Random Stranger

Of all the treasures in my video game collection, the rarest might be a Nintendo 64 controller with a functioning stick.

That's my Japanese one. I had to get a different color so I could tell it apart from my US version.

I wish I had the foresight to do that with my other Japanese consoles and now I have to double check the text on the back of them when I plug them in.

A large stack of consoles including N64, Wii, Saturn, PS2, Xbox 360, and PSP.

Going a little crazy this morning with b-roll.

The Kinnikuman (M.U.S.C.L.E.) cart in the last picture might be the craziest thing in these cases. The gold carts are competition prizes, but for Kinnikuman the prize was that the winner could change any character in the game to another one of their choice. Six unique carts exist for eight prizes.

At 1100 yen, do it! See how many baseball, mahjong, and baseball mahjong games they can fit in a box!

Those are pricey games when you can find them boxed, but Super Potato takes things to the next level.

Game: "Hello! Do you want to go through a heavily scripted sequence to start your hero's journey?"

Me: "I refuse the call."

Game: "Well that's not how this is supposed to go."

I'm not going to say the Master System version is the worst port (there were a lot of them and some to some really rough platforms), but it definitely does the game no favors. I've got the Genesis version and played others and Shadow of the Beast has always been dreadful to me...

YouTube video by RndStranger Burning Angels (バーニングエンジェル) - PC Engine Power 202

There may not be any good Dirty Pair video games, but Naxat created a shoot-'em-up on the PC Engine featuring their generic counterparts the Burning Angels. And it turned out to be pretty good as long as you don't mind crushing difficulty...

youtu.be/xcwK3oxD0gQ

Everyone had bad timing with CD drives and their consoles in the 90s. Either jumping in a tad too early and being trapped with slow, clunky implementation, picking a bad drive that's barely functional and had a life span barely beyond the warranty, or just refusing to engage with CDs at all...

Shadow of the Beast for the SMS.

For this most random of game Saturdays, I have Shadow of the Beast for the Master System, a game that has baffled me for decades why people claim any version of it was good. You have to have some severe Amiga poisoning to think Shadow of the Beast was fun.

You could buy an effectively defunct game company known for fighting games, have them make a new game in your favorite series, and make them put your pet sports star/piece of shit and favorite DJ in it!

Boppin' is one of those games that the DOS heads will gush about and nobody else knows. The Windows native version is great!

Final Fantasy III 😁

I was going to go with a very popular game that I happen to despise. 😃

I am slightly annoyed that a big announcement occurred four days early to sync up with the big bonus video I've been working on for weeks...

Am I really going to pull out a bunch of notoriously bad games to assemble a "terrible game shelf" that's just a joke that will be on screen for three seconds?

Sometimes I'm just amusing myself...

This is one of those reprints where it's significantly cheaper to get the original.

Video game intros and voice acting peaked in this moment

I genuinely had no memory of this character. But it seems like there was a good reason for that.

I just worked it through in my head and I think there's five Gainax games in the PC Engine library. Unless there's another one of their PC games that got ported that I'm forgetting...

I am probably cursed to eventually make a Neon Genesis Evangelion video and I have made and definitely will be making some Gainax videos (did you know the Valis FC commercial was directed by Anno?).

I'll try to put it off as long as I can but the Saturn library is always there, looming...

YouTube video by RndStranger Ranma 1/2 (らんま1/2) - PC Engine 201

The PC Engine's life span lined up just right so that Ranma 1/2 was one of the platform's biggest franchises. The first Ranma 1/2 game on the system was not a great start, unfortunately.

youtu.be/DFpQI7QlcdM

There kind of is a PCE sequel, but that's its own weird story.

I know there's a lot of sunk cost fallacy in people sticking in these bad situations, but maybe don't get on the treadmill in the first place.

Game companies putting a piece of moldy cheese in the most obvious trap ever and so many people still go after it...

Them: [Goes on about how a game is no fun and the company's efforts to extract every dollar out of players' pockets.]

Me: "Then don't play it. Walk away."

Them: "But I've invested so much time and money into it!"

Obviously, Kemco's port of Deja Vu reached consoles before it, but that was originally a US computer game, and similarly other mystery games released in the west originated there.

YouTube video by RndStranger J.B Harold Murder Club (J.B.ハロルドシリーズ マーダークラブ) - PC Engine Power 200

Although murder mysteries were huge on Japanese consoles, very few of them were released outside of the country until recently. I believe the first Japanese-penned mystery game to get released in the US was J.B. Harold Murder Club for the PC Engine.

youtu.be/NyLIf5aMjsc

I'm going to guess that having their corporate headquarters torn down to put up an apartment building is a bad sign for anything new coming from a game developer, right?

I haven't noticed a difference. 😜