Funco Land - A land of Fun...co..

Where kids came to trade in their games for $3 and buy pre-owned ones for $50 with nice colorful cases. The good 'ol days!

Toys'R'Us Video Game Slips Nostalgia

When all it took was a video game slip to purchase your favorite video game

A Re-seller RANT

The days of where we could find NES and SNES games for a few dollars are gone...thanks to the RESELLER. A RANT.

How I let EARTHBOUND slip through my fingers...

My ultimate prize...gone again.

The Ultimate NES Review Collection

Join me as I suffer through every single NES game known to man! Prepare yourself!

Friday, March 29, 2013

Retro Gamer Memories #2 : Reminiscing – ET + Sonic the Hedgehog

I’m hoping I can reminisce on more titles I buy in the future, but honestly I just don’t remember playing some of these games. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Maybe these games scarred me so profoundly because they were so bad, I just sealed that section of my brain away so I wouldn’t have to relive those horrible memories. Or maybe I just never owned the game in the first place so I never played it. Or I just don’t remember.

But this last weekend I picked up a few games, two of which I definitely remember experiencing in my childhood.
Let’s start off with what is said to be one of the worst games ever created, and also rumored to have brought about the eventual bankruptcy of ATARI – oh yes, you know what I am talking about….
Little turd nugget
(I wonder if Spielberg realized his alien looked like a penis)
Ahh, E.T. – the extra-terrestial. That loveable little alien who ate reeses pieces and screamed like a banshee when drew barrymore opens the closet door. He looked freaky as hell when he was all pasty white in the ice box, but he also looks downright pathetic in the Atari game.
If I remember one thing about the E.T. game, besides hearing that all the left over cartridges were buried in some landfill in new mexico (true story look it up on the wiki..everythings true on wiki : ET WIKI), is that I never knew what the fuck I was supposed to do in this game. I loved E.T. the movie, so of course the game had to be awesome too. But no it wasn’t. Like any typical game adaptation of a movie, it was horrendous. I don’t even want to speak about this game anymore – just thinking about it makes me want to break my atari all over again (yes I admit I broke my original atari).

(I just don’t get it)
So lets talk about some better games – now I’m talking games that just enhanced my love for gaming at a young age. Now unfortunately I don’t remember playing Sonic 2, or Sonic vs Knuckles, and I’m not going to talk about Ms. Pacman, because hell, its just pacman on genesis. But I do want to touch upon the originalSonic the Hedgehog.
Sonic!
(just look at that smug look slapped across that face)
Now this game was pure “awesome” – if there’s one thing I remember about this game, was the fact that I was pissed as all hell that I never owned it. In fact, I never even owned a genesis when I was growing up. The jealousy raged inside me every time I went to a friends house and they had all these cool games for their genesis such as ECO the dolphin, Jurassic park (shutup it was awesome), and of course Sonic.

(seriously – how cool was that)
Sonic brings back some fond memories of my childhood, as it brings up the times that my family would go to a long time friends house for dinner every other month or so. Now for me, these nights were always a blast and I loved hanging out with them and their dog Brady. But the thing that really sticks out in my mind, was building up the courage to ask their kids, if I can play their Sega Genesis. Now they weren’t much older than me mind you, but at that time if you were nine and the other kids were twelve, you were worlds apart.
Of course they didn’t mind, and after dinner while the parents would talk, I would sneak away with one of the brothers and stare at their TV screen as we played Sonic for the rest of the night. Occassionally another game caught our interest – sometimes it was a madden, or other times it was altered beast, but I always returned to Sonic. The funny thing is though, out of all the times I went to their house, and stole gaming time away from them, I don’t think I ever got past the first few levels of Sonic. I just had too much fun zooming across the board, collecting coins, and kicking the crap out of Doctor Robotnik.
Until next time.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Old VG artwork...

I made this image almost 5 years ago – but I’ve been inspired to create more VG movie posters. Let’s see how it pans out.
First I’m going to try and recreate this one with a more modern graphical image. Wish me luck, let’s see if I still got it.

Monday, March 4, 2013

Retro Game Hunt #1 - Hidden Treasures under a train station?!

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It was Sunday morning, my dog was being a pain in the ass and I was unfortuantely on call for work (my day job as a systems admin). I was already answering a few problem related e-mails, but that wasn’t going to deter me from taking my hour break at the local flea market that I discovered the weekend before.
I knew the crowds would soon be overcome with the blood-thirsty souls of greedy hoarders hoping to add another senseless item to feed their addiction, so I hastily woke up my wife, and raced over to the Bellmore LIRR station. It didn’t take long before I snagged my first few additions to my VG collection. Who would have thought there would be so many retro games mixed in the piles of garbage. It was actually at one of the first stalls I searched that I discovered a boxed Sonic 1 and Ms. Pacman for genesis – all for the whopping price of $6 for the pair.
Continuing my hunt, I came across a filthy box hidden under a table which was filled to the brim with old genesis games with a few atari games mixed in. My first thought was to buy out the whole box, but when the guy told me it was $5 per game and $100 for the box I was immediately turned off. I was about to give up when I eyed two of the games that could kick off my Atari 2600 collection in the right direction. The infamous ET, and Sword Quest : Fireland. I couldn’t resist, and gave in to temptation and added another 2 games to my goody bag.
As soon as I thought my day was over, something caught my eye. It wasn’t some mystical rare game that was worth thousands, nor was it a pristine, new in the box, unopened / sealed Atari 2600. No - it was a pigeon..a pigeon that just happened to be sitting out in the open as if it didn’t have a care in the world. So I slowly stepped over the pigeon, and looked at the table set up which did happen to have a wide array of games - ranging from NES, famicom, Japanese DS games, a few old school systems such as coleico vision, commodore and atari (which I may pick up next week), two game gears, and a box filled with controllers and wires. Mixed in the bunch I grabbed a copy of Sonic 2, and sonic and knuckles. They were originally $5 each, but without any effort at all the guy at the booth tossed them both to me for $5.
But thats when the Pigeon got pissed off…..

(oh – he’s going to kick your ass)
Apparently, that pigeon did not like me buying those two games for $5, so he fucking attacked me. Full blown attack – as in this pigeon flew straight at my face and attempted to claw my eyes out, or even worse shit all over me. I fled for my life, video games in hand and departed the flea market, watching over my shoulder as the pigeon reclaimed his perch atop a commodore 64.
I ended my day with the below -
Sonic + Ms. Pacman = $6
Sword Quest : Fire World + ET = $10
Sonic 2 + Sonic and Knuckles = $5
Grand Total = $21
Not too shabby for a first attempt at some flea market purchasing. I’ll be going down memory lane tomorrow on some of past experiences with these great games – so stay Tuned.

Friday, March 1, 2013

MINICRAFT!

From the makers of Minecraft (Notch a.k.a Markus Persson) – comes his new mini masterpiece – Minicraft!
He designed this game for the Ludum Dare competition in which Indie Game developers have just 48 hours to design and create an workable game. This game brings back huge memories of classic 8-bit adventure RPG’s, and I love the elements of Minecraft tied into it.
Cheers to you Notch – excellent job.
You can play the game in your browser by following the link below – so enjoy