The local retro game collector community is pretty strong and as such we have a lot of local events strung through the year that are well worth attending even if you are lightly into the retro scene. In October Cheerful Ghost runs a booth at Portland Retro Game Expo and in January some of the same folks host the PRGE/NWCGE Swap Meet. It's hosted at the Portland Double Tree and it's much smaller and more focused on buying, selling and trading retro games. Will and I hit it up this year and were some of the first people in line to peruse the crazy amount of amazing retro games and collectables. One of my yearly goals is to limit myself to only buying 5 games this year and that makes going to a retro game expo tough but I had a game in mind I've wanted to get for a long time. One of my favorite games on the Super Nintendo is King Arthur's World and it's one of the more obscure games on the platform. I never thought the game got the recognition it deserved as a kind of Lemmings inspired knights and wizards RTS. Since the game doesn't have a huge following it doesn't sell for a lot so I picked it up for a good price.

As Will and I were rounding the show floor I overheard a vendor saying they wanted to move their issues of Nintendo Power and were selling them for a dollar. They were bagged and boarded and in great condition so I immediately was interested. The guy that the vendor told that to directly nabbed each issue he could find but missed a box so after he left I swooped in and walked away with 18 issues. I'm thinking about slowly working to owning a nearly complete collection and this is a really great first step. The issues I bought were Top Secret Passwords, Super Mario Bros. Inside Out Part 1 & 2, Issue Number 9, 23, 24, 26, 28, 37, 45, 48, 55, 63, 68, 70, 71, 74 & 107. I'm thinking a complete collection up to about issue 70 or so sounds good so i'm fairly well on my way to that.

I also picked up a couple versions of Star Wars on VHS I didn't own yet in The Empire Strikes back 1992 release along with The Making of Star Wars VHS released in 1995. I've nearly completed my Star Wars on VHS collection and all I need to button it up is Empire and Jedi on the original CBS/FOX VHS run and Revenge of the Sith. I'm still not sure if I plan on collection all the versions of Star Wars on Laserdisc or if i'll just go for one version of the trilogy on Laserdisc. It's a really obscure format and like Betamax i'm interested in how hard it might be to find locally.

The Humble Store is giving away Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs as a collection right now for the next 24 hours. If you are interested in some of the more well reviewed indie horror games and don't want to spend any money, head over to Humble and grab a free Steam key.

A little taste of what's in store for you in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs...

"The year is 1899

Wealthy industrialist Oswald Mandus awakes in his bed, wracked with fever and haunted by dreams of a dark and hellish engine. Tortured by visions of a disastrous expedition to Mexico, broken on the failing dreams of an industrial utopia, wracked with guilt and tropical disease, he wakes into a nightmare. The house is silent, the ground beneath him shaking at the will of some infernal machine: all he knows is that his children are in grave peril, and it is up to him to save them."

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/amnesia-collection

It's a sad thing to hear that Nintendo is shutting down Miitomo only two years after it's initial launch in 2016. After it hit the scene Miitomo was pretty huge and most people on Cheerful Ghost and the local PDX indie game scene were playing it. That said, after a couple months, my usage of it faded entirely and it seems that was the same for most people as Nintendo is now shutting it down. It's a pretty epic rise and fall and shows the fragility of some online communities you can spend real money with to buy in game or app items. What happens to all your digital stuff you've payed for when the services goes away? In the case of Miitomo, almost everything is lost except your Mii which can copy over to certain other systems. This is partly why I don't buy much in game DLC or online content and have really enjoyed heading back to buying game carts, retro systems and games without DRM.

All that to say Miitomo was a cool idea and kudos to Nintendo for trying it out. I thought it would act as a sort of single sign on system that bridged the phone and new console world of Nintendo but that wasn't to be. The Switch is missing something like Miitomo or Miiverse and I wonder now if it will ever get anything like it as Miitomo is moving to retirement and Miiverse has also been shutdown? Maybe Nintendo is retiring from creating another social network and just focusing on games? Kind of sad if that were true as both Miitomo and Miiverse had a lot of simple charm and no one is making anything quite like them.

https://miitomo.com/en/notifications/180125/

Nintendo released a Japanese exclusive follow up to The Legend of Zelda a Link To The Past on the Satellaview. The Satellaview game broadcast went to subscribers over Satellite and Link to the Past Ancient Stone Tablets was one such game that went out to players in 1997. Youtuber AwesomeFaceProd created a really great historical breakdown of the game, the Satellaview and it's history as well as the team of people that brought this rare game to a playable ROM form and translated it. It's nice this game wasn't entirely lost to history and can be enjoyed by players today. I've seen this game pressed on recreation SNES carts and i'm thinking this might be a fun oddity to add to my collection.

http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/

"Long ago in an ancient and chaotic time period know as the 00's, Bethesda and Zenimax attained the rights to a game called Fallout: A Post-Apocalyptic Role-Playing Game from Interplay and Black Isle Studios. In 2008, they release their first installation into the franchise: Fallout 3.

Now, nearly 10 years later, we want to keep the first 3D entry alive and kicking by updating and bringing it into the current generation of gaming and graphics by rebuilding the entire Capital Wasteland complete with quests, dialog, and all locations into Fallout 4's Creation Engine."

This mod looks really cool and something i'm now following and anticipating the release of. I know these kinds of things are really hard to develop so i'm not expecting it to be done any time soon but the ability to play Fallout 3 with the Fallout 4 engine and updated graphics sounds awesome. I wonder if it's the base Fo3 game or includes the first DLC that brings you back to life to continue on after the game ends? Either way then this launches it should be a great way to relive the Capital Wasteland adventure.

https://capitalwasteland.com/

The Legend of Zelda The Minish Cap is a notoriously overlooked Zelda game and I recently watch a review by Mike Matei from Cinemassacre about it. Minish Cap is the Zelda title created specifically for the Gameboy Advance and one that, to date, I haven't played. As I pick up the backlog of retro games that I missed and want to complete, Minish Cap is one of the games that pop to the top of my list. Wondering if anyone has played this one and if so what you think of it?

if I had to pick between getting and XBox One or PS4 i'd buy the XBox One. Firstly the XBox One has 4k Blu-ray, something the PS4 doesn't and it also has backwards compatibility with original XBox and XBox 360 games where the PS4 does not. One area that Microsoft seems to be excelling at is backwards compatibility and in the DF Retro video linked above they go into detail about how it works. Another reason to get an XBox is, to date, i've never owned one so I haven't had the pleasure of playing the Halo franchise or the other exclusives to the system. Truth be told the chances I'll buy a PS4 or XBox One are quite low in general but I do appreciate Microsoft putting resources into making backwards compatibility work so well and think Sony could improve a lot here.

If you have a working knowledge of the Super Nintendo hardware and some of it's games you've heard of the FX chip. It's the chip featured in such games as Star Fox, Stunt Race FX and Super Mario World 2. What might not be obvious is that there were a bunch of other chips used in certain games to enable even more processing power than the Super Nintendo shipped with at launch. As stated in the video it's cool that games brought more hardware to bear to deliver the kinds of cutting edge graphics not possible otherwise. If you run a PC it's relatively easy to upgrade the hardware but on early game consoles the developers brought the upgrades directly to the game karts!

Awesome Games Done Quick wrapped this year breaking it's all time high for money raised in a single event to 2.2 million dollars for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. GDQ over time has become a twice yearly staple where I try and glue myself to the stream all week to soak in the amazing runs. It's actually something that my partner and I watch together and as a non gamer she actually finds many of the runs fun to watch. I find that the best runs to watch are games i've played before but occasionally there is a particularly amazing run of something i've never heard of.

Since GDQ's speedruns go day and night for an entire week I don't have the ability to watch them all. GDQ dropped all the runs on YouTube and I added the ones I missed to my watch later queue. I have certain runs I want to talk about today and then i'll drop about five or six posts over the upcoming months talking about everything else. There are way too many great runs for one post so piecing them out over a month or so makes the most sense.

The Legend of Zelda by JSR2gamers, BT and RandomEffekt in 37:43 The first run embedded above is the Legend of Zelda race I got up for on Saturday to watch at 5am. If you love Legend of Zelda this is a must watch and honestly one of the coolest runs of GDQ. It might have also been that I had a ton of strong coffee so I definitely had a pretty epic coffee buzz going but it's also just a kick ass run featuring some of the best Zelda runners around.

Diablo by Funkmastermp in 34:17 Stay awhile and watch this Diablo run where Funkmastermp tears up the game in 34 minutes! It's a well done run but I had a hard time understanding what was going on all the time. Since Speed Runners run the game a lot there are many inside jokes and sarcastic one liners I don't always get making it hard to understand what's happening with a run. That said, it's a great run but at times I had to mute the commentary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xh3Y60DM2E&list=WL&index=91

Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition by KowalLazy in 24:31 I didn't know you could beat a Baldur's in under and hour but KowalLazy does it in less than 30 minutes! The Baldur's series is something I missed the first time around but I really appreciate the games and how they impacted RPG gaming. This run is of the enhanced version of Baldur's 2 and it's very well done in how KowalLazy explains the techniques he uses to run the game in the fastest way possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBcHJPZDicU&list=WL&index=92

Super Dram World 2 by grandPOObear in 49:34 If you're going to only watch one run, check out the Zelda speed race embedded at the top of the post. If you're gonna watch another one you need to watch Grandpoobear play Super Dram World 2. Dram World 2 is the sequel to Dram World which is a Super Mario World community ROM game that is extremely, extremely difficult. Grandpoobear currently holds the world record for speedrunning Dram World 2 and he completes the whole game in an impressive 49 minutes. But enough of reading, seriously just click the link below and treat yourself to the run, it's really that good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOFSMg5UjzM&list=WL&index=72

Batman: The Video Game by dxtr and EndySWE in 10:18 Wrapping things up with this super solid NES Batman race by dxtr and EndySWE. NES Batman was even positively reviewed by the Angry Video Game nerd but rightfully declared "a hard son of a bitch" but EndySWE and dxtr make it look easy. And clocking in at 10 minutes it's a short run well worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMWizKtkJ14&list=WL&index=94

https://gamesdonequick.com/

Nintendo announced Nintendo Labo today which looks to be a game that merges hobbyist DiY crafting and the Nintendo Switch. It's a really interesting concept and the trailer shows off some of the fun things you can do with Labo. Many people are jumping into the maker communities creating mini computers that do certain tasks and it seems like Labo is on the edge of that with some of the silly peripherals of the Wii era. Want to make a remote controlled device with your joy-cons that uses the rumble to move? Check. Want to build a cardboard fishing pole to catch something? Check. Want to build a full robot suit to fight other robots? Check.

I could see Labo going pretty big with kids and parents that want to have some family crafting and gaming time together. I could see myself getting this when my son is older and I think we'd have quite a bit of fun with it. Then again, if many on Twitter are to be believed, this is just another failure of Nintendo recently(which is an odd claim considering Nintendo is doing very well at the moment). As I was reading the fan response to Labo on Twitter I really appreciated what @MikeDrucker had to say

"NINTENDO: Nintendo Labo is for kids and those that like kid stuff!
ADULT GAMER: Okay, but what if I don't want it?
NINTENDO: Totally fine. It's for kids.
ADULT GAMER: Yes, but cardboard? Really? Not in my game room!
NINTENDO: It's for kids.
ADULT GAMER: But how is it for me?"

https://twitter.com/MikeDrucker/status/953755810391384065

Yeah maybe Nintendo Labo isn't for everyone but it still looks like fun and isn't like anything Sony or Microsoft is doing at all.