The Grand Emperor's Retro Video Gaming Blog

Your going to find out pretty soon that I may be a bit behind on a few things. But all I can say is thank God retro gaming is about the past and I have time to catch up, and even learn about the bad stuff without experiencing more of it. Of course keep in mind this all refers to retro gaming. So here we are two days until the start of the new year. And of course at this time of year everybody thinks about their New Year's resolutions. Sure I could talk about the whole losing weight losing a bad habit gaining this losing that gaining this losing that thing that everybody usually does when to come's New Year's resolutions. But I decided that I would much rather make my New Year's resolutions based upon retro gaming. Usually one folks make New Year's resolutions it's all about leaving comfort zones. Then again it's not always about leaving comfort sounds sometimes about just completing a list of things that you really want to complete. For instance I kno...

I hope you're enjoying this series and I also hope that you're beginning to listen to some of the podcast that I have suggested to you. For this particular installment I decided to go with a slightly different type of podcast. It still deals with retro gaming but it's a bit different than the previous two that I have bought to you. Both the Atari 2600 Game by Game podcast,  and The Retro League , are really great when it comes to learning about old-school games and even how to retro game in our modern era.   With this particular podcast you will still learn a bit about retro gaming but not quite in the same sense that you will from the other two podcast. I started listening to Legacy Music Hour , thanks to a suggestion by The Retro League , who often bought up the podcast. At first I never bothered to really look for it until about a week ago when I came across the podcasts while looking for some additional ones to listen to you. I didn't know what I wou...

Merry Christmas!!!! No post today. Enjoy time with you families and play some games you got for Christmas as a kid, with you own kids. 

Ok, we talked about anticipating what may be under the tree, now let's talk about those Christmas Day memories. I know we're a two days away yet, but I don't want to post an article on Christmas and I'm afraid after none of us will be in the Christmas mood anymore. Christmas 1989 For me there was the Christmas of 1989 when I got an Atari 7800, and a bunch of games (Atari 2600 luckily). It was a total surprise to get the 7800, sadly it didn't work and I bought it back to Toys R Us to get an Atari 2600 Jr instead. This same Christmas  my Mom and Sister kept asking me what games I would like for Christmas. I gave them a list and told them "Whatever you do don't buy ET for me it's suppose to be an awful game". So on Christmas Day I got some 2600 games, I can't remember which ones but I can tell you for certain ET was one of them. I don't know if they had already bought it when they asked me or they just wanted to play a little joke one b...

Well, another 5 days and its Christmas. Do you remember what is was like to be a kid, how the entire month of December seemed like one big exciting buildup to what would be waiting for you under the tree? Of course lets also get down to it and say that Christmas has always been a great time for video games. Christmas is that key holiday when a lot of kids got there consoles. I got an Atari 7800 (that ended up not working) and my NES both on Christmas. Not to mention my first real PC, and a gaggle of Atari 2600, NES, Commodore 64, and PC games over the years. Now my 7800, and NES where both complete surprises to me so I never anticipated them under the tree. The PC on the other hand, hell yeah! No I know a lot of you are saying "a computer, that ain't retro gaming!". Well to me it is since PC gaming back then was so different and so where the games, and how they where presented.  To me the PC meant access to the internet, and of course flight sims. As you may ...

About a month ago I wrote an article about how I was majorly pissed after two transactions on eBay; one for an SNES, and one for a N64 went bad. I am happy to report that I got my money back on both with very little fight and full cooperation from Paypal. But the better news is that through some odd circumstances a co-worker gave me an N64 that was taking up space in his house, with Ocarina of Time.  I bought the system home the day before Thanksgiving which helped to make the weekend a bit more joyful. On Black Friday we got Super Mario 64 for it as well, and I also picked up Starfox 64 on eBay that week too.  To say the least my oldest son is really excited to have the system. I am too since as you well know from previous posts I have been trying to build a cool retro gaming collection. With the N64 in place I now have at least one system representing generations 2 through 7 available to me. Of course if I was able to find my PS1 I would have...

Gaming has taken an unusual and unforeseen turn over the last five years. Although consoles are still strong, no one really could have guessed how cell phones and tablets could change gaming five years ago. Don't worry PS, XBox, WiiU, and there portable counterparts, aren't about to be overtaken by cell phones and tablets any time soon. What's truly amazing is since the rise of the iPhones and Androids, how powerful these devices have become. It's hard to imagine that a phone and music player is a more powerful gaming platform then our 90's video game consoles, and any computer we owned up until about the year 2005.  The biggest thing about cell phones and tablets is that they are the realm of the casual gamer. The whole Candy Crush and Bejeweled crowd. But you can read about my rant on that a different time. Even though casual gamers seem to dominate the "mobile" realm, it hasn't prevented video game developers from going after the mid and ha...

I recently wrote a post about mobile gaming changing the way we game. After giving it a lot of thought I decided I would like to take a look into why mobile gaming is so big and where it came from.  You see portable gaming has been around for a while with good examples dating back to the early 1980's. But it was about 1990 when consumers began to take it seriously after the Gameboy . Since then we have seen numerous serious contenders fight it out in this market right up to today with the 3DS , and PS Vita on the market. At the same time though portable gaming really saw contention come out of left field over the past decade. At the time of Nintendo's original Gameboy cell phones where the size of bricks and weighed nearly as much, and only functioned as phones. By the early 2000's the world would change. By the time of the Gameboy Advanced , cell phones and PDA's (the first handheld computers) had began it slowly but surely merge. Cell phones began to have m...

Emulation is nothing new, nor is it a phenomenon strictly confined to the internet. In Gen 3 we got a taste of emulation as Gen 2 Atari games such as  Defender, and Mario Brothers  made appearences on the NES although somewhat modified and/or updated from the original Atari form. In many ways it could even be argued that these where more like ports then emulations. (Ports or Porting is the process of bringing games from one system to another, but making modifications to do so. Most ports where from arcade games to home consoles, but console to console porting has occurred as well.) Console to console emulation has more or less always been around especially since Gen 3. In most cases though new consoles didn't see old titles until the consoles where a few years into or even near the end of their lifespan. Logically this would be becuase the money was in releasing new titles and not rehashing old ones.  Round about Gen 6 though something changed, and that chang...

I got into the retro gaming movement with a lot of vigor thanks to Podcasts. It's great to know there is a community out there full of folks who are passionate about this hobby and really willing to share information. In my first part of this series I introduced you to the Atari 2600 Game by Game Podcast which I think is a shining example of a enthusiast sharing his passion. In this part I would like to introduce you to another podcast that is a great example of this; The Retro League .  The show is currently hosted by Hugues Johnson and "Jungle Rat" Rob Anderson, but has had additional host and guest hosts in its past. If you are one of my readers and the name Hugues Johnson sounds familiar it's becuase I mentioned and article of his "The Madden Theory" in my piece about the WiiU a couple of weeks back.  I enjoy this show becuase the host are both informative and funny, although it is a bit of dry humor. I also love that fact the Hugues J...

In parts 1 and 2 I took a look at the potential failure of the WiiU and XBOX ONE, in Gen 8. Now it's time to look at one last entrant the PS4. Let's be honest the Playstation series has been a game changer since it arrived in Gen 5, stepping up to take on the gap left collectively by Atari, NEOGEO, and Turbo Grafix. In era in which console gamers where bailing out to go to PC gaming, gamers needed something new to place them back in front of their TV's, instead of thier computer monitors. I should know I was one of them, and Gran Turismo was one of the games that bought me back.  In Gen 6 Sony gave us the PS2 an innovative multimedia platform, that sold just as many people on the fact that it was a DVD player, as it did on the fact that it was a video game console. Many consider the PS2 the quintisential modern gaming platform and the system that seperated the old from the new. The PS2 now holds the record as the longest living platform to still have games ma...

I recently wrote article here about the possible outcomes we might see for systems entering the Gen 8 fray. In it I mentioned my concerns about XBOX ONE, and it's weaknesses mainly being in Microsofts rules as far as the systems connectivity, and software sharing. But, I also mentioned that Microsoft could use the XBOX ONE as it's last entry in the home console market, and simply develop games from Gen 9 on. About two months ago I caught a trailer for a new game set to come out in June of next year named Destiny . If you haven't seen a trailer for it check it out its really cool, and had a lot of potential. But, it does have a Halo  type quality to it, even down to the story line.  One of the reasons this might be is becuase the game is being developed by Halo developer Bungie. In this case though Bungie has partnered with video game great Activision. So in a way we have Halo being married to Modern Warfare . But am I the only one who sees this as being aweso...

You know a couple of weeks back when I first started this blog I was asked if I was going to do any reviews. I said "well I might", but I was non-committal since reviews aren't really my thing, but I realized that occasionaly the mood would strike me and I would just have to. My first subject is RC Pro Am. I don't know if you remember this or not but RC Pro Am was always one of those titles you where told you had to own on NES. The weird thing is I was always told I had to get it, but no one I know had it.  I bought Super RC Pro Am on Gameboy in the Fall on 1991 though, and at that point it was a new release. For me the game would always have good memories  since I bought it the weekend after being in the hospital for two weeks as a kid. And then later in January of 1992, I remember playing it on my 8th grade trip as we made the long drive to Northern Wisconsin with a friend of mine playing Nirvana in the background. So  Super RC Pro Am was my only conn...

Over just the past few years the entire identity of Black Friday has been a bit muddled and lost. It use to be about getting up in the dark and fighting the cold out to some store to possible get a good deal. Now days Black Friday doesn’t even take place of Friday, as stores such as Walmart, Best Buy and others open their doors while most folks are still chowing down on Turkey. It’s weird to say this but it seems as if the concept of Black Friday is now retro too. Don’t worry this blog post isn’t about me bitching about the lost meaning of Black Friday, so don’t worry. What I actually want to talk about is video game memories of Black Friday, you see I have many myself some of which aren’t that old. I hoping you have some memories about video games and Black Friday too. So here goes. My favorite Black Friday memory is when I bought Command & Conquer: Red Alert on PC in 1996. I was a huge fan of the original Command & Conquer and had been waiting long for a seque...

We left off examining the potential downfall of the WiiU, and maybe even Nintendo in part one. We also established that in the in the less then 40 years of the video gaming industries history, that every decade had has its tribulations and victims knocked from the hill of success and into an oblivion of mediocrity. So as we sit here on the cusp of Gen 8 consoles who will be the victim(s) of the 10's? We've covered WiiU's flaws, so let us look now at the XBOX ONE. The XBOX ONE has been stirring up controversy since we (and that includes Microsoft) knew the prototype as that XBox 720. Unlike the 360 the ONE comes with the Kinect as a standard feature, but unlike the 360 the Kinect on the ONE gets the creepiness factor of being on all the time. Meaning the f$&*ing robot is always watching you. Now if that isn't enough to potentially turn you off to the ONE, here are a few more WTF factors Mr. Gates and Microsoft want us to swallow. The ONE has to be connecte...

Video gaming whether modern or retro always has its 800 pound Gorilla in the room, usually multiple ones. There are the bad things we don't want to talk about like the whole Custers Revenge thing, and then there are the good things like educational gaming we don't want to talk about either. It's strange to think that in retro circles the unspeakable is a game like Math Grand Prix, or that Big Birds Egg Drop is on the same level of being shunned as Beat Em' & Eat Em'.  But the fact of the matter is that we all have fond memories of educational games, whether we want to admit it or not. For instance I actually liked Math Grand Prix , and I have very fond memories of Oregon Trail, and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego , as I was wrapping up my 8th grade year. Of course lets be honest looking back the only thing educational about Oregon Trail  may have been its title.  Nowadays, educational games still exist and cover a wide range topics that extend fa...

I have a pretty good memory, but there's games in my collection I don't always remember. This is particularly true in collecting Atari 2600 games, especially when you can pick up whole lots of 10+ each on e-bay fairly inexpensively. Having just revived my collection, remembering all the titles I had was a bit of a mystery. So looking through e-bay I held off on getting some lots out of fear of getting games I already have.  To help me through this I decided I had to catalog my collection somehow. Luckily, there's an app for that and I want to share it with you. Above are two examples of apps from Sort It Apps , the simply names Video Games , and Music are two examples. Each can be found on the iTunes Store for free and allow you to track your collections of video games, music, movies, apps and other items. This is the sort screen here I can see all my games, on any platform. This video game app allows you to search you collection by platform too. ...

You know the video game industry as a self contained unit is a fascinating thing. It's an industry that is totally driven by consumerism and it's products are purely  the purchases of those with disposable income. Meaning consumers can abandon the game market with little impact to themselves. It's like this perfect little example of monopolistic competition. With that being said though is definitely a place of economic Darwinism and once a decade some competitor gets knocked off the the top of the hill. In the giant video game industry crash of 82' for instance many of Atari's clone making competitors disappeared and Atari itself almost lost everything. But Atari would only be king of the hill for so long as the American market became open to the likes of Nintendo, and Sega to name a few.  In the 90's Atari would finally be knocked from the hill after the failure of the Jaguar and Lynx. And in the 00' Sega would be knocked from the hill after ...

If your new to retro gaming then you are probably not aware that there two ways of retro gaming. One way is the traditional way and what is considered the most lagitimate way, that is getting an old counsel of your choice, the games you want, and playing them as they where originally meant to be played. Like getting an NES, getting Super Mario Bros 3, hooking it up to your tv and just having fun.  The other way is emulation.  From NESticle in the mid-90's to the new Ouya game emulation has been around for a while, comes in a lot of varieties, and more of it is to come. Essentially emulation is using some other system by which to play games of another. I know that sounds vague but emulation opens to door to vague. For instance if you own a Wii, WiiU, or 3DS then you know about virtual counsel through the Nintendo store. Here you can buy titles from the NES, to NeoGeo, to N64 and then play them right there on your modern Nintendo system. This is emulation but this is ...

I left off part 1 with finding Sega Genesis systems trending for lower prices then normal on eBay, and finding a system with everything I wanted, for $1 plus shipping. As I mentioned this Genesis had 2 controllers, 6 sonic games, the RF adaptor, and of course the counsel. I had to take a chance, I e-mailed the seller. "Does it work?" but to reply back. Two days passed someone else started bidding on it low bid was $1.25, I waited till the day of the auction and at last minute bid in. It closed at $5.25, I sent another e-mail to the seller "before I pay does it work?", no response. Finally 2 days later "yes it did work when I last plugged it in a year ago, I will check it again tonight!" the seller replied. That was good enough for me, I paid and with my eBay Bucks, it came out to $15 out of my pocket. But, was the seller telling me the truth?  I paid for the system on a Friday and got it by the Wednesday following. Pretty impressive co...

I have to admit in the short time I have been involved in the retro gaming community I have been impressed. There is a lot of love out there for old games, and a lot of really passionate people who pass the bug of collecting on so easily. I'm writting this series of blogs about podcasts, because podcasts for me are how I came into the fold. There are a lot of really great retro gaming podcasts out there too, and I want to pass a few of them on to you to give a listen to.  This first show I am reviewing is not the first one I started listening to initially, I'll cover that one later. But this podcast to me is true embodiment of the retro-gaming community, the shows how that love of this hobby shines from those who are into it. The Atari Game by Game podcast was started back in February by the host Ferg. In each podcast he usually covers to Atari games, giving a brief synapsis of both games. For each games he provides a brief history of its development, the names of ...

If you have read any of my past articles you will know that I buy most of my systems off eBay. Yeah I know, when it comes to retro gaming I should save a little dough and hit garage sales, resale shops and rummage sales. But I work out of town and by the time I get home from work each day you can be assured all those places are picked over, if they are open at all. I think you all also know that I have been trying to add consoles to my collection, and two of the prime targets on my list where an SNES, and an N64.   You see I managed to get a hold of a Super NES and N64 the week before last on eBay from two different sellers. And I have been anxiously awaiting the SNES, since I have so many fond memories of playing it. I even bought an extra controller, as well as some of my favorite SNES games like Starfox, Pilotwings, and F-zero, as well as a Super Gameboy adaptor.  So let me put this next part to you this way you see I was one for one with eBay, my Genesis was ...