Dr. Morbis

I'm also getting it 100% "fa' sho." I think it's awesome that they're releasing it as a Game & Watch.

You're right - I remembered there being something very different about this particular localization from an article I read on the net a few years ago, and I thought it was a reverse localization, but now you made me go and look it up! So the interesting thing about the Power Blade localization is that it was a complete redesign of the original game by a US employee at Taito America by the name of Randy Studdard, who just so happens to be the former Nintendo employee who created the Captain N / Captain Nintendo character originally for Nintendo Power. Of course Taito, being a big famous Japanese game developer, did not exactly want to advertise that some random white dude in America had single-handedly taken their game and made it way better, and so this is why it's so difficult to find any credits for this game other than for the music composer (Kinuyo Yamashita), since the music was never changed.

That's backwards: it was developed over here and then reskinned to be less realistic and more cartoony to cater to the Japanese market.

Speaking of Zelda games, mine is: I don't like Breath of the Wild at all... it is SOOOOOOOO tedious! You can't just find a sword and start killing monsters; you can't just find a bow and arrow and start shooting things; you can't just find a life potion and recover your health; and on and on and on. Every single frickin' thing you want to do in this game takes 400 prerequesites, and then whatever your resulting item or event is will have limited use, at which point you'll have to start your hunting and gathering all over again. To be fair, I've only played about 5 hours in, but barring a massively abrupt change in game dynamics at the 6 hour mark, I'm going to assume the entire game is like this and will quite happily never go near this game again. It just feels too much like work. Remember when Zelda games used to spot you a sword, a shield and a tunic right off the bat? Ahhhhh.... good times, good times....

There IS a logical explanation: they are owned by GoCollect, a douche (or number of douches) trying to use game collecting as a new speculative market to bank some major coin...

They look cool, but why doesn't Mr. LOL have a D-Pad eye like every single other reactionary................?

eBay sends you a message with all of their erroneous information. I joined in 2000 but it said my first purchase was in late 2001; man, by that point I was already at like 40 feedbacks from buying so much stuff. They were wrong on my first item sold too, so I don't think they started saving auction info until the early 2000's. They did add a disclaimer in the message that the info wasn't right but was "close enough." What I liked more than the info was the pie charts of what types of items I've bought and sold over the years. Anyway, thanks eBay! Here's to another twenty years....

I was hoping to play on an AV Famicom to take advantage of the 163 sound. As for the pcb size, is it a width problem or length problem for fitting the pcb back in the shell? I'd have to test, but maybe a Famicom basic cartridge or one of the larger Koei's or, even better, one of the Famitsa games that has the larger Namco case since all those baseball games are dirt cheap. Anyway, I'll shoot you a message...

Huge thanks for the info! I was actually just coming back to this thread to post that I've spent the whole evening opening up ALL my Namco 163 famicom carts and like 95% are glob tops. The closest I've got is the same 111F0 donor you have pictured that has the battery but no RAM. It came from a Kaijuu Monogatari, which is almost always glob tops, but I finally got lucky. Though, after seeing your pictures, turning my 111F0 cart into what you've developed looks like a massive undertaking. So, two questions: one, have you tested the Pac-Man CE on your proof of concept cart pictured and come up with positive results? And two, would you build one of those pcb's for me (assuming Pac-Man CE works) and charge me whatever you feel is fair for your time and effort and research plus whatever profit you want to make? I can send you my Kaijuu Monogatari cart, if that would help...

I'll put my vote on Police Academy by Tengen for NES. I remember reading an interview with a Tengen staffer years ago where he mentioned that the game was completely done to the point of being boxed, shrinkwrapped and loaded up on pallets when the order came down to field destroy them all. Of course odds are highly in favour of them actually being destroyed at that time, but all it would've taken is for some lazy warehouse worker to be more focused on going home early for the weekend or whatever and then driving the skid into the back corner of the warehouse where it's out of the way until he could deal with it later...

Okay, it turns out it's two 128k files for chr and prg when I split the ROM so I'm going to order two 27C010 chips and throw this all together into whichever of those compatible Namco 163 games has a battery to back-up SRAM. My hope is that whoever coded Pac-Man CE set it up so that your high scores and unlocked achievements would be backed up to SRAM even after power down. I'll report back in a couple of weeks (whenever the chips arrive) and let you know how it went. Thanks again for your help

Those are aftermarket cases or reproductions or re-purposed cases of common games with a new sticker on the spine. There were 94 games released for the US TG16 (not including the two system cards), of which 73 came with a jewel case, and 21 came with a box, clear plastic tray and a sleeve - no jewel case included.

Cool, these are all really interesting. Keep up the good work!

It's not a hack; it's a "port" of a game from a different system done years ago that's finally been released A hack is someone taking an NES game already released and altering it in some way, like giving Mario an afro or designing new levels and graphics for Castlevania for the umpteenth time... Download the ROM and boot it up in your emulator and you'll be having a blast in no time! But some of those games have 4 channel sound and some are 8 channel. Does that matter? Okay, since the ROM is 256k, does that mean I need two chips that will hold 128k each? And if so, would two 27C010 chips suffice? Because I've used those before and could probably handle the small amount of rewiring. Or is Pac-Man CE one of those rare NES games that has different size chips for the prg and chr (unlikely)? Anyway, thanks for the help so far

I'm hoping one of you smart fellers in here can help me with this... So the Famicom "demake" of Pac-Man Championship Edition has been extracted from the Namco Collection by someone and posted on the net, and the ROM plays perfectly fine on my NES emulator on my pc... - BUT - I want to play it on my AV Famicom while sitting on my couch in front of my CRT. To do this I need to put it onto a compatible Famicom cart. The game's audio is awesome, but since it uses the Namco 163 sound chip, I want to burn it to a Famicom cart instead of a US NES one to get the proper audio. Now, I've got most of Namco's Famicom library already, as well as an EPROM burner and the necessary equipment to pull off necessary chips and install new ones in their place. I can also split a ROM, remove it's header, etc. All I need is a guide from someone more technically inclined than myself to tell me which game to use as a donor, what type of chips I need to burn the prg and chr ROMS onto, and what random couple of wires need to be re-routed, as seems to be the case with most of these alterations. I've already patched many Fami carts into English no problem (FF III, Lagrange Point, etc) because step-by-step guides exist on the net that can easily be followed; and since Pac-Man CE is so fun and the sound kicks ass, there will one day be a step-by-step guide on the net for this game too, I just don't want to have to wait five years for one to show up. So, can anyone help me on this? I can Paypal some funds if necessary as an incentive, whatever it takes, I just want to be able to play this game on an actual console...

Hey Rob, I remember meeting both you and Kevin (Khan) at the NA expo in 2008, and you were both going on and on about wanting to make games for the NES. At the time I was thinking, "Man, those guys are crazy! That would be impossible!" Now here we are more than a decade later and look at the results... Well, keep on doing what you're doing and we'll keep on playing your games.

Thanks for the info. It's definitely a game I need to pick up, then. I've always avoided it because I thought it was a hack and I avoid them like the plague. I've got losts of homebrew carts in my collection, but not one hack purchased in 20+ years...

Yeah, my bookmark for this site has been removed for a while now; I can only stomach so much bullshit. Just the facts, Ma'am, that's all I'm looking for. Pricecharting.com don't fail me now...

Can anyone tell me if Streemerz is based on the code of Bionic Commando (ie: a hack) or was it designed from the ground up with heavy influences from BC and the original Streemers?

Banana Prince for NES/Famicom

Alright, the list on gamefaqs has been updated and is up to date as of this post. Once again, many thanks to Trifecta for singlehandedly making this update happen. Onward and upward...

Great article, man! I actually just beat Thundercade earlier this year and so I could totally relate to everything you wrote as I was reading it (except having to switch to a CRT - I'm already a CRT NES gamer for life!). It's funny: there are only four levels and more often than not I could get to the final boss on my first game before continuing, and yet it took me like a week and a half to beat it. That final boss is sooooo hard, and the same thing with the choppers coming in when you're down to one dude left to kill happened to me multiple times too. But when you finally beat it.... oh man, what a feeling! I don't get that feeling beating games on any other system, but when I take down a really tough NES game, the satisfaction is indescribable. Thundercade was completion #367 for me, but I started recording NES completions in 2001. Keep up the good work!

This game looks so awesome, but please add a little jumping animation for the tank thing (if you haven't already). The other animations of the character moving and whatnot look so wonderful and fluid, but then when he gets in the tank and jumps in the air, it's like the tank just magically rises. I'm not saying rip off Blaster Master and have the wheels move all the way inward, but do something to show that the tank has the power to rise in the air like that (puff of smoke/flame/fire under the vehicle for a second when it leaves the ground??? I dunno...). I'm really looking forward to playing this game, but when I watch the trailer, this one little issue is all I can think about! If it's too late, just ignore this post. No worries, I'll still buy the game...

I hate having to wade through tedious equipment screens to swap out items in games designed for the need to do this frequently. I especially hate seeing this in otherwise stellar games. Two big examples for me are having to continuously change your boots in the Water Temple of Ocarina of Time, and having to continuously swap swords at certain points of Crystalis - both are excellent games with this niggling flaw that makes me wonder how on earth it got past the play-testers. It especially bugs me with OOT since there are so many damn buttons on an n64 controller...

Here's the thing: NES systems are not "notoriously unreliable" in terms of executing code; they were "notoriously unreliable" in two ways and two ways ONLY: making a good connection between the cart contacts and the system contacts, and getting past the lockout chip. The argument presented doesn't work because it's apples to oranges - the AVS won't play your Mall Brawl cart because it can't properly EXECUTE THE CODE. But yeah, the argument is pretty stale at this point and we all know where everyone stands. I wish you the best of luck in receiving a cart that works with your AVS, however, I will be utterly SHOCKED if you do!