Retro Gaming Australia

More backlog smashing this week saw the last of my NES backlog put to rest. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is a lot better than I expected, and can be really tricky – that trip to the final dungeon caused much in the way of cussing and hair loss. I’ve still got 17 more systems to clear out, and it doesn’t help that I keep finding Dreamcast games that were left off the core list. I’ll never beat everything that we own, but I’m gonna get my money’s worth out of each and every game.

Check Out: The PAL PS1 Collective

One problem of the online retro gaming scene is that the vast majority of content is written with the American market in mind – nobody really worries too much about PAL or NTSC-J collectors. Knowing this, Defcon and AtariBuff, two of the biggest PlayStation collectors in Europe, pooled their resources together to create a database cataloguing all they know about the PlayStation in PAL regions. There’s information about every game, variants, special editions, region exclusive releases and stuff that only collector types will really care about. It should definitely be your first point of call for any questions regarding PAL PlayStation.

Enemy Zero Special Edition Crate at GameSniped

Those of you who know me well (which is probably 90% of the current reader base) know that I’m a total sucker for special, collectors and limited editions. Often I’m disappointed by the cheap crap that many publishers include with their special editions, as usually it fails to justify the price. GameSniped featured this little doozy on their site this week. That’s what I call a special edition – sure, it cost a shitload of money and Enemy Zero is a terrible game, but it had a buttload of stuff, and came in a goddamn crate personally delivered to you by the game’s producer.

Nintendo World Championships – No Reserve Auction at GameSniped

I won’t link directly to the auction, cos I get frigging annoyed when I read old posts with dead eBay links, but there’s one of the grey NWC carts on eBay. So if you’ve got a spare $6K and a burning desire for a piece of US NES history, here’s your opportunity.

1993 US Senate Committee Hearings on Video Game Violence at C-SPAN (via 1UP Retro)

Ah, politicians and video games. Here we have the hearings that sought to villify the games industry and make out like all of us children at the time were being transformed into murderers by Night Trap and Mortal Kombat. Clearly nobody in the hearing had any idea what was involved in Night Trap.

Sonic Jam for Game.Com at Sega-16

For reasons unknown (but likely money related) Sega licensed Sonic the Hedgehog to Tiger Electronics for this utterly terrible “port” of Sonic Jam to the Game.Com. It didn’t end well.

Fallout Extreme (Xbox), Hitman: Blood Money Beta (PS2, Xbox), World Rally (Mega-CD), GoldenEye: Rogue Agent Beta (PS2, Xbox, GCN), Lobo (N64), I-Ninja (GBA) at Unseen64

Kind of a dull week at Unseen64, but the short article on Fallout Extreme merits reading. Interplay really had no clue what to do with that series.

This Week’s Virtual Console Release: Milon’s Secret Castle (NES) and Castlevania X: Rondo of Blood (PCE-CD)

At last, the masses can play the one of the greatest Castlevania games in Rondo of Blood. Nintendo appears to have stopped listing the points cost of these games, but I understand Rondo is 900 Nintendo Points. Well worth the cost – hopefully this has some sort of flow on effect and I can finally nab an original copy of the game for under $150.

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