Post any time you get ANYTHING retro 3.

[wakka]

I love the Zero Wing artwork.

[Yakumo]

Baseley09 very true but it does have some nice arranged music and an extended intro if memory serves me right.

[Baseley09]

Indeed the soundtrack is sound, game plays great but tbh I reckon the megadrive chip tunes suit the vibe better.

[beecee]

latest addition. re-shelled US snes, came with a HD retrovision component cable but dont envisage ill ever use that.

[fuse]

Mixture of eBay buys, proxy buys, and a few from the Sore Thumbs shop in York.

Box on the Sunsoft collection is battered to heck, but at £5 with a spine I'm ok to just chuck it in a new jewel case at some point. I don't think I've clocked before that Cleopatra Fortune was ever made available on PAL formats, but given it's a fair wedge for a Japanese release and the PAL one was about a tenner I can't complain.



Bangai-o was one of the few titles left that I really wanted to make sure I got before the Analogue 3D came. It's in lovely condition!



Real mix here - some licensed / tie-in games that I was looking for on the back of them being based off other games I like (L&S being heavily inspired by Metal Slug, and the LotR one being a Diablo-like). Really glad to have gotten the 4th Konami GB Collection too, now leaving just the first one to source. The Japanese releases of these were for GB (not colour) and the never came out in the US, so they're pretty intriguing versions of these games.



Yeah Resi 6 isn't the best, but I do love this packaging.



Finally some obis to add to incomplete copies I had. Turns out I had two different releases of Donpachi and at first I wasn't sure which one matched this one?

[egparadigm]

Finally got Pirates for Xbox, after rejecting more less-than-mint copies than I care to remember. A slightly below par £4, which was a nice bonus. Bought Mario v Donkey Kong purely because it was in a US-style case and also it has the Mario caché.

[egparadigm]

Found another one in Cash Converters. Had some problems getting the game to show on the 3DS but working better after cleaning the contacts, thankfully.

[Baseley09]

Few goodies from nippon, still slogging away at the NEC Avenue games, Son Son II is on the creep so happy to get under 30 squid. And of course reclaiming the Valis set, only one off sans the visual collection that I can't be arsed with.

PC Engine world is essentially the NEC hardware line up catalogue from the Core grafx II / Duo era.

[egparadigm]

Oops I did it again. This one had an interesting vs mode. Not come close to beating the CPU yet!

[Protocol Penguin]

Oops I did it again. This one had an interesting vs mode. Not come close to beating the CPU yet!

One of the all-time best officially licensed Tetris games, IMO.

[Nu-Eclipse]

One of the all-time best officially licensed Tetris games, IMO.

Strong agree. Would genuinely go as far as to say that it is a DS essential.

Absolutely rinsed it back in the day and I still have my copy. You could make a strong argument for it being the best multiplayer game of the DS era.

[Hirst]

Anyone order a photo with a side order of dull explanatory text, because numb nuts has bought some games again.


Smash Court (PS1) and Guide: I set up a Pi recently so me and the missus could easily play games at the seaside (the arcades aren't up to much nowadays). Since they can do PS1 emulation well, a game we'd got really into in multiplayer is the original Smash Court. What you'd assume is a simple pick up and play arcade-style experience is actually an insanely technical game of tennis with a cliff-like difficulty curve. You have to sink hours into it to become even passable, but the great presentation and music stops you giving up. It's dirt cheap in Japan as it was hugely popular. If you have somebody to play with, absolutely get it. Going to translate the guide and improve my skills! All in for £5.

Sega Touring Car Championship (SS): Open up your eyes and realise and something-something-something. Touring has always been one of the lesser-liked Model 2 racing games, which I think is down to it being less visually interesting than the others combined with it being less easy to pick up and play by design. I do still like (if not quite love) it but I never got round to the Saturn version which I hear has framerate issues. Recently got a Saturn wheel and had this recommended as one that works well with it, so we'll see! This was actually new and sealed but dirt cheap due to it having a crack in the jewel case, which I'll just swap out. Take that, game grading companies. Another £5.

Genseikyokō Seireikidōdan Elemental Gearbolt (PS1): Saw this on a video and didn't even get to the end before ordering it, I've known the title of it but never saw it running but was aware it was one of those Working Designs US ports. Predictably, they did their usual thing of inexplicably messing with the difficulty level and inserting their own (subjective) sense of humour and sound effects into it, but the Japanese one goes for a a lot less. Looks brilliant, people have said it's like a Panzer Dragoon style lightgun shooter. Also the Japanese guy selling it was doing so because due to age he couldn't get the scores he used to be able to do, felt that one! I'll look after it for him for £13.

Rescue Shot Bubibo (PS1): I've been looking at setting up my little portable CRT again for lightgun games and trying out PS1 ones - back in the day I went with the Saturn for lightgun and having a PS1 gun setup felt like an indulgence. The premise of the game is that you have to protect a dimwit rabbit by shooting hazards out of his way (and shoot him to make him jump). Very simple but charming-looking and cheerful game for grim winter fun, came out on PAL but I'm not paying many times more for 10 less Hz. Also I still find it very exciting to open up new old games, especially when it cost £6.

Galaxian 3 (PS1): Home port of the rail shooter Laserdisc "ride" that I never got to play back in the day (if it ever came here I bet it didn't get beyond London). It's a very short arcade experience, but honestly I'm fine with that as it means I'll likely find time to play it. This is not lightgun compatible, I think it predates the Guncon. Thinking of borrowing a projector from work and setting this up on it for multiplayer fun. Might just do it at work, nobody's ever in on Christmas Eve. It's a great idea, leave me alone. A novelty at £7.

Gokuu Densetsu: Magic Beast Warriors (PS1): For reasons involving the '70s show "Monkey", my missus is obsessed with adaptations of the Chinese tale "Journey to the West" and will try any game to do with it. This is a Mortal Kombat style digitised 2D fighter with simple and middling gameplay mechanics, but the production is utterly insane. Every character is either in a big mascot suit or a bonkers outfit, FMV everywhere with hammy voice acting. The rock soundtrack is some of the best music you'll ever hear, no joke. Stages have FMV backgrounds with baffling, dreamlike imagery - monsters, floating Statue of Liberty, you name it. Played it a Pi for about 2 minutes before saying "getting this". It's not super-expensive but fairly rare, so when I saw this one in mediocre condition but pretty cheap. Might upgrade to a nicer one later, but this will do for now at £8.

Deathsmiles II X Limited (360): Not really sure how it took so long to find out, but did you know that Cave ported a bunch of their games on phones with genuinely good touchscreen controls? Nobody told me, I just saw them while poking around the Cave website and been doing DoDonPachi in the gents since. In any case, this reminded me that whilst I have Deathsmiles on the 360, I never got round to getting the second one. Last time I looked the price had gone right up, but it's dropped again. The CD soundtrack is still sealed, not for long though - going in the car CD changer as "Christmas" music. Most expensive item at £15 and likely the last game of the year.

Hopefully that will be enough and I won't see anything else now!

[wakka]

Great picks.

I haven't thought about Smash Court in years. That was such a good game. Of course it was in the UK it was Anna Kournikova's Smash Court Tennis - I didn't realise how cool the Japanese box art was. The cover of the strategy guide is awesome too.

Regarding Cave mobile ports - yeah, they're really good. Touch controls are, to be honest, probably one of the easiest ways to actually hammer through these.

They actually started coming out a very long time ago, around 2011 or so when smartphone gaming was in its infancy. Due to their tenure, at least on the iPhone side of things they've drifted in and out of compatibility with the latest operating systems because Cave have updated them in a fairly haphazard and infrequent way. It's a good reminder to see if I can re-download the ones I own.

[Hirst]

Makes sense I wouldn’t have heard about Cave shooters in 2011, I was probably still on a Motorola International 8700 with pull out antenna. I’m as cheap on phones as games, currently on a £40 iPhone SE (2016) which feels like I’m in the future.

Anna Kournikova was Smash Court 2 which I’ve also played, but I slightly prefer the stages on the first one! Basically same game though. We got the first one as Namco Tennis Smash Court, but don’t recall ever seeing it.

[wakka]

Ah, interesting, I didn't realise Anna Kournikova was the sequel. I just searched up the PAL cover art for the first and I don't recall ever seeing that before either. Anna Kournikova was a big hit though, I remember that game being everywhere. Which means it was probably a good call on Namco's part to shell out for the endorsement!