Recently I picked up 8Bitdo's NES30 Pro bluetooth gamepad. I have a bunch of PC controllers but most of them like the XBox 360 controller are great for PC shooters and other games but not great for traditional platformers or retro games.

The NES30 advertises support for the PC, Mac, Android, iOS & more recently the Switch. With some research I found out that the NES30 supports iOS through iCade which is a pseduo-standard that began with the iCade for iPad where the controller acts like a keyboard and games that support the iCade respond to certain keyboard button presses. It's an interesting work around to Apple not having a controller standard at the time until they released MFi which is a new Apple certification standard for controllers. Because of this iCade support is limited to a handful of games and apparently 8Bitdo doesn't support it anymore because in the recent controller firmware they removed iCade support and added support for the Switch. I can understand why they did that and truth be told, you can rollback the firmware to get iCade support but you'd then lose support for the Switch. It would be nice to eventually buy one controller to work with all your devices but it seems Apple disallows this in the MFi licensing terms so, for now, it's not going to happen.

The NES30 pairs beautifully with my Mac, PC and Android devices and once setup works flawlessly. It's very light and feels great in the hand. The buttons and action really remind me of the original Nintendo controllers and the analog thumbsticks aren't too bad. I don't think i'd use the NES30 for a modern shooter but for the handful of platformers and retro games I played with it it worked really well.

Last night after we tucked away the little one to sleep my partner and I decided to watch a movie. More than half way in a Cheerful Ghost user hardeyez texts me that he just pre-ordered the Super Nintendo Classic on Walmart and I should head over to do the same. Immediately I let my partner know the emergency situation and we paused the film and I frantically created a Walmart account and put in the pre-order in what I consider to be the quickest new account creation process ever. A few minutes later I messaged Travis, WhiteboySlim and Scrypt but by the time Travis went to pre-order the Classic that Walmart page had crashed. I heard stories that people that pre-ordered the system woke up to Walmart telling them they didn't have stock for them but... so far... it looks like it's a pre-order success story.

Needless to say securing a Super Nintendo Classic really made my evening and that next morning. I really wanted to get the Nintendo Classic and wasn't looking forward to having another year roll by and missing out on Nintendo next retro re-release. According to Walmart the Super Nintendo Classic should arrive on October 6th which is just in time for it to get packed away for Christmas. Even though i'm getting the Super Nintendo Classic October 6th I still want to wrap it up and open it on Christmas. It just seems like playing it on Christmas morning is the best way to experience it.. or at least that's the plan right now.

Some people have noted what the point of getting one is if you own quite a few of these games already? That's a good point but considering I don't actually own most of these games, this is a pretty inexpensive way to get them. I don't own Earthbound and getting the SNES cart for $300 doesn't sound that appealing to me. Plus out of all 21 games on the Super Nintendo Classic technically I only own 5 and it would be 6 if the kid I loaned Secret of Mana too returned it to me. Funny story with that is a couple of years ago I met that kid at a bar and I mentioned to him he still had my Secret of Mana cart. We both laughed and he said that i'd never get it back.

Now I will.

http://www.nintendo.com/super-nes-classic

If you want to listen to me pine away about the Super Nintendo Classic you should listen to the first Episode of a new Podcast "Cheerful Ghost Radio."

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/3391/cheerful-ghost-radio-episode-1-the-first-one-where-we-talk-about-the-super-nintendo-classic

“We’re not teasing you intentionally; we want to get this right, so we’ve opted to share things step by step as we bring this to life, and to listen closely to the Atari community feedback as we do so.”

So far all we know about the Ataribox is that it's coming and it looks... pretty good. Some other sites have some pictures that show it off from a couple more angles but not much more is known at this point.

I've always been curious if a console aimed at the retro or hacker enthusiast community could do well but i'm not sure if this is more than "Atari's NES Classic" or a full on console that will support new and old games? I've reached out to Atari about this so when we know more in terms of games that will launch on this and the specs i'll report back.

https://www.ataribox.com/
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/17/15980990/atari-ataribox-specs-pictures

Strap in for another installment of some of the coolest speedruns out of this years Summer Games Done Quick starting with an incredible Link to the Past swordless run by Andy completed in 1:14.58! Andy uses every trick in the book to complete this run quickly without a sword and lots of it is glitching out the game to skip areas and get some items out of order. If you are a fan of the game this is a must watch run!

Super Mario Series Warpless Relay Race in 2:47:12 is an epic run of three teams through all of the Super Mario games on the NES ending with Super Mario World. It's a nail biting race and the end is surprising as it was quite close with all teams coming very near to each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewbKrMvwzQI

Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix by Bl00dyBizkitz in 3:02:00 might as well be called "The Disney Singalong Run" because during this 3 hour Kingdom Hearts showcase different runners sing through such songs like Gaston, Part of Your World, A Whole New World & Be a Man. It's a really fun run that shows off the spirit of Summer Games Done Quick and brings the spreedrun a little closer to something you'd see in a Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVjf3bc3Noo

G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor by toad22484 in 9:52 is just a solid speedrun of a classic NES game that doesn't get as much love as I think it deserves. It's really quick too so well worth jumping in to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQNvWPWo9BA

Sony has it's PS4 VR, Occulus has the Rift, Google has Cardboard and Valve has the HTC Vive. Microsoft is doing something a bit different with it's HoloLens and to date I haven't been to interested in it until I recently watched a Metal Jesus video where he showed it off. Apparently Jesus has a friend at Microsoft that let him borrow it for a couple days and take some video of how it turned out. Microsoft HoloLens is a augmented reality system that seems to have some really interesting games you can play with it such as a detective game that takes place entirely in your room. Since it's augmented reality the video doesn't turn out that bad either, which isn't something I can say for most VR video on YouTube as it's stretched and isn't easy to put on a traditional video screen. To date i'm not interested in picking up any VR system yet but I enjoy seeing what they are capable of and playing around with them when I can.

This weekend at Disney's D23 Expo there was a Star Wars Episode VII: The Last Jedi panel and as part of that director Rian Johnson dropped a behind the scenes video that I found fairly surprising. From the looks of the puppets, effects and more it looks like Johnson is taking things in a slightly new direction while keeping the spirit of Star Wars intact. Or at least that's what the feature told me. I'm really happy to get these behind the scenes videos and trailers spread out over the months leading up to the December release date for this movie. It's nice to see how things are moving along and have fresh stuff to talk about while we all dig in for 5 months until episode VII comes. Seems like it was just yesterday when we were crazily awaiting The Force Awakens and now Episode 8 is nearly here.

It's a good time to be a Star Wars fan.

For many the thought of building up a retro game library of the games you want to collect isn't easy or cheap. It seems like more and more people are trying to collect these old games making stock limited and driving up prices. Even when new opportunities to own these classics comes up by way of the Nintendo or Super Nintendo Classic those options aren't available to everyone as again... stock is limited so what's a person to do? Well Cygnus Destroyer as a video about solutions to these problems by way of flash carts and bootlegs. Seems a bit odd to to me to play a Nintendo Game on a NES recreation like the RetroN and a flash cart when you could just emulate everything on your PC but... All that said, these are great options if you wanted to play a game you couldn't find on your original NES hardware with a flash cart or if your childhood NES broke like mine, replace it with something a bit less expensive and just as useful like a RetroN 3.

Now that the Nintendo Switch is out and the Wii U received it's last first party Nintendo title if you are interested in picking one up and the back catalog now might be a good time. Metal Jesus and Kinsey have a really great video that covers the system and some of the best games you can get. I still love collecting games for my Wii and getting a Wii U is a matter of time when the prices on the used market go low enough.

Another Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus video hit YouTube today from the alternate history gameshow German or Else! Apparently people in the United States have 173 days to switch over to speaking only German and the gameshow is a way educate people on the change. It's a funny concept until they take away the loser at the end for re-education. They end the clip with some in game footage and I really find the scene with the SS officers chumming it up with the KKK to be particularly disturbing.

October 27th can't come quickly enough.

The new Castlevania Netflix show dropped recently and last night I sat down to watch the entire first season. It's not hard to binge watch the whole show as it's only 4 episodes that clock in at about 30 minutes each. That said I really appreciated that the show didn't waste much time and completed it's first story arc in four episodes. My only real complaint by the end was that there wasn't more story waiting for me but Netflix has said that it's picking up another season of 8 episodes so if you liked the first season, more is on the way.

The basic premise of Castlevania is that Dracula lost his wife and wants to take his revenge on mankind for taking her life. The first episode focuses on Dracula and you really feel for him and understand why he decides to become a super villain. I was very surprised at how much I loved the story and how the choices the show creators made I didn't really expect. I was expecting some generic vampire hunter show and what I felt very fresh and original. The first season is an interesting take on religion, science and how power is used to control people. I didn't expect that Castlevania would start the show on such a pro-science bend but it does and it's an entirely surprising focus in a universe that is primarily focused on sword and sorcery. Kind of strange to consider but the Castlevania show expertly juggles science, religion, magic and monsters in such a way I was really impressed.

Simon Belmont is the main character of the show and he starts out as a defeated drifter who literally gets the shit kicked out of him when we first meet him. I really enjoyed Simon's character and the voice acting by Richard Armitage is superb. Other characters are brought in over the course of the four episodes but I don't want to spoil anything by telling you who it is.

The show feels like it's taking notes from Castlevania III and Symphony of the Night. Castlevania III is the highlight of the NES series for me but the show doesn't feel like it's a direct companion to the NES games. Frankly I really enjoy the fresh take on this universe, religion, science and the like so having the Netflix show have only light parallels to the video game is entirely fine by me.

If you have Netflix and are curious to watch the show I recommend you check it out. My only cautionary tale is that you take heed to the content as this show is very dark, bloody and contains some shocking stuff.