For a Nintendo Entertainment System fan, it’s a once-impossible dream finally come true: a thousand games at your fingertips in a real NES console. RetroZone has done it first with the PowerPak, a new NES flash cartridge. With the PowerPak, you can fit every NES game ever made, around the world, onto one cartridge. Dumped ROM images of the games are copied to a compact flash card, which slides into the PowerPak unit itself. Turn on the NES with the PowerPak cart inserted, and you’ll see an on-screen menu that lists all the games on the cart. Pick one from the list, you’ll be playing the game as if you had the game’s original cartridge in the console. With a flash multicart like the PowerPak, NES users no longer need to switch cartridges between games. As an owner of over 250 NES games, I personally have been looking for a product like this for a long time.

Perhaps even more exciting is the PowerPak’s potential to jumpstart homebrew development in the NES community. Unlike the Atari 2600, Nintendo’s most famous console is woefully lacking amateur home-programmed software. RetroZone is out to change that with their new PowerPak products, which significantly lower the barriers to entry in developing games for play on a real NES unit.

[ Continue reading The PowerPak NES Flash Cartridge » ]

Brian Parker, a resident of Redwood City, CA, has run RetroZone full time for three years. His company is well known in the retrogaming community for its sales of original console controllers — like NES, SNES, and Genesis control pads — modified to work with the USB ports found on modern computers. In 2005, I reviewed one of his USB NES controller products and found it to be excellent (I still use it regularly, in fact). But it was with the new PowerPak NES flash cartridge in mind that I interviewed Brian via email last month.

Also an avid cyclist, Brian gave me a picture of him competitively riding a racing bicycle, the only known picture of him in existence. Ok, I’m kidding — but it is him.

Thanks for the interview, Brian.

[ Update (11/02/2007): Click Here to read our review of the RetroZone PowerPak flash cart. ]

[ Continue reading [ VC&G Interview ] Brian Parker on RetroZone and the PowerPak NES Flash Cart » ]

Sure; it’s easy to make fun of what kids say. They’re young, inexperienced, and they’ll do anything to finish a forced elementary school project on time. But I believe there’s no harm in finding entertainment in the whimsical creative works of children, especially when they attempt to write a history of video games. While some of the student-written history I’ve found online is impressively accurate, other times it seems ridiculously and hilariously mangled, probably the result of some quick copies and pastes from an online source. Either way, it’s all gold.

I find it exciting that certain teachers are web-savvy enough to let their students create online reports. It’s not only good for the kids, but it’s often funny as hell for everyone else. The following examples were taken from two different student reports on a real US elementary school website. I’d love to link to the actual pages themselves, but the URLs have been removed to protect the innocent and their microscopic bandwidth. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.

[ Continue reading Kids Say The Darndest Video Game History » ]

[ “Ask RedWolf” is a regular column where Benj Edwards (aka RedWolf) answers readers’ questions about computers and video games. ]

Late last year, I started fielding questions for a new series called “Ask RedWolf”(“RedWolf” being my long-time online alias that I used to go by on this blog). Many months later, I’m finally getting around to releasing the first one.

This time around, I discuss a technical question on the Sharp Twin Famicom and give my best educated guesses on two requests for game identification, which our readers might be able to help with. And of course, you can always ask me questions yourself for the next column. On with the show.

[ Continue reading Ask RedWolf: On Famicom, Winds, and Pyramids » ]

Earlier this year, I spent a few months getting into everything Civilization for an in-depth look at the history of Sid Meier’s classic. The result of that work is now up on Gamasutra as “The History of Civilization.” It also includes (at the end of the article) the transcript of a lengthy telephone interview I conducted with Sid Meier on the topic.

I’d like to extend special thanks to Sid Meier, Bruce C. Shelley, and Troy S. Goodfellow for their indispensable help in putting the piece together. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Let’s get wired up and play Jumpman!

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Sixteen years after its humble emergence in the golden age of the BBS, Wendell Hicken’s timeless 1991 artillery simulation remains a hallmark in shareware history. Scorched Earth stands as nothing less than a masterpiece in the field of computer games.

With its numerous gameplay settings, variable computer AI, and an impressive variety of entertaining power-ups, Scorched Earth possesses nearly infinite replay value. It’s also one of the greatest party games ever devised: up to ten players can take turns plotting the explosive demise of their closest friends at the hands of a Nuke, MIRV, or Death’s Head over as many as 1000 rounds. As a testament to the pure strategy of the game, veterans skilled in the ways of Scorch know the best ways to dispatch foes — or merely survive as others duke it out — under any circumstance, rain or shine, springy walls or rubber.

   

Many of today’s game designers seem envious of Scorch’s ability to consistently entertain for over a decade. Fans of Hicken’s classic have attempted modern remakes of or improvements upon Scorched Earth, but to this day, none has even begun to approach the solid feel, intricate balance, or professional production values of the original. That’s how good it is.

Hicken didn’t invent the artillery game; he perfected it. And as long as our computers run without smoking, we’ll still be playing the original Scorched Earth as good Wendell intended.