Blog: Oh Right, This Thing!

Wow, so, I haven't posted a review - or anything else for that matter - for something like half a year. That's pretty crap of me, isn't it? But I have . . . well, not a good reason. I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. I have a flimsy excuse.

I mentioned this sort of in passing in another post, but my game controller is messed up. Specifically, the B button doesn't work anymore. Not unless you press really, really hard, and I'm not the least bit interesting in having to press really, really hard, especially since the B button is a pretty important button the game playing process. So I set the controller down and decided to take some time off from the reviewing game until I could find a replacement.

I did not, obviously, find a replacement. Did you know that retro-style six-button controllers for the computer pretty much do not exist anymore? Not anywhere I've looked, anyway. They're all styled after the Playstation controller nowadays. Not that that's a bad design or anything. In fact, I think it's a wonderful design. Of all the post-18bit controllers that have come out over the years, it's still my favorite. But the problem is, the PS design does not work well with Sega Genesis games, some of which are either more accessible with or even downright require an arcade-format six-button scheme.

And the extremely few properly retro controllers that I have found? Crap. Completely unsuitable for me for one reason or another.

But whatever. The search continues for a new controller, but that never should have stopped me from doing reviews in the meantime. Emulation is not the only option available to me, after all! I have plenty of old games that I actually own for the physical consoles sitting in the entertainment center! I have several old computer games that I can play on this old dinosaur of an eMachine! And it just so happens that I've just recently finished one of those games! So as soon as I'm done posting this, I'ma gonna go and start writing a new review!

Yeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaah!!!

PS, In my absence, Blogspot has apparently added one of those nifty share bars, which can be seen at the bottom of this post (and the others retroactively, I'm guessing?), so please feel free to be kind and start sharing stuff from YOTGR on Twitter or Facebook or wherever else it is the kids like to hang out on these here internets!

Blog: Things Of All Sorts

I know I only have maybe five or six readers, and I'm not even sure all of them are really paying any attention anymore, but I'm still gonna go ahead and apologize for not posting anything for Sunday. I promised I'd try to get at least one something up every day, and I failed all (five or six) of you miserably. But to be fair, I did have my reasons! One of those reasons is actually a pretty funny story, and the punchline is . . . veeerrrry drunk.

The other reason is that I'm thinking about taking weekends off from the blog. I've got other things in my life, y'know! And one of those things is actually playing the games that I intend to review for YOTGR. Another is trying to get a new job (horrors!), and yet another is just staring at the wall, contemplating the abyss. Oh, right, and I usually go visit my parents on most Saturdays.

Still, weekdays I'll be keeping up with YOTGR a bit, and as it's Monday, I'll be getting on posting something entertaining here in a bit.

But speaking of YOTGR, I'm thinking about changing the name. "Ye Olde-Timey Games Review" was something I just came up with after a few moments of thought when I decided to do this, and while I still kinda like it, it's a bit unwieldy. I think the place needs a punchier sorta name. I'm not sure exactly what kind of punchier sorta name just yet, but I'll hopefully figure something out soon enough.

Blog: Expanding YOTGR's Scope

So, I'm thinking of actually advertising the existence of the blog a little more aggressively now that I've got a decent number of reviews under my belt, so it's time to start thinking of ways to make it a little more viable and marketable.  In short, I think I may need to give more reason for people to come by and stick around.

The reviews themselves will, of course, continue to be the main reason for the blog overall, and I hope they're entertaining and informative enough to keep folks from running off screaming and warning their friends and loved ones away for fear that I might end up corrupting them somehow with my awful, awful writing, opinions, and looks.  But I don't put up reviews every single day, and in these highly competitive internets, consistent updating sells.

To those ends and starting tomorrow, I will try to put up at least one news item and/or bit of entertainment every day as regards old school gaming.  Stuff like re-releases of old games, announcements of new games being made for old series, and videos of Mario saying swear words over and over again.  That sort of thing.  And just like the games themselves around here, a lot of this stuff (especially the entertainment parts) are probably going to be old, since I've got a good number of links to interesting stuff saved up in my bookmarks and I'm too lazy to bother looking for new crap all the time.  Still, if you haven't seen it, it's new to you, right?  Right!

Some folks may not care for this sort of thing, of course, and just want to read the reviews themselves.  Or maybe they just care about the news or just the pictures of Samus and Sonic getting it on.  To help facilitate that, I'll be marking the titles of those entries appropriately.  News items will start off with "News:", the entertaining stuff will be marked "Fun:", and entries like this talking specifically about the blog itself will be marked "Blog:".  Reviews will continue unmarked with just the name of the game itself as the title, though "review" will be placed in their tags so readers can sort out all the other crap if they wish.

Sound good?  Yah, that sounds good.  Cheers!

Hello, And Welcome To YOTGR

Please allow me to introduce myself.  I'm a man of poverty and taste.

At least I hope I have taste.  I mean, I like old video games for one thing.  Scratch that . . . I love old video games.  I was just a kid during the days when Nintendo revitalized the video game industry after the Crash of '83, but after I got my teeth sunk into the games of that time, I also started to realize my love for games that were old even back then.  Classics like Pac Man and Galaga and Pong, who's popularity is still felt to this day, and who's arcade machines can still be found in pizza places across America.  And as I grew up, I still found myself drawn to the games of yesteryear, even when a particular yesteryear used to be a future and finally presentyear for me at some point.  To this day, I still consider the Super Nintendo era to have been the true Golden Age of Video Games, and have ever since I first played Super Mario World nearly two decades ago.

As I mentioned above, I am a man of poverty.  I'm not living on the streets or anything, but for most of my life money has been hard to come by.  As a result, I haven't been up to date with the latest gaming tech in several, several years.  Old games are basically all I get to play nowadays since they're all I can afford . . . and that doesn't really bother me in the least.  I may salivate just like everybody else over the newest, shiniest toy in the video game toybox, but I have learned great patience, secure in the knowledge that someday everything will become cheap enough that I can afford to play it.  Maybe not today, maybe not this year or even the next, but someday it will be mine.  In the meantime, I happily stick with the old stuff that still entertains me just as much - if not more in some cases - as the new junk.

And now I intend to help share that love of old games with my fellow internet denizens by playing and then reviewing them.  The games, that is.  Not the internet denizens.

"But what," you may ask, "constitutes an 'old' game, Jim?"  And rightly so.  Well, I'll tell you.

For the purposes of my reviews an old game is any that isn't on a current generation console.  That means that at the time of this writing, I will not be reviewing anything on the XBox 360, Playstation 3, Wii, DS, or the like.  Everything before all that is fair game.  Of course, computer games - which I also intend to review from time to time - may be a little more difficult to peg for some folks, but I'm just gonna say that if my currently-about-five-years-obsolete computer can't run it, I won't be reviewing it.

I hope everyone who passes this way enjoys reading my reviews, and that maybe - just maybe - I'll be able to help a few folks find some entertaining old gems that they'd never played before.

Cheers!