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Christmas Retro Gaming
desember 31st, 2019
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It's been a while since I last posted here. Having two
children, the months before Christmas often become very
busy, and I also had some busy weeks at work. So nothing is
better than a few days off. We spend a couple of days at our
cabin and came back home on friday. Today, we drove back to
the cabin again to celebrate New Years Day far off from
civilization. That is, not further away then to have a
lousy, but still quite stable internet connection.
Last year, I bought an old Nintendo Gameboy, the DMG-01.
Partly, because I never owned one back in the 90s. My
parents didn't want me to spend my spare time with playing
games, so no C64, no Gameboy, no consoles. As a result I
learned BASIC, and later Pascal and Assembly on CP/M, and
started writing my own games on an Amstrad CPC 464 when I
was 8 years old. Kind of an early stard for my career as a
programmer. The other reason for buying a Gameboy was my 10
year old son's interest in retro gaming. Right after I
bought the device, the Gameboy celebrated its 30th
anniversary, resulting in rised prices for games.
Here are the games I bought in 2019:
* Tetris
* Donkey Kong
* Wario Land 3
* Lemmings
* Mario & Yoshi
* Dr. Franken
And on a combined cartrige:
* Alley way
* Bomber Boy
* Tennis
* Bust a Move 2
* Ninja Turtle 2
* Dr. Mario
Over the past days, I ordered more games on Ebay and Finn.no
(The Norwegian answer to craigslist). Some of them are still
on its way:
* F1 Race
* Killer Instinct
* WWF Superstars
* The Hunt for Red October
* Ms Pacman
* Pinball: Revenge of the Gator
* Kung Fu Master
The Gameboy's battery life is exceptional compared to todays
mobile phones and playing devices. But my son complains
about the display without backlight. It seems to be the
Gameboy's biggest advantage (more battery life) and dis-
advantage (almost impossible to see with bad lighting). So
my plan is to buy another DMG-01 and modify the display with
a backlight. I haven't ordered the parts yet, but it does
not seem to be difficult. With two Gameboys, we also can
play together with a link cable (DMG-04).
My son also has an old NES (the European PAL model). That's
where things went wrong this Christmas. I ordered some more
NES games on Ebay:
* Mission Impossible
* California Games
* 1942
But, sadly, I did not check the region for these games. It
turned out these where NTSC-cartidges, hence the price (PAL
games are usually much more expensive). But, internet to the
rescue: I found a page that describes how to bypass the
region check on a PAL NES [1]. It requires only two wires to
be soldered to the NES, so the mod is reversible. I have not
yet modified the NES, but this will be one of my first
projects of 2020. It's always good to have a plan.
Nevertheless, we had a great time playing these old games
this Christmas! I'm looking forward to play more games in
2020. Happy New Year to everybody on Gopherspace!
[1] https://aaltomies.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/pal-nes-region-free-mod-without-tampering-with-cic-chip-leg/
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