Virtual Console

I finally broke down and bought some Wii Virtual Console games:

* Sonic the Hedgehog 2: I have this cart for the Genesis but it only works about 20% of the time. Now I can play without worrying about it freezing up! And I don’t have to play the whole game in one sitting, since the Wii saves the game state when you return to the home screen.

* Toejam & Earl: Panic on Funkatron: We had this for the Genesis a long time ago, it was pretty fun. Carly is still mad I sold the original cartridge years ago.

* Dragon’s Curse: This is the TurboGrafix 16 sequel to Wonderboy in Monsterworld which Jay and played on the Genesis a few years back.

* The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: We were a SEGA house growing up, so I didn’t get to play this on the SNES. I’ve attempted to play it on emulators a few times but it’s always a hassle. Maybe I’ll actually stick with it on the Wii.

Wiinii

We had our first Wii-related injury last night — Brian was standing too close behind me while I was playing Wii bowling, and I ended up hitting him in the nuts with the controller.

He learned the hard way not to stand behind people that are bowling 😛

I feel like

Woah! DreamZZT and FrotzDC are mentioned in the O’Reilly book Gaming Hacks: 100 Industrial Strength Tips & Tools by Simon Carless. Apparently it was published in 2004, but I had no idea it existed until a random google search turned up the index from the book. Anyone know where I can track down a copy? I’m curious to see what it says, but I’m not about to pay $30 for it 😛

Party like it’s 1989

I scored two VFD-based handheld games from eBay:

The first one is Galaxy II by Epoch, which I had back in New Zealand under a different name (Astro Wars by Grandstand):

Galaxy II

Below is a picture of the game display. The VFDs really confuse the auto-focus on my camera:

Galaxy II Screenshot

The game is a typical shooter, you control the green “ship” at the bottom of the screen and shoot at the aliens above. There are three levels where the enemies move in different patterns, followed by a fourth bonus level where you try to land your ship on a moving platform. The levels keep repeating until you run out of lives.

The other game I got is Invader from Space:

Invaders from Space

The gameplay is similar to Space Invaders where you lose the game if the enemies reach the ground.

Buggy Bubble Bobble

Looks like Bubble Bobble Revolution for the DS was released with a serious bug: the boss for level 30 never appears. I’ve noticed a similar bug in the wifi multiplayer mode, a lot of the multiplayer levels wouldn’t spawn any enemies. Good job codemasters! I guess I’ll have to wait 8 – 10 weeks for a replacement cartridge, though I haven’t managed to get past the first boss yet anyway, the new age version of the game is hard! At least there’s the classic version to play in the meantime.

Glasses, glasses!

So I’m playing brain age, and it asks me to draw some pictures. One of the things it asked for was a firetruck, so I drew one. After it’s done it shows you “actual” pictures to compare with, and it shows the firetruck and says “Focus on the ladder on the top” — but the truck I drew had the ladder on the side! 🙁

And the weird thing is my sister did the same thing. Though, her truck was facing left, and mine was facing right.

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I solved my first Sudoku puzzle today. It was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Thanks, Brain Age!