The Grand Emperor's Retro Video Gaming Blog

Gen 5 Gaming and Gen 3 Fighters   Gen 5 is the era of 64-bits, and a great time of change in the world of home consoles. Some would argue that this is the generation retro gaming died in, while others will tell you this is the era modern gaming started in. Both sides have a convincing argument, since gen 5 would see the last cartridge based big name system, but would also see the first Playstation. The gap between gen 4 and gen 5 left a lot of bodies in its wake, like the Sega CD, Sega 32x, and Atari Jaguar, but the ultimate battle was of the CD over the cartridge. For jet fighters in gen 3 like consoles in gen 5 there is an argument that gen 3 started the era of the first modern fighters. Super-sonic afterburning twin engines and sleek designs, coupled with advanced radar, avionics, and weapons systems certainly backed that argument.   Pic F-4 Phantom II and PlayStation The McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom II defined gen 3. It was the primary air sup...

Amongst retro gamers there are many points of contention, for the most part these points are met with a great deal of fun and humor. For instance there has always been a great deal of back and forth about the PC gaming schism of the early to mid-90's in which console gamers left behind SNES's and Sega Genesis's and enter into the world of DOS and early versions of the Windows Operating System. This was an era that many retro gamers consider to be the golden age of PC gaming. This was the era of Sim City , Doom , Wing Commander, Command & Conquer, and realistic feeling flight sims like Microsoft Flight Simulator .  Back in those days PC gamers carried thier heads a little higher than console gamers, and even felt a little superior. We had left behind the world of simple games like Super Mario Brothers and homogenous fighting games like Mortal Combat , and entered a world of first person shooters, and both turn based and real time strategy games. Gaming went beyond ...

As many of you may know from reading some my previous articles I have voice been somewhat of a big flights sim nut. This is part of the reason why my initial NES collection was filled with aviation-based games many of them not all that awesome. This is also the reason why I would eventually leave behind console gaming to go to PC gaming since PCs do in fact have more realistic flight sims. Going back to my NES though there were two games I wanted very badly after I first got my NES. One was Top Gun , the other After Burner . I remember being in the electronics section of a Venture store (Remember those) and coming accross Tengen games for $19.99 on sale. With great titles such as RBI , After Burner , and Gauntlet it was hard for me to decide on with $20 burning a whole in my 12 year old pocket. My first choice was After Burner  but I came back a few minutes latet for RBI. Now I know what your thinking "wait didn't he just say he was a huge flight sim nut?". Well yes,...

I ended up picking up this 5200 for a heck of a price on eBay. It was one of those instances where the seller "couldn't test the system, but it worked the last time he played it". So with the great price I was taking the chance it might not work, but the 5200 is a resilient system. When the box with the 5200 arrived I wasn't very sure what it was. Frankly, the box looked too small and felt too light for the 5200, controllers, the few games, and power box I had bid on. The 5200 was in there though as was everything else listed in the auction.  Seeing as to how the seller was "unsure" of the system I decided to test it out on my small TV first, so I wouldn't have to fight my way in and out of the back end of the entertainment center if it didn't work. I hooked the 5200's unique power box/RF box up to the small TV and put the first 5200 cart I could grab Space Invaders in. The "Fuji" symbol popped up in all its rainbow color chang...

There are video games out there that define a platform. Like Super Mario Brothers on the NES, Sonic  on Genesis, or Asteroids on the Atari 2600. But then there are those video games out there that define video gaming as a whole. These are games that are memorable, fun, intuitive, and easy to operate, but challenging enough to keep you coming back for more. I'm sure anyone who has been around gaming long enough can name one that just epitomizes video gaming for them as a whole. I have two that for me define video games for me, one is Moon Patrol, and the other is Choplifter which I will be talking about right now.  My earliest memory of Choplifter is from when I was about 6 or so and my sister took me with her to go to a friends house. Being 6 I was bored easily by the chatter of two teenage girls, so my sisters friends mom, guided me into another room with what I believe was a Commodore 64. She put Choplifter on showed me how to play it, and I was hooked. As much as I...

"It's a really great game, do you have it in your collection?" "Yes I do" he says with hesitation, "And from the 60 seconds of it I played it does seem like a really great game!" "60 seconds?", his friend said quizzically with eyebrows raised,"Only 60 seconds did something happen to your machine did it break? Did the game go bad?" "No! ", he settled in for the long explanation,"It's just that....well... you see it came to me in the mail with a bunch of other games I got off eBay and I was in such a rush to try them all to make sure they work and get that guy back his feedback that I only had a minute or so to play and then it went right into my cabinet". Be honest with me my retrogaming companions does this sound like you? Well it's certainly me! After collecting for multiple systems for the past eight months I realized there are some pretty great games in my collection that I have on...

This week on the No Quarter podcast (http://monsterfeet.com/noquarter/ episode 87: Combat School ) the hosts Mike and Carrington got into an argument about whether or not someone who buys their games on eBay is an actual collector. I was inclined to agree with Carrington that collecting off eBay can still make someone a legitimate collector since the markets for old games are not readily available. Yet, the co-host Mike mentioned that being a true collector needed to involve some social aspects that you don't get from eBay. I guess I could see where he is coming from too. The fact of the matter is though that there are a lot of aspects to collecting, especially in retro gaming, that need some defining. What makes a true collector? What make a legitimate retro gamer? What just makes someone a hipster doing this on a lark? The fact of the matter is no one can really seem to say. I don't know if I ever mentioned this or not but I actually come from the hobby of mod...

Gen 3 and the end of Gen 1 Fighters In consoles gen 3 is when real 8-bit finally “arrived”, the hardware and software had finally reached it’s height and the games became ever more complicated in graphics, and/or game play. For any retro gamer in the know Gen 3 equals 8-bit with no if, ands, or buts. The end of the first generation of jet fighters was extremely similar this earliest generation finally saw air to air combat between jets, and ever increasing speeds. The designs now reflected aircraft to come, with swept back or narrow wings, and increases emphasis on building the plane around the engine.   Pic F-86 and NES The crowned king of this late generation is the F-86 Sabre. The F-86 had a 10 to 1 confirmed kill ratio in the skies above Korea, in spite of the fact that its arch rival the Mig-15 was almost the same aircraft. Essentially the USAF didn’t want to deploy the Sabre in Korea, but when the Mig-15 arrived on the scene claiming P-80’s, and B-29’s b...