21 July 2014

Pickups 9: Famicom Cartridges 9 (03.07.2014)


I got these bad boys on July 03, 2014.
The cartridges on the second photo are for my friend, but I talk about them noneless. ;)
So, starting from the first picture, I got:
  • 4-in-1 Contra, Top Gun, Thunder Cade, Ghostly Village
I already had this one, but sold it to one guy, and actually still wanted to have this multicart in my collection, so I bought this one with T2 label on it.
Ghostly Village is just Makaimura, known as Ghosts'n'Goblins in the West. All they did here is changed the title screen to "Ghostly Village" with the plain text.
  • Adventure Island 2 (JPN)
I don't think that I need to introduce you what this game is. I decided to get it with a proper label, taken straight from North American boxart, which looks pretty good imo.
  • Conic Prince
Actually it's Bananan Ouji no Daibouken, aka. Banana Prince. This cartridge doesn't work on a real Famicom sadly, but at least it works well on my Famiclones. I think that you all know what Banana Prince is, so there's no need to comment about it.
  • Contra
The label for this one is taken from the Famicom version of the game, although here it's just the North American version of the game. The same awesome "Run-and-gun" game, that we all love, and we all have played back in NES/Famicom days, and still play nowadays. ;)
  • Darkwing Duck
The same game as it was on NES. ;)
Got this one for myself. It's in pretty good condition, and works well on everything I tried to run this cartridge on.
  • Ninja Cat
Otherwise known as Kyatto Ninden Teyandee. My new bootleg copy of this game has problems with displaying properly on any of my Famiclones, except for Famulator and GameStar. This one, however, works with no problems. Basically, this game is just based of the anime Kyatto Ninden Teyandee, and it's a very good and simple game, that you probably won't have problems with playing through. ;)
  • Power Blade
The same game as it was on NES, although my copy doesn't seem to work on my Famicom for some crazy reason, just like the next cartridge.
  • Power Blade 2
The rare game on official NES cartridge, which, just like the first game I got on a pirate cart, doesn't work on Famicom. O_o
  • Soccer
A regular Soccer game from Nintendo. Although, this cartridge is from Steepler Ltd. and it has the Dendy sticker label on the back, which I'll show a bit later.
You can see the random gameplay video of it here:

  • Tetris (Tengen)
Yes, two copies of Tengen Tetris, and both of them have 1992 PYRAMID GAME CARD copyright screen. I got the second one for my friend. The gameplay of this version can be seen here:

Now here is the much better look at two Tetris cartridges, along with Soccer cartridge.

Yes, they indeed have this "Dendy" sticker on the back. There are quite a few collectors of such cartridges in Russia, and these bootleg carts would most likely cost over like 29 USD or something, which is really too much, and for such money, you would probably be able to buy the real Famicom cartridge complete in box, rather than spend it on these pirate carts. I got these ones for a bit less than 4 USD, which is really cool and exciting.

And here there are some Tetris cartridges I have in single cartridge format. All of them are Steepler Ltd. carts btw ;)

And here there are the games from the second picture:
  • Mickey Mouse (LD29)
A regular Japanese version of Mickey Mousecapade, but without copyrights.
  • Jurassic Park
A regular Jurassic Park game for NES, but without copyrights.
  • Taito Chase HQ
Some sort of racing game.
  • "over-9-million-'games'-in-1"
The multicart with Unchained Melody in it. It has Duck Hunt, Wild Gunman, Tank 1990, Dr. Mario, Super Mario Bros.
  • Mickey's Safari in Letterland
Some Mickey Mouse game where you have to collect letters to spell the word at the end of the stage
  • Tiny Toon Adventures
Just a regular Tiny Toon Adventures for NES, despite the fact that the label says Tiny Toon 2.
  • Felix the Cat
Just a regular Felix the Cat game for NES, one of the most loved games in my country, and for a good reason. It's a pretty good and simple platformer, developed by Shimada Kikaku, who also developed Kero Kero Keroppi no Daibouken 2 game for Famicom, although this game was released only on NES, but in Eastern Europe, South America and some Asian countries, there's a chance that you could pick up both of these games. ;)
  • Frankenstein: The monster Returns 
There's a bit of a sad story about this one. It's the Bandai's 1990 game, Frankenstein, that's ruined by a few facts. First off, the "N" letter is missing in graphic data banks. Secondly, the game crashes on level 2, when trying to get off the island to progress further. The game is not that great to begin with, but the pirates maganed to screw it up just perfectly.
  • Exerion (LA47)
A regular Exerion game for Famicom.
  • Mermaid (JPN)
A regular Japanese version of The Little Mermaid for NES.
  • Battletoads
It's a proper North American version with copyrights. No UP+Start cheat, that was available in another pirate version.

Pickups 8: Famicom Cartridges 8 (28.06.2014)

I got 4 more pirate Famicom carts! Here's the picture of all of them:


  • Super Lion King

It's a port of The Lion King from Sega Mega Drive to Famicom, made by SuperGame company. This is the original pirate port. There exists MMC3 mapper hack of this, where the SuperGame logo is a bit shorter than in the original version, and the "Bug Toss" bonus stage is missing. I already have the original version from my childhood, but I'll keep this one in my collection. Maybe I'll trade one of these copies later.


  • Karateka (LA-49)

It's just Karateka for Famicom, but on singlecart. The most interesting thing about it is the cartridge itself that I got:


It looks like a standard early pirate cart.
But besides that, there is also a strange sticker on the top of it:


It says "GOCAT Double Quality Control 100%". O_O
Please, let me know if you have ever seen such a sticker somewhere else, because this is the first time I see this sticker on any of my pirate carts for Famicom.


  • Wrecking Crew (LB30 TV GAME CARTRIDGE)
  • Star Force (LA32 TV GAME CARTRIDGE)


I think that these two are pretty self-explanatory, so there's no any real need to spend time talking about them.

Pickups 7: Super Nintendo/Super Famicom Cartridges 2 / Famicom Cartridges 7 (24.06.2014)

I keep on making posts about my retrogaming pickups. This time I got 3 cartridges, 1 for SFC, and 2 for Famicom.



As you can see I got the following games:
Famicom

  • Banana

The game that plays similar to Flappy, Boulder Dash, Dig Dug. You basically have to collect fruits, pick up your friend and finish the stage. Really and really fun puzzle game that I recommend checking out! Even though this game looks to be CIB, it's not. It didn't have a cartridge holder as well as the manual when I bought it, but I really wanted to play the game itself. I guess I'll buy this game CIB much later ;)
The cartridge itself is in really good condition as it can be seen from the photos below:

And here it is the box itself:



  • Star Luster

It's the space exploration simulator, which is done very well in my opinion. After all, simple space shooters have been one of my favourite game genres. This turns out to be more than just a space shooter, because it feels like you are controlling a real space ship in a space! Here you just pick up the zones, labeled as "E" at the bottom, fly there and destroy all the enemies. Depending of the difficulty you have selected at the beginning of the game, you'll have to defend the bases as well, I think. This game is not too common to find on pirate multicarts, let alone the singlecarts. Early Famicom games were distributed by Whirlwind Manu company, that also ported games from FDS to Famicom. It can be easily distinguished if it's Whirlwind Manu or not, who is likely to have made the bootleg single cart. Just look at the ID number, like "LB19" or "LG01" or "LB35". It's likely that Whirlwind Manu made this cartridge. But the problem is, there wasn't found any pictures of pirate singlecart of this game with such an ID number. Even the website of Cah4e3, who has a huge cartridge database as well as some ROM dumps, doesn't have the picture of pirate singlecart of Star Luster there.
Thankfully, this game can be found on multicarts like 150-in-1 Real Game, 245-in-1 Real Game or 400-in-1 Real Game, or even on official Famicom cartridge just easily.
My cartridge also has three end label stickers put all over the place: one at the front, second on the top, third one is at the back. Kind of weird looking, but still cool noneless. I suppose that these 3 end labels came along with game, and you'd buy CIB back in 1985, and it was just up to you what end label to put on the cartridge, to find it easily among the other cartridges that don't have end labels. I don't really understand why only a few Japanese companies decided to put end labels on their cartridges. I had to make custom ones myself for most of these carts, but that's not really a huge problem, it just adds more convinience when you try to find a needed game to play.

Super Famicom

  • Super Genjin 2

To be honest, I am not really familiar with this game, but the good person at arlenhill.proboards.com told me that this game is a Japanese-exclusive one, that was really cool to hear. I've played this game a little bit, and I liked it. It's basically one of the games of Bonk's Adventure series, but this one came out only in Japan. Also it doesn't have too much of Japanese text in it, so I can play through it without much of a problem. If it was some sort of RPG, I would be screwed. XD

These were my pickups for June 24, 2014.
More "pickups" posts are coming soon!

Pickups 6: Super Nintendo/Super Famicom Cartridges 1 / Famicom Cartridges 6 (18.06.2014)

So, it's yet another post of pickups, since I've made that video of all of my Famicom cartridges pickups.
This time, besides picking up Famicom games, I also got some for North American Super Nintendo and Japanese Super Famicom.
Here there are all the games I got that date:
Famicom:

  • Booby Kids

Basically, you play as a kid, who can lay out "booby" traps for enemies. And you have to collect random items in the game, and get to the end of the level, as well as kill as many enemies as possible.
The controls aren't exactly great in it. You can only move vertically and horizontally, but not diagonally. This part is hard to explain, but you move something like by 16x16 pixels of the screen, and you can't finish your move, until the character gets to another 16x16 pixels of the screen where he can move... It's not a terrible issue, I think that I quickly got used to this weirdness.

The music in the game is pretty catchy though. You may recall the music from some Supervision Famicom multicarts, like 190-in-1, Contra 100-in-1 Function 16, Pegasus Contra 168-in-1, 650-in-1, etc..
Well, the pirates clearly stole the music from this game.

A few examples (the first multicart menu music):

Another one:

Yet another one:

Super Nintendo (US):

  • Aladdin
  • Lion King


Super Famicom:

  • Takahashi Meijin no Daibouken Jima (aka. Super Adventure Island)
  • Tetris 2 + Bombliss
  • Contra Spirits (aka. Contra III - The Alien Wars)
  • Akumajou Dracula (aka. Super Castlevania IV)
I think that Super Nintendo/Famicom games listed above are pretty self-explanatory.
See you later with more "Pickups" posts!

Videogame Collection 4: Super Famicom Cartridges (Summer 2013)

Here's the new post of my videogame collection.
This time, before posting a new pickups post, I decided to post my collection of Super Famicom/Super Nintendo cartridges, and I gotta say, that it's not exactly as big as my Famicom collection.
I guess that's because Famicom was my first videogame console ever, although I didn't have a real Famicom, but instead a Sega Mega Drive 2 shaped Famiclone, and I had some cartridges left along with it, and later I decided to buy my favourite games on official Famicom carts, and/or on bootleg singlecarts, and such.

But, anyway, let's get into the main topic of this post.
So, here it is!
Let me list some of these games down below.

  • Super Mario Collection (aka. Super Mario All-Stars)
  • Super Gameboy
  • Super Mario World
  • Super Donkey Kong (aka. Donkey Kong Country)
  • Super Donkey Kong 2 (aka. Donkey Kong Country 2)
  • Hoshi no Kirby Super Deluxe (aka. Kirby Super Star)
  • Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
  • Super Mario Kart
And the games on the next photo... I actually got them along with Super Famicom, although I didn't play them much, and one person asked for trading some of these cartridges to him, but I'll list them here down below as well. ;)

  • Momotarou Dentetsu Happy
  • Crayon Shin-Chan: Arashi o Yobu Enji
  • Ranma 1/2 – Bakuretsu Rantou Hen
  • Prime Goal 3
  • Fatal Fury Garou Densetsu

Pickups 5: Famicom Cartridges 5 (from 12.04.2014 to 06.06.2014)



This video also includes my commentary, in English.
Sorry to all Russian subscribers! I make my videos for the international viewing, and in fact most of people in Russia would like to see some gaming shows or reviews, rather than such weird pickups videos or gameplays or other such stuff...

Enjoy!
P.S. Sorry for not posting "pickups" posts for such a long time. I completely forgot about it, due to being busy with real life or with other things. Now I'll post all of the stuff I got since the last post. As it is said, better late than never! ;)

(C) SomeRussianMarioDude Productions (2014)

If I was a pirate... #4: Fish War

What we have here today in "If I was a pirate..." posts series, is the "Fish War" game, that I found on 150-in-1 Real Game, 245-in-1 Real Game and 400-in-1 Real Game.

The picture for the cartridge is taken from some Fish Wars game for iOS phone system.
What basically this game is, it's a hack of one of the classic Nintendo black box games, called Balloon Fight, the game released in 1984, featuring two guys on balloons that have to destroy the balloons of their enemies in-game. The game is very fun and enjoyable, especially if you play it with your friend either on a real console or through netplay. I played this game once with my Hungarian friend, MrNorbert1994, through the netplay, recorded our playing and uploaded on YouTube, which can be watched on my main channel ;)

So, what can I say about this hack? This hack is really one of the weirdest ones I have ever seen in my life. I will give you the reasons why it's really a strange hack, and also pretty funny one.
Basically that's what was done in this hack to differ from original Balloon Fight:
1) Obviously the graphics. So, you are playing as a fish (or two fishes, if you play in 2-player mode), and have to kill other fishes. And, according to the scenery in the game, it takes place somewhere in the middle of the sea.
Some platforms seem to be invisible which is really confusing. Sometimes it's really hard to distinguish the platform from the background, which really raises the problem of being able to fall down by accident and die, as it's really hard to tell if it is the platform or not.
There are also some graphic glitches to be seen in bonus areas as well.
2) The music is completely different to the original version of the game. It doesn't sound too bad in my opinion, although many of you may disagree with me. It sounds way too fast on NTSC, but doesn't sound too bad on PAL Famiclone machine ;)
The music is really repetitive, so it might be somewhat annoying to listen to it for the very long time period.
Also, the music in this hack reminds me of some games from Mini Joystick Famiclone, the videos of which can be watched at the YouTube channel of PirateGamingHeavy.
The sound effects are not presented here. I guess the hackers decided to remove all of the original music/soundtracks entirely from this game, and replace it with their music.
3) In 150-in-1 and 245-in-1 versions, the "Balloon Trip" mode is removed from this hack, which may be a bad thing for someone who really loved this mode in the original game.
But 400-in-1 version, thankfully, has this mode, but it's called "Push Start" for god-knows-why reason.

The gameplay video of this hack can be watched here:


Enjoy!
(C) SomeRussianMarioDude Productions (2014)

20 July 2014

If I was a pirate... #3: Dejectile (aka. Bomberman 2002)

Due to me being bored, I have decided to make another post on my blog.
It's yet another post of "If I was a pirate...", as I made quite a few custom labels just for fun.

This time is... Dejectil.


Seriously... What kind of name is that?? Dejectil?? And I didn't even make it up myself, in case you are wondering.
The label is taken from one of the Gameboy Advance games of Bomberman(?), but it doesn't say Dejectil anywhere. XD

It's one of the games, created by the chinese company, called NiceCode. Basically, what this company did, is that they produced some plug and play systems, called DreamGear, which contained some Famiclone games, that wre of the really poor quality, kind of like the ones in Action 52 for NES. If you know what Action 52 is, you can probably already expect what the games on DreamGear plug and play systems are, as I stated above.

Although, in my opinion, this game is one of the better ones, but still pretty poor.
Basically, Dejectil (makes me wanna say "Detective" instead) is a rip-off of Bomberman for NES. Just like in that game, you have to blow up the enemies with your bombs, pick up different powerups and find the door to get to the next level. Here, the enemies are twats that actively avoid being blown up, and drop bombs is not exactly easy as well. The music, on the other hand, is, surprisingly, not too bad. I say "surprisingly", because most of the games by NiceCode have a really atrocious music.

One other thing that is also worth pointing out about this game, is that it was released as Bomberman 2002 on standalone pirate carts. Basically, it was the same thing, except with proper sprites taken from original Bomberman games for NES. That's why you can kind of see why I didn't put "Dejectile" title on the label.

To learn more about the games of DreamGear plug and play systems, I'd suggest that you should watch this video by one of my favourite YouTube users, called PirateGamingHeavy:


Here it is the gameplay of mine about this game:


And here's the gameplay video of "Bomberman 2002" version of this game:


Enjoy! More posts will come soon here ;)
(C) SomeRussianMarioDude Productions (2014)

16 July 2014

Famicom Game Manuals #10: Hoshi no Kirby

This is going to be the last "Famicom Game Manuals" post on my blog for a while, since I have no more game manuals for Famicom to scan and to post, and these posts were made not just for my blog, but also for the MrNorbert1994's video about game manual showcase.
But that doesn't mean that I am done with this topic completely!
Any contribution to extend this topic of "Famicom Game Manuals" on my blog will be appreciated.
If you have some manual scans in very good quality, feel free to send them to me @ somerussianmariodude@gmail.com
The photos of manuals may be accepted, but only with good lighting, good focus, and no shaking, and the most important thing is everything to be readable!

So, first things first, before showing off the manual scans, let's see my CIB copy of Hoshi no Kirby, otherwise known as Kirby's Adventure outside of Japan.











Caution labels: Hoshi no Kirby (left), Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima III (right)
As you can see, the box itself is in good condition, not exactly in the best condition, but not too bad. The manual is alright. The cartridge itself is in really good condition and the save battery still works.
The warning label on the back is a bit different compared to any other standard Famicom cart, which I guess, also says about the save battery stuff, like don't turn on the console while the game is being saved and such...
And yes... as many of you would say and I would agree... it's one of the best looking platformers for NES/Famicom, but I think that you know what Kirby's Adventure game is, and I don't really need to introduce you this one. Let's go over to the manual that was for Famicom release of the game.
The pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

The front side.
Pages 0-1.
Pages 2-3.
Pages 4-5.
Pages 6-7.
Pages 8-9.
Pages 10-11.
Pages 12-13.
Pages 14-15.
Pages 16-17.
Pages 18-19.
Pages 20-21.
Pages 22-23.
Pages 24-25.
Pages 26-27.
Pages 28-29.
The back side.
Enjoy!
(C) SomeRussianMarioDude Productions (2014)