baphoon

I remember being on waiting lists at our local Family Video and Pony Express Videos for games. Mega Man 3 was definitely a step above for graphics and sound. My favorite in the series had to be Mega Man 2 I have played through that game probably 200 times and still continue to play it. I still find the first Mega Man to be the most difficult of the series. Did you ever play Mega Man the Wily Wars? It was only available on cart in Japan or through Sega's online service for Genesis called the Sega Channel. It in my opinion was a terrible remake of Mega Man 1-3. The timing was completely off it felt like playing the game in slow motion mostly due to the time between blaster shots being way to slow. The graphics were nice but I just could not get over the timing it was a serious game breaker for me.

Mega Man my all time top favorite game series (hence my profile pic). I remember the Friday I booted up to Mega Man 3 I almost exploded I remember the first level I played Snake Man! You and I could have been best friends as kids lol.

Your childhood sounds much like mine. When I was younger I would say 8 years old I would come home from school on Friday to a 10.00 bill and a trip to either McDonalds or Hardees (Carl Jr's). The 10.00 would rent 2 NES games from Friday to Sunday. Many times I would have beaten a game by Saturday and the guy at the local video store then called Movie Time Video would let me swap it for something else till Sunday. After awhile he quit doing that because he claims he was loosing to much money on me lol. Once my sister got a job at 16 I quit renting games because every Friday I would come home and hit power on the NES and it would already have a brand new game loaded up for me to play. I was a bit spoiled as a kid by my sister she continued this tradition well into the SNES beginning years also.

Figured I would start this topic to see who else appreciated envelope art in the 90's and to see if anyone else has any old envelope art they created that they would like to share with everyone. Yesterday one of my very old and best friends sent me a text just saying "as requested" I then replied with a what? He sent me a picture of a letter I mailed him in 1993. I live in IL and always have he also did until about 1992 he moved to FL a few years later he ended up moving back to IL. While he was there we would write back and forth and I would always send him envelope art. In this particular letter I wrote "How do you like the envelope? I drew it myself. Please save it." I was 14 then now I'm 37. He actually saved the letter and envelope he said it was sealed in plastic and put away in a box all these years and he found it a few days ago. Here is what the envelope looked like I smeared out the old address for apparent reasons on the photo. If you have any envelope art or childhood stories regarding envelope art please feel free to share I would love to see it.

Primal Rage 2 actually exists there is a arcade here in Illinois I have yet to visit its about 4 hours away from me. I need to play a trip soon to check it out. Here is an article about it if you want to take a look http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/23/5834750/primal-rage-2-arcade-video I believe you can get it also in MAME however I don't think it plays very well from what I remember.

Great picks! I loved Suikoden the theme music to the intro video I used to let it just play in a loop. Still to this day gives me chills.

Yes old school wrestling was the best. All the rivalries and wrestlers swapping from WWF to WCW. I have recently been playing some of the newer games WWE2K15 & 16 they just don't feel the same as the old N64 games man I loved those games. In HS my two best friends and I would always get together on Monday nights my mom would order us pizza and we would watch Monday Night Nitro afterwords we would play WCW NWO World Tour for hours and all end up exhausted at school the next day. We would then repeat the process on Thursdays for WCW Thursday Night Thunder on TBS. On weekends we would play Mario Kart and Mario Party. Ah the memories great times makes me miss them life was so much easier then. And yes Kid Icarus was bad but I have to laugh more and Mega Man and his awful voice what were they thinking? MEGA HI!!!

I love the monkey island series. I prefer the old point and click adventures I felt like the TellTale Monkey Island (Tales of Monkey Island) was just not as good. The story was okay and the puzzles were ok but I feel like it just lacked the overall charm that the older games had.

I only have two hands I just couldn't talk my wife into letting me have the bionic arm implant even though it would well benefit her too lol. I usually pick about 10 games per month or two to rotate and play through. This is the only way I have been able to stick with certain games long enough to complete them and clear out some of my back log. I have a bit of an addiction buying games when I see them on sale and never really playing them. I try to justify it by saying I am a collector but again my wife would disagree lol.

I read it all the time. It honestly was my favorite gaming magazine. I used to send in envelope art on a monthly basis just hoping it would show up in a new issue. I started buying them at the local grocery store I did that for about a year then finally realized how much I could save by just subscribing. I did that for about 4 years. I kick myself now however because I had all of those magazines boxed up and ended up throwing them all out in a move because I needed the space. At the time of the move I also gave away my Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguar, and Nintendo VirtuaBoy which I also kick myself for now because my nephews literally destroyed all of those consoles.

This cartoon always brings back memories of being a kid. This one reminds me of junior high These completely remind me of my high school years

My current rotation... PS4: Witcher 3, Batman Arkham Knight XB1: Elder Scrolls Online, Mega Man Collection, Just Cause 3 XB360: Deus Ex Human Revolution, South Park Stick of Truth PS3: Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix, Mass Effect PS Vita: Final Fantasy X, Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky (PSP) 3DS: Yo-Kai Watch

Great article. It's funny though when I replay old NES games how much easier they seem now compared to playing them when I was 8 years old. Many games that just seemed impossible then are now not easy but I can actually complete them. I really struggled with Faxanadu on NES as a kid I replayed that last year still challenging to a point but was able to finish it. It's the exact opposite with more modern games for me especially FPS shooters. Back in like 2000 I was extremely good at them and now I am sub par if not terrible at many of them. I don't know if its age or just the fact that there are so many people just really good at them since they started hitting the console market.

Dragonfire! I loved Dragonfire! It was so simple and repetitive but I used to put hours on that game as a kid. My second would have been Kaboom and third Barnstorming.

I have the same problem with Steam my backlog is terrible. 287 games of which I have played about 60 of them between Steam sales, Humble Bundles, and Bundle Stars deals I can't pass up the dirt cheap prices.

I recently picked up a Playstation TV / Vita TV on clearance at GameStop for 60 bucks. It came with a DS3 and Lego Movie game so it was a decent deal. I use it to play a few of my Vita games like Sword Art Online, One Piece, Freedom Wars ect. It does a ok job with PSP games some of them the text can be really muddy and hard to read. One nice thing is I can just swap my memory card from the Vita to the PSTV and it works perfect so all of my game saves are there without using the cloud. My cloud storage is always full from the PS4.

Well said. I do agree there is something soothing about grinding. Many times at night when I can't sleep I will grab a handheld and grind a bit on a RPG it helps me turn my brain off and finally get to sleep. As a bonus the next day if I play I am ahead of the game. I also enjoy grinding while like watching a tv show or movie on Netflix its a great way to multitask and catch up on shows that I am behind on. I can remember playing vanilla WoW many years ago (have not played in 5+ years) my first character a hunter I actually did very minimal questing and not a single dungeon and I ground my way all the way to 50 which was max level if I remember right at the time. I ended up with a ton of money, items, and crafting skill doing it that way.

I don't think having a choice is a bad thing. I think when giving the option that completely changes the way the game is structured to be played is put in place it ruins the game. Again this is just my opinion and I am here to see what others think so I appreciate you're response. These options to me would be similar to say using a Game Genie or cheat code device. Sure it can be short term fun, humorous, and tempting but it butchers the way the game is intended to be played and in turn usually ruins the longevity and replay value of a title. I feel like the whole natural progression of the game is being rushed through by implementing an in game cheat option.

No worries my 6 year old son plays enough Minecraft and Terraria to keep them both around for a very long time lol.

Ctophil great post. It's nice to see someone who appreciates old style RPG's. Great recommendations too in your post a few I have played and a few I will need to check out. I think you are completely right with the Final Fantasy series it's just gone way to far off of where it used to be. In my opinion and I usually get burned for this but Final Fantasy VI aka III was the best game in the series. I have re played it more times than I can count on both hands and feet and easily many more times than dare I say it Final Fantasy VII. I sometimes often wonder if Square and Enix had not merged how many more classic RPG like titles we could have ended up with. Enix made some great games in their time too not all the typical turn based RPG but still great games like Dragon Warrior, Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, ActRaiser, to name a few.

My opinion most of the modern games now do not hold the interest that the classic retro games do. I know there are good titles still being released but I don't foresee myself 10 years from now saying "Man I am really in the mood for some Gears of War or Little Big Planet". I still to this day can say I really want to play some Super Metroid or Little Nemo the Dream Master (one of my all time favorite NES titles). Personally for me I don't consider anything Playstation 1 or newer as being Retro (I am 37 years young). Once 3D really hit mainstream consoles it quit being retro to me. I remember the first time I played Tekken I hated it I could not stand the 3D I was upset that it didn't play like Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat.

At least a few times a week or used to. I picked up a Retron thinking it would solve many of my issues with well mostly the non existent space on my desk. The Retron ended up having a death grip Sega Genesis and NES slot so I returned it. I mostly use my modded Wii now to play retro games and have the consoles and carts boxed up in the closet. The only consistent consoles connected are PS4, PS3, XB1, Wii, and PC (not a console but a game machine none the less).

I normally take the carts apart and use 90% isopropyl alcohol on a q tip and go over each sides contacts a few times. When I get stubborn carts off eBay that clearly were not taken care of I wipe them down with the alcohol first to loosen up the crud then lightly go over the contacts with a soft pencil eraser going along the length of the contacts not the width. Then another once over with the alcohol to shine them up usually always does the trick. For the console slots I wrap light paper over the end of a credit card moisten it with the alcohol and gently insert it and remove it a few times until no more black shows up on the white paper.

I play 3DS, PS Vita, and Nvidia Shield. I play my Vita more than the others for all the RPGs and Trophy support. I think Vita gets a bad reputation mostly because of Sony they honestly gave up on it too soon. Its a powerful handheld with poor support.