Retro Gaming

[TruckWEB]

I don't have much, here is the list of what I own:

- NES, SNES, GameCube, Wii

- Commodore CD32

- Sony PS2

- OUYA (yes... I'm sorry!)

Portable : NeoGeo Pocket Color, Nintendo DS Lite, 2DS, 3DS XL

As for the modern console : Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, WiiU

That's about it...

[xendrome]

Arcade system runs MAME, Atari 2400, 4800, 7200, Turbo Grafix 16, Sega Master, Sega Genesis, Sega CD, NES, SNES, N64, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advanced, Pinball (All roms for each system) running on a Dell Optiplex with Xeon CPU and 4GB ram. Front end is Maximus Arcade, nothing fancy just simple.

Other items: SNES with SuperEver Drive, N64 with Everdrive 64 and a Hyperkin RetroN for various uses/reasons, like Save ability for game that do not support it.

[Aergan]

 

Arcade system runs MAME, Atari 2400, 4800, 7200, Turbo Grafix 16, Sega Master, Sega Genesis, Sega CD, NES, SNES, N64, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advanced, Pinball (All roms for each system) running on a Dell Optiplex with Xeon CPU and 4GB ram. Front end is Maximus Arcade, nothing fancy just simple.

Other items: SNES with SuperEver Drive, N64 with Everdrive 64 and a Hyperkin RetroN for various uses/reasons, like Save ability for game that do not support it.

How is the Retron 5 ? They're a tad on the expensive side in the UK but seems like the easiest / cheapest way to get HDMI out of NES/SNES.

[Aergan]

My son and I played Castle of Illusion: Staring Mickey Mouse on the SEGA Master System last Sunday:

[soniqstylz]

pffft, noobs

 

[Skyfrog]

Well I don't have room for any fancy shelving for them right now like the poster above, but I have an Atari 2600, NES, Super NES, N64, Gamecube, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Dreamcast, PS2 and XBox. The 360 in the pic also of course but that's not exactly retro. As far as collecting games I've been mostly concentrating on the 2600 right now (including a handful I've kept from childhood). I've also got a few old computers stored away; a TI-99/4a, Commodore VIC-20 and C64. The latest games I've bought is Q*Bert for the TI-99 and Castlevania IV for the SNES.

My first console was a Colecovision, a Christmas gift from my aunt in 1983. Later I got the 2600 Expansion Module for it. Sadly I no longer have them. My parents got me an NES in 1986 (which I still have) and later an SNES which eventually turned yellow and stopped working so I no longer have that one anymore. I got an SNES model 2 on ebay a few years ago to replace it. Those were my childhood consoles, but none were the first systems I played. That honor went to my father's Sears model Atari Super Pong IV.

Edited August 26, 2015 by Thrackerzod

[Aergan]

8~16bit game tower

 

SEGA Classics Arcade Collection on the Mega CD

 

Streets of Rage (Mega CD edition)

 

 

[Aergan]

Well I don't have room for any fancy shelving for them right now like the poster above, but I have an Atari 2600, NES, Super NES, N64, Gamecube, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Dreamcast, PS2 and XBox. The 360 in the pic also of course but that's not exactly retro. As far as collecting games I've been mostly concentrating on the 2600 right now (including a handful I've kept from childhood). I've also got a few old computers stored away; a TI-99/4a, Commodore VIC-20 and C64. The latest games I've bought is Q*Bert for the TI-99 and Castlevania IV for the SNES.

My first console was a Colecovision, a Christmas gift from my aunt in 1983. Later I got the 2600 Expansion Module for it. Sadly I no longer have them. My parents got me an NES in 1986 (which I still have) and later an SNES which eventually turned yellow and stopped working so I no longer have that one anymore. I got an SNES model 2 on ebay a few years ago to replace it. Those were my childhood consoles, but none were the first systems I played. That honor went to my father's Sears model Atari Super Pong IV.

Great selection of consoles there. Nintendo is something I've neglected for a long time and at present, I don't own any official/licensed consoles or hand-helds. I need to work on that.

I have to say, after seeing quite a few versions of Q*Bert over the many years, the TI-99/4a version was one of the better attempts (ATARI though, seriously - what the heck?). I was a bit spoilt with the C64 version, though I remember it taking long enough to watch through a cartoon to load!

 

First console I had growing up was a Grandstand Astro Wars unit. Unfortunately, it decided to mimic a Star Wars pyrotechnic prop device when my Aunt mistakenly plugged the wrong power unit into the back of it.

 

From then on, we had a Commodore C16 & two Commodore C1342 Joysticks. We went through 3 of those over 4 years. FireAnt killed the first two.

After that, I was onto the SEGA Master System II (which I still have). I have two consoles still, one with Sonic The Hedgehog built-in and the other with Alex Kidd in Miracle World. Unfortunately, these units are RF out only, so I don't get to play them these days. Currently I'm in the process of refurbishing them, so I may assemble them this week and take some photos. The Alex Kidd version of the game is different from the cartridge version; the rice cake was changed to a hamburger, the action buttons were reversed and the game credits omitted to make the ROM fit in the SMS BIOS. For Sonic The Hedgehog, they omitted the game credits.

 

[Skyfrog]

First console I had growing up was a

Grandstand Astro Wars

unit. Unfortunately, it decided to mimic a Star Wars pyrotechnic prop device when my Aunt mistakenly plugged the wrong power unit into the back of it.

 

That looks cool; I guess we didn't have those in the US. That reminds me though I did have a Frogger tabletop game (until my cousin broke it).

[Aergan]

Began to really notice that my early (pre-1993) SEGA Mega Drive games sound off-pitch after spending a bit of time on the SEGA Classics Collection for the Xbox 360.

With that in mind, I decided to do something about it.

 

VA4 PAL Mega Drive board. JP1~JP4 control the region and language:

 

I cut traces for JP3 & JP2:

 

Soldered in a standard PIN header:

 

Photo of the rear of the motherboard:

 

Made up a cable from some old PC wires, red braided sleeving and some heat shrink:

 

I didn't have any 3-pole (on-off-on) switches left, so I used another method to incorporate 2x 2-pole switches as a temporary measure (I have some 3-pole switches in the post):

 

As these are just temporary, I'm not going to cut the case:

[Aergan]

Fruits of the labour, Streets of Rage (as Bare Knuckle) running in NTSC (60Hz) & Japanese:

 

Hadn't realised, not only does the game run slower under PAL (50Hz) but that it's also letter-boxed:

 

Compared to glorious full-screen NTSC (60Hz) in English:

 

There is a downside though, my Mega-CD was Mega-not happy about my recent hardware region changes:

 

Rebooting in PAL solves the issue:

 

But interestingly (and hilariously), I can switch to NTSC mid-game and it doesn't give a toss!

[Aergan]

These two arrived in the Post this morning:

 

This afternoon has been spent mostly stealing Viper's weaponry:

 

YEAH!

[+E.Worm Jimmy Subscriber¹]

 

 

 

great game, though i used to play it on 3DO.   it had much better graphics...  but that console was super expensive and was extremely limited in game selection, so this is the one game that i played the most.

looked better then Sega.... but i am sure it is just as fun on mega drive

one of the few other great games for it, that i would love to play again was Gex

EDIT: just realized Gex was out for playstation and it is out on GOG now

gonna get it from GOG and play it today

 

EDIT2:    not going to buy it, people are commenting it does not work with xbox gamepad.   and i am not about to start playing platformers on a keyboard.

gonna play Freedom Planet instead.  a perfect recreation of how mega drive platformers used to feel (mostly a lot like sonic)

[Skyfrog]

Began to really notice that my early (pre-1993) SEGA Mega Drive games sound off-pitch after spending a bit of time on the SEGA Classics Collection for the Xbox 360.

With that in mind, I decided to do something about it.

 

VA4 PAL Mega Drive board. JP1~JP4 control the region and language:

 

I cut traces for JP3 & JP2:

 

Soldered in a standard PIN header:

 

Photo of the rear of the motherboard:

 

Made up a cable from some old PC wires, red braided sleeving and some heat shrink:

 

I didn't have any 3-pole (on-off-on) switches left, so I used another method to incorporate 2x 2-pole switches as a temporary measure (I have some 3-pole switches in the post):

 

As these are just temporary, I'm not going to cut the case:

Interesting mod, while you're at it I would recommend replacing the capacitors. They degrade over time and you end up with poor sound and other issues. When I got my 2600 I had to replace the hex buffer chip and at the same time I replaced all the caps and the voltage regulator. Fixed the controller issue I was having and got a much clearer picture in the end.

[Aergan]

 

great game, though i used to play it on 3DO.   it had much better graphics...  but that console was super expensive and was extremely limited in game selection, so this is the one game that i played the most.

looked better then Sega.... but i am sure it is just as fun on mega drive

one of the few other great games for it, that i would love to play again was Gex

 

EDIT: just realized Gex was out for playstation and it is out on GOG now

gonna get it from GOG and play it today

 

EDIT2:    not going to buy it, people are commenting it does not work with xbox gamepad.   and i am not about to start playing platformers on a keyboard.

gonna play Freedom Planet instead.  a perfect recreation of how mega drive platformers used to feel (mostly a lot like sonic)

Road Rash is mostly about the music and knocking Viper, Slater and Biff, PE No 1 off their bikes.
3DO does look better but then it's from the next generation and came out many years later. It's the same version as was released on the SEGA Saturn, Sony PlayStation & Windows:

 

The SEGA Master System version looks very true to the SEGA Mega Drive version, which I was completely unaware of. I will look into getting that in the future. The Commodore Amiga looks like the best version of that game title though, it's pretty spectacular! The Mega-CD version is a complete and utter disappointment though. I guess that's in-between the two game bases or they outsourced a port of the Saturn version to Gearbox - it's hideous!

 

Interesting mod, while you're at it I would recommend replacing the capacitors. They degrade over time and you end up with poor sound and other issues. When I got my 2600 I had to replace the hex buffer chip and at the same time I replaced all the caps and the voltage regulator. Fixed the controller issue I was having and got a much clearer picture in the end.

Despite it's age (VA4 Jan 1992), it works perfectly, sound is spot on and the board/caps look great and test out OK. I have a VA6 though that's sounding it's death-knell that needs a full cap replacement to do first. The VA6 doesn't output via the A/V port any more, so it's painfully obvious the caps are likely now resistors. I will ensure that I order more caps than I need in-case it's raining and I'm bored. I have another VA6 (possibly a VA6.5) that is working and looks similar inside to my VA4 (different brand of capacitor too).

 

I had a go on Alien Storm earlier to test out NTSC mode. It runs so smoothly now:

 

 

The running section now in fantastic!