Retro Boy Advance

So the rumour mill has started on the next home console from Nintendo . One of the big features is apparently going to be a controller with a HD screen built-in. This can only mean one thing... Zelda: Four Swords Adventure 2! Woohoo!

Yes. The PlayStation. With a Super NES pad. You probably already know the famous story of how the PlayStation came to b e, in which case you know it was originally supposed to be a Super NES with CD capabilities. I'm using that Nintendo connection as a segue to my future series of posts concerning... tada! The Sony PlayStation, aka PSX, aka PS1, aka PS one. Yeah, yeah. I know I'm supposed to be this big Nintendo fan who only blogs Nintendo stuff and I promised to blog about Gamecube stuff and... I haven't. Not yet anyway. But thing is, I was cleaning out my house the other day and I found my old PS one, looking all cute and white... and neglected. The problem with my PS one was I had bought it after my previous original body PlayStation had died and very soon after the PS one died as well. Fed up with Sony's apparent lack of quality control I gave up on the PlayStation forever and moved on to (supposedly) more reliable world of PCs for my gaming needs. But tha

Now that Retronauts is firmly back and comfortable with its new call-in format, I can rest easily that my need for retro gaming chatter is easily satiated every time a new episode goes up. The most recent episode was about the Game Boy Advance, one of my favourite handhelds as you may know, and while it was a good episode on the whole, with mentions of the Gamecube attachment, Game Boy Player, (thanks to our friend noiseredux from Game Boy Player Land ), the three Castlevania games, Riviera, Super Mario Advance, the tendency of the GBA to mostly get 16-bit console ports, Mother 3 and even Rhythm Tengoku, I was slightly disappointed that the Game Boy Micro got no love (despite the Famicom limited edition being the image for the episode) and neither did Advance Wars. For shame. If only I had a skype headset, fast internet and a time machine, I could fix this. Still, it's not all doom and gloom! It's actually a good episode, despite my complaints. This is the internet, after a

Today is the tenth anniversary of the Game Boy Advance, my favourite little handheld that could, and boy did it do it oh so well. I've mentioned before that I bought my indigo GBA near the Japanese launch and the only games I could get at the time were Japanese ones so I opted to get Super Mario Advance and F-Zero. Both totally awesome experiences, especially F-Zero, which made me feel like I finally had a Super NES... IN MY HAND. And the GBA was that essentially. A GBA in your hand. It would later go on to inherit the legacy of the Super NES as an all round awesome 2D graphics handheld portable gaming device (phew! That was a mouthful) by being the place for awesome 2D RPGs. The GBA would be home to a series of some of the greatest Castlevania games ever, two great Metroid games, great (but not perfect) remakes of Super NES RPGs as well as many other great games. Unfortunately this awesome little thing had one big great flaw. While it did allow you to play awesome games,

This morning on the commute to work, I spent the whole train ride trying to defeat the most difficult boss in Mother 3 I have encountered so far. My train ride lasts about 40 minutes, and the whole time I was just fighting him. Victory never felt so sweet as when the train pulled in to my stop, the boss finally succumbed. To say it felt marvelous is an understatement. I then saved the game, switched my DS off and promptly walked to my office. However, during my lunch break, I found to my extreme horror that the save file had disappeared . I checked my last save backup I made and it was early in the chapter I was at. The boss I defeated this morning was at the end of the chapter. This particular chapter happens to the longest chapter in Mother 3. So yeah, I'm feeling a wee bit frustrated with the game now. I really wanted to finish it, but it looks like I won't be revisiting it anytime soon. I don't feel like replaying a whole chapter. As far as I'm concerned, I am

So I registered a new URL for my little blog: http://www.retroboyadvance.com I can't believe I was able to snag this domain name. Did no one else thought to register it? Anyways, Blogger is smart enough to reroute the old URL to the new one, but update your bookmarks anyway! In other news, I am still slowly making my way through Mother 3. I am in the penultimate chapter (I think) so not long now till the end.