Retrospecticus 08: The Year in Review

Today is the the one year anniversary of the Temple of Doom and I thought that a good way to celebrate would be to take a look back at some of the Temple’s most popular posts, as well as some of my personal favorites. I will also be listing some other great places around the web that are leading the charge of  the retro revival. What are we waiting for!?! Let’s begin this year end retrospective type thing.

First off we’ll cover the most popular Temple of Doom posts as well as some of my personal favorites.

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Most Popular List Post

“Which Final Fantasy is the best?” – May 20th/08
The most popular list-style feature of the year is a little post dating back to May 20th called “Which Final Fantasy is the Best?”. For the article I skimmed all 12 main series Final Fantasy titles and ordered them from worst to best. This post came about because it was always something that I had been searching for online but could never find. This post gets about 10-30 hit per day. although there was not as much outrage as I initially anticipated.

Post-Christmas Round Up

Man, am I ever glad I have time off of work this holiday season. Using some of my banked vacation days, with the help of a couple well placed weekends, means that I have 11 consecutive days off of work. This works out really good for me, because below  is what I got for Christmas this year.

Persona 4, Persona 3: Fes, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Quest, Metal Storm (100% mint & CIB!), Shinobi III, an issue of RetroGamer and a tin of  Legend of Zelda candies (black socks- a Christmas standard, not pictured).

That represents my total haul, including my wife, parents and brother. I haven’t had much time until tonight to check things out, but I can report that I just got done my first hour (of many) in Persona 4 and I must say that I am already sucked into the story, it’s just so well told. Very impressive so far, and I haven’t even freely fought a battle yet.

Oh, and remember my post a few weeks back in which I was wishing for a red Sharp Twin Famicom? Well, one of my gifts was a tracking number, which I have been entering on canadapost.ca tri-daily since Christmas day desperate for an update on the shipping of the schwag pictured below;

I am epically excited to take this maybe for a test run and as soon as I get my hands on it (Jan.6th or 7th) I will be posting a big Twin Famicom review. In the mean time and in-between time, I suggest you head over to Powet TV or the Famicom Dojo site and check out the last episode of season 1, as it has all the background on the Twin Famicom that you will need. Hell, while you are there you might as well check out all of the other episodes because the Famicom is amazing and this shit should be taught in school.

One last thing of note: December 29th is the one year anniversary of the Temple of Doom Retro Video Game Collecting blog and on that day I will be posting a retrospective featuring the best of the year that was. So make sure to come back and check that out. Thanks for reading!

Another Four Reasons the Sega Genesis Rules

This is a reccurring feature here at Temple of Doom in which I spotlight the best games that Sega’s 16 bit powerhouse has to offer.  As always, I implore you to go and buy these games immediately.

Comix Zone

Where do you game?

This site (used to be called templeofdoom.org, now the much radder videogamesarerad.com) and was named named for my game room. I am lucky enough to have a cool (and totally hot) wife who understands my hobby. Her involvement with video games may stop after Mario 3, Super Mario World, Tetris, and Mario Kart, but she gets it. I had some time to kill tonight, and I realized it had been months since I posted any pictures of the Temple of Doom. So this post is dedicated to my game room, in all it’s glory.

Let the games begin...

This is the corner of the room where all the work gets done. Dual 13″ TVs (the best size, in my opinion, for playing the 8 and 16-bit classics). Currently hooked up is NES, SNES, Turbo Grafx 16 and the SEGA battleship. Also nestled in there is a Game Gear with a MasterSystem convertor. Also pictured is my amazing leather recliner… perfect for video gaming. The blue and red stacked storage cabinets house all my peripherals and such. I have spent the last 4+ years perfecting this set up and I think I have it exactly right.

This is my console shelf. It houses the systems I use pretty frequently but don’t have hooked up at moment; Atari 2600, Famicom / Disk System, Dreamcast, and Super Famicom (which I don’t use at all, because I “modded” my SNES).

My CIBs. Mostly Nintendo Entertainment System, but there are some Atari 2600, SNES and Nintendo 64 sprinkled in there. I am not a big CIB collector, these have more just accumulated by accident more than anything else.

The temple’s front gates, featuring my Famicom Disk System box, an original Spy Hunter arcade marquee and a whole lot of posters. And directly to the right of that is…

My pride and joy. I have stream lined my collection quite a bit over the past 6 months (I sold 200 NES games alone), because I am now under the philosophy of collecting games that I want to play, rather than just collecting games for collection sake. These two shelves feature the bulk of my life’s work. In order from top left corner to bottom right corner: GameCube, PS2, PS1, Dreamcast, Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, unlicensed NES (in plastic cases), assorted junk, video game mags and guides – Next Shelf – Sega CD, 32X, various current gen games (I don’t have many, in fact I use my X Box 360 more as a DVD player than a gaming system), loose SNES carts, some CIB Super Famicom,  Nintendo DS, Gameboy Advance / Color, Turbo Grafx 16, loose NES carts and finally my containers of loose games. More on that next…

I have seven plastic containers that house most of my loose carts. Such as Genesis, Atari 2600, portable games (Game Gear, Gameboy/Colout Advance, Wonderswan etc.), N64, Famicom, and Disk System.

All in all I am pretty psyched about my set up. Next week I am going yo try to get a review up and some more import related blabbering. Until then, why not comment with some photobucket or flickr links to your set ups? I am a huge fan of seeing the way other people organize their collections. Until next time…

PS – Brian, I am trying to find a reliable place to host those reproduction posters as we speak, so don;t think that I have forgotten! Thanks for the emails, and most of all thanks for reading! Tell a friend (or 20)!

Have a Fami Fami Christmas

 

There is just something about Christmas that makes me fall in love with the Famicom all over again. It could be because last year for Christmas my young and beautiful wife got me a CIB Famicom Disk System, but I am not so sure. Christmas just seems to be an import gaming time of year for me. Already on it’s way to my doorstep this festive season is a CIB Zelda no Densetsu 1: The Hyrule Fantasy. In case you don’t know, that’s the Famicom version, not the disk system version. Man, did I get a hell of a deal. $40 shipped for that, as well as incomplete copies of Zelda 1 & 2 for the disk system. From where you might ask? Let’s just say I have my sources… and they rule.

This year I am hoping that Santa leaves a red Sharp Twin Famicom under my tree. I have been dropping subtile hints for the last little while to this effect:

But why a red one? Because it looks like giant piece of delicious candy, that’s why. I love everything about this console. The red “1” and “2” on the controllers; the way the lettering in “Famicom” curves around the cartridge slot; the fact that it is pretty much the ultimate retro video game power house (playing Metroid (featuring save files) and playing Kid Dracula on the same machine??!!). Basically this device screams awesome. I mean, just look at it!

Glorious.

It would seem that this is a great time of year for purchasing some Japanese games and systems. Ebay stores such as FeatherPluckinFilms and Andy Games Japan actually charge a decent price for their stuff and they don’t gouge for shipping, something Americans shipping to Canada should wise up to (One seller on Ebay is charging $15 to ship a loose Gameboy game to Canada. That is at max $2. Bad business, bad seller, no buy, EVER). A few other non-Ebay places you should check out are Japan Game Stock and Pink Godzilla, who each have huge selections of everything import, as well as Famicom Shop, because they have awesome prices it is run by a stand-up guy who really knows his shit. I have ordered stuff from all these places and I have never had anything but great service and a hassle free experience.

So what are you waiting for? Pop (or buy) Spartan X into your Famicom, and have a holly jolly x-mas.