The Spam Thread!

[cpd2009]

Sorry. Not much to report from me during the last week, other than the record cold weather we have been putting up with.

Thinking of what game I should get for the Switch next. I want to give the Pokémon Let's Go game a try, but perhaps I should try a previous Pokémon game first, such as a DS/3DS title? Pokémon Mystery Dungeon is a fun game, but it's more of a dungeon crawler game with RPG elements.

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To keep things more interesting, here's a real blast from the past. On Feb 6th, this video will be 11 years old. Amazes me how fast time flies since I still remember when this video was new. 

I aspired to get one of these Chintendo Vii consoles, but never did. I think these are very hard to find online nowadays, especially in America.

[cpd2009]

Today is another dark day in video game history. The Wii Shop Channel has officially closed down. To clarify, this refers to the original Wii Shop from 2006, and not the Wii U eShop.

As it stands, you can only redownload previously purchased games. Nintendo has stated even this feature will be discontinued eventually.

I know we all have said many things about Nintendo's backward decisions before, but this proves that these decisions come back to bite their customers. With no way to tie your purchases to a Nintendo account online, your games are locked to the system you downloaded it on. You can transfer them from an old Wii to a newer Wii U, but that's it. After Nintendo stops allowing redownloading your titles, you better hope your Wii U and/or SD card don't become corrupted and unusable. Unless you turn to modding and load WAD files, there will be no official way to redownload these games.

In future years, the same thing will happen to the 3DS and Wii U eShop, though I'd imagine the Wii U will come first. The Switch eShop now ties your purchases to your Nintendo account, but of course it's not backward compatible with anything before it. And who knows if your Switch licenses will transfer to whatever system Nintendo will succeed it with.

[huckleberrypie]

Which brings us with what we see is a pitfall of digital purchases, i.e. we're at the mercy of publishers should they shut down or decide to discontinue support in a whim.

[cpd2009]

Another game I just finished... Dr. Fizzwizzle's Animal Rescue, that Arkanoid clone that was released on the Wii a long while ago.

It's a decent Arkanoid clone, but true to shovelware fashion, it has a bad case of AWinnerIsYou. The ExcusePlot is that aliens are stealing all the animals off earth for their own zoo, and it's up to Dr. Fizzwizzle and his "Fizzball" to capture all the animals Arkanoid style. The ending is just a four panel comic scene, with a big "THE END". Not even an end credits sequence.

A bit underwhelming even for shovelware but I hear Ninjabread Man is worse. According to TVTropes, Ninjabread Man just dumps you to the title screen after finishing the final level.

I'm probably going to focus on my backlog of WiiWare soon, and perhaps watching YouTube videos about the best Wii U eShop games.

[huckleberrypie]

That feeling when you had to modify the World Rally Championship APK just so it won't nag on you because your device is rooted. I know there are Magisk and Xposed modules that allow you to hide modifications from banking and streaming apps, but in my case it's a pain in the rear to use on my TV box for some reason.

[cpd2009]

Well, today is a very fine day in my life. Not because of the Superb Owl, but that I have decided to start collecting retro games again.

In retrospect, I should have never sold off my collection, but I ended up doing so and recently began to regret it a lot. The Wii Shop closing probably helped in that regard.

So to start off my collecting quest, I purchased... Porky Pig's Haunted Holiday for SNES. I got to start somewhere.

It will be rather easy to re-acquire the lesser known games I previously owned as those are still quite affordable. The most expensive games are obviously the big name titles like anything in the Mario or Zelda series.

[huckleberrypie]

Well, today is a very fine day in my life. Not because of the Superb Owl, but that I have decided to start collecting retro games again.

In retrospect, I should have never sold off my collection, but I ended up doing so and recently began to regret it a lot. The Wii Shop closing probably helped in that regard.

So to start off my collecting quest, I purchased... Porky Pig's Haunted Holiday for SNES. I got to start somewhere.

It will be rather easy to re-acquire the lesser known games I previously owned as those are still quite affordable. The most expensive games are obviously the big name titles like anything in the Mario or Zelda series.

Reminds me of when record bars closed down here due to low sales, no thanks to the likes of Spotify making both legit and bootleg records, as well as the likes of Limewire and MP3s obsolete. I do have a Spotify account, but I prefer to have an offline copy of all my music tbh. It kinda' saddens me that the move to the cloud meant that feelies are starting to move into collectors territory as opposed to having an offline copy for contingency's sake.

In other news, I've just acquired a TLC Felicity doll from a fellow forum member, as well as a new old stock copy of The American Girls Dress Designer. I already have a copy of the latter but that was an ISO shared by a friend - it obviously didn't come with the paper dolls which was the main point of the program hence why I thought about getting it legit.

[cpd2009]

I avoid streaming music services altogether, for the reasons you mentioned. I also still listen to radio for music and the streaming music industry isn't doing them a whole lot of favors (plus the fact most radio in America is corporate owned, but that's another topic)

As for ways of playing SNES games on my modern TV, I just have my old FC Twin Famiclone hooked up to the composite AV input. The picture is not the best, but acceptable for now. With my upcoming IRS tax refund, I am exploring options of getting a clone with an HDMI output. I have my eyes on the RetroBit SuperRetroTrio+, with slots for NES, SNES and Genesis/MD games with a built in HD upscaler. I'd imagine the picture quality being similar to my bootleg CoolBaby console. It simply upscales a composite video signal into HD rather well. There is no distortion or dot crawl present, and the image looks far better than just running a standard AV cable.

Another option is the Retron5 which just emulates your carts on an Android-based box, but previous experience told me that the input lag for SNES games is too much. There's also standalone NES and SNES consoles with HD output.

[huckleberrypie]

I avoid streaming music services altogether, for the reasons you mentioned. I also still listen to radio for music and the streaming music industry isn't doing them a whole lot of favors (plus the fact most radio in America is corporate owned, but that's another topic)

As for ways of playing SNES games on my modern TV, I just have my old FC Twin Famiclone hooked up to the composite AV input. The picture is not the best, but acceptable for now. With my upcoming IRS tax refund, I am exploring options of getting a clone with an HDMI output. I have my eyes on the RetroBit SuperRetroTrio+, with slots for NES, SNES and Genesis/MD games with a built in HD upscaler. I'd imagine the picture quality being similar to my bootleg CoolBaby console. It simply upscales a composite video signal into HD rather well. There is no distortion or dot crawl present, and the image looks far better than just running a standard AV cable.

Another option is the Retron5 which just emulates your carts on an Android-based box, but previous experience told me that the input lag for SNES games is too much. There's also standalone NES and SNES consoles with HD output.

The Retron5 console seems interesting enough in terms of dumping legit carts into a legally obtained ROM. Have you also considered having an existing SNES modded for HD output? It may set you back a tad but at least you have an authentic (albeit modified) hardware to play games on at acceptable quality. I remember playing Sega Genesis games via RF and I don't really notice it to be that bad, not unless you hook it up to a modern telly which would muddle things up even further.

Which is why tbh I haven't given up on piracy yet. Not to encourage or violate forum guidelines though, but legitimate services still lack content hence the drive for less than legal means.

[cpd2009]

I could give the Retron5 a go again, but I just hope the input lag in the SNES portion still isn't there. If not, any of the current HD-upscaling retro consoles would do well.

If I had easy access to a 20'' CRT set, I would use that in a heartbeat, but they weigh so much and in my town, they are hard to come by. I'd have to wait until Spring or Summer to see if any turn up at a yard sale or auction should I decide to get a CRT.