January 19, 2012
I recently received a sizable lot of games from a seller who apparently had a penchant for game shows and board games. I find that entering game show licenses into the database always poses a challenge as there tend to be many titles with the same name but for different video gaming generation. See Wheel of Fortune licensees and Jeopardy licensees. Indeed, this batch of games appears to contain 2 distinct versions of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
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Aha! So I’m not the only person interested in collecting CD-ROMs from breakfast cereal boxes. Check out all of the General Mills discs in this collection:
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Part 1 of the balance, several quiz games in keeping with the game show theme:
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And part 2:
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Posted by Multimedia Mike under Acquisitions | Comments (5)
January 16, 2012
I remember seeing this image a long time ago:
The reason I bring this up is because of 2 recent acquisitions: Hello Kitty Online and a Warhammer 40,000 game, forming just the right cohesion:
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Not only is it Hello Kitty Online (which is a free-to-play game anyway), but this is the Premium Edition! You know it has to be special.
The Warhammer 40K Game is Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Retribution. I know this is awfully current by my standards. But I have a good excuse– I got this (new) and a new copy of Dungeon Siege III at a charity auction during the Christmas season.
2 boxed games:
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CyberMage: Darklight Awakening received an EA CD-ROM Classics edition release. That makes it sound like a big deal, though I had never heard of it before I picked it up at the thrift shop. Then there is Rescue Heroes: Mission Select– I’m determined to single-handedly get the entire Rescue Heroes series into MobyGames.
One of these games is not like the other:
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Fate: The Cursed King is a very recent game (copyright 2011). It prominently gloats that it has 10 million fans (on Facebook). Further, it features some kind of Facebook integration, something I haven’t seen for a boxed game (not that I purchase very many recent ones).
The other 2 games are Beyond Pearl Harbor: Pacific Warriors and Amazing Animals.
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- Beyond Divinity: Looks cool, but like all games that look cool, is already well-represented in the database.
- Great Adventures by Fisher-Price: Castle
- Hardwar: I picked this up at the thrift shop today; too bad they only had the second disc.
- Pinball Science: Ideally, this disc has a functional pinball game or 2.
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- Monopoly Casino: Monopoly-themed casino games; the jewel case copy also encourages you to seek out Monopoly-themed gambling games in real-world casinos.
- Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego: CD-ROM edition; I always wonder if these games are playable without the physical material that usually supplemented them (I remember the floppy version of Where in Time… came with a desktop encyclopedia).
- Peter’s Numbers Adventure: sounds like a delightfully banal educational title.
- Mega Bloks Dragons and Mega Bloks Dragons: Metal Ages: Not sure what Mega Bloks is, but the site has tie-ins with properties as diverse as Halo and Hello Kitty.
- Scooby-Doo and the Toon Tour of Mysteries (disc 4 in a series): I wanted to get this because I have some other series of Scooby-Doo discs that I wished to complete. However, this seems to be a video DVD that also has a Flash-based game on the DVD-ROM portion. So it’s not in the same series as other games I have looked at.
Posted by Multimedia Mike under Acquisitions | Comments (2)
January 6, 2012
Look what I found in the trash– seriously, someone was just throwing it away:
A perfectly good, original Microsoft Xbox, complete with an original massive controller. At least, I assumed that it was working. It didn’t have a power cable or A/V connector. But a quick browse at Amazon and US$10 remedied that problem and I was able to certify that it works fine.
I’ve never owned or really even played any Xbox stuff (1st gen or 360). But I’m free to accumulate games now (as long as they’re free or sufficiently cheap, as per my policy). The only Xbox disc I had handy for testing was a demo disc that came with an Xbox magazine I bought many years ago, when I was just studying random optical media for fun.
The stories of the gargantuan original Xbox controller certainly were no exaggeration. I’m ordering up one of the smaller ones ASAP. The Xbox console itself is quite the beast as well– I fear I’ll hurt my back just carting it about.
Posted by Multimedia Mike under Acquisitions | Comments (0)
December 29, 2011
I feel terribly embarrassed. I bought the wrong high-tech Christmas present for someone. Here’s how it happened:
2 years ago, I handed down my old Nintendo GameCube to some relatives and they have been enjoying it quite a lot. I got them Super Smash Bros. Melee as well as 4 GameCube controllers.
In the weeks before Christmas, these same relatives mentioned that they would enjoy having a Nintendo Wii along with Just Dance 3. Lo and behold, I happened to see exactly what they wanted in the store– a bundle that included the Wii and Just Dance 3, and it seemed fairly inexpensive (the whole bundle cost less than I had been seeing regular Wii consoles go for). Since they liked Melee, I also got them Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Since the Wii sports backward compatibility with the GameCube and has ports for 4 GC controllers, they’ll have all kinds of 4-player fun.
What Went Wrong?
All told, things went pretty well. They were surprised to see the Wii and associated games on Christmas morning and have been getting plenty of use out of them. However, when I visited a few days later to see how things were going, they reported that the Wii didn’t have ports for the old GameCube controllers.
Wait, what?
It turns out that what I purchased was not the original Wii but apparently a newer version called the Wii Family Edition. It looks like this:
It sacrifices GameCube backward compatibility, both in software as well as controller ports. It only has USB ports now.
Oh well, they can still enjoy the old GameCube and the new Wii separately. I was just disappointed that they won’t be able to play multiplayer Brawl until they get some more Wii controllers. Moreover, I felt terribly embarrassed that I am not up to date on current video game technology, particularly Nintendo’s offerings, after being a hardcore Nintendo nerd during my teenage years.
All in all, I can’t fault Nintendo for this move. This is a standard type of cost reduction method. The Wii is 5 years old now and has more than enough of its own software that it doesn’t need to draw from the pool of last generation games to expand on its offerings (it still has Virtual Console for the really old stuff, too). This also reminds me of the top-loading 8-bit NES (for which I paid US$99, used)– that had the interesting cost reduction measure of removing the composite A/V output meaning that you absolutely had to use RF to connect to a TV. Not great, but the console was rock-solid otherwise.
Curiously, the top Amazon search for Nintendo Wii (“Wii Black Console with New Super Mario Brothers Wii and Music CD”) is a new-style Wii yet the features still list GameCube compatibility. No, wait– on closer inspection, the “Product Features” bullet list states, “Nintendo GameCube software and accessories are not supported”, while further down, the same page has an outdated Amazon.com product description table comparing the current generation consoles. This table features the old Wii and the old capabilities.
Oops.
Posted by Multimedia Mike under The Big Picture | Comments (0)
September 30, 2011
I acquired a space-themed game, a 1993 space-themed CD-ROM title called Space Adventure:
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Oh, and I also acquired a somewhat more recent and mainstream space-themed game– StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty.
It’s pretty difficult to work through any of my 900+ DOS/Windows games (including the 200+ games not currently present in the database) when I’m just having too much fun playing SC2. It leaves me feeling like a bit of a sellout. It’s just so mainstream. I know all about the controversy surrounding the game — can’t play, even single-player campaign, without being connected to the internet; no LAN play — but I haven’t been able to bring myself to care. I’m really enjoying a game for the first time in quite awhile. If I ever finish the primary campaign, I might be motivated to plunder my archives for other real time strategy games I have acquired (perhaps revisiting some of the titles I have already briefly examined for this blog or recently acquired. But given the ponderous rate at which I’m playing through the Wings of Liberty campaign (really taking my time and getting all the achievements on each mission), the new SC2 expansions might be out by the time I get through the main 24 missions.
Well, back to it.
Posted by Multimedia Mike under Acquisitions | Comments (1)
September 27, 2011
I recently acquired a sizable collection of computer games from someone who clearly is or was very enthusiastic about war-themed video games. War games are popular among the type of people who would normally contribute to an entity such as MobyGames. As such, all of these acquisitions are already in the database (though I do have a lot of scanning ahead of me since scans of many of the CD-ROMs I acquired didn’t make it into the database).
I’ll start with some World War II-themed titles:
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Flight games, notably Jane’s Combat Simulations:
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Uncategorized war games:
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And a few stragglers that don’t really fit into the (modern, 20th centry) genre of war game:
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Posted by Multimedia Mike under Acquisitions | Comments (2)
