(I wrote this to participate in 1 More Castle’s “Review a Great Game Day” holiday. Check out all the great reviews on RAGGD site!)

“Boomshakalaka!”

This phrase was ingrained in the minds and hearts of young gamers in the early 90s as NBA Jam exploded onto the arcade scene. Midway’s science experiment of taking the hardwood action of the NBA and transmogrifying it into a lightning-quick over-the-top arcade experience took the country by storm and everyone, from hoops heads to those who wouldn’t know a pick-and-roll from a slam dunk, was lacing up for the addicting two-on-two festivities.

I greatly lament the death of video game stores.

Yes, I know GameStop is (and will continue to be) a thing. I’m talking about your old mom-and-pop video game stores – establishments run by people who care about what they do and run a business to service their customer.

As a retro gamer, I really miss the days of having places to go to browse old games. I miss seeing shelves filled with cartridges; monuments of plastic-encased circuit boards tempting you towards them with promises of nostalgia and warm feelings.

I really miss having places that made me feel that way.

So I haven’t written much in a while, and that sucks. But I have a good excuse! I’ve started a webshow, and thanks to some very generous folks who donated via Kickstarter, I was able to get my idea off the ground and explore a new way to share my love of retro games with the world.

Now that the preliminary work is done I plan on writing more here in between episodes. If you’re interested in the new show, I have a new site for it over at http://thebacklog.pkbloggin.net. Check out the first episode focusing on the Sega Genesis classic Sub-Terrania!

Remember when I wrote about Little Samson and how sad I was because it was astronomically expensive and it was a game that meant a lot to me? Of course you do, it wasn’t even a month ago. Well, I solved my problem… I imported the Famicom version!

Because I like to torture myself over things I can’t have, I was doing a lot of research about the game and stumbled upon a short video by the Gaming Historian detailing the history and background of the game. He mentioned that the game had no voices or text, with the story told completely through cutscenes. A lightbulb flashed above my head just like in the cartoons… if the Japanese version was cheaper I could just get that instead!

My sister-in-law really surprises me sometimes.

She’s 15 years old, born around three months after the Nintendo 64 launched in North America. She doesn’t remember the “good old days” of gaming because she was too busy spitting up and pooping in diapers.

A few weekends ago Christina and I finally decided to find a way to hook up all of our retro consoles. It’s something that I’ve been whining about for a long time, so I don’t know if she agreed to it because she wanted to play the old games too or if she just wanted to shut me up. Anyway, we made it happen.

A bit of background information before I get into it, though; our place isn’t very big. I mean, we have a good size living room that comfortably fits our two couches, a table, an entertainment center and a computer desk with room to spare. Aside from that, though, all we have is a kitchen, bathroom, walk-in storage room and our bedroom.

The first thing we needed to do was get a CRT television. As you probably already know, trying to play old video games on a modern LCD or plasma TV results in a gross, trashy image due to the television trying to upscale an image that honestly wasn’t very good to begin with. Taking the NES’ native 256×224 image output and trying to upscale it to 1024×768 or higher isn’t a good time for anybody.

I’ve really been into retro gaming lately. Christina and I have been talking a lot about the “good old days” and our desire to really focus on stuff from our childhoods because there’s not really a lot coming out that we’re interested in. This weekend we’re going to be moving some furniture around in the house and setting up a CRT television so we can finally hook up all of our old retro consoles.

This has led to me spending a lot of time online looking at retro collecting sites and scouring eBay for old games that I used to rent and never got around to buying. The price of old games has certainly gone up recently, probably due to several rare games getting mainstream media coverage after being sold for thousands of dollars and people thinking any old cart in their attic is going to make them rich.

Christina and I have been thinking a lot about our future game room after cleaning out the game closet not long ago and I decided we should get dust sleeves for our NES and SNES games that didn’t already have covers, so I pulled them all out today to count how many naked carts we had. I just felt like sharing the pictures.

Don’t you hate it when one simple design choice ruins an entire game?

As a 3DS Ambassador, I got 10 free Game Boy Advance games via download, including Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. I haven’t played much Fire Emblem despite owning both Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, but James, editor at Nintendo Life, asked me if I’d review it as my first Nintendo Life assignment. I agreed.

I’m not super into strategy RPGs, but I do love me some Shining Force and Final Fantasy Tactics, and I’d always wanted to really get into Fire Emblem. I liked the look of it and the “rock-paper-scissors” weapon balance was super fun. The writing was good and I loved the character designs. Things were looking good!

(Note: I originally published this article on Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming on February 8, 2011.)

One of my weird gaming quirks is that I am inexplicably drawn to interesting title screens. Like a moth to a flame, if you show me a cool title screen, I’m more than likely to play your game. That’s part of how I pick which “unknown” games to play on Virtual Console, since all you really get to see are the title screens!

One of the first games I downloaded for the Virtual Console was Neutopia for the Turbografx-16, and I selected it solely based on how amazing the title screen was. Awesome 16-bit graphics, hero in a heroic pose, colorful landscape, it had all I was looking for. I bought it without even knowing what kind of game it was, I just knew I wanted in.