When I was a boy, the #1 game arcade I went to in Glendale, AZ was Bag-A-Tel in Valley West Mall. My #1 go-to game was, of course, Atari’s Star Wars sit-down cabinet. Released in 1983, this game came out the same year as Return of the Jedi, yet it involved the first Star Wars movie. I remember playing Atari’s Red Baron, a similar vector graphics shooter cabinet, before Star Was was released. The Return of the Jedi game by Atari came out in ’84, featuring an isometric view that I really could not get the hang of. Then in ’85 the first game was modified to play the Empire Strikes Back vector graphics game, which was not as good.
If Star Wars was occupied, my #2 choice was the Namco’s Pole Position II (released by Atari in the US) sit-down cabinet, which was located next to Star Wars. (This animated gif is actually of the first Pole Position game though.)
I have very fond memories of Bag-A-Tel. I loved that place. Whenever we’d catch a movie at the dollar theater, we’d be sure to stop by that arcade. Valley West Mall was eventually closed down, then later re-opened as Manistee Town Center. Eventually that mall went goodbye as well, and the mall was used for filming the movie Eight-Legged Freaks starring David Arquette and featuring a very young Scarlett Johannsson. The mall was demolished for that movie.
Hyper Dyne Side Arms (Capcom, Arcade 1986) This game blew me away as a kid when I first saw it. That two mecha could transform into starfighters and form one big robot was too cool. At the time, I was unable to get enough powerups to make that happen.
If I recall correctly, it was a drugstore called Skagg’s that had this game. Mom would ask me to go and I would be excited to go so that I could look at this game. After my quarter was gone, I’d still just love to watch the screen. It was so great how stores and convenience stores would have arcade games by the entrance. I miss those days.
When I bought my PC Engine in Osaka in 2001, Side Arms was one of the first games I bought for that system. Neat stuff.
Sailor Moon (Banpresto, Arcade 1995) I played the Super Famicom Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon R brawler games by Bandai quite a lot, but it wasn’t until much later that I learned of this arcade game by Banpresto much letter. The gameplay is pretty solid and I love the screen-clearing magic attacks, but it lacks the standard projectile attacks that the SFC games featured, done by holding the attack button and charging it for a moment. It would have made this arcade game better IMHO.
In 1996, the video game scene in the USA was heavily focused on 3D-rendered graphics and I was disappointed. I was not opposed to 3D, but I much preferred 2D pixel graphics. I had finally bought a SNES with my high school graduation money in the summer of ’94. But now it was two years later, and by then nearly everything seemed to be 3D.
I went to a place called Laser Quest with my friend Nathan, which is a Laser Tag type of place. In the lobby were several arcade machines. Two that stood out to me was Gunbird and Power Instinct 2. I was fearing that shmups were a dead genre, as everything on the dominant Playstation seemed to be focused on 3D gameplay. Power Instinct 2 was a Street Fighter-style fighting game, but with quirky characters and a Sailor Moon-style girl character that transforms into a chick on rollerblades.
Gunbird’s publisher was Jaleco and Power Instinct 2’s publisher was Atlus. I managed to track down an email for Jaleco and asked them if they could release the game on a home console. A Jaleco rep responded to me, who happened to be an import gamer. He told me that Gunbird did get a home port on the Sega Saturn, although it was through Atlus. This Jaleco rep was the first to tell me about how incredibly awesome the Saturn was for 2D gaming, and how there is a treasure trove of such games that was not being released for the domestic US Saturn, particularly 2D shmups. It was then that I knew I had to get a Saturn.
Atlus released both Gunbird and Power Instinct 2 in Japan for home consoles, however the latter was released for the Playstation rather than the Saturn. This is disappointing, because the Playstation could not handle the game like I am sure the Saturn could. Load times are atrocious for this game’s home port. Power Instinct 3, aka Groove on Fight, was released for the Saturn, but it just didn’t have the same charm, I thought.
I got these on AliExpress.com. I didn’t notice the size of these stickers. I was hoping to put the RetroPie sticker on my Raspberry Pi case, but it’s way too big for it!
Here is the link to the sales page for these stickers. You have to choose which ones you want. They also have a Konami sticker, but it’s the newer logo and not the classic logo, unfortunately. So, I passed. I do want to buy a smaller RetroPie sticker now.
Since I’ve shown lots of cool Sega swag from Shimamura stores, I thought I’d share these images I found on my Flickr account. I bought the Saturn pajamas, but I wish I had gone into debt and bought the Megadrive and Dreamcast pajamas too. Drat.
I found these on Pinterest. I always preferred Capcom’s Aliens vs. Predator arcade game over Konami’s Aliens game. I played the Konami game in the arcades on occasion, but it never impressed me much. I’ve lately come to appreciate it more recently via Final Burn Alpha on RetroPie.
Oh my freaking gosh. CD Romance has released an ENGLISH-PATCHED image of Princess Crown for the Sega Saturn! I bought this game nearly 20 years ago. About 10 years ago I played up to the point where I slayed the dragon, but didn’t get further than that as I lost track of it. Now it is in ENGLISH! With my Japanese level, I was able to make sense of the game, but I didn’t catch the part of how Gradriel’s older sister is ill (which would explain why she was crowned queen instead of her sister).I don’t care for the font choice, but this is super-duper neat-o!
This game is the predecessor to Vanillaware’s Odin Sphere. I like how you can have the little girl pick up the kitty instead of the book.
I don’t care for the font choice, but this is super-duper neat-o!
It’s not a proper 1.0 version yet. Some text is still in Japanese, such as the labels to the doors. This will make it difficult for those who can’t read the moon runes. Plus it has some wonky text issues. Still, this is GREAT!
By creating an account on Mercari, I’ve expanded my ability to buy neat crap. Something I missed out on at Shimamura is this neat Megadrive T-shirt. This shirt is brand new and still has the tag attached! The front breast has the MD logo, the 3-button controller, and under that it says “16-BIT.”
Here is my newest desktop wallpaper, and it’s Nadia with a beautiful sunset. I was running Mint Mate 20 Ulyssa, and my 1TB SSD hard disk was maxing out. In august I bought a 2TB HD, and in September I installed Mint Mate 22 Wilma. It wasn’t a smooth experience like version 20 was. The first problem I had was when I plugged the old 1TB drive in and tried copying my files directly from there. Upon reboot, it wouldn’t even boot up and was scrolling text. I re-installed Wilma. Then updating the Nvidia driver caused the computer to freeze up. I had to get help on the Linux Mint Forums and learned how to modify the boot kernel. After that, it was fine. However what remains is apparently the USB device manager might not function properly.
I’ve done three fresh installs of Retropie on Linux Mint Mate 22 and each time the controller input is screwed up. I am using a Logitech F310 USB gamepad, which is pretty standard. Retropie on Mint 22 is flawed. Controller problems.
When accessing the in-game menu by pressing the hot key (to take a screenshot, save state, etc), the joypad locks up. I have to press select for it to work again. When returning to the game, the joypad is again locked up and I cannot play the game. I must press select again to regain control.
When accessing Retropie-Setup from within the RetroPie GUI, joypad input ceases to work. Not even the arrow keys can be used. The workaround for this is to run the setup.sh via terminal and the controller works. Just not when accessed through RetroPie itself.
For this third time, I did not copy over any config files and I did the controller setup for my joypad from scratch. I thought perhaps that there might have been a problem by just copying the entirety of the ./opt/retropie folder and all of its subfolders, but this is not the case. I did a full uninstall, then a reinstall. The problem remains.
I am wondering if it is a problem with Mint 22 itself. I had zero problems installing and using RetroPie on Mint 19 and 20. However, with Mint 22 I’ve noticed that at least with Space Invaders Extreme on Steam, the game does not recognize my controller at all, regardless of which version of the Linux Proton compatibility tool I am using.
I’ve been advocating people switching to Linux for years now, but this latest version is making me hesitant. My experiences with installing Mint 19 Tricia and Mint 20 Ulyssa were smooth, but Mint 22 Wilma has given me some headaches. Posting my problems online, I was told by others who are disappointed with 22 Wilma’s USB capabilities. One guy said he has some external hard drives that 22 won’t recognize. Another said that his Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse combo is wonky, and replacing this with a generic wireless set did not solve the problem. I do hope that these issues will be addressed soon. I would not have known what to do with my Nvidia driver without the help of the Mint forum. I was told that my GPU is old, but it’s from 2017 so it can’t be that old.
For now, Steam is fine, more or less. Retropie is fine until I have to bring up the menu. Having to press the select button though, it makes me hesitant to plug in my Saturn controllers, since they do not have a select button.
EDIT 10/27: I ran an update over the weekend and the first issue with RetroPie freezing after calling up the menu is now fixed.
