So as many of you know, and many more are soon to find out, Sega released a Sega Genesis 3 in North America around the time they released the 32x and the Sega Saturn. This was a smaller version of the Sega Genesis that did not accept the 32x, officially anyway, and did not have an expansion slot for accepting the Sega CD. Still, after our Genesis finally burnt out, a few months after we burnt out the Flicky cart from playing it too much, we were hard pressed to find a brand new Sega Genesis that could accommodate the add-ons. So with the loss of the main unit we also lost the use of the Sega CD and 32X. Sure I could have looked harder, etc. but I moved on to newer game systems, well actually I think I just played a ton of Super Nintendo which was way better than the Genesis and since the 32x kind of had crappy games I think I got lost in Final Fantasy 3. Still the Genesis will always live in my heart as my first “16-bit” home system. Notice the double quotes. Anyway, somewhere along the way we ended up with the Sega Genesis 3 and I fired it up tonight. I played some of my old favorites including Altered Beast, X-Men and Shadow Dancer, but my lust for power did not stop there. I dug out, and am cleaning up my Atari 7800. The schematics for the 7800 are public domain now, which is good because my RF switch is shot, so I can either build one from the schematics, repair mine, or cop out and buy another one for about $10. Still, it might be more fun to build one, especially if I get one of those $2 circuit boards from Radio Shack and put it together without a casing so the electronics just dangle there on the side of the TV… The when technophobes came into my house I could be all like, “that’s what a circuit board looks like, that’s where the magic takes places. Inside of the little black things on the boards wizards and other mythical creatures cast the spells that cause you to see images on the screen.” Still, in this town some of them may be seeing images from some stuff left in their systems from the 60′s and I don’t mean their retro-gaming systems when I say systems here. Oh man, I’m so excited. Still I have vowed not to dive into another old system until I finally beat level 6 on X-Men without using cheats. Wish me luck. Yes I could get emulators, but emulators are not nearly as cool as having the old hardware. It is amazing that the developers were able to make them so please don’t misunderstand me here. I am very happy that emulators exist, but God I love old game systems. Oh yeah, and there is a store in my town that sells old arcade machines. They have skee-ball machines for $45 bucks, the problem is you have to rent a huge truck to get it home, still I’m tempted.
That’s really cool!! When it comes to that generation of systems I like the Super Nintendo best. My favorite game on it is Super Mario World. I think it sounds like more fun for you to build the RF switch. You could make the casing look like a monkey. They are always funny.
Retro systems are the best! I still have a working SNES, as well as my Sega Saturn, and N64. These don’t qualify as super retro like an NES or an arcade cabinet, but they’re still awesome. There is something about emulators that is just never quite the same, even if you’re playing them on a TV.
Speaking of retro systems, I played the “House of the Dead” arcade machine at the skating rink the other day. The guns were even weighted to help simulate the real Zombie killing experience. That or they just weren’t that good at making plastic guns for arcade machines yet. This amazing game, produced by Sega, showed us what Sega was really best at making bad ass arcade games. I love arcade machines because I love the idea of taking dedicated hardware and using it to make the best single thing that you can. On a totally different topic something just hit me today. I looked at a Radio Shack advertisement claiming that they are an “iPod Authorized Reseller” how lame is that? Not that they sell iPods but that Apple authorizes people to make a ton of money selling their MP3 players. It’s not enough just to sell them, it’s a privilege? This actually supposedly goes back to when the first 3rd party companies started reselling Apple computers, and used to have to do with quality control, but a computer is a bit more difficult to understand than a crappy, overpriced, MP3 player. It sounds like a snobby way to simply let a company say, hey we sell iPods and may have someone in the store that can tell you how to turn it on…. At any rate, back to retro gaming. The best deal I’ve seen recently is “Sonic’s Ultimate Sega Genesis Collection” for PS3. It has over 40 games from the Genesis on it. I know, using my PS3 to play old Genesis games is kind of like putting racing tires a Chevette, but there’s nothing like killing bad guys in Golden Axe 3 with a friend. Plus it has some awesome emulator like features built in. For example, you can save at any point anywhere. This actually lets you save your Golden Axe game so you can do something else with your life if you need to. To those of us who had to suffer through games with codes, etc. this brings new life to old games. Also, they play in 720P. I would say that SNES marked a totally new generation of gaming systems. Although other impressive systems came out around the same time equally powerful systems like the 3DO and the Jaguar were hampered by awful game libraries, or “overpriced” carts like the Neo Geo. Sure I don’t think the Neo Geo carts were too overpriced for what you were getting, but how many people really cared about how ahead of its time that system was? Sega Saturn was an awesome idea, but I don’t think anyone understands why Sega released the Sega CD, 32x, and Saturn at basically the same time. The 32x and Saturn were released on top of each other. The SNES had an awesome library, and the console was affordable. The games were too, compared to the other systems that were out there.