Tag Archive

25 Years Later The SNES Mouse Is Being Re-Released

Posted on June 29, 2017 by Rae Michelle Richards

Some of you reading this might remember the SNES paint program Mario Paint and the Super Nintendo styled mouse that came packed with the cartridge. Twenty-five years after the peripherals’ initial release for Ninty’s fourth generation console, it is seeing a resurgence thanks to a Nintendo partner – hardware manufacturer Hyperkin.

I can’t seem to find which company manufactured the 1990s original version of the SNES mouse so perhaps Nintendo produced it themselves. Hyperkin’s re-release of the pointing device adopts the same grey color scheme, small physical size and twin purple buttons that made the OG mouse so unique. One particular change with the 2017 Hyperkin version is the length of the cord – 1992’s version had a cord that was shorter than that of the included SNES controllers. They’ve kept the SNES controller port support as well, meaning that this mouse will work with existing Super Nintendo consoles and the upcoming Super Nintendo Entertainment System Classic.

Here are a few promo shots and the official features list from Hyperkin:

  • SNES compatible
  • Perfect with Mario Paint and other compatible SNES mouse titles
  • Iconic retro-style color scheme
  • Smooth and responsive cursor control, perfect for drawing, commanding troops, or fragging enemies
  • 6 ft. cable

The Retro Style Mouse will retail for $19.99 USD, no word on if we’ll be able to hack Mario Paint on to our SNES Classics when they become available. Other games that supported the mouse back in the 90s included the arcade port of Terminator 2 and the SNES version of Jurassic Park – needless to say those won’t come standard on the SNES Classic either.

[Source: Hyperkin | Header Image Source: Moby Games]

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SNES Classic On The Way This September

Posted on June 26, 2017 by Les Major

SNES Classic

Nintendo made the announcement just moments ago that indeed there will be a SNES Classic! Rumors and speculations have been circulating lately but thankfully Nintendo has confirmed the systems existence. What a great set of games too including the officially unreleased game, Star Fox 2!

The SNES classic will be released September 29th and is listed as being $80 USD.

Here are the included games:

Contra III: The Alien Wars™
Donkey Kong Country™
EarthBound™
Final Fantasy III
F-ZERO™
Kirby™ Super Star
Kirby’s Dream Course™
The Legend of Zelda™: A Link to the Past™
Mega Man® X
Secret of Mana
Star Fox™
Star Fox™ 2
Street Fighter® II Turbo: Hyper Fighting
Super Castlevania IV™
Super Ghouls ’n Ghosts®
Super Mario Kart™
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars™
Super Mario World™
Super Metroid™
Super Punch-Out!! ™
Yoshi’s Island™

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North America Needs This Seiken Densetsu Collection

Posted on March 21, 2017 by Les Major

Growing up in the 90s, I had some amazing experiences on the SNES. Watching Terra pilot her MagiTek armor across the snowy plains toward Narshe. Traveling through time with a talking frog, a prehistoric warrior woman, and a robot from the future. Then there was that time I drew a sword from a waterfall and doomed an entire planet. Now that, that was a good time!

The first two games I’m referring to are Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger. The latter is Secret of Mana. One of my favorite games from my youth. What’s this? In Japan there’s going to be a Seiken Densetsu Collection featuring Final Fantasy Adventure for the Gameboy, Secret of Mana, and Seiken Densetsu 3 for the SNES on one cart for the Nintendo Switch?

News of this title was teased on Twitter yesterday:

This would be a wonderful addition to the Switch. Especially being able to play with both JoyCons like that? Make it happen SquareEnix! It would also be the first time Seiken Densetsu 3 was released in North America! Look at this beautiful box art.

There’s even a trailer available. Enjoy! Hopefully we’ll get this one in our markets as well.

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12 In 1 Retro Console, The Retro Freak, Coming Soon From FunStock Retro

Posted on March 4, 2017 by Rae Michelle Richards

Who doesn’t love a good 8-bit or 16-bit from their childhood? Perhaps checking out a console that existed before you did? Retro games can introduce you to genres that are no longer considered mainstream or help you relive some of the definitive games that helped shape the games industry into what it is today.

Imagine having access to the physical libraries of 12 different consoles all from different manufacturers from the past 30+ years, this is possible thanks to the upcoming release of the Retro Freak from UK retailer FunStock Retro you will now be able to have up to 16 consoles under your television without a jungle of tangled cables.

In terms of compatibility the Retro Freak supports cartridges from the following systems:

  • NES
  • SNES
  • Famicom (Japanese SNES)
  • SNES (PAL)
  • Game Boy
  • Game Boy Color
  • GBA
  • SEGA Mega Drive
  • SEGA Genesis
  • PC Engine
  • Japanese Turbo Graphics 16

Direct emulation via the included cartridge slots isn’t the only thing that the Retro Freak will bring to the crowded console clone scene. With built-in USB ports this neat little device will support a number of USB enabled controllers including those from the Xbox One and PlayStation. If you’ve got a USB genesis or SNES controller those are supported as well. Each system’s controller layout and be customized and this little white box even gives players the ability to add turbo functions through the system’s menus.

Here are a few shots of the Retro Freak system menus:

Retro Freak also gives players an extra degree of control with its ability to copy a game cartridge directly to a mounted SD card – removing the need to keep cartridges cluttered around the television like you did when you were 8. If one of your older cartridges no longer has a working SRAM battery, making manual saves impossible, the Retro Freak can back up saves directly to a mounted SD card.

More information about the Retro Freak are available at the Funstock Retro website. Currently the Retro Freak is priced at 169.99 EURO / $240 CDN and offers free shipping within Europe or to North America for $5.99.

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Repairing The ‘SNES PlayStation’ Answers One of Gaming’s Big Mysteries

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Back in the late 1980s Nintendo of Japan announced a partnership with Sony Corporation to build a CD-based add-on for the then-upcoming Super Famicom (Super Nintendo).  After years of development one of the most public schisms between the then fledgling video games industry giants occurred during the 1991 Consumer Electronics Show. Though, this dissolution may have ultimately favoured Sony as any list of top-selling games these days will inevitably feature Playstation games, but back then, Sony was humiliated at that 1991 show. In the span of two days not only did Sony announce a CD-based add-on for the SNES, called the ‘Nintendo PlayStation, but Nintendo of America also announced a partnership with Phillips to produce officially licensed games.z

After Engadget went hands-on with an early prototype ‘Super Nintendo PlayStation’ decades of speculation roared to life within the gaming enthusiast community. For more than 20 years this add-on was a phantom, the only tangible evidence was thought to be a single controller (that we now know looks nothing like this prototype’s controller) that appeared online in 2007, some concept drawings and Sony’s original 1991 CES press release. For years fans had wondered – Did the SNES CD add the capabilities of the PlayStation 1 (called the PSX in early marketing materials)? Or was it an entirely new beast?

SNES_PlayStation1

Thankfully well known hardware tinkerer Ben Heck was able to negotiate a deal with the owners of the SNES PlayStation system, allowing Ben to take a crack at restoring some of the functionality. After two painful weeks of waiting for Ben’s entire video series to be complete – from tear-down to repair of this once mythical prototype – we now have some tangible details about the ill-fated add-on.

The SNES PlayStation did not contain any of the hardware that would later be found in the PSX, instead it appears to be very similar in design to a Japanese SNES with a CD-tray under carriage, extra memory and control chips designed to run unreleased CD based games. Now that the full specs of the SNES PlayStation prototype have been published by Ben we know that the unit would have used the stock 3 MHz processor from the SNES for most of its number crunching. Also we know that the SNES PlayStation had an additional 2mhz co-processor and added 256K of Working Memory to allow for smooth playback from the 2X CD-ROM drive.

Rare_PlayStation_Controller

Ben Heck is actually able to restore a lot of function to this patch-work prototype – replacing a number of the aging capacitors and cleaning up some of the internal components. Once this was done he was able to restore function to both the under carriage CD-ROM drive, view the CD-ROM self test, play SNES / Super Famicom Games and even get the CD-ROM drive to open and close. Sadly, without any proto-type CD-ROM software to test the unit with, we’ll never get to see the SNES PlayStation reach its unrealized potential.

So there you have it, one of the longest standing mysteries that plagued young Nintendo fans in the early 90s finally solved. Check out the pair of videos below if you’re interested in the entire restoration process that the SNES PlayStation underwent.

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Secret of Evermore | Retrospective

Posted on January 12, 2016 by Kenny Keelan

When I was younger, I had a thing for giving games a chance when they weren’t rated so well or they weren’t getting a lot of media attention. If I was at a local video store and I hadn’t seen a game before, I’d always get excited as though I was the first person in the entire world to play it and I’d found some kind of hidden gem. Back when I first started renting SNES and Genesis games on my own – before that, I needed parental or brotherly approval – the Internet wasn’t nearly as relevant as it is now and very little of it was dedicated to gaming and gaming press so having what you would call a gaming blog, back then, was kind of a brand new thing. My thing, back then, was just talking about games that I liked and trying to grow a community that knew no borders. It’s a weird thing, back then, really quite a bit more niche than it is now. When I wrote about Secret of Evermore, then, I remember saying that I got it because of its similarities to Secret of Mana, a game that stood as a beautiful and rich departure from the likes of Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, and Breath of Fire titles that were all the rage at the time. Delving into it now, I feel that I was able to appreciate it a little more than I did when I first tried it. Follow the jump to learn more about the game and my experiences with it!

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The Joys of Import Gaming: How easy we have it these days

Posted on January 8, 2016 by Erika

As a kid having grown up during the 90s, I got to experience the height of the console wars in full swing: Nintendo vs Sega. Both of those companies duked it out for the dominance of the console market, with several other competitors such as Atari with their Jaguar and NEC’s TurboGrafix-16 lagging severely behind. Unfortunately, with growing up in the US, gamers such as myself missed numerous releases. Some of those were either not localized from Japan, or the translations of various games that did make it over were severely butchered by such things as Nintendo’s no-religious imagery/text policy, or had copious amounts of Engrish. Possibly one of the more famous examples of Engrish was the localization of the Sega MegaDrive game Zero Wing, which spawned one of the earlier memes of 2000/2001.

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Wii U Getting Virtual Console – 30th Anniversary Specials!

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Les Major

Coming this Spring, Wii U gamers will be able to download content from their own version of the virtual console including Nintendo and Super Nintendo titles. These games will be playable on screen as usual, and seperately on your GamePad controller.

The service will have a limited selection to begin with, but will continue to add more as well as Game Boy Advance titles. There is also “special pricing” if you’re looking to upgrade your Wii virtual console titles you’ve transfered over to your Wii U. NES games will cost $1 for the upgrade and SNES titles, $1.50. There’s more!Read More

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Man Sells Complete Super Nintendo Collection On eBay

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Broken Joysticks

Chances are that you find oneself on eBay, glancing at bids and offers that makes the mind conjure up the great auctioning question, “Should I bid on this, even knowing good and well I shouldn’t?” Well then, here is an offer that makes the most of that great question.

A gentleman by the eBay username kaisetsuna has provided an auction for which he is selling the complete Super Nintendo collection that was available in the United States, Canada and Mexico, all for the low, low price of $24,999. So for the price of a new Chevrolet Camaro or the tuition for Texas A&M, one can own 721 Super Nintendo games, some with the original boxes and manuals to match. You not only get perennial classics like Super Mario World, Contra 3: The Alien Wars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time, but also games no one should even dare play, like Skuljagger: Revolt of the Westicans, Lester the Unlikely, and the worst version of Mortal Kombat.

If you want to bid on it yourself, there is a link right HERE that you can take advantage of, and be the first on your block to have more than enough 16-bit, Mode 7 and even Super FX gaming to take advantage for years.

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