Back to the Sega content with a look at (from most reliable accounts) the first three titles for SG-1000: Borderline, Safari Hunting, and N-Sub. All three are ports of arcade releases from the VIC-Dual platform, all three were programmed by Compile, and all three are more fun than their fairly rudimentary visuals might suggest.
2021-02-10 13:58:59 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone, I wanted to give you the low-down on things.
First, the Patreon tier changes I've mentioned several times recently will go into effect next week. After giving it some consideration, I'm NOT going to introduce a new tier for bonus content. Instead, it's going to work like this:
Ah... yeah, I know I said it's gonna be all SG-1000 all the time around here, but is it my fault that the Famicom Disk System has an anniversary coming up? This episode is timed to the week of the peripheral's 35th birthday, creating a tiny scheduling hiccup in my larger plans. But some things are simply worth celebrating.
2021-02-03 14:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Alright, here we go. Segaiden, and specifically the SG-1000's catalog, will be occupying the bulk of my energy for the foreseeable future. I've made ominous rumblings about this for a while, but I've wanted to bring Sega 8-bit coverage into this scheme for ages, and it's only recently I've been able to secure both the plan and the resources to do it properly. I find the journey we're about to take here incredibly intriguing, and I hope you will too.
This "Road to NES Works" effort won't...
2021-01-27 14:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
You ever wonder what every Famicom game released in 1985 looks like? Well, now you know. (Almost. Robot Gyro and Robot Block were a little too chunky to fit into this box.)
Anyway. Hello! I think a monthly (or whatever) update is in order this morning, to give you a sense of Patreon plans for the near future. Above, you can see a portion of the content plan for most of 2021; the other facet, of course, is Sega SG-1000. My original intention was to summarize Famicom 198...
2021-01-23 14:04:20 +0000 UTC View Post
You want to know something wild? In the NES chronology (as mapped out by me, which is to say "known American release dates by month, further sub-organized by precise Japanese launch days"), Rambo and Metal Gear appear right next to one another. As this video covers, those games have a lot more in common than just adjacent ship dates, though. They share a decidedly incestuous background, too...
Anyway, this is a lengthy apologia for a greatly misunderstood game, so if t...
2021-01-20 14:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Life is full of surprises, sometimes. For example, I never would have guessed that I'd end up finding 10 minutes' worth of things to say about a game as simple as City Connection. And yet, look at this video. It's wild.
Two more weeks until I kick off my SG-1000 retrospective project. I don't think that's necessarily what people are here for, but I hope you'll enjoy it all the same.
2021-01-13 14:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Ah, now this is more like it: An auspicious start to 2021. I hope.
This week's episode doubles down on sports content, with a game my brother owned as a kid (MLB) and a game I wish he had owned (Ice Hockey). The former is pretty middling. The latter, though, really feels like the ultimate send-off to the early NES house style. Even when Ice Hockey was brand new, and I had just gotten my own NES so I could borrow a friend's copy, I remember thinking how old and...
2021-01-06 14:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Not an auspicious start to the new year, I'm afraid. Maybe you should think of this as the last gasp of the ever-wretched 2020. Nevertheless, I did try to give both of these games a fair shake, even if Dragon Power is effectively unplayable without the use of Game Genie codes. I'm sure people have beaten the game legitimately, but neither my friends nor I had the patience to deal with it back at the time. Meanwhile, Ikari Warriors II is also pretty bad... but at least it's v...
2020-12-30 14:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Yeah, I know. It's not a Game Boy game. Just roll with it. (Even though Roll doesn't appear in this episode.)
This one is another patron request, from Jon, and it is also a handy tie-in with the Mega Man Legends episode from a few months back. And if you think this means there might be a patron request in the queue for Legends 2... you're danged right.
2020-12-23 14:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
This week wraps it up for Game Gear's 1990 run and brings the system's chronology in line with the Game Boy's. About 10 more Game Boy episodes (December 1990 was a busy month!), and one Lynx episode and that will wrap it up for the year. The year 1990, I mean. There are still two videos left to be posted for 2020.
There are real emotional highs and lows in this one. A roguelike! Wow! And also Soukoban! Oh well.
Have a happy holiday this week, whatever holiday that may be ...
2020-12-16 13:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostHey all, sorry my monthly preview post is only showing up now, halfway through the month. I've had a lot going on lately, unfortunately. So rather than just looking at what's ahead for December (which is now 50% complete), let's look ahead to the new year.
First, a heads-up about a small yet significant change for the new year: I'm going to be revising and slightly restructuring patron tiers on January 1 (or shortly after). This is something I've been contemplating for quite a while, an...
2020-12-15 16:11:25 +0000 UTC View Post
Pardon the seasonal look here, which is two weeks out of sync for Patreon viewers this week but will be spot-on when this episode goes live.
I think this episode wins the prize for the least amount of footage ever devoted to an actual game under discussion (T&C Surf Designs), but you've literally seen everything there is to see from these roughly 45 seconds of footage. It's a terribly slight game. Emphasis on terrible.
2020-12-09 13:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
As promised! A pipin' hot Final Fantasy Legend II video. I apologize that the footage you see here is all from the first five or six hours of the game—things on the home health front prevented me from spending as much time recording footage as I would have preferred. So please forgive the slightly limited visuals and enjoy this piece on one of the finest portable 8-bit RPGs ever made. Then enjoy it for yourself when the Switch collection comes out next week.
2020-12-02 13:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
So, I'm going a little bit out of order with this one here. This week's episode should be Final Fantasy Legend II, so that the public release of the episode will coincide with the Switch collection's release... but that's a big game! I'm still capturing footage! Contra, on the other hand, I could clear and record in 30 minutes and still have time to capture footage of Probotector and 魂斗羅. So I'm posting this episode here three weeks ahead of its publi...
2020-11-25 14:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Bonsoir, mes amis! Unless you're in the western hemisphere, in which case, good morning. This week brings us the second of three Game Boy Works Gaiden episodes about Game Gear's 1990 lineup. One more of these, one more Lynx episode, about 10 more Game Boy Works and we'll be completely through with 1990. Incroyable!
Once we hit the end of 1990, I will be hitting the brakes on Game Boy/Game Gear/Lynx coverage for quite a while and focusing on NES Works (and related Gaidens) to bring...
2020-11-18 14:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
This one's coming in hot—so hot I haven't even had time to watch it myself yet, so apologies for any issues you may find! Unfortunately, I've been dealing with a family health crisis for the past week, which culminated in a 24-hour trip to the emergency department Sunday leading to a surgical procedure yesterday. Everything worked out in the end, but as you can probably imagine, I haven't had much time for anything else (and won't until my wife's had a week or two of post-op recovery and ca...
2020-11-11 14:01:03 +0000 UTC View Post
We have another hardware-centric patron request from Joseph Wawzonek again this week: A look at the Aladdin Deck Enhancer for NES. This was probably the single most elaborate and time-consuming single video I've ever put together (even more so than Mr. Driller!), and the recording issues I encountered were pretty frustrating... but I think I have managed to assemble an informative and even-handed look at an interesting peripheral that ultimately amounted to basically nothing in the grand sche...
2020-11-04 15:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostHello, everyone! As always, please DO NOT share this document with anyone—you are receiving an exclusive (very) early digital copy of the text, long before anyone else.
Yes, at long last, the Virtual Boy Works book is ready to go. The final print version may vary slightly from what you see here (and the print version is still a few months away due to production times), but this is... pretty much it! I am confident that this is the best, most informative, and ...
2020-11-02 22:15:45 +0000 UTC View Post
A patron request episode this week, which takes us across the galaxy and across the Atlantic to look at a European exclusive for NES: Imagineer's conversion of Braben & Bell's Elite. This is the sort of game that demands an entire summer vacation... I had a couple of weekends and nine minutes of video. This overview probably doesn't entirely do the NES port justice, but hopefully you get the idea! And hopefully the PAL video doesn't look too wonky through my NTSC-oriented setup...
T...
2020-10-28 18:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
As promised (?), my actual video publishing schedule has shifted very slightly from the Q4 preview I posted a few weeks back. Although the content hasn't changed, the order has... in this case, I realized we could use a (1) Game Boy episode and (2) something a little lighter and quippier amidst all the more straightforward historic coverage that's been showing up here lately. Which isn't to say this isn't a legit episode or anything, but the games under examination here are awfully simplistic...
2020-10-21 13:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
And now, your regularly scheduled Castlevania content. Yes, I've put together the Metroidvania Works schedule entirely with the aim of running a Castlevania-related episode for the public on the week of Halloween. It's a whole thing now... I don't know.
I've expanded the purview of the Metroidvania Works series to consistently include tangential action-RPG creations as a secondary topic in most episodes. This episode's is Golvellius.
My hope is that by the end of...
2020-10-14 13:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostGreetings, gentlebeings. We're somehow almost a third of the way through October, so I'm overdue for the monthly preview. This time, though, I thought I'd share my tentative schedule of posts for the remainder of the year. Things always shuffle around along the way, but I have a pretty solid plan in place at this point as I move toward my general strategic shift in content for 2021, so by and large this should be pretty close to what you'll actually be watching through the end of the 2020—d...
2020-10-09 13:30:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Apologies for being a bit of a liar. This episode was not on the upcoming video release schedule I posted a few weeks back—Elite has been pushed back a few weeks. It's just that I started working on the next Metroidvania Works episode and realized the brief overview of Vampire Killer I posted in Metroidvania Works several months back didn't really get as deeply into the workings of Vampire Killer as I think it should have in order to lay the groundwork fo...
2020-10-07 13:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
One last side trip into 7800 territory for a while, with four more games that were in no way unique to the system. This series has been revelatory for me. I had no idea how slowly the 7800 was to really get going—for a system slated to launch in 1984, it's surprising to discover that it didn't really pick up steam until ’88.
We'll be looking at Sega's 8-bit lineup next, and I imagine that'll gear up far more quickly.
2020-09-30 14:05:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone, just wanted to give you a quick heads-up as to where things stand with the 2020 book production process.
The books are coming along nicely, if not quite as quickly as I had hoped. I wrapped Virtual Boy Works over the Labor Day weekend, and currently I'm working with the printer to refine the 3D gallery section. The anaglyphic 3D works for some people but not others, so I'm fine-tuning it a little now to take another stab at it. However, it may end up being o...
2020-09-25 12:25:34 +0000 UTC View Post
The second of three (for now) episodes on Atari 7800. This one looks at the rest of the launch games, plus one post-launch release, and goes more into GCC's role in the console's design and software.
Also, I may have made some significant (and long intended) improvements to the up-front presentation.
2020-09-23 14:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Let's do this, folks. I promise it won't take long.
NES Works is currently at January 1988, and this episode hits rewind to take us back about a year and a half to May 1986—right before the NES completed its slow nationwide rollout—and the launch of Atari 7800. By the time the NES reached 1988 and its 70-somethingth game, the 7800 would have a grand library of 12 games. So for the next few weeks, we're taking a sidebar to explore those 12 games and get a sense of what Atari...
2020-09-16 13:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
The latest side story to Game Boy Works takes us through some really solid arcade conversions for Lynx—all of which are games that have been seen recently or will be seen soon on the NES/NES Gaiden side of things. It's a small world, these early ’90s.
The games in question this time around: Ms. Pac-Man, Rampage, Rygar, and Xenophobe. How do their Lynx interpretations stack up to other contemporary versions? Surprisingly well, for some of them. If ...
2020-09-09 13:00:18 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone, just a quick note here to provide a glimpse of what lies ahead for the next six weeks or so:
I realize that's kind of a lot of Atari all at once, but aside from one more Lynx episode... t...
2020-09-03 22:03:05 +0000 UTC View Post