No, you\’re not misreading the title. It\’s not supposed to come out as a fragment, but part of the title of my previous posting, \”If only I had a Nintendo Family Computer Disk System …\”\r\n\r\nWhy Metroid? Well, I haven\’t played any of the Metroid games and my earliest Nintendo video game console (I mean, aside from the various Game & Watches I\’ve collected throughout the years), the Nintendo Family Computer, is the best, uhmm, medium. Besides, Metroid, the first game in the Metroid series, was first released for the Famicom Disk System, way back in August 1986. A well-deserved kudos …read more

It’s amazing how memories flood your head just by looking at an object, hearing sounds, feeling the texture of wood with your fingers, and the list goes on. For me, the flood of memories started with the previous post, the one about Casio’s first game watch.
I suddenly remembered playing a couple of boxing matches on a calculator. It turns out that the calculator I remember is also a Casio, the BG-15.
Check out this video:

Yeah, those words I scrawled on the image above are exactly what I told my mother, oh, about 25 or so years ago, the age of video gaming discovery when Atari, Coleco and Nintendo dominated the market with their (then) outlandish-looking contraptions. I wasn’t pining for any of those, though. I was after a cool watch.
In this corner of the world, however, we also discovered, to our delight, that we can bring our video games to school with us, and not just leave them at home to gather dust. Well, there was, of course, the Game & Watch, but Nintendo …read more

Here’s something interesting that has eluded my attention these past six or so months that I’ve been handling Re:Retro. It’s the Game & Watch Gallery for the Nintendo Game Boy. Gosh, talk about taking advantage (in a good way, of course) of intellectual property rights. Nintendo, in a brilliant move, swiped remade four Game & Watch classics to feature present-day video game icons, including Mario and Donkey Kong Jr., and to play on the Game Boy.
Let’s take a closer look at the four games:
Manhole: Like in the original Game & Watch classic, you have a few people walking across a …read more

It\’s been a while, and I feel real rusty writing about retro video gaming. To tell you the truth, I\’m not sure how to begin writing again and what to write about. But the show must go on, and after hours of scouring the deepest recesses of my memory, I\’ve found good topics that may appease even the staunchest retro gaming fanatic … I hope.\r\n\r\nLike I said in past posts (ha, try saying that 10 times in a row at John Moschitta speed without faltering), and what readers have been egging me about this past few months, Re:Retro may seem …read more

At the risk of sounding exactly like a raving lunatic, I’m finally going to bare to the public one of my most well-kept secrets: I whined, whimpered, smashed my head into my bedroom’s wall, kicked down everything I saw, cried like a little school girl, and screamed until I turned blue just to force my Mom and Dad to buy me a widescreen Game & Watch.
No, not recently! Duh. Back when I was, oh, hmmm, eight years old … I think. Anyway, I also need to tell you that I ended up empty handed that day—no Game & Watch, no …read more

Ever wonder how the modern video game console controller came to be? Well, thanks to the ingenious Sock Master, we now have a pretty good idea. Here’s a little tidbit from his “study” entitled “Sock Master’s Game Console Controller Family Tree”:
How did the current home-console controllers come to be? How have they evolved? You may have noticed some similarities between the current generation controllers, or between them and the previous generations of controllers. So, how do they all tie together?
Let’s try to find out. I’ve put together a chart, or controller family tree, that tries to connect all the current …read more

Here I am, sitting in front of the computer and thinking about something cool to write about. I can’t seem to think of anything but all the gifts I’ve received since I was born, particularly gifts that have something to do with video games.
Why gifts? Because my birthday’s coming up. Egad! My birthday’s tomorrow and I still can’t think of a cool post!
Hmmm. Search, search, search. Search memories. Search Google. Search Yahoo!.
Aha! Finally, something.
Like I mentioned in my first post on Re:Retro, my first handheld video game platform was a folder-shaped black box that had a big screen and a …read more