A Good month focusing mainly on my Top 10 Quest.
Nintendo 64 Official Gold Controller
I purchased this controller to add to my boxed N64 as my variant was missing the gold controller.
Rating – Loose
Price Paid – £25 (Cex Online)
Super Mario Bros. 2 – Nintendo Entertainment System
The Princess has been kidnapped by King Koopa (again) and it’s up to Mario and Luigi to save her (again). Not to be confused with the western Super Mario Bros. 2, this sequel to Super Mario Bros. is very much an expansion to the original, with many reused graphics and concepts, though new ones are also present.
Instead of offering a two-player mode as in the original, this game allows you to choose between a Mario mode and a Luigi mode, with each character handling differently. Mario has tighter ground control, while Luigi has greater jumping capabilities.
Power-ups remain the same: Super Mushrooms grow a brother from small to Super size, Fire Flowers give them the ability to throw fireballs at enemies, Starman makes a character temporarily invincible, and a 1-Up Mushroom will give one more life. New to this game is a power-down, a Poison Mushroom which will harm you as if it were an enemy.
The goal is still to survive from the left side of the level to the right, avoiding perils and bopping enemies along the way, progressing through a series of 8 worlds with 4 levels each. That is, unless a warp zone is found allowing areas to be skipped. There are new tricks that work for and against the player, though. Some piranha plants will come out of their pipe even if you’re standing right next to them, and bloobers now appear outside of the water. Wind can be present to alter how jumps will behave. Some warp zones will actually take the player to an earlier level instead of to a later one.
Rating – Boxed, No Manual Or Insert
Price Paid – £32 (Cex Online)
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle – Nintendo Gamecube
A complete conversion of Sonic Adventure 2 from the Dreamcast, with additional features exclusive to the Gamecube.
Play as either Sonic, Knuckles and co. or the evil crew of Dr. Robotnik, Shadow and Rouge through a total of 150 missions (30 levels in total). As Sonic team, you must stop Dr. Robotnik from taking control of the Chaos Emeralds, and as Dr. Robotnik’s Team, you must hold Sonic at bay while collecting all of the Emeralds to take full control of the planet.
Exclusive to the Gamecube are improved visuals, new 2 player battle games (including Kart Racing, Hunting and Chao Karate) and the ability to grow your Chao and exchange them to the Game Boy Advance game Sonic Advance for portable training.
Rating – Boxed, No Manual
Price Paid – £15 (Cex Online)
Sonic And Knuckles – Sega Mega Drive
Sonic and Knuckles continues the story directly from where Sonic the Hedgehog 3 left off. The explosion from the Death Egg sends Sonic flying deep into Floating Island’s Mushroom Hills. Sonic knows of the Master Emerald hidden somewhere on Floating Island, and is sure that Dr. Robotnik wants it to give his Death Egg limitless power. Knuckles probably knows where it is – but can Sonic stop Robotnik’s plans and find the Master Emerald all while fighting off Knuckles? Meanwhile, Knuckles is guarding Floating Island when he’s attacked by one of Robotnik’s robots! He quickly begins a chase for revenge.
Sonic & Knuckles is the fourth game in the Sonic series. It retains the same basic features as in the previous Sonic games (speed, rings for protection, Special Stages with Chaos Emeralds) as well as the three different shield types introduced in Sonic 3 (Fire, Water and Electric). Players can select either of the two title characters for play – either Sonic, or the all-new Knuckles the Echidna. Knuckles cannot jump as high as Sonic, but he can glide by holding the jump button while in the air. If you glide into a wall, Knuckles will also be able to climb it. He can also break through walls that Sonic can’t. With these abilities, Knuckles can access different areas from Sonic, making for each level an entirely new experience.
Rating – Complete
Price Paid – £45 (Cex Online)
Mortal Kombat – Sega Mega Drive
Mortal Kombat is a side-scrolling fighting game. Fighting is set as one-on-one combat, allowing each player to perform a variety of punches, kicks, and special moves in order to defeat their opponent. When the opponent faces their second round loss, the winner can perform a finishing move called a “Fatality” on the loser. The Fatality is a move unique to each fighter that graphically kills the loser in a blood-soaked finale.
Mortal Kombat began its life as a 2-player arcade title. It is notable for its use of digitized actors to represent the game’s fighters, as well as its use of copious amounts of blood during gameplay.
Rating – Complete
Price Paid – £12 (Cex Online)
Resident Evil Code: Veronica – Sega Dreamcast
Three months after the events of Resident Evil 2, Claire Redfield is still looking for her brother Chris. She infiltrates Umbrella Corporation’s headquarters in Paris, where she is captured and knocked out. When she comes to, she finds herself in a prison on a remote island. Freed by a friendly guard, Claire faces several problems. Not only is the island under attack by an unknown assailant, but there has been another outbreak of the T-Virus and the island is crawling with zombies and other mutated creatures. Claire not only has to face the undead, but also the commander of the base, a mad aristocrat with family ties to the origins of Umbrella Corporation and the T-Virus. And escaping from the island is only the beginning of Claire’s ordeals.
Code: Veronica continues the survival horror gameplay of its predecessors: the protagonist explores the surroundings, fighting monsters and solving puzzles. However, Code: Veronica is the first game in the series to do away with pre-rendered backgrounds, using a fully polygonal 3D engine instead, which allows for features such as real-time lighting and camera movement. Still, such movements are only used sparingly, and the use of perspective is mostly unchanged from earlier installments: the camera automatically switches to different static angles, showing the protagonist, monsters, and rooms from different spooky viewpoints.
Rating – Complete
Price Paid – £12 (Cex Online)
Mickey Mouse – Land of Illusion – Sega Game Gear
Mickey Mouse is reading an interesting book and suddenly find himself in a strange, dreamy village. He is told that a curse has been placed on the village, turning its good magic into bad one. The evil Phantom, who lives in the castle in the clouds, is responsible for that! Mickey decides to help the villagers and to defeat the evil Phantom.
This is a platform jump-and-run game. There is a time limit to each level. Mickey can jump, duck, climb, and defeat enemies by jumping on them and pressing the down arrow at the same time.
Rating – Complete
Price Paid – £15 (Cex Online)
Prince of Persia – Sega Game Gear
While the Sultan of Persia is fighting a war in a foreign country, his Grand Vizier Jaffar orchestrates a coup d’état. His way to the throne lies through the Sultan’s lovely daughter. Jaffar kidnaps her and threatens to kill her if she refuses to marry him. Meanwhile, the man the Princess loves is thrown into the dungeon. He has only one hour to escape from his prison, defeat the guards on his way, and stop Jaffar before the terrible marriage takes place.
Prince of Persia is a 2D platformer that is commonly regarded as a progenitor of the cinematic platformer genre. Rather than following the more common jump-and-run mechanics, it focuses on careful advancement through fairly complex levels, emphasizing the protagonist’s vulnerability and survival aspect. Rotoscoping technique is used to give more realism to the animation of the characters’ movements.
Rating – Complete
Price Paid – £15 (Cex Online)
Fighters Megamix – Sega Saturn
Fighters Megamix is a 1996 fighting video game by Sega for the Sega Saturn. It is a video game crossover of various 3D arcade blockbusters by Sega, from the complete cast of Virtua Fighter 2 and Fighting Vipers to Janet from Virtua Cop 2 and the Hornet car from Daytona USA. It allows gamers to play as the bosses of both Virtua Fighter 2 and Fighting Vipers without codes.
Mixing a simplistic video game and a sophisticated video game must have been difficult. But Fighters Megamix manages to do so by offering many options. The most important option available is the choice of having Fighters Megamix run under the Fighting Vipers style of gameplay or the Virtua Fighter 2 style of gameplay. Other options are unlockable while playing the game.
One good thing about mixing two games into one is that the game would include more selectable characters. Not only are there the 22 characters from Virtua Fighter 2 and Fighting Vipers but there are also 10 other hidden characters that can be unlocked by playing well in the Saturn version, including two from the arcade-only Sonic the Fighters. There are only 4 characters from Virtua Fighter 2 and 4 from Fighting Vipers in the Game.Com version.
Rating – Complete
Price Paid – £15 (Cex Online)
Nintendo 2DS Console
Please see here for more info
Rating – Complete
Price Paid – £48 (Cash Converters)
Commodore 64 Computer
Please see here for more info
Rating – Boxed With Insert
Price Paid – £40 (Cash Converters)
A Change Going Forward
I have decided that I’m going to slightly change the way I do my ‘Pickups’ posts. I’m going to be uploading a post as soon as I add an item to the collection instead of waiting until the end of the month. Hopefully this will result in more regular content for the site and will hopefully be more interesting for the reader.