Retro Gaming Console Nerdgasm

This is not an advert. This is NOT sponsored content! (Thanks South Park for my continued education.) I am stupidly, ridiculously excited about this new (to me) thing.

 

Meet my toy! This sweet little machine will play Gameboy games from the original brick all the way up to Gameboy Advance cartridges. It will play NES games. It will play SNES games. It will play the Famicom carts for those generations as well. It will play Master drive and Genesis games. It does all of this on one system. It connects to my tv with an HDMI cable and upscales (read this as smooths the rough edges) the graphics. It has a brick of a wireless controller that works well enough with all these game generations, but it also has ports to support corded controllers for the NES, SNES, and Genesis.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen the Retron is simply amazing. Feel free to delve after the real sales pitch at the manufacturer’s website here. Now that the generic gushing is out of the way, let me get to the real talk.

 

The Retron 5 is cheaper (even ignoring inflation) than the NES purchased in 1987 or the SNES on its release. I paid 139.95 for mine at McKay’s Used Books and CDs. I hear that you can also find these in Books A Million Stores and they are about $10 cheaper on Amazon.com. The price of this little beauty blew my mind. It has been worth every penny.

 

I unboxed it expecting to find a catch. Instead, I was further impressed. The HDMI cord is LONG… I mean around 6 feet. The power brick cord is slightly less but is still ample. The USB 2.0 cord that connects the controller to the console to charge is 10 feet. I didn’t expect a game built in and as far as I have explored there is not one.

 

Half a decade ago I stupidly sold off my collections…to “grow up” for my fiancee. The girl didn’t stick, but my stuff is still gone. Among that stuff were all my “vintage” video games. I have missed them terribly. The time has come to remedy that in the form of the great game hunt of 2016.

 

The night my wife and I picked up the system I owned 4 games that would play for the system. Perhaps ironically they may be the biggest money savers in the coming hunt. For Gameboy Advance I had:

 

Legend of Zelda: The Adventure of Link (screw you haters! I love this one)

Final Fantasy IV Advance

Final Fantasy VI Advance

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past with Four Sword Adventures

 

Those are all (yes even the first one) great games and if I had to run them down in the original cartridges might cost me a pretty penny. I booted up the Retron, dropped in A Link to the Past and was almost instantly amazed at how great the Gameboy Advance graphics scaled up onto my flat screen. I loved the game…it was true to form. I didn’t love the blocky Retron controller. It is functional and wireless but it clicks a little loudly for my taste.

 

I solved this problem by switching over to a wired SNES clone controller. It functioned identically to the original in my memory. I felt 12 all over again. Hesitantly, I turned off A Link to the Past to play games with the wife. We had picked up a couple of platformers that I want to share with my oldest daughter. We bought:

 

Sonic the Hedgehog ($4.99)

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ($2.99)

Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2 ($10.95)

 

It’s worth noting here that I also bought two Tomee SNES clone controllers at $9.95 each for those of you adding up my purchases (like I am).

 

We both really wanted to play Super Mario World. In two stops I wasn’t able to run down the original SNES cart. I was able to get the Advance release, but I realized that we were not going to be able to play it 2 players. That wasn’t a big deal to me in the short term because when I grew up most of the games I enjoyed were single player and my friends and I shared and took turns.

 

I also realized that none of the system link features of Gameboy games are going to function on the Retron (that I know of). This means that yes I can play Pokemon on the big screen, but no I cannot trade Pokemon with real people on my Retron. It means that I will have to solo playthrough Four Sword Adventures (again). For the love that I give that system this is a small price to pay.

 

The Retron is the perfect solution to my retro game desires. Now I just have to track down the carts that I really want and a few controllers. It is very worth noting that while talking to a “game pro” at a local retro game shop I was told that Duck Hunt and other Zapper games will not function on a flat-screen TV. They require an old CRT. I really wanted to play Duck Hunt so I hope this isn’t true as it presents a difficult to overcome challenges.CRT screens do not have HDMI inputs. There may be an easy workaround or this may not be a problem. That will be the subject of a blog to come.

 

So… It is time to make a shopping list for the Retron. My goal is to get as much of this as possible during 2016 as cheap as I can make it happen. If you are reading this and want to work as my agent bless your heart and it might earn you a seat on the couch for retro gaming night. Here goes the list:

 

2 NES Controllers or Clones

1 NES Zapper Gun (yes I have to try the experiment but it is not a priority)

NES Games :

 

1. Advance Dungeons and Dragons: DragonStrike
2. Advance Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of the Lance
3. Advance Dungeons and Dragons: Hillsfar
4. Advance Dungeons and Dragons: Pool of Radiance
5. The Adventures of Bayou Billy
6. Back to the Future
7. Back to the Future Parts II & III
8. The Bard’s Tale
9. California Games
10. Castlevania
11. Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
12. Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
13. Contra
14. Double Dragon
15. Dragon Warrior
16. Dragon Warrior II
17. Dragon Warrior III
18. Dragon Warrior IV
19. Duck Hunt
20. Excitebike
21. Galaga
22. Gauntlet
23. Gauntlet II
24. Ghostbusters
25. Ghostbusters II
26. Ikari Warriors
27. Ironsword: Wizard’s and Warriors II
28. Joe & Mac
29. Karate Champ
30. The Karate Kid
31. Kid Icarus
32. The Legend of Zelda
33. Marble Madness
34. Mike Tyson’s Punch Out
35. Ninja Gaiden
36. Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos
37. Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom
38. Paperboy
39. Skate or Die!
40. Spy vs. Spy
41. Strider
42. Super C
43. Super Mario Bros.
44. Super Mario Bros. 2
45. Super Mario Bros. 3
46. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
47. Wizards and Warriors

SNES Games:

1. Breath of Fire
2. Clayfighter
3. F-Zero
4. Final Fight
5. Gradius III
6. Illusion of Gaia
7. Killer Instinct
8. Paladin’s Quest
9. Prince of Persia
10. Rival Turf!
11. Secret of Mana
12. Star Fox
13. Street Fighter II
14. Super Mario Kart
15. Super Scope 6 (probably has the Zapper Gun problem)
16. Super Star Wars

2 Sega Genesis Controllers or clones

 

Genesis Games:

1. Altered Beast
2. Art of Fighting
3. Ghoul’s N Ghosts
4. Golden Axe
5. King of Monsters
6. King of Monsters 2
7. Mortal Kombat
8. Mortal Kombat 2
9. Mortal Kombal 3
10. Phantasy Star
11. Primal Rage
12. Strider Returns: Journey From Darkness
13. Shinobi III

 

The Gameboy games wishlist is going to be posted at a later date and time.