Here's one last extra video to send you into the final month of the year: A VHS rip of a promotional video tape that Namco distributed for Klonoa: Empire of Dreams—their first GBA release, I think? It also includes some additional trailers for Mr. Driller 2, Ace Combat something-or-other, and Time Crisis II/Project Titan. This video tape was in pretty rough shape, but the material looped about half a dozen times, so I've included the two cle...
2024-11-30 19:09:05 +0000 UTC
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Hello! I have gone and posted a new bonus video for you. Yes, it's a little thing I like to call a VHS rip of Vic Tokai's marketing video for The Krion Conquest. It's a Japanese-language item, so you'll want to use auto-translated captions to understand what's being said. (Mostly "this game is cool, please buy it," I imagine.)
2024-11-29 23:05:22 +0000 UTC
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Happy day of giving thanks, if you choose to celebrate/be thankful/live in a place that observes that event today. Here is this week's belated video. But no less sincere for its tardiness. It's the first of a handful of episodes on the Intellivision's late-stage run under the INTV banner—a recap of the system's history to that point, and a look at the first of the INTV releases. Please to enjoy.
2024-11-28 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
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The episode post for this week is running a couple of days behind... like I said, life has been kicking my butt lately. Today's a work day, and tomorrow is a family day, so expect to see it Friday—and, hopefully, things will lock back into their normal routine after that. Maybe. There's a Phantasy Star episode coming up soon, and I just know that's gonna be a slobberknocker.
In the meantime, to tide you over, here is an upload of a superplay video tape of Sega arcade gam...
2024-11-27 13:11:49 +0000 UTC
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Whew, this was supposed to have been up over the weekend, but life just will not give me a break. Sorry about that! Here is the final episode of the Microvision retrospective series that probably no one has been clamoring for. I'll make sure next month's bonus episode is a little more interesting, honest.
2024-11-26 03:12:23 +0000 UTC
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The XEGS saga continues! Slowly! I won't be dwelling on this system for too many consecutive episodes in a row... I'm really trying to avoid unnecessary psychic damage these days. But here's a li'l toe-dip in the pond: Another piece on the XEGS library and its history.
2024-11-20 12:00:11 +0000 UTC
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I've been sitting on this one for a few years, and working on the NES Era books (Vol. II on sale now through December 1!) has finally nudged me into action. Yes, it's time to throw some Atari XE Game System coverage into the mix.
I hope it has become clear through my post-NES Atari coverage that I have a lot of respect for Atari as a game- and hardware-ma...
2024-11-13 12:45:48 +0000 UTC
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Hey friends. It's another VHS tape rip. God, we're so close to the end of Game Tech Video I can almost taste it. This series has gotten pretty long in the tooth, which is an absolutely astounding thing for me to feel considering how much of these tapes involve historic footage of interesting games! What did people think about games of the era? What was popular? What was notable? I love that stuff! But there's all the Indiaman and Mr. X crap to suffer through... it's rough times, ya know?
2024-11-11 00:57:06 +0000 UTC
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I'd say "good morning," but, well.
Nevertheless, I do have a new video for you this morning. I hope it will bring some small glimmer of light into an otherwise bleak day. Onward the Atari 7800....
2024-11-06 12:47:56 +0000 UTC
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Well, I guess it's about time that I get back to covering the Atari 7800, now that I have the means to properly capture footage for it. We gotta wrap up 1988's releases, and that means stepping into some slightly unpleasant territory. Yes, we're talking the terribly and terribly expensive Tank Command by Froggo Games. And Impossible Mission, which is great on 7800 until it isn't!
2024-10-30 11:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Hey! Here's another Game Tech Video! This series is getting kinda long in the tooth and keeps hammering the same bad jokes! But... this episode is worth keeping. Skip to the end! There's an interesting behind-the-scene segment on the creation of some Namco Famicom TV commercials. I mean, this video tape is basically a commercial, and here we are seeing how commercials are made?! So meta. Anyway.
2024-10-30 01:16:23 +0000 UTC
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Wow, that's a lot of serial numbers in the title of this episode, huh. I should probably find a more elegant approach to naming these.
So here we have the next-to-last Microvision retrospective; after next month, I will cheerfully move along to more vibrant and fertile grounds for my bonus features. These are by far the slightest games I have ever covered on my channel in a decade-plus of doing this. So I hope you don't mind me indulging myself a bit as I dive into the history of St...
2024-10-27 12:30:56 +0000 UTC
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After about 15 months of living in a stage of stressful chaos, I think my life is finally settling down a little... at the very least, my most important recording equipment has a permanent setup, and all of the VHS tapes and LaserDiscs I need to rip are accessible again and close at hand. So, I can finally get back into a nice weekly routine of publishing interesting oddities for your eyes only. Sorry for the disruptions to the system! It will be nice for my nerves not to be in ...
2024-10-25 21:26:50 +0000 UTC
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It's the pumpkin spice latte of the YouTube world: Horror-themed commentary about old video games. In this case, the horror comes from the preposterous difficulty level of Fester's Quest. Like, what the actual hell, man? I used cheats to get to the end of this recording because I am An Old now, but even in my NES heyday of one-lifing Life Force and blitzling Battletoads, I could not have finished this game. Just unbelievable.
Still. ...
2024-10-23 11:45:40 +0000 UTC
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It just wouldn't be October without a Castlevania video around here. Fortunately, I had one coming up in the queue for evaluation... or rather, reevaluation. Yes, it's Castlevania: The Adventure, a game I last tackled about a decade ago. I would like to say that time has softened my views on this game, but I was always taught not to be a liar. However, I did try to avoid repeating myself here and found new things to explore... mainly surrounding context stuff. As is my ...
2024-10-16 11:33:44 +0000 UTC
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This week brings us one of those episodes that filled me with dread when I saw it looming on the production schedule. How on earth am I supposed to find 10 minutes of discussion about these forgettably workmanlike releases, I wondered. But then, I started digging into their creation and—it turns out there actually was quite a bit to be said about the behind-the-scenes of the whole affair. Who knew? Well, you do, now. Thanks to me. You're welcome, I guess. Though admittedly I can't ...
2024-10-09 11:49:16 +0000 UTC
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Coming in a little hot this week—I'm not sure the 4K version of this episode has fully processed yet. That's because my copy of Air Fortress has mysteriously gone missing, and I spent the evening and morning trying to find it for photographic inclusion here. No luck! But I'm taking a vacation day from work today to finally get my home office in order (nine months after moving to this place) so I'm sure it will turn up shortly after I set this live.
Anyway, Air Fortr...
2024-10-02 13:56:53 +0000 UTC
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Whew! Gosh! Squeaking in under the wire again! The audio on this one is a little patchy because I recorded it on-site at Portland Retro Gaming Expo. It's really weird how my portable mic sounds great during panels but terrible in hotel rooms. I even fussed with sound dampening and reverb mitigation when I recorded (read: Built a pillow fort to act as sound baffles). Ah well. The important thing is: More Microvision.
2024-10-01 00:04:02 +0000 UTC
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Another l'il treat for you, and this one is pretty awesome. Or at least I think so. I recently came across this LaserDisc on a Japanese auction site that caught my attention; it appeared to be a making-of special on the PlayStation game Ghost in the Shell. Surely that couldn't be right, I thought? But no, it is correct. This video talks specifically about digital animation processes as they existed in 1998, making it an interesting archaeological find... but it also includes a ton of uncompre...
2024-09-29 14:04:49 +0000 UTC
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You know, it really bugs me when people call PRGE "Purge." We are not in the business of culling nerds! But I am in the business of talking to my fellow nerds, and I'll be doing that this weekend... or so goes the plan. I've had to delay my travels by a day due to the hurricane—every outbound flight to Portland has been cancelled or delayed for so long that connections will be impossible to make today—so if you're planning to be at the show tomorrow, you can watch me as I roll into my Dra...
2024-09-27 13:46:14 +0000 UTC
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Wow! Gosh! Sorry this upload is half a day late. I spent the morning playing medical chauffeur for my significant other, and then I spent the rest of the day trying to catch up with work.
Anyway. It doesn't matter. The important thing is that this Faxanadu video is here now. Enjoy.
2024-09-26 01:46:01 +0000 UTC
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Man, the Game Tech Video series really just screams "It was a different era!", huh? I mean, aside from the fact that these are video cassette tapes sold at retail to tell you about upcoming video game releases—definitely not a modern-day concert—there's also a lot of unsavory stuff that used to fly and absolutely would not be OK now. So... you can skip the first 15 minutes of this video, since it's heavily focused on 8-bit baseball, which is not THAT huge a sin on its own. B...
2024-09-24 17:47:08 +0000 UTC
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This is one of those episodes where I fell into an interesting connection through sheer coincidence, and people will mistakenly think I'm much better at planning these things out than I actually am. My on-camera opening line actually connects with the thread of commentary that closes out the episode, which comes off as bookeneds... but actually what happened was that when I recorded the host segments as the very final component of the editing process, I thought, "Oh, I should reference the so...
2024-09-18 12:04:28 +0000 UTC
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I've put together a little promo video for The NES Era Vol. I. Don't worry, I won't be pushing this thing forever... eventually, the presale period will end, and I'll be done.
In the meantime! https://limitedrungames.com/collections/books/products/the-nes-era-vol-1-hardcover
2024-09-13 01:53:08 +0000 UTC
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I may have fudged some release timing for this episode. It's possible that one of these games is actually a September 1989 release even though the chronology is still in August (I've seen different dates given online). But here's the thing: The longer I produce NES Works, the less compelled I feel to take a strictly chronological approach... more like mostly chronological. Distribution and release dates were super slippery back in the day, as the complications around the release...
2024-09-11 12:29:20 +0000 UTC
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My latest book, which offers a holistic photographic overview of Japanese console games from 1979 through October 1985 (you know, when Japanese consoles first reached the U.S. via the NES) is now available for preorder at LRG.
This is a proper, traditional coffee table book focused on images and photos while still providing context for the games and the circumstances of their release. It's also very large! The size of a modest vinyl boxset, specifically—12x12x1"! Here is a to-scale ...
2024-09-06 13:42:19 +0000 UTC
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Last week we had Defender of the Crown, where you invaded and defended castles; now here are two more games where you invade castles. Well, you definitely do in the case of Castlequest. The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle, I dunno. Nothing about that reads as "castle" to me, especially when you get to the wood panel rooms and the frozen pipe zones. Then again, what do I know? I'm clearly not as smart as Kemco-Seika, who cleverly came up with a game concept so generic that they could...
2024-09-04 12:03:00 +0000 UTC
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There are still a few minutes left in August where I am, so I'm declaring this one a victory. Maybe next time I'll actually have time to write something interesting here!
2024-09-01 03:55:54 +0000 UTC
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For all who celebrate.
2024-08-31 12:31:02 +0000 UTC
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Another Game Tech Video VHS rip for you today. But mostly for me. I'm trying to get these things indexed to the best of my ability so that I'll have access to these rich resources when I need relevant B-roll for my videos. Sadly, these VHS magazines didn't survive into the Heisei era, so I'm running out of localized game releases that can make use of this footage. Very woeful!
2024-08-29 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
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