9/26/08
I'm feeling especially accomplished today, thanks to a project I finished last night. There's never been a suitable controller for the Virtual Console games on the Wii, so I set out to change that by bringing the ultimate controller to Nintendo's latest game system. I took a spare Saturn joypad, opened it, and removed some of the components, including the cable and the logic chip set in the center of the pad's printed circuit board. Next, I connected a series of tiny wires to the traces where the chip had rested, and soldered the other ends of the wires to a connector. After some invasive surgery on a cheap GameCube controller, I was left with this...
It doesn't look pretty, but let me tell you, it works! I've given this a test run on a GameCube, and every button but the L and R triggers (which I haven't wired up on the GameCube controller yet) work perfectly. That's a very good thing, but what's even better is that I can take this controller and adapt it for use with practically any other game console.in existence. Can you imagine Super NES games with Saturn-quality control? Or, dare I make the suggestion, 3DO games that are actually playable? I can now, and I vow to make that dream a reality!
In less self-congratulatory news, I bought the Wii version of Mega Man 9 on Monday, and it's been kicking my sorry butt for the rest of the week. I'm planning a video review of this game for next Monday, but what I'll say right now is that the outrageous difficuty does detract from what could have been the all-time best game in the series. As it is, it's still one of the highlights in the game's history... although Mega Man and Mega Man 2 will always be my personal favorites, Mega Man 9 impressed me more than the third game and is loads better than the fourth and fifth. If you've got some spare Wii points, do yourself a big favor and spend them on this release.
Oh yeah, one more thing before I go. Awesome NES is closing out the Ns with reviews of the Ninja Gaiden trilogy, as well as Nintendo World Championships, a triple shot of Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer, and Tetris that has become a hot commodity among collectors thanks to its extreme rarity. Only a handful of these cartridges were made for a contest held by Nintendo nearly twenty years ago, making them worth thousands of dollars... or tens of thousands if you can find the coveted gold cartridges given to finalists!
9/15/08
Hey, I'm updating again! Occasionally, anyway.
So, I just beat Mercenaries 2: World in Flames over the weekend. People have been complaining a lot about the bugs in the game, but the one that really twists my last nerve in a knot is Mercs 2's uncanny knack for crashing just as I complete a side mission. I could almost forgive this while playing the previous game, because it was designed for the original Xbox, and we all know how temperamental the Xbox 360's backward compatibility can be. However, crashes in Mercenaries 2 are a lot harder to accept, since the game was tailor made for the Xbox 360. Maybe I should forget about all the small fry I missed while playing through the story mode and just move on to Mass Effect...
Outside of that, I don't have too much to discuss. The sequel to Rock Band was just released. Electronic Arts recently abandoned its repeated attempts to acquire its competitor Take-Two by force. After months of being bested by the PSP, the DS Lite has finally risen to the top of the Japanese sales charts. And there's a new installment of Awesome NES, featuring such titles as NightShade and NES Open Tournament Golf. I guess that's it! I'll talk to you later.
9/5/08
I don't really have much to say at the moment (and anything I did say would be a lot of emotionally charged, intensely personal drivel that would be best reserved for a LiveJournal post), but I do feel an obligation to update this site. So here you go, folks... have some Nintendo DS Reviews, an update to Awesome NES, and a handful of videos. I may have some commentary on the latest Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Arcade games at a later date, but right now, this is as much as I can give you.
