Blog post by Gemma @ Juicy Game Reviews / TheGebs24
The Game Boy Advance (GBA) was Nintendo’s fourth major handheld gaming device following the Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Colour. Released in 2001 (firstly in Japan) the Game Boy Advance went on to sell a monumental 81.51 millions units worldwide. Despite the Game Boy Advance not being backlit the device had a powerful impact on gamers across the world including myself with solid titles like Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. The Game Bay Advance evolved in to the the Game Boy Advance SP (a front and backlit model) and later again in the Game Boy Micro. Overall the Game Boy Advance family had a production life of six years with the final Micro produced in 2007.
Nintendo seemed to have a monopoly on the handheld gaming market unlike Sony who clearly didn’t give the PSP or Vita enough love. It comes as no surprise that there are a plethora of clone devices on the market that attempt to thrust the Nintendo handheld games to the next level. Boasting things like crisper sound, sharper picture quality and so on. The Revo K101 Plus falls right in line with that current ethos. It is a GBA clone device (in varying colours and transparencies) that packs an immense punch when it comes to picture quality and sound. Not only does it run original Game Boy Advance games but there’s a Revo cartridge that allows you to insert a micro SD card in to the device. Original Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance roms can all be played from the micro SD card. Original Game Boy and GBC carts will not work with the device.
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Guest blog post by Todd M @The_Top Loader
Get over here -----> Welcome to the 90's baby because I'm having fun n' games playing Mortal Kombat (released in 1992), but what version? That has been the topic of my childhood. Who had the best version, who could beat their chest the loudest in this primal rage that surprisingly escalated over just a few drops of blood? It came out on everything you could possibly think of, Master System, Gameboy, Game Gear, PC... you get the idea I literally could go on and on (until I run out of consoles to name) but the real test of might came down to just two consoles - the mighty Mega Drive and the Super Nintendo. The simpler time's of the 80's were gone with our Commodore 64's and their, 8's with their ,1's and don't forget to press play on tape as I watch the true fanboys get all fired up like a Scorpion fatality as they enter the console tournament looking for blood (which is truly where the battle begins) and where the movie version of Shang Tsung would famously say - "it has begun" - while Ed Boon's literal voice as the original game announcer now tells us to "Fight!!" The 90's were Excellent if not a little Dan Forden Toasty as I ripped out hearts and gave the kiss of death as my opponent went up in flames in the face of a burning skeleton's defeat as they dropped down to ashes because didn't you know you weak pathetic fools - I've come for your souls ! .. and so forth. That was Mortal Kombat, the gameplay was decent but let's be realistic here it's the gore that people came for. There were violent videos games before Mortal Kombat but they weren't in the mainstream and were never as popular because - lets face it - everybody pays more attention to the cool kids. Its funny being a parent now and thinking I don't think I would want my kid playing Mortal Kombat X .. but back when I was at that wise old age of ten I knew it all. I knew what was right and I knew what was wrong, hey I may have not bought Super Castlevania IV when I had the chance ..but in my defence I didn't now I was wrong at the time. My brother liked Excalibur with capes and crap like that but one thing we both loved was ninja's and the whole Eastern Kung-Fu scene because guess what? We both loved - Mortal Kombat - finally, we agreed on something.
Throw in a coin, select a player, choose your destiny while watching this klassic character line up that includes my personal favourite Sub Zero as he swings back and forth with his cold blue hands to the perfectly selected music beat while waiting patiently to controversially rip off your head right before we "Fight!!" Kano throws knifes and spins on a dime but what do you expect from a guy that lives for a life of crime because he won't hold back when ripping out someone's heart straight from their chest as it would Finish Him!! ..or her. No time to pause for a moment in this game (which can be frustrating) so you will have to use one of the other klassic digitized characters to release more effective green screen effects if you end up on the wrong side of Scorpion's famous harpoon attack, just don't teleport past Sonja Blade and panic while she flexes her reversed matrix style scissor kick as they both can burn you aliveafter they input the the right button combination before the fatality timer finally runs out. Liu Kang still kicks around while throwing projectiles in your face until Wham Bam! Van Damme .. hey he wasn't in the game, well he was supposed to be but he pulled out to do something else so here's Johnny.. Cage ! What a cool name, he's the complete package and this movie star has a secret weapon that's a real ball breaker and not the kind that you would find in his pants which does not work on Sonja Blade because of what's not in her pants - ironic - but with all this flippin' and floppin' all over the place I forgot to mention Raiden the God of Thunder who looks like he just come off the set of Big Trouble in Little China. You may think I'm going off track here but have you ever have wondered where the inspiration for Raiden came from? Watch the Three Storms in this movie because as I played Mortal Kombat for the first time it hit me like a bolt of lightning needed for the 1.21 gigawatts .. what the hell is a Giga.. wait, what? - wrong movie - sheesh now I'm really getting off track here so let's get back in the DeLorean to take me back to where I was before I made this alternate typing time line. Raiden is a parody verified by the words of Ed Boon himself from one of my all time favourite movies, hey.. who else thinks John Carpenter would have been a perfect match to direct and write a MK movie? It's a perfect blend of East meets West with western digitized character sprites and oriental backgrounds that felt like they were lifted straight out of a Kung-Fu scene with Eastern mystical mythologies including a four armed general monster Goro and shape shifting Lo Pan .. I mean Shang Tsung.. as the final bad guy with a story so far left out of Outworld about Elder Gods and Earth realm Sacred tournaments I can hear the words of Jack Burton echoing "I feel like a little bit of an outsider here"...because we are and I don't care because we all know that all he wants to do is go get his truck back.
Guest post by Ben @Capture Way
You probably don’t need me to tell you that gaming is going in some intriguing new directions, from Virtual Reality to unprecedented artificial intelligence to graphics almost indistinguishable from reality. Somehow, in a landscape where the technology that drives our gaming is thousands of times better than 20 or 30 years ago, it is fascinating that people are still playing retro games. So is this all a flash in the pan? Or, like wearing flared jeans, will this trend quickly fall back into obscurity?
When I was a teenager, YoYos made a comeback. Little plastic discs which spin on the end of a string, and if you really master the art, come back to you. They were back on the playground for all of about two weeks, and everyone was bored again. Who knows where the comeback came from, but it was quickly gone again, and time and time again I have been told that the same thing will happen with retro gaming, but it won’t. Crawling around in the attic and finding your old Nintendo 64, dusting it off and loading up your favourite games is a great experience, mainly for one reason; nostalgia. Just like we do with movies, albums and other forms of media, we tie games to memories of times in our lives. For me, N64 and other 90s consoles remind me of weekends with friends arguing over Super Mario Kart, drooling over who got the next turn on Goldeneye (N64) or even trying our best to work out what on earth was going on in Pokemon stadium. However, nostalgia alone isn’t enough, so why do people stick to it? At the risk of sounding overly simplistic, it is because the games are amazing! The YoYo fad came and went because after you’ve had the initial shiny object syndrome and fulfilled your human curiosity, you realise that hanging a ball off a bit of string isn’t that fulfilling, but with a retro game, you quickly remember what drew you in in the first place. There are reasons we could play Zelda, Pokemon or Super Mario for days at a time. Other technology from the time wasn’t necessarily fit for purpose, a Nokia 3310 phone quickly became redundant, and it is unlikely that we will ever want to use them again as they were replaced by something much better. Better is the operative word here, and in gaming, as with film and music, more tech doesn’t necessarily mean better. |
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