PixlBit

Went to Jay Street Video Games in Mall. Saw Front Mission 3 for $15, no manual. Buy on PSN instead. Saw Pokemon Stadium for $25 loose. Can get it for $15 online. Would've got it for $20. Not today. Asked for Dynasty Tactics. Salesman said no copies. After hurting him, still no. Left angry.

Well, my friend Mark finally has his gamer-tag up and running again on Xbox 360, and so it's back to modern gaming as usual, playing co-op in new and exciting virtual worlds. I expect to log twenty hours or so in EDF 2025 this weekend.

"Give me a little bit of bass with those 88s" sings The Capitols in the song "Cool Jerk". . . What to play then. For NES we've got: Metal Gear, Zelda II, Double Dragon, R.B.I. Baseball (I mistakenly put it with '87), Contra, Ikari II, Super Mario Bros 2, Bump n' Jump, and Castlevania II; for Arcade: Super Contra, Splatterhouse, Altered Beast, Gradius II, New Zealand Story, Vindicators, Alien Crush, and Double Dragon II; for SMS: Phantasy Star, Miracle Warriors, Shinobi, Wonder Boy, and Ys: Vanished Omens (good year for SMS!); and for PC: Ultima V, Dungeons & Dragons: Pool of Radiance (the first of the SSI DnD games), Exile, Bard's Tale III, and Wasteland. I must've been in a bloodletting mood because I chose Splatterhouse.

I had a pretty reasonable pool of games I wanted to play from 1987. Arcade games: Contra, Street Fighter (begining of the fighting game scene?), Double Dragon, 1943, R-Type, Sky Shark and Xenophobe; NES: Mega Man, Legend of Zelda, Ikari Warriors, Rygar, Arkanoid, Kid Icarus, Wizards and Warriors, R.B.I. Baseball, Metroid and Castlevania (what a year for NES!); Nothing for Sega Master System's debut; and PC games: Leisure Suit Larry, Dungeon Master, Head Over Heels, and Maniac Mansion. I decided to go with Ikari Warriors, but when that went too fast, I added Sky Shark.

I went through a bunch of lists for this year and came up with some titles to consider for my visit to nostalgia land. For NES it was: Commando, Ghosts n' Goblins, and Gradius. Sega Master System it was: Alex Kidd, Space Harrier, and Alien Syndrome. Arcade it was: Return of Ishtar, Arkanoid, Bubble Bobble, Out Run, Rygar, Gauntlet II, Darius, Ikari Warriors, Jackal, Joust 2 and Victory Road (the sequel to Ikari Warriors). PC/Mac it was: Star Flight, Wizard's Crown, Space Quest, Might & Magic Book 1, and Dark Castle.

1985 and home console video gaming makes a huge comback with the release of Nintendo's NES. Disguised as a VCR (that's a videocassette recorder for those who don't know) and coupled with a toy robot so nobody would call it a video game machine, the NES reignited home console gaming. Super Mario Bros. was the big hit that year, but I'd played that and had a copy of Mach Rider waiting for my attention, so I went with that. But before I started, I watched a bunch of video of other games that came out that year like arcade game Tiger-Heli, and PC games: Tau Ceti, Oregon Trail, Ultima IV and The Bard's Tale. 

1984: consoles pretty much dead with the crash of '83; the arcades still pretty good with titles like: 1942, Punch-Out, Marble Madness and Space Ace; PC doing well with King's Quest, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein.  I looked at a lot of video of these games and more from this year and decided on replaying 1942 within Capcom Arcade Cabinet on XBLA and within Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded on PSP. 

I watched a lot of videos on some games from 1983: arcade games Mario Bros, Spy Hunter, Crossbow, Star Wars The Arcade Game; PC games Ultima III (check out The Spoony One's review of it. It's fun.), and Troll's Tale; console games Quest for Quintana Roo on ColecoVision, Pitfall II on Atari 2600, and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin for Intellivision.

1982 was a very good year for video games. Just to name some I liked, there were: Donkey Kong Jr., Xevious, Joust, and Front Line in arcades, Ultima II and Wizardry II on PC; Barmstorming and Frogs & Flies on Atari 2600; B-17 Bomber, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and Shark! Shark! on Intellivision; and Venture on the new ColecoVision.

 I was going to stop after Floor 1, but it was so much fun, I kept going to see how far I could get with Team Predator. My friend Mark got interested in Wizardry too and fired up his Yobo NES console and played a Star Trek themed team. He grabbed several super powerful Blade Cuisinarts and over a million in gold from his previous teams to fuel his play. I was playing pure and didn't use anything from old teams.