“Get Pocket Power!”

I scored my first Neo Geo Pocket Color (NGPC) along with Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure and SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium for my birthday in 1999. It was an amazing little machine — in my opinion, the only US market competitor that stood a chance against the Game Boy in the long run.

SNK clearly studied Nintendo’s winning handheld strategy and succeeded where previous Game Boy competitors failed by keeping the Neo Geo Pocket Color’s technical specifications minimal and omitting a backlight, allowing for low retail cost and long battery life.

The NGPC even sported an innovative and satisfyingly clicky thumb stick that in some ways surpassed the traditional D-pad in functionality. Still, SNK couldn’t keep up with Nintendo’s first party franchises and voluminous third party support, and the NGPC died on the vine, never to realize its full potential.

Along with the Sega Dreamcast, the NGPG lives on in gamer memory as one of those rare consoles that failed due to commercial reasons alone, not technical ones. The NGPC hardware is currently cheap and plentiful, so if you don’t have one, I highly recommend picking up a unit and a handful of games.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What are your favorite Neo Geo Pocket Color Games? What game you think was best, over all, for the system?

“You are the weapon!”

I was a big fan of the original NES Renegade back in the day, but I seem to recall the sequel, Target: Renegade, being a major letdown. Did anyone out there actually like it?

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite Taito game of all time?

“The Blue Bomber takes to the road…”

By the way, I’ve been posting a Retro Scan of the Week every week now for four years straight. It kinda blows my mind. That’s over 200 scans. Is there anything left to scan? You bet.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the best Mario Kart clone of all time?

Meanwhile, the cover remained a one-fist affair.

I love Ultima VI, so it’s excellent that Origin made two spin-off games using the same engine. I’ve played Martian Dreams, the other Worlds of Ultima game, but never The Savage Empire. Is anybody out there a fan?

Discussion Topic of the Week: Which is best: The Savage Empire or Martian Dreams?

Click above to see the full advertisement.

Ten years ago, InterAct began advertising this obscure online attachment for the Nintendo 64 called “Sharkwire Online.” I personally don’t know much about the device or how it was supposed to work beyond what Wikipedia and IGN have to say about it.

That is, it appears the Sharkwire was a dial-up modem that plugged into a N64 and allowed game console owners to access an ISP of sorts, through which they could download the latest cheats and codes to their Sharkwire units, which would then function, I presume, like the more common InterAct GameShark peripheral.

This whole setup seems like an overly elaborate Rube Goldberg way of cheating at games, so it’s no surprise that the Sharkwire Online quickly faded into oblivion. I didn’t remember it at all when I came across this ad in EGM the other day; not only did I pore over each issue of that magazine religiously throughout its entire run, but I usually took specific note of any online-related accessories.

Did anybody out there have one of these? Would you care to fill us in on what exactly it did from a user’s perspective? Did it do it well?

Happy 2010

As a side note, it’s now 2010, which, thanks to my longstanding but completely arbitrary “vintage” guideline, means that the year 2000 now opens to us as a source of VC&G material.

History marches on, and what was once new continuously slides away from us until it crosses into the realm of obsolete curiosity. Funny enough, in a time when a five year-old cell phone seems like it was from the stone age, ten years is beginning to feel like a conservative figure. Still, it’s always a minor shock to see what becomes the nouveau vintage every year.

Discussion Topic of the Week: How do you feel about “cheating” at video games with devices like the GameShark, Pro Action Replay, and the Game Genie? Is it a good or bad thing?

Last Sunday, PC World published my last slideshow of the year, The Ghosts of Christmas Games Past. It examines twelve retro Christmas video/computer games from the dawn of time right up to ten years before the present.

Sorry I didn’t tell you guys about the article earlier this week; it slipped past me and I didn’t know it was up yet.

Once again, Merry Christmas!

“No more Mr. Ice Guy.”

It looks like Kickle Cubicle visited much of the Eastern U.S. coast over the weekend with a nasty snowstorm; hope you guys are digging out all right. Here in NC, some of us lucked out with a light dusting and a lot of rain.

Kickle Cubicle itself is a fun, Lolo-esque NES puzzler with a silly name that hints at both kicking and modular office partitions (thankfully, cubicles do not actually appear in the game). If you run across it, I highly recommend picking it up.

Merry Christmas from VC&G!

Discussion Topic of the Week: It’s Santa time once again. If you could magically (and freely) have any one item for your classic computer or video game collection, what would it be?

My latest PC World article celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Milton-Bradley Microvision with a look back at handheld game systems of the past. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

Thirty years ago this fall, Milton Bradley released the world’s first handheld video game system with interchangeable cartridges, the Microvision. Prior to 1979, handheld electronic games were stuck with one predetermined game (or set of games) per unit. After the Nintendo Game Boy debuted a decade later, the market for cartridge-based handheld devices exploded, inspiring hardware vendors both prominent and obscure to release gadgets for playing multiple games on the go.

I spent quite a bit of time hand-crafting the slides (and writing the text, of course), so I think it’s one of my better slide shows. I hope you enjoy it.

As a side note, the anniversary of the Microvisions’s release was actually last month (November 2009), but due to delays in PC World’s publishing schedule, my article was pushed back until now.

The Euro-American family in its native habitat.

Just in time for Thanksgiving — and the ritual practice of family togetherness — comes this wonderful vintage photo from the back of the NES Action Set box. In it, we see a four-person white American nuclear family utterly consumed by a game of Super Mario Bros.

This scene looks nice at first glance, but imagine having to play through a whole game with mom and dad hanging off of your shoulders.

“Hey son.”

(Father gets in close, whispering into son’s ear.)

“Want to play some Super Mario Brothers?”

“I’m already playing, Dad.”

(Father squeezes son’s shoulder tighter.)

“My uncle’s name is Mario.”

Luckily, the scenario I’ve concocted above appears nowhere on the box. Still, a few amusing things about this photo jump out at me:

• Mario is gleefully flying to his death.
• The family apparently owns two copies of Super Mario Bros. because one is on the table, and they’re playing one in the NES.
• The two kids are both playing a one player game at the same time. Or maybe the older brother (player 1) on the right is screwing up the little brother’s game by hitting pause at random intervals.
• The mother and the son on the right aren’t looking at the TV set. Actually, I don’t think any of them are.

I’ve included an extra-large scan this time (when you click on the image), so you might be able to turn it into a desktop background.

For more vintage family madness, check out my latest slideshow on Technologizer.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever played a video game with your entire immediate family rapturously engaged in the action on screen?

Remember the PowerPak — that wondrous device from RetroZone that allowed you to cram every NES game ever made into one cartridge? Well, two years later, RetroZone has released its follow-up, the SNES PowerPak for the Super NES.

Well, they’ve kinda released it. Sales appear to temporarily be on hold in order to “investigate system compatibility,” according to the RetroZone website.

For those unfamiliar with the original PowerPak concept, the SNES PowerPak allows one to copy SNES ROM files onto a compact flash card, place the card into the SNES PowerPak cartridge, and then play those games on a real Super NES unit. It supports multiple games through on-screen menu selection.

More Info to Come

When I stumbled across the new SNES PowerPak today, I initially felt like jealously hoarding the knowledge so I’ll have less competitors when I try to get my hands on one of these magical devices.

But then I realized that I have a responsibility to let you guys know about this, since so few sites out there cover the world of Nintendo hacking and modding — and especially since the proprietor of RetroZone doesn’t make much effort to get the word out.

Whenever I get one, I’ll write a review for VC&G. Until then, you can drool over it like me at the RetroZone site.