Of course, before writing this piece, I scoured the Internet for a good photo to go with the “Have a very Mario Christmas!” title. This is the first one I found:

Many thanks to Lord Woof and his Flickr photostream for the image.

Anyway, let me close this post with a sincere wish for you and other Re:Retro viewers to have a very merry Christmas. Enjoy the holidays!

Post from: EveryJoe

Have a very Mario Christmas!

If you’re a regular visitor of this blog and the rest of the Video Games Channel of b5media, then you probably already know why I’ve been gone for almost a week. If not, well, here’s a short explanation (which I also posted on my other b5media blog, MMOtaku):

Whew! What a nasty week! I won’t bore you guys with details; suffice it to say that I—and I guess a hundred or so Internet service subscribers in this little town—had a hell of a boring time with little or no Internet connection.

Well, if any good came out of the sudden loss of Internet connection, it’s probably the extra time to break out some old consoles and games and play them. And I’ve played a good number of old games on my now-dysfunctional Atari 2600, Nintendo Family Computer, and Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

I tried to make my rusty and musty Apple IIc up and running, but it’s just too old and dirty—courtesy of a family of mice that have made the computer their home. And my Coleco Telstar Arcade isn’t in any better shape, with only the Pong side running—and I’m not really in the mood for Pong or any other game that emulates tennis in some form.

So I’ve stuck to playing some of the Atari 2600, Nintendo Family Computer and Super Nintendo Entertainment System’s most beloved games, including two Star Wars games, Jedi Arena and Death Star Battle, Street Fighter, and Starfox.

Okay, that’s it for now. Stay tuned to Re:Retro for more retro-gaming goodness!

Post from: EveryJoe

More Atari, Famicom, and SNES games on Re:Retro

That’s right, today is Sonic the Hedgehog’s 15th anniversary!

I can’t believe it’s been 15 whole years since I first played Sonic the Hedgehog on my trusty old Mega Drive.

We’d picked up a copy of Mean Machines (before it became Mean Machines Sega) and saw the review of Sonic’s console debut. The buzz surrounding the game was incredible and Mean Machines were suitably excited, making Sonic the cover star for their eighth issue.

They finally reviewed it in their tenth issue (link to PDF of the review), and that was it. We were getting a Mega Drive for this one game. We had to sell our NES to get it, but it was worth it.
I still remember bringing it back from Rumbelows, on that day. I think there’s a jewelry store there now. They gave us a Mega Drive that had clearly been opened, and I noticed because I could not stop staring at the thing. I voiced my eight year old concern to the man in the shop, but we were assured that the unit was fine and that it hadn’t been removed from the box.

Upon making our way back to our house we met my sister in “the snicket”, which is wank-speak for a thoroughfare (next to “the spare field”). She was about half way through her paper round, but managed to finish the rest of it fairly quickly when she saw what we were taking home.

Upon getting home we excitedly gathered round and unpacked the box. I was positive at this point I was going to freak out sometime, and I probably did, but not through excitement. It had been opened in the store and was missing an RF cable.

My stepdad, just as eager as the rest of us to play Sonic, cycled back into town to pick one up and hopefully beat the poo out of that asshat in Rumbelows. It only took him around half an hour, but it was one of the most agonising waits of my life. Imagine being eight years old, with the very latest in cutting edge games hardware sitting in front of you, perfectly functional, yet useless. Imagine what it must feel like for a heroin addict to go cold turkey. How their blood must itch.

My blood was itching.

I think I read the manual for Sonic four or five times before my stepdad returned with vital component.

This was it. We were ready. But who should play first? I can’t remember who did, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t mind. Just watching this game was incredible enough. It was the fastest damn thing I’d ever seen! These days Sonic 1 is almost laboriously slow, but at the time let me assure you that there wasn’t another game that moved so quickly and smoothly.

I remember feeling something life-changing that day. I think the first time I played Sonic was the moment where I knew I’d be playing games for the rest of my life, if only to see what the future holds. After witnessing this incredible transition from 8 to 16bit, I wanted to see where it was going to lead us all.

The 23rd of June 1991 is the day that I became a gamer. And it’s thanks to the little blue guy. Hell, were it not for Yuji Naka and his team I wouldn’t even be called Jonic! My life would very different indeed. I can’t believe it’s been fifteen years.

Happy anniversary to Sonic and Sonic Team, and thanks for the past fifteen years :o)

Incidentally, today is also the sixteenth anniversary of the Simpsons, the tenth anniversary of the N64 (Japan), The fifth Anniversary of the Nintendo Gameboy Advance (UK) and the launch day of the Nintendo DS Lite (UK)! I wonder what it is about this date that Nintendo is so keen on? Three important pieces of hardware at five year intervals. You think they’re were trying to steal some thunder from Sonic’s 5th, 10th and now 15th anniversaries? Anyone got any ideas?

Oh yeah, Sonic 1 screenshots from Console Passion

Post from: EveryJoe

Happy Birthday Sonic!

What’s that? A redesign on the cards? A better Re:Retro?

Whatever next?!

I’m not sure when it’s happening, but I’ve nearly finished the template… Once I’ve got the go ahead I’ll drop the new skin on this blizzog (blizog?)… I’m also mentioning it because I really like that picture :o)

Stick around and maybe you will experience the thrills that I’m guaranteeing with the new design! Yes you…

Post from: EveryJoe

What on Earth is this?

In startling news, Sony realised recently that they replaced the Playstation six damn years ago, and as such don’t need to make it (or the PSone) anymore.

What took them so long? If they were still selling thousands of them then fair enough, but what with the PS3’s release in the not so distant future, and the fact that PS2s are rapidly approaching pocket change prices it amazes me that they hung onto it for so long. Six years too long.

Having said that, they are now well and truly completely and unequivocally retro!

I want one.

Via Joystiq

Post from: EveryJoe

ZOMG WTF PSX RIP!

Aww yeah! It’s time once again to welcome another blog to the b5 media games channel.

Games Industry Wire is a blog written by our newest games blogger Justin Tippins and it concerns, oddly enough, the games industry itself rather than the games it produces…

There will be interviews, analysis, news… Oh! The content… Mmmmm…

Welcome aboard Justin! Stop by and check it out, it’s already shaping up to be a great blog!

Games Industry Wire.

Post from: EveryJoe

New blog: Games Industry Wire!

Fellow retro game blogger Racketboy has finally launched his latest blogging project, “Room Play“.

I want to cover the things that will enhance a gamer’s gaming environment while throwing in some things that could be thought of as a gamer’s HGTV. :)

As is the way with such a great blogger, there is already a load of great content over there… Here are a couple of highlights so far:

• Make your own USB Saturn Controller
• Free gaming mp3s to expand your musical horizons
• Sega’s arcade to Revolution possibilities
• Console color database

The quality is high as you might expect, and it’s shaping up to be a great blog… Make sure to subscribe to the ATOM feed, you’ll only regret it if you don’t!

Visit Room Play!

The Room Play logo is copyright © 2006 Racketboy

Post from: EveryJoe

Room Play launched!

I wouldn’t normally make a post like this, but this is still a new blog (less than a month old) and a story I posted earlier has made the front page of Digg by proxy… I’m just so pleased with the whole thing that not only could I not do anything other than post about it, but my diction has also gone to complete sdkgajdf!

Here’s the blog that the Digg article links to and the article on Digg itself. Go and Digg it if you, uh… Dig it…

I know I’m not ultimately responsible for the Digging of the article, so I want to thank Game Set Watch for writing about my little blog here… I’m dead pleased :o)

Thanks to anyone that Dugg, and thanks again to GSW :o)

And yes, in the screenshot I am listening to a Sonic radio station…

Post from: EveryJoe

Digging Pong…

That’s right folks, having not long ago launched this blog, the b5media video games channel continues to grow with today’s announcement of the addition of Play Designs.

The second blog b5 is rocking written by your friend and mine, the lovely Amber Loe.

I think you’re gonna like her, she’s into the same kinds of things as people like us… You know, games and web programming and all those geeky things we get up to. Seriously, go talk to her man…

What’s that? You don’t know her well enough? Well find out more in her profile then…

Listen, you’re totally gonna dig what she’s doing over there… It’s all about game development, you be mad crazy to miss this… Did I mention she’s also an Adventuress?

Go on man…

Go on!

Post from: EveryJoe

Play Designs, yo!

I guess I should have mentioned this yesterday when the launch was officially announced.

That’s right, Re:Retro is now a real blog that’s ready to go! If this is your first time here, welcome! My name is Jonic, and this is Re:Retro, which will become a prime source of retro gaming goodness for you to devour with your occular apparatus.

My apologies if the design looks a little shoddy, but we had to launch in a bit of a rush last night after I started getting quite a few links coming in. Many thanks to fellow b5ers Play-Girlz (twice), Kapped, Nintendo Gal, Infendo and 4cr (although I’d have liked a link back from you :P).

It appears yesterday’s post about The World of Nintendo proved rather popular (even if I did tip all the aforementioned websites off about it) so we had to launch there and then. I had about an hour to get the design working in Internet Explorer so it might look a little shakey there.

This is just the start, I’m going to work really hard on this and this website will hopefully be seen as a benchmark of retro games blogs written by me.

Thanks for stopping by, whether you’re new here or not! Now subscribe to the feed and start commenting!

Jonic.

Post from: EveryJoe

Re:Retro go!