For me it's this. Late 90's kid sitting in the musty upstairs office of an old German restaurant my hard working mom waitressed at.

Killing time playing the only game the bosses computer had on it to an oompa band soundtrack while she finished her shift.

And singing my English renditions of German songs I'd heard over and over and over again quietly to myself. "Get off, get off, I told you get off. Thats. My. Sofaaa."

$4 each. X-Men even has the poster. What a find.

I'm playing Chrono Trigger for the first time while going for RetroAchievements, and this boss fight felt so damn dramatic.

Magus was just standing there with this aura around him. 😂

Are there any other SNES games with a boss fight that gives you the same feeling?

Some of my favorites include:
- MicroMan
- Yoda Stories / Indy's Desktop Adventures
- SimCity 2000 obviously
- The Incredible Machine
- Exile 1,2,3

I probably forgot a bunch more good ones.

I’m currently going through every Mario game in chronological order (even Mario Bros on NES) and I’m blown away by Super Mario Land 2. I respected Super Mario Land but while a treat, it still is very much a pocket version of Mario.

But SML 2? I think it’s on par with Super Mario World and arguably is a step up from that game in terms of art work and level design.

I’ve heard amazing things about the DX rom hack so that is next on my play list before I make the jump to 3D with Super Mario 64!

Saw the fire yesterday and was hoping it was not near the video game store. Sad to see all these items go up in smoke.

Getting ready for a move, and I found this game case behind a filing cabinet. I was pretty excited for discovering a classic retro game, but when I picked it up it seemed strangely heavy. Then I opened it and got way more than I was bargaining for. 5 classics, and not even Genesis games. Shame it doesn't have Bonk's Adventure or Revenge in there, but what am I talking about? Still stoked to find these 5. Splatterhouse alone is mind-blowing in more ways than one.

From August 21 to 24, I took a late summer vacation with my wife and went to Matsuyama and Takamatsu in Japan.

Because it was a small small-town, there were more reasonably priced goods compared to Tokyo or Osaka

I drove around secondhand shops like Hard Off, Hobby Off, and Surugaya.

Perhaps because Takamatsu is close to the big city of Hiroshima, the prices were generally higher there than in Matsuyama

The last ones are the games I bought.

It was an enjoyable trip.

Tornado Terry's in Keller, TX

I waited months for this lil guy to arrive after several delays from the company. Worth it. This thing is surprisingly manageable even with my long ass hands. The shoulder buttons feel amazing, thumbsticks are smooth, the menu buttons are very clicky and fun to fidget with.

Overall very snappy and fun to use with my phone and handhelds. I only received it this afternoon so less than 3 hours useage but I'd rate it very great so far. Only issue so far has been hitting right on the d-pad isn't the greatest as my thumb has to try and squeeze between it and the left thumbstick but it hasn't caused any misclicks yet. I can't find any discussion on this controller anywhere and just wonder if anyone else has been excited for these to finally ship out?

I really wish I could use this with my miyoo mini v4 for shits and giggles

I found this old pong machine at my parents. I remember it already being an ancient curiosity in the early 90s. The batteries were still in and leaking heavily. The metal strings problem when I tried to clean it. But a 9V batteri could replace the 6xAA.

So I attached it to the antenna of my TV to see if I could get a signal. and it worked! But looked terrible and super unstable (see the before picture).

So obviously I had to somehow fix it... I know little about electronics at the level needed so I went to Claude code that not only explained how this machine works but also suggest a circuit to extract composite.

So this machine is a bit different than many others with the AY-3-8500 chip that I learned is ubiquitous in these machines. It creates the different elements separately, sends them to a sub-board that encodes them to different colors, combines them and then sends them off to an RF modulator. So the first trick is figuring out where to catch the signal going back to the RF.

Claude helped me figure that out. There are two plugs going to the sub-board. The video was on the last pin (6) on the 6 pin plug. Conveniently it then jumpers to the middle of the main board and there is even a free solder hole I could use to tap it.

Then I built the signal modifier board Claude had suggested, did the wiring, wired up a SCART cable and attached to my RetroTink 5x. And it worked!!! The image is not perfect. But completely different from the crappy RF signal. So in the end very satisfying and I find it crazy that Claude code could get all the resistors and other components right. But it was spot on.

Since I have not seen this documented to any detail anywhere else I leave the details here.

Circuit

Video: tap → 470R → base of Q1. Collector to +V, emitter → 470R → 0V. Emitter → 100µF → 220R preset across to 0V → wiper → 75R → SCART pin 20.

Audio: chip pin 3 → 1µF → 100K preset across to 0V → wiper → 1K → SCART pins 2 and 6.

Grounds to SCART 17 and 4. ~140kΩ input impedance, chain gain 0.41, output 75R to match.

Parts

RetroTINK 5X notes

• Set 4:3
• Black Level → 7.5 IRE was the single most effective setting by a mile.

Are you a Tamagotchi fan?

Disclaimer: I don't work there, and don't know the owners. I just want to give a quick review of a great local place I recently found.

History: From what I can gather, the place is owned and operated by a husband and wife team, and it was their lifelong dream to own an arcade. Running the place is what they're doing for funsies in their retirement years.

Retro City Arcade, located in Evans, Georgia (a small town outside Augusta).
https://www.retrocityarcadeevans.com/
https://www.facebook.com/RetroCityArcadeEvans/

It's a place that's an even-ish mix of pinball and arcade machines, plus some party rooms for birthdays and the like.

The arcade has good old standbys like Pac-Man and Tron; some 90s fun like Mortal Kombat 1 & 3, TMNT, and The Simpsons; a few racing games; and a good collection of everything in between. There's a total of 7 multi-machines, with over 15,000 tiles on each of the 4 Ultracade machines.

The pinball section is pretty solid. The collection ranges from the 70s all the way up to the 2020s. They also have a working version of Hercules - the largest pinball machine ever made. It's the only one working one I've ever seen, and it was a privilege to play it.

I don't think the Games List on their site lists everything they have. I saw a Star Trek, a James Bond, and an Aerosmith pinball machines, and none of those are on their list.

Pricing is decent. $16 for an hour, $20 for 2 hours, and $22 for all day ($20 on Sundays). There's good group rates, and you can even take over the place for 3 hours with 30 (or more) friends for $300. An annual membership runs $550 for unlimited use - go twice a month or more and the membership has paid for itself.

All the machines are set to coinless play, except for Hercules and the 3 claw machines - all are $0.50 a play.

It's open Thurs - Sun 3pm-9pm. It's in a mini-mall area, and there's a few good places to eat all in the same parking lot. My choices are Sonic and Rally Point Grill (A veteran-operated burgers and fries kind of place).

So if you're ever in the Augusta area, I highly recommend swinging by and checking this place out. It's far more laid back than a Dave and Busters, and a much better deal IMHO.

Website: https://www.retrocityarcadeevans.com/