DoctorEncore

I didn't see an option for Potater, so I chose the less correct Potato.

I'd say Atari 2600 and NES are probably the two most important and influential consoles. Everything after that was more of a progression than a revolution.

My only experience is with the Turbografx Mini, but I've found the selection of games to be stellar. At the top end, it competes well with Nintendo and Sega. I don't feel comfortable rating it since I've never encountered the console in real life and I've not truly explored the library, but I plan on jumping in head first when Analogue puts out their Duo.

For being a relatively terrible year for this country and much of the world, 2020 was actually a pretty solid year for music. Here are a few of my favorite albums from 2020. I'll try to write a bit about each and highlight some standout tracks with Youtube links, but I wanted to get this up and give everyone a chance to weigh in before 2021 gets long in the tooth. Run the Jewels - RTJ4 Genre: Rap RTJ4 finds Run the Jewels at the top of their game. This album is fast, hard-hitting, political, and lyrically diverse. The production is probably the best of El-P's career and some of the songs seem almost prescient considering they were mostly written in 2019. Every single guest star manages to nail his/her role without stealing the spotlight, just like a good feature should. Glass Animals - Dreamland Genre: Alternative Glass Animals seem unable to do any wrong. Their third album is a much more personal and nostalgic affair than their previous efforts and it really resonates with me as a child of the 90s. The poppy songs still have wonderful hooks while the meandering experimental stuff also works. There is a sense of sadness and hope in the audio recordings pulled from old home videos that punctuate the album. Overall, a really stellar collection, probably their best yet. Taylor Swift - Folklore/Evermore Genre: Pop/Folk Taylor Swift has long been one of the best songwriters in contemporary pop. If her transformation from country prodigy to pop queen was impressive, her conversion to indie/alt folk hero is borderline miraculous. With the help of The National's Aaron Dessner, Swift has crafted not one, but two of the year's best albums. These are Swift's most lyrically interesting songs yet and the production and arrangement brings an ethereal sense of melancholy throughout. My only gripe is the length of this double album. If she had taken the best songs from each session, there is no doubt she would have crafted the best album of the year and probably one of the best of the decade. The Killers - Imploding the Mirage Genre: Alternative A surprisingly solid return to form for a band that's been kicking around for quite a while. If you liked Killers circa 2004 and mostly ignored their mixed output since then, you owe it to yourself to give this one a listen. A few stellar tracks anchor a very listenable album. Oliver Tree - Ugly is Beautiful Genre: Alternative Rock The long gestating project from meme/artist Oliver Tree finally arrived this year and... it's actually great. The songs have a distinct 90s punk/pop/alternative feel and the lyrics are surprisingly heartfelt in spots, while still appropriately over the top in others. Easily one of my favorites of the year. Links, highlights, and more albums to come...

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Welcome! Always great to have someone from an underrepresented part of the world. Look forward to hearing about all your local stuff!

Great way to put it. I don't miss a single item I ever let go, I only miss the idea of owning it or the potential value of owning it. When I think of it that way, I don't regret getting rid of anything.

Thanks for the heads up. I had never seen their site before. I'll be sure to peruse on a regular basis.

Updated for the first time in a long long time. See title and OP.

Wow! Nice find!

6/10. I've played the games dozens of times and it was fine, but I probably never made it past the first or second stage and never felt a desire to. I suspect I would enjoy it if I put some dedicated time into it, but I probably never will, so this is my honest rating as of right now.

A couple PS4 releases for collecting purposes. I am mostly done with special editions, but you don't really see publisher specific collections in physical format like this Annapurna Interactive set from iam8bit. There are some great games in the collection including The Outer Wilds, which is one of my all-time favorites. 13 Sentinels is supposed to be great, but I also bought that more for collecting. I think it will be one of the lesser-known gems of the PS4 library. A few My Nintendo items to add to the collection (calendar, notebook, and Xenoblade stickers). I don't have everything they offered in 2020, but these will go with a decent stack of other stuff I've acquired. The Nintendo store is selling some nice 35th Anniversary Mario t-shirts in novelty oversized boxes that resemble the older games in the series, so I decided to splurge and get them for display purposes. I'll try to get a pic of my son in his SMW shirt (he chose that one even though he's never truly played that game). It's tough to tell just how big these are, but the second pic shows a PS4 game for scale. And finally, the coup de grace, the officially real and somehow not vaporware Atari VCS. I have no clue what to do with this thing and I don't know why I bought it. I'll let you guys know if I actually hook it up someday. That's all for this week. Hopefully I'll start getting some of my SMS, 32X, and Sega CD purchases in for next week.

Very cool. Where did you find it?

I am really looking forward to this. All the recent oral histories on Polygon have also been great.

Number two! Great condition and some history!

There are almost too many to list! Favorites for me would be Duck Tales and Rescue Rangers on the NES and Aladdin on the Genesis.

N7 for sure, unclear if the 07A has it. If the BK-1 07A cart has the modified roster, it would actually make the back of the BK-1 box incorrect, which is mildly amusing. I believe this needs to be confirmed still.

I wasn't trying to imply that it's common, but I wouldn't consider it ultra rare either. It's just not sought by an especially large number of people, it can be somewhat tough to spot, and sellers rarely recognize it as special, so it will continue to pop up regularly. I've seen it numerous times over the last several years.

Mr. Rothchild is always watching.

For a short time in my life, I was obsessed with getting 100% achievements on every game I played. It was fun for a little while and I really enjoyed completing ridiculously hard challenges, but eventually it got old and I went back to playing purely for fun. Nowadays, I don't even look at achievement lists. I'm perfectly satisfied to finish a game with 10 points or 1000 points. On extremely rare occasions when I absolutely adore a game, I'll look to the achievement list to find more fun stuff to do.

A simple eBay alert for Tecmo NBA will eventually net you that one. The Mega Man 6 will be significantly harder to find since it was never truly released in America. Your best bet there is to look at South American auction sites, particularly Brazil. Good luck.

I never played Super Metroid as a kid, but I adore Metroid Prime. I should definitely go back and play SM some day, but I didn't list it in the backlog thread so that would be illegal and unethical. Perhaps next year.

For the uninitiated, look at NBA logo in the top left and the cartridge code on the middle right. Now you've just got to keep your eyes peeled for an N7 variant!

It is definitely legit. It is the only type of NES box made from this material and with top and bottom flaps. You'll notice that the cardboard is actually much thicker than knock-offs or late LJN/Acclaim games. The white cardboard inside is also shinier than you'll find in other white boxes. It's probably one of the coolest variants for the NES since it's such an oddball.