was bored)

I was bored today, So I decided, since I now have all of the major 5th generation consoles, I thought I'd take a photo of all of their controllers side by side, similar to what some guy did with the 6th gen console on Wikipedia. The reason I didn't do console. because it'd be too much hassle unplugging them all lifting them off, putting them all on my bed, take the photo, lift them all back and plug them all back in, it'd be a nightmare.

Anyway here it is:

Retro Diary - 30/12/11 - Christmas(ish) Special

I haven't been online since Christmas day, well I have, but I've been too busy playing the Sam & Max games to write this, but I decided to take a little break from them to write this. (it was hard to pull myself away from playing them, they're just so awesome!)

I decided originally to forget about writing this, but then I remembered the reason I started this series in the first place, so I can look back and if I forgot exactly what happened in my memories, I can read these entries to remind me exactly what happened.

Anyway, enough blabbering on, let's get started!

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Dear Diary,

Despite the tragedy that happened in my family slightly earlier this year, I really enjoyed Christmas this year, I got almost everything I wanted, I say everything I mean I didn't get my Sam & Max DVD boxset and the copy I got of Season 2 was a faulty copy, stupid conmen! Also, the copy I got of wipEout 3 Special edition what the 2 games package which came with that and Destruction Derby 2, which I didn't want, I already had Destruction Derby 2, I didn't want it again!

I managed to get it working if I boot it up a certain, obscure way, but I'm planning on getting a legit, UK version of the game plus the Sam & Max DVD box set and a proper copy of wipEout 3: Special Edition from Amazon.

Anyway, here's what else I got:

• Laurel and Hardy DVD box-set
• Gorillaz Compliation Album
• Sam & Max Hit the Road [PC]
• Sam & Max - Season One [PC]
• Sam & Max - The Devil's Playhouse [PC]
• World Tour Racing [JagCD]
• wipE'out 6 [N64]
• wip3out [PS1]
• Darkseed [CD32]
• Mashed [Xbox]
• Mashed: Fully Loaded [Xbox]
• Motorstorm: Arctic Edge [PS2]

I haven't got the time to take photos of all them, so, obviously, I can't provide photos. I've been mostly playing the Sam & Max games, I've completed Season One, I'm in the middle of Season One, I've still to play Hit the Road and Devil's Playhouse.

Speaking of, I've been hearing that the PC version of Hit the Road doesn't work on XP and Vista PCs, and that you still need DOSbox for them, but I tried the game out without DOS box, and it work perfectly fine, I don't see what everyone's problem is.

Overall, like I said, despite what happened in November, I had a great Christmas!

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The same day, we went down the grans for our Christmas dinner, I brought my CD32 and PS2 along, since the main TV was apparently going to be busy, we had to use the other TV in the sitting room, which has dodgy colours, but I suppose it was better than nothing. So me and Steven played a few games of Motorstorm on it, and I showed him Rise of the Robots and how bad it was.

Then my brother and his brother (I still need permission to use their real names) came in with the Xbox 360 and used the main TV, great! Interesting thing though, they were about to play FIFA 12 on it, so I decided to show them that we didn't need their fancy next gen multimedia system, and stuck in FIFA 12 on the PS2 and played that.

I don't remember much else, I do remember having a game of Motorstorm with Giancarlo, but then he had to leave, we left not long after.

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The next day, we went there again, but this time, I didn't bring a console, my brother brought his PS3, we had 3 games, before we started, he said to me "I'll show you how to really play FIFA!", and I ended up beating him in 2 of the 3 games, yeah, it seams my way of playing FIFA is the superior way!

After that, he had a few games with out cousins, then we were thinking of doing a local-ish tournament, so far, we only have 6 people in it, we need 8! We're going to work something out though.

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Wow, I thought this diary would be longer, oh well.

Cobra!

Retro Diary - 23/10/11 - "It's like they're on the moon..."

A lot happened this week, at least as far as retro gaming goes.

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On Wednesday, my friend came over to my house to have a game of FIFA 12, on PS2!

He thought it was rubbish compared to the Xbox 360 version, well, he said it was completely different and that it didn't fell right, but he said that it might be okay once you get used to the controls, even though I didn't say so, I agreed with him, because after seeing gameplay of the Xbox 360 version, it looked MUCH better.

We then watched some Red Dwarf and some Fawlty Towers, then he was playing Pokémon Pinball on my Game Boy Color, he was playing that for a good while.

We played a few more games, here's the complete list of what we played:

In the order we played them:
• FIFA 12 [PS2]
• Pokémon Stadium [N64]
• Pokémon Pinball [GBC]
• Half-Life [PS2]
• Timesplitters: Future Perfect [Xbox]
• FIFA Football 2003 [PS2]
• Ready 2 Rumble Boxing [DC]

The most fun we had was playing Half-Life and Timesplitters: Future Perfect, we played both of them for hours and before we knew it, it was time for him to go, so we played a couple of games of Ready 2 Rumble Boxing and then he left.

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On Saturday, my Atari Jaguar Memory Track arrived! So now I can save data on my Jaguar CD games. (well, game)

It says on the back it can box "125,000" bytes of data, that's only 250KBs, even back then, in 1996, where you had the fairly small 1MB PS1 memory cards, that was rubbish, and it says also that it can store data from up to "250 Jaguar games" but when I went to the memory track manager, the previous owner had data from 3 games, Battlemorph, Hoverstrike: Unconquered Lads and Myst, and that almost took up the whole cart, only about 100 bytes remained! 250 games my ar*e!

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On Sunday, before we went to grans, my brother wanted someone to play him at Co-op in Super Mario Bros. Wii, he asked me first, I didn't want to, so he got our dad to do it.

When I went down for a coke later on, he was still playing and looked so bored playing it, so I thought since I had nothing else to do, I thought I'd take his place, and surprisingly, I enjoyed it, even if it was my brother playing it, he always shouts and makes loud noises while playing it, we got every star-coins, whatever they're called, in world 1 and managed to unlock level 1 of world 9, we didn't complete it, but I'd love to give it another shot!

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At grans, it was PS2 week, and since my cousins were still to arrive.

So I decided to play a game of FIFA 12 career mode, when I first played when the game arrived, I didn't like it the framerate was very unreliable and the controls were very awkward (I'm playing on "Be a player" mode by the way), but playing it a second time, I started to really enjoy it, the dynamic camera angles you get when your near a goal I thought were a very nice touch, and I managed to score 2 goals, and it felt very rewarding... and then I got sent off, after "bumping", for lack of a better word, the score to 2-0. Then the opponent team scored not 1, but 4 goals against us! Talk about a bad move, eh? I had to watch the rest of the entire match, the first half wasn't even over yet, I couldn't skip, I could quit, but all progress would be lost and it was count as a retire, it was some of the most boring moments of my life. The score ended 3-4, we lost, and I got the blame, the newspaper said it was my fault and that I was sorry for the loss, bullsh*t!

Then my brother wanted a shot at career mode, but as a manager, so, since I had plenty of memory card space, I let him, and he was playing for about half an hour, despite claiming he hated it,
I told him "I thought you hated this game.",
and he replied "Well, I suppose it's alright when you get used to the controls.",
which was exactly what my friend said, well, assumed, and he was right according to what my brother said.

When my brother started playing, my cousins arrived, and we were talking about how there's still PS2 games being made and making jokes like
"(Cobra!) has probably made a spike in the sales charts for the PS2 version!",
I played along, saying stuff like "Breaking news! Someone bought the PS2 version of FIFA 12!", we had quite a laugh.

I was also mentioning what I wanted to get for Christmas, spent with my EMA money (I know, I'm buying my own presents, sad isn't it? Well, I'm not buy all of them, just most of them.) as I have £300, if saved up, to spend, and I mentioned that I got a 3DO with a few games for just £50! Not bad considering they usually go for £120 with no games, and I told them that I found an Amiga CD32 for just £40, although it had no controller and a EU plug, I can buy both easily for a decent price.

So if you want a CD32, there are 6 available, so get yourself one, just leave one for me, please?

Then, after my brother was done playing FIFA 12, we popped in Timesplitters 2 and played some co-op multiplayer, we only finished 1 level when the cousin I was playing with had to leave.

My other cousin was still there so we decided to play some Timesplitters 1, since he never played it before and was curious as to what it was like, it was kind of boring, I was aware that all of the goals were, get this, then go back, and that it was repetitive, this especially showed in co-op multiplayer, I got bored of it after just 2 levels.

We then had a game of WWE All Stars, just to show him how bad it was, and the game was so bad, it was awesome! Surprisingly, we had a great laugh out of it, because of all of the over the top moves. He said that "It's like they're on the moon!" because of this, and I mentioned that the bad sound effects and lack of music (Yeah, there's no music in the PS2 version.) kind of helped that effect.

So as it turns out, WWE All Stars is like the PS2's Monster Truck Madness 64, it's so horrible, that it's awesome!

Here's the complete list of games we played:

In the order we played them:
• FIFA 12
• Timesplitters 2
• Timesplitters
• WWE All Stars

On the way back, my cousin was dropping me off my house, due to our car not being there yet, and on the way, we were actually talking about this blog, and he mentioned that he liked the logo at the top and I mentioned that it was outdated, as my collection grew quite a bit since, I got a Jaguar+CD, a Game Boy Color, an N-Gage,
and he added; "...with a 3DO on the way!",
and then I added afterwards; "... and a CD32!",
I was surprised at the fact that it even remotely interested him that I was getting a 3DO, of course in a good way, my only guess it was because I was at one point hosting a competition for a game about what console to add to it, and he entered with the 3DO, I cancelled it due to lack of entries later on, so technically, he was the winner, although the game was cancelled.

That was what I was up to this week, next week is Xbox week, a very underrated console in my opinion, in fact I'm probably the only person in the world to prefer it over the Xbox 360. Hopefully, it will be as fun as this week was.

Cobra!

Retro Diary - 18/9/11 - "Just because *I* have a working Atari Jaguar CD!"

Despite the impression you might've got from reading the title, it was actually Sega Saturn week! "Well then why the f*ck did you put the Atari Jaguar CD in the title!?" I hear you ask, well, I'll explain later.

First off, though, it's been quite an eventful(ish) week this week, let me tell you everything that happened in chronological order.

I'm going to skip the arrival of my (working) Atari Jaguar CD, as I've already posted an article all about it. My brother, for practically the whole week, was in my room playing Spiderman 2 for the Playstation 2, I saw practically, I mean every minute where he wasn't in school or sleeping, in some nights, he was even playing until midnight, so yeah, he hogged my TV, but I didn't mind, because I enjoyed watching him play it, especially since he comments as he plays, like a let's play, in fact while I eat, I prefer watching him play it than watching something on the internet.

This is sad, I'm going on about how I enjoy watching my brother play a game while I eat, how low I sunk to!?

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Anyway, on Thursday, after I came home from College, my Gamecube controller arrived, this is the one that is purple at the front, and clear at the back, and this is an official controller, I never knew Nintendo made these kind of controllers!

I've yet to try it out, I will once I get my old one back from my cousin, and play my brother at a game or two or Marvel Nemesis!

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Speaking of college, in college, we play Quake 3 on the PCs at break times, which is cool. Not much to say about that other than, it's alot of fun!

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Before I went to my grans today, I went to a car boot sale, and got myself a few still, some good deals, some bad.

but before that, I want to mention that I saw a bunch of Laserdiscs for sale! If you don't know what they are, you could say they were the precursor to DVDs, because they were discs that played videos, but there was one problem with them, THEY WERE MASSIVE! Seriously, I had to stretch out my hand just to hold it from the centre to the edge! The most surprising thing I think, was that this guy had Toy Story for laserdisc, I would've thought that laserdiscs were well dead by the time Toy Story came out, but it turns out I was wrong.

Anyway I got the Simpsons Movie Soundtrack, Special Edition, brand new, sealed, for just £1, and the seller wasn't a con artist, I checked the disc, not a scratch on it!

I also got Theme Park World and a Multi tap for the PS1 for a total of £4, Theme Park World worked just fine, I'm totally addicted to that, but the multi-tap is useless, it doesn't work, I have 2 game that support multi-tap (Klonoa Beach Volleyball and Cubix: Race n' Robots), and it doesn't work on either.

At lastly, I got the Godfather Trilogy boxset on VHS, unfortunately, this doesn't work, in fact, it's the opposite, it almost ruined my VCR! Luckily, we got it fixed in the end, but I am NEVER going to touch that boxset EVER again!

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When it was time to go to grans, I brought my Sega Saturn, as it was Sega Saturn week, and just in case, my Game Boy Color, we didn't play that though, it was all about the Saturn.

The game we played:

In the order we played them
• NiGHTS: Into Dreams...
• Fighters Megamix
• Resurrection: Rise 2
• Sega Rally
• Virtua Fighter 2
• Daytona USA: Championship Circuit Edition

The games we enjoyed the most were Fighters Megamix and Virtua Fighter 2. Fighters Megamix, if you don't know, and you probably don't, it's rather obscure, it's basically like a Sega Smash Bros., only it came out before, you can even play as a car from Daytona USA!

I mentioned above that I was going to explain why I mentioned the Atari Jaguar CD in the title, well I will now, when I'm losing in a game again my cousins, for a joke, I go "Just because *I* have a working Atari Jaguar CD!", sorry to dissapoint you Jaguar Fans, that was all I had about the Jaguar CD in this, well, I suppose except we have an in joke where we say "When I grow up, I want to be a *Insert inanimate object here*!" and when we were saying silly stuff like that I said "When I grow up, I want to be an Atari Jaguar CD!"... Well, it was funny at the time.

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That's about it for todays Retro Diary, now if you'll excuse me, I have a Theme Park to attend to...

Cobra!

Retro Arrivals: Atari Jaguar CD and Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands

That's right! I finally got myself an Atari Jaguar CD! At long last!

I've always wanted to get one of these managed to find one on EBay, boxed and with the game Hover Strike: Unconquered lands for £200, it may sound like alot but considering that they usually go for £500, it's a pretty good deal, so naturally, I jumped at the chance, and it arrived today!

The box for it is shorter and narrower than the regular Jaguar box, but it's alot taller, unfortunately, I forgot to take the picture of the 2 for comparison, but the boxes are already stored away, and I can't be bothered to get them out again and take a photo or two because I'm a lazy rascal! I did, however, get a photo of the box on it's on, here you go:


The box for the games themselves are actually BIGGER than the cartridge games, here's a photo of comparisons (by the way, the WWE curtains at the side of the 3rd photo are temporary, just in case you thought I was just some big kid.):


...and what's inside the box that's making it so big... only this:


Here's a photo of the Jaguar CD itself:


A photo with it attached to the Jaguar, I have to admit, it looks pretty cool:


and finally, a picture of the Jag+CD with a cartridge slot at the back, or as I like to call it, the toilet formation:


I know what you're all asking, does it work?...

... yes it does!!! By the way, excuse the amateur taking-a-photo-in-front-of-the-TV style of capturing this, it's because I don't have the Jaguar AV cables, and they're hard to find, so I'm stuck with the RGB SCART, which is a NIGHTMARE to set up, although the quality makes up for it I think.

... but it didn't work at first, it came up with the now notorious red screen of death, but then I figured out that the Jaguar CD was properly attached, at the back, and I had to use a bit of force to get it in, but I managed, and it worked!

I hate being mean to my readers, I really do, but I must make an exception... Get that up youse, AVGN fanboys!!!

Yes, I have proven that Jaguar CDs are in fact NOT self-aware, how did I avoid getting a dodgy JagCD, well the answer in simple, yet many overlook it... I checked the EBay item's description, and made sure the words "Tested, and works properly." appeared, and it did.

In all fairness, I've heard that AVGN DID get a working Jaguar CD after he filmed the review, so good on him, and I'm not hating on AVGN, in fact I'm a huge fan of him myself, it's the fans that annoy me, alot.

So there you have it, it all worked out in the end, I gave a working Jaguar CD a nice home, where it will be played alot. Was it worth the price... not so far, but I didn't want the Jaguar CD for one game, I wanted it for pretty much all of them, they all look brilliant, except for primal rage and baldies. Also, I wanted it to extend my horizon on Jaguar games, to extend the amount of games I can choose from, and stuff like that, I really didn't want it for it rarity...

...Alright, I lied, the rarity attracted me to it even more, but that wasn't the reason I bought it, I'm not a game collector who keeps their valuables in glass cases, waiting for it to be worth more, no, I bought it, so I could play it, I'm probably the only gamer in the world to want a Jaguar CD for that, but there you go, there's a first for everything.

I'll be looking forward to next few years for this baby, buying a bunch of awesome games, digging up some rare gems, that is if the Jag CD lasts though it all, I have faith in it.

Cobra!