Yes, it is that time of year again- the time when famed Japanese game shop Meteor releases the finalist for their annual My Famicase Exhibition. Artists from around Japanese create labels for made-up Famicom games and stick them onto real Famicom carts, and the best of the best are displayed at the Meteor store. I look forward to this every singal year, not only as an import game collector but also because I work as a graphic designer.

Famicase always blows me away. Last year was pretty amazing and this year is no different. Check out some of my favorites below and go to the Famicase 2012 site  to see all the entries.

Few months ago Stuart Hunt from Imagine Publishing contacting me regarding my copy of Punch Out Special for the Famicom (better known as Gold Punch Out). He wanted to know if I wanted to be interviewed for the Collector’s Corner feature in GamesTM, and sister magazine to the absolutely amazing Retro Gamer.

Stuart sent me the interview questions via email, and I sent back my answers and a bunch of pictures of my cart-only copy of Punch Out Special, along with a few pictures my wife took of me with the cart in-hand.

NERRRRRRD!

Fast forward a month and a half and my copy finally arrived in the mail. This is definitely as high point in my sub-career as a video game obsessed weirdo, so I plan to savour this for a while. Who said print is dead?

If you to pick a copy up, it’s issue 121 of GamesTM. I am not sure where you can get it in the US (I believe Barnes and Noble), but in Canada you can get it at Chapters/Indigo stores. Or you can go to the GamesTM website and order a copy direct from the publisher.

GamesTM is honestly a really solid magazine. They cover modern games, as well as retro and even arcade games. The magazine is put together with the same skill and quality as Retro Gamer (and we all know how awesome that is). I recommend picking GamesTM up on a monthly basis, because there just aren’t many magazines left that put the care and dedication into video games that Imagine Publishing, Retro Gamer and GamesTM especially, provides.

This is a reoccurring feature here were I provide updates in my quest to own all of the Zelda games complete-in-box. Play catch up on my progress by checking out my flagship entry, the first update, the second update, the third update,  the fourth update , and the fifth update.

I am pretty pumped about this latest Zelda find. One of the Wii’s launch titles was the fantastic  The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I got my copy on launch day and played the shit out of it. In all of the hype and excitement of the Wii’s launch, the mirror image version of Twilight Princess that was launched simultaneously for the Gamecube was kind of lost in the shuffle.

My wife and I actually had the Gamecube version pre-ordered over a year before it came out, way back when the release date was supposed to be November 2005. After it was delayed and the Wii version was announced, we switched our pre-order to the Wii version.

As it happens, the Gamecube version has become pretty sought-after and also fairly pricey while you can find a copy of the Wii version for under $15 easy. I picked up this copy of the Gamecube Twilight Princess at a local second hand store for $25; a pretty righteous steal, considering it’s pristine condition. Killer.

Even though these figures don’t count toward my Zelda CIB collection, I thought they were pretty rad and deserved a mention. I picked these up at a local comic book store, Comic Readers. They come in these plastic eggs, like toys that you get out of vending machines in the middle of a shopping mall. These are both figures from Phantom Hourglass… not my favourite game, but the figures are cool regardless.

Also warranting mention is this lunch box set that my dad picked up for me for 99 cents at a junk store.

It has all the stuff inside as far as I can tell. It contains a Twilight Princess disk book and a couple Wiimote and nunchuk skins. For free I will always take anything Zelda always

Oh boy… this list is starting to become more and more manageable. Let us cross another one off, shall we?

The Legend of Zelda (Classic Series version, grey cart) (NES)
The Adventure of Link (Classic Series version, grey cart) (NES)
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Gameboy)
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (Regular version without holographic cart)(N64)
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess(Gamecube)
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (DS)

I have been on the look out for a working Atari 2600, and I have always thought that the Vader model (nick named as such for the console’s resemblance to Darth Vader’s helmet) was the most bad ass looking revision. I was totally not willing to pay the amount it sells for in local video game stores or online,  mostly because I basically want one around as a curiosity.

$9.99 is exactly as much as I was willing to pay, so I snapped it up. This thing was in a state of extreme neglect,but I could tell it was in pretty good condition even under the thick layer of dust. I took the console apart, gave the case a good scrubbing in a sink full of warm soapy water and gave the board and carts slot a once over with rubbing alcohol and compressed air.

The beast came through to the other side looking fantastic. I picked up a coax f-plug adaptor (and some games) from Replay Games and fired her up with my fingers crossed. Sure enough, my new Atari works flawlessly, and in fact has the clearest picture (I am talking perfect connection) of any Atari I have ever owned. Suffice to say I sank some serious time into Missile Command and Dig Dug. Awesome

This first bit of radness I actually found in an antique store of all places. Floating in a sea of over priced toys form the 80′s and 90′s (none of them any good, trust me) was this Super Mario Bros.: The Movie thermos. Memorabilia for that turd is actually kind of uncommon, so I had to get this.  I only paid $8 for it, and I feel pretty good about adding this to the game room. I remember when I was a kid my dad actually took me to go see the Mario Bros. movie in the theatre. It is seriously the first time I can remember being disappointed when leaving a movie theatre. Compared to some of the other movies I had seen in the theaters up to that point (Back to the Future 2 + 3, Ghostbusters 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 + 2) I would say that the Super Mario movie was a pretty epic let down.

I have heard nothing but good things about Power Blade, but it was just one of those games I never played as a kid. I picked this copy up for $4 at a local junk store so I jumped at the opportunity. My only regret is waiting so long to play this game. I played it until I beat it, and then played it until I beat it on the harder setting. This game is fantastic, it has probably squeaked its way into my top 20 NES games, and that is a pretty robust list. Find this game and play it, trust me.

Monster in My Pocket is a NES game that I have always wanted to play, even all the way back to when the game was new. I finally saw it in the wild and paid a steep $15 for it (worth it in my books). To be completely honest, I was kind of disappointed. I thought that Rescue Rangers used the “small hero in a giant world” theme to much greater effect in that titles level design. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing bad about this game- all and all it is a really solid action platformer. That being said that game is a little bland and repetitive. Not helping things is a sporadic and over all uneven difficulty level, boring level backgrounds, and repetitive enemies. I could take it or leave it, but I am glad I finally have a copy.

I picked up this copy for Jackal for NES for a mere $3 at a local second-hand store, mainly because the car looked like complete and utter garbage; cover in writing, stickers, goo and dirt. However, 20 minutes with some goo-gone, rubbing alcohol, windex, some q-tips and a toothbrush and the cart looks brand new. Pound for pound, Jackal has to be among the greatest two-player experiences in 8-bit gaming. The single player is pretty rad also. Blowing shit up in a Jeep full of commandos never felt so amazing.

I picked this minty fresh, CIB copy of Kirby’s Dream Land for the original Game Boy up at a local second hand store (same one as mention above) for $19.95. A pretty stellar price considering they go for at least twice that on Ebay… and this one is in REALLY good condition. My 4 year old daughter has actually sunk much more time into this one than me, although I did play the shit out of it at my cousin Neil’s house around the time it came out. I just wish that CIB Game Boy games weren’t so expensive and hard to come by, or I would have a lot more of them.

This little gem I picked up at the Salvation Army thrift store for $0.99. I couldn’t pass this one up because I am such a huge fan of both the book and the movie. I haven’t had a chance to play this one yet, but it looks great with my gaggle of PC and Amiga big box games. I have this thing where I can’t pass up a big box PC game when I see one on the cheap, and I have gotten 95% of my PC big box collection from this one single Salvation Army thrift store.

I actually picked both of these books (see inset) at a local used book store for $4 each. A little more than I would normally spend on something like this, but these old books are nearly impossible to find, even online, and I just happened to have a $10 bill in my pocket. All in all these books are kind of poorly written and woefully misinformed, but it is still pretty funny to look back on stuff like this. Now if I could only find a few of those Nintendo Tips and Tricks VHS tapes I used to rent when I was a kid…

I never pass up controllers or adaptors when I see them in the wild. I picked this bunch of stuff from another local junk store. They were $1.99 each. The PS1 controller above is in absolutely mint condition, and the SNES controllers needed quite a bit of cleaning, but ended up turning out to work perfectly. This is the second similar score I found at the same place in the past month.

Expect more posts very soon… I am actually waiting on a battery charger for the “G” battery that my Sony digital camera uses because my original one got lost somewhere. I had to order one off of Ebay because no stores in my area carried them, so I cannot take any pictures in the meantime. It should come via mail this coming week, though.

In North America every single licensed NES game looked the same; same cart, same label shape, same grey color. This was not the case in Japan, were the licensing policies of Nintendo of Japan where much less strict. Publishers were not required to have their carts manufactured by Nintendo, so they were free to to vary their cart color, size, packaging, and even the shape and appearance of each individual cart, as long as it fit in the Famicom cart slot.

The Famicom version of Maniac Mansion is among the most unique variations I have seen. The game’s box is a clear plastic sleeve, with the label on the cart itself serving as the cover. The manual is tucked nicely in behind the cart in a moulded plastic tray,

The uniqueness does not end at the packaging, the cart itself is also quite interesting. The cartridge is a larger than average cart that has a dust protector that seamlessly fits on the bottom of the cart.

Another interesting feature, which I have only seen on other Jaleco carts, is that there is a sticker on the back of cart which has a screenshot from the game on it, almost as if it were the back of the box. My knowledge of the written Japanese language is pretty much zero, so I can only imagine that the text is also similar to the back of the game box also.

Maniac Mansion is one of my favourite NES games, and in my opinion the quirkiness and absurdest sense of humour prevalent throughout the game itself is perfectly matched by Jaleco’s unique packaging concept for the Famicom release.

It’s not often you see these in the wild, especially the 1st party SNES power adaptor. Great price, great find. The thrift stores have been relatively fruitless as of late, so this was a breath of fresh air.

It’s been a slow week, I know, but in the last 4 days it was my 30th (yikes!) birthday and my son’s 1st birthday, so I have been doing other things. Next week things will pick back up, I swear.

I have been waiting to get my hands on one of these things since I first saw it demoed at E3 last year. The portable Super Nintendo has long been a dream of mine, and many other video game fans. Sure, there was that FC-16, but from most accounts I saw it was kind of junky and truthfully, the device itself looked like a gigantic sloppy Nintendo DS clone (in a bad way).

Hyperkin has created the SupaBoy with hardcore SNES fans in mind. Emulating the classic (and hideous, in retrospect) duo-tone grey and duo-purple design cues of the North American Super Nintendo, they are pandering specifically to the nostelgia of long time fans, and I am in love.

The entire machine has a pretty decent build quality, and the inclusion of SNES controller inputs on the front means you can use your own official Nintendo SNES controllers. You can only use them when the SupaBoy is hooked up to your TV, however, via the included AV cable. Many reviews raise complaints about this idiosyncrasy, but I personally think the idea of propping the SupaBoy up on a table, or laying it in your lap just so you can play it with plugged-in controller is kind of ridiculous, and really defeats the whole purpose of having a portable device in the first place.

On the plus side, the screen on the SupaBoy is absolutely fantastic. It is kind of disappointing that my photos do not accurately capture the color depth and vividness of the picture, but rest assured that this thing looks beautiful in person. 16-bit has never looked so good.

My sole complaint with the machine is that the D pad takes a little getting used to. I found myself having some trouble with precise movements for the first hour or so, but I soon overcame it’s short-comings and began unconsciously compensating for the over-stiff D pad. After I got used to it I never really had any further problems, but it would have nice to have something closer to the SNES’ actual D pad.

As far as game compatibly goes, I have tried out pretty much all of my carts and have not had any problems. I have heard people have had problems with the Donkey Kong Country games and with Super Mario RPG, but this is likely because the later released versions of these carts have added copy protection built-in which makes them incompatible with clone systems. Happily, my Super Mario RPG is one of the first batch released, so it plays without any problems.

The SupaBoy only gets 2.5 hours playtime per charge, so Hyperkin mercifully included a rechargable battery that can be charged via the included power adaptor.

Check out the thumbnails below for a small cross section of some of my favourite games running on the SupaBoy. These games include reproduction carts, an FX ship cart, and Super Famicom games. The Super Famicom Nintendo Power cart even works on the SupaBoy, which I was uncertain of initially.

I recently came into a bit of a windfall when I sold an Ebay score for 20 times what I paid. I spent an entire day trying to decide exactly what from my long and storied Ebay watch list I would finally move on, and in the end I decided to bolster my already impressive Chrono Trigger collection.

The six characters represented in this keychain set are Crono, Marle, Lucca, Robo, Ayla and Frog- all the playable characters (minus Magus) from Chrono Trigger.

There is not much info about these on the internet (not in English, anyway) but the Chrono Compendium states that these were allegedly dispensed by arcade machines in 1995.

These six Chrono Trigger keychains were produced by Japanese company Bandai under license from Square. The six keychains are incredibly accurate to Akira Toriyama’s original character designs and are meticulously detailed, which is surprising, considering they are only 2″ – 2.5″ in height.

Chrono Trigger, unlike most Square-Enix franchises, has a distinct lack of officially licensed merchandise available. In fact, other than these keychains, the Formation Arts statues, and a handful of guides and soundtracks, not much else is out there for the rabid Chrono fan such as myself. This, in turn, keeps the price on most Chrono Trigger stuff up pretty high. For instance, this complete set of keychains routinely sell for upwards of $90 without the paper fold-outs that originally accompanied each keychain.

More than a simple Zelda clone, Secret of Mana was (and remains) an example of the action RPG perfected.

With it’s bright colorful graphics, detailed sprites, and top-down perspective Secret of Mana may seem on the surface to be a sequel to The Legend of Zelda, and in many ways Mana does borrow heavily from Nintendo’s action staple. However, it’s obvious after spending any measurable amount of time with the game that it is a different animal. Secret of Mana, true to Square’s nature, incorporates into the Zelda formula a complex JRPG-style levelling system and a completely unique combat mechanic.

Rather than just simply hacking and slashing your way through static screens jammed with enemies, Mana introduced a combat percentage gauge for each character. Using your weapon (successfully or not) causes the combat gauge to fall to zero, it’s recharge speed based upon what type of weapon is equipped and the characters individual stats. The gauge represents the percentage of damage dealt with each blow, so it is imperative that you plan your strikes for maximum efficiency. Unlike The Legend of Zelda: A link to the Past, where guns-blazing was often an effective strategy, this method rarely worked in Mana and the player is more likely to be punished for eschewing strategically coordinated attacks.

As defining and transformational as this combat system was, the most lasting innovation in The Secret of Mana was not with the combat, nor the leveling system or even the cooperative multiplayer- though all have proven to be influential. The most lasting impression Secret of Mana made is the menu system.

Officially dubbed the Ring Command, Secret of Mana’s menu system solved one of the problems inherent when infusing a JRPG style game with Zelda-like hack and slash action: inventory management.

In a traditional JRPG the battles are typically turn-based and menu driven, generally giving the game a deliberate, somewhat slower pace. After each battle (and sometimes mid-battle) you are able to change equipment and use items via the menus. The action literally pauses and waits for you to make up your mind. Even games that utilize Active Time Battle systems have the option to set the combat to “wait”, allowing you time to plan attacks and actions accordingly.

In stark contrast to the random encounters prevalent in most traditional role playing games, hack and slash action games are littered with enemies that pose an immediate threat the moment you enter a new screen or area. This immediate threat and faster style of game-play makes the use of standard JRPG menus inefficacious. Imagine being in the heat if a boss battle, dodging attacks and frantically trying to get in close to deal damage to the monster’s weak point- and you realize you are low on health and need to use an item. So you hit the start button and go to a menu screen, and then into a sub-screen, and then you select your item, and then the character to use it on, and then back out of all the menus back to the action. Do this two or three times and you have effectively killed the flow of the battle and sullied the entire combat experience.

Thankfully, Square solved this looming problem by incorporating the aforementioned Ring Command into Secret of Mana.

The Ring Command is an icon based based menu system that can be summoned on the fly, literally at the touch of a button. Activating the Ring Command pauses the action and brings up a ring of icons over the dimmed play screen. These icons can then quickly be cycled through via D pad, allowing for a minimal break in action. Also accessible through the Ring Command are character stats, controller layout, battle tactics, party AI and more; all conveniently accessed via a single screen just one button away from the action.

The Ring Command gave Square the ability to incorporate the complex menu system of a traditional JRPG, without losing the player in a catacomb of windows and text. The Ring Command was polished even further when it next  appeared in the Japanese exclusive Mana sequel Seiken Densetsu 3 two years later.

Many action games have since implemented a menu system built on the overall design philosophy of the Ring Command, proving that some of the concepts founded in the formative years of video game design still hold great importance in the continued refinement of video gaming as a whole.