Vintage video games

Not much to add this list. All of the mentioned games are aweseome. I condensed all my games down to a few SD cards and run emulation (PC and PSP).

In reply to SilverFleet:

You sir . . . Are my hero!!

Appleseed wrote: In reply to SilverFleet: Quite a collection, but...no Intelevision. I got my Great Grandma's (!) and the sound module. B-17 Bomber rules. So does Bump n Jump. Anyone want to sell me their Tengen Tetris?

I forgot to take pics of the Intellivision stuff. I have two, both boxed. Back when we had a Play N Trade in my area, I pillaged that place for INTV games. They marked them all $2.99 no matter what, even if they had the boxes! I Also have B17 Bomber and another Intellivoice game, but no Intellivoice module. I just picked up Demon Attack for it a couple weeks ago, which means I should really bust it out soon!

Jay wrote: Here's my current setup. I condensed everything into an "arcade cabinet." I don't spend a huge amount of time gaming anymore but every now and then I sit down for an hour or two. All the best of the 5th & 6th gen consoles - Dreamcast, 3DO, PS1 (original SCPH-1001 w/"audiophile" sound output if you believe that BS ;), slim PS2, and an older PC for Steam/Humble/etc. games. The only one missing is my Saturn. I have more stuff too but this is what I've unpacked and set up. I do have a Megadrive, TG-16, NES, and some others but I don't feel like getting into collecting carts for those as they can be emulated near-perfectly.

Shovel Knight has to be my favorite new game in the past 10 years. So awesome.

That's also a nice little rig you have there. A launch 3DO is a rare sight these days!

OK maybe my collection isn't physically bigger than SilverFleet's after all

I definitely don't have so many rare goodies. My rarest artifacts are probably a Game Boy camera and printer, and a Chipmunk'd Atari 5.25" drive.

SilverFleet wrote: Shovel Knight has to be my favorite new game in the past 10 years. So awesome. That's also a nice little rig you have there. A launch 3DO is a rare sight these days!

Thanks! Yeah Shovel Knight is something else - I basically bought it because I'm a fan of the musician (Virt) but it turns out the rest of the game is every bit as amazing.

I've had the 3DO for years - got it NIB from the backroom stock of a game shop in ~2002 when "retro-gaming" wasn't even a thing. I think they charged me $20 for it. Imagine that now. I think it was my first console actually; was a big PC gamer in my youth but never had any consoles of my own.

Funnily enough I just upgraded the monitor in the games cabinet. Did you guys know you can get 24" widescreen 1080i CRTs with DVI for free? Madness!

I should have measured it before I picked it up because it ALMOST didn't fit, but that would have been boring.

I sold my 3DO with all of the games a few years back for like $25.

I wish I still had it, though I would likely never play it. Nothing on it was that great. Hell, I just want the Wolf3D case back.

In reply to Jay:

Do tell about these CRTs.

^^ LOL, check your local Craigslist. People can't even give the things away because they're not "current" and everyone has to upgrade once a year. This thing is amazing, it was made in 2005 so it's one of the very last generation of high-end tube TVs. The color depth is something else and even SD output on S-Video is rendered beautifully without interlace (it runs 1080i or 540p, selectable.) The DVI port for the PC into is nice too. It's not a precision CAD display but for gaming it's brilliant.

Somebody paid thousands for this a decade ago, but today it's virtually worthless.

SilverFleet wrote: My Saturn, pictured with the rare Guardian Heroes. Picked this up from a friend in the mid-90's.

I think that's the first time I've ever seen something plugged into the cartridge port on the Saturn. Is it part of Guardian Heroes or something else?

Edit: never mind, it's a memory card. :P I can't read.

In reply to Jay:

Yeah, it's a terrible memory card. It hasn't worked in years, but it's still in there. I need to get an Action Replay to replace it so I can play all sorts of JDM goodness.

I've thought about getting one of those HD CRT's, but I've read that they don't allow for light gun games because of the refresh rates. I'd be happy with a new 4:3 CRT with RGB Component and S-Video. The Samsung I have only has Composite.

I have a 32" Sony Trinitron CRT in the living room that does 1080i and has DVI. My parents were going to throw it away because it didn't work. $18 in ICs and a few minutes soldering later, it worked again. Now I need to solve the bleeding issue it has, and it will be a good set.

The TV I use in my bedroom is a 1985 build JC Penney TV, built by NEC. I think it has an issue with a coil or something, I really don't know that much about working on that portion of a CRT. Does anyone here work on TVs? The HV is what scares the E36 M3 out of me.

I've had a couple of flat panels, but they don't seem to last. Overall, I seem to have better luck with the old tanks.

If you're into 2600 stuff, I highly recommend the Harmony Cart flash cart, runs everything including the big homebrews on the latest version. I think you have to get a higher output power brick though (there's an ARM doing all the work in there).

I also have a pause kit in mine (involves some soldering on the PCB, and at least when I did it, digging through old Atari service manuals because the instructions didn't cover my motherboard revision), handy thing to have, you can leave it paused for days.

And if you are still running RF, ditch the switchbox for a RCA-F adapter.

These are some of the games I had the most fun playing on my NES.

The Legend Of Zelda. I know it's not obscure but damnit, it's the best NES game ever. I played this game sooo many times, and it took me forever as a kid to beat the game only to find out there was a second quest afterwards, it was like getting two games for the price of one.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 - The Arcade Game was my second most played title. My brother and I spent soo many hours of our youth beating up Foot soldiers and trying to nab pizza slices before the other one got them. Great game for multiplayer mayhem, I just wish it worked with the 4 port adapter.

Kirby's Adventures. This game was released pretty close to the end of the NES and you can tell that it's pushing the hardware to it's limits in some areas. I loved it, being able to vacuum up your opponents and steal their powers was great. The graphics are some of the best on the NES and the mini-games between levels for more lives are great fun.

Duck Tales - Man, Capcom put out some great titles, but I think this one was my favorite. The replay-ability of this game is great, and with different difficulty levels you can really challenge yourself. Finding all the hidden gems and ice cream cones takes a lot of practice, but the music transcends the midi platform of the NES. Campcom recently remastered this one and is available on Steam, I got it and love playing it.

StarTropics - This one is a great adventure game, good controls, good graphics, and some pretty cool bosses and weapons. It can get frustrating at times but it's a great not so well known game.

Little Nemo Dream Master - Another more obscure title, I put many hours in on this one also. You can hop rides on certain baddies after feeding them candy to help you out getting through tough areas. I don't think i ever beat this one, but I remember it's good graphics and good controls.

In reply to t25torx:

Great suggestions! You can still find those ones just about everywhere too, although some of them (like Kirby's Adventure) are creeping up in price. Little Nemo is a lot of fun, and never gets it's due. StarTropics is another fun one that's still cheap and common. You'll need a walkthrough for some parts, because the original game came with some hints in the box that you needed to get past some parts of the game. They actually included a real physical letter from your in-game uncle that you had to dip in water to reveal a code.

In reply to BrokenYugo:

RCA-F adapters are a godsend. Aside from hacking in AV-Out ports, this is the way to go when hooking up pre-NES consoles.

SWMBO has been on my case about organizing my collection, so I started getting serious about it last night. She went out and bought some long under-the-bed bins and told me to consolidate my crap.

I started off with my Atari 2600 stuff.

These are 99% of my loose games, with about 12 more Sears Telegames-branded ones in a hardshell travel case. I have about 10 more complete in the box ones on a shelf. More to come soon.

River City Ransom provided days and days of fun. Playing with my brothers we tried to put in lots strategic play methods to get through swiftly.

Jackel: was also super fun. I also find that almost no one remembers that one.

Forbidden Forest was mostly cool due to the music and tone.

Mig Alley Ace: Great fun as an early two player air combat game.

There was a game my brothers and I have yet to remember the name for. It had a helicopter, kind of a space helicopter that had to save people on treacherous ledges in a side scroll cave maze.

In reply to Advan046:

Choplifter?

In reply to Hungary Bill:

Yeah, I was going to say Choplifter, Chopper Command (which is similar), Or even Super Cobra.

Chopper Command:

Super Cobra:

Anyone else looking forward to the NES Classic Edition?

I think that it's cool that Nintendo is making the NES Mini, but I already have almost all of those games for the original (and a hacked Wii with just about every NES game on there) so it's not really for me. It IS for anyone who wants a quick plug-and-play way to relive the old days, especially if they no longer have their childhood NES. Some of the game choices are questionable (Why Super C instead of Contra?) but it's a good selection of games overall.

If it had a SD slot on it to load roms, then I would have already preordered it because it does HDMI natively.

Eh, not really. You can make one in a few minutes with a Raspberry Pi or number of other devices now.

Plus, those old games (to me) are great nostalgia, but only a very small number of them will I actually play for any extended period of time.

Same goes for PC games... very few games 20+ years old hold up to the test of time. And most of those, unlike console games, have had major engine improvements since then.

Something occurred to me today, any console older than 20 years or so with original electrolytic caps is really living on borrowed time. Realized this when the NES was acting up more than usual when I pulled it out today, pulled the top off to clean the connector and noticed that the big main power filter cap was bulging (BAD!). I think I'm just going to put in a big digikey order and recap all my stuff (2600, NES, SNES) preemptively, including the filter in the SNES's DC power brick. A lot of the NES and SNES carts also have a 22uf electrolytic in them, probably not a bad idea to replace those in case they start leaking.

This intrigues me. Hdmi, plays NES and Famicom games, and it doesn't look terribly dopey doing it. I like that it uses a custom FPGA instead of the buggy NOAC.

BrokenYugo wrote: Something occurred to me today, any console older than 20 years or so with original electrolytic caps is really living on borrowed time. Realized this when the NES was acting up more than usual when I pulled it out today, pulled the top off to clean the connector and noticed that the big main power filter cap was bulging (BAD!). I think I'm just going to put in a big digikey order and recap all my stuff (2600, NES, SNES) preemptively, including the filter in the SNES's DC power brick. A lot of the NES and SNES carts also have a 22uf electrolytic in them, probably not a bad idea to replace those in case they start leaking.

100% correct! There are lots of consoles out there that need to be "re-capped". The usual suspects are the Turbo Duo (the NEC Turbografx CD and Turbografx 16 all-in one), The Sega CD (usually a fuse, but caps go too), the Game Gear (I have 3, none work 100% because of bad caps), the NEC Turbo Express (a portable Turbografx 16), and the Sega Nomad (portable Genesis, I have one that is starting to fail).

That said, there are a lot of old consoles that you would expect to be garbage that work just fine. For some reason, the Atari 2600 is the most bomb-proof of all the consoles I own. I wouldn't hesitate to pull one that's been buried in the ground for 10 years and plug the thing in. Same goes for the games. The NES is notorious for issues, but 99% of the time it's either the 10NES lockout chip and/or the 72-pin cartridge connector that goes bad. I usually clip the power to the 10NES and replace the connector to get them working 100%.

Most carts that I have had issues with are NES carts. The connectors are susceptible to tarnishing and degradation over time, and because everyone used to blow in them. That moisture lead to tarnish and the breakdown of connectors.

I just ordered this tool kit and will be going through my entire NES collection soon with some Barkeeper's Friend to clean the contacts:

Nintendo Security Bit Tool Kit