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I've always said my son is his own kind of person. He's like a crabby old man in an 11 year olds body. Last year I bought a box of old games, mostly NES titles and the loot from that purchase quickly became his. He still enjoys modern games and I have to tell him to go outside instead of playing on the PC like everyone else, but this kid loves the classics. Because of this he will watch YouTube on games to buy, read walkthroughs on how to beat things and the best part he will chew the fat with me for as long as I can pay attention on NES games.

Recently we bought him Punch out, Battletoads and a game genie. Now those two games were a couple of my favorites as a kid. I was one of the few that actually beat punchout without codes and I told my son how long it took me to finally win. Now he has that fire that he can be better then I was/am at games. To prove a point once, he beat the Pit Demon in dark souls with the broken hilt sword after I couldn't, so now he wants that tile to his name on Punch out. He has made it all the way to MrDream/ Mike Tyson with no cheats last weekend and it just makes me feel really cool watching his progress and remembering doing that same thing.

I'll keep this updated with his progress on these old games.

Really cool! Impressive kid you have there!

If you're a super dad, you'll buy him Punisher for the SEGA Genesis....$75 used. Because of the frigging poster it's supposed to come with!

Pfff I won't be spending that much on his games besides he's worked for the money that has been spent so far. I teach my kids if I have to work for it so do you.


Saturday apparently we are bringing the systems out to the living room and he and I are having a game session while my wife and daughter have a girl's day out.

OK so it's been awhile and I think it's update time. The boy has bought a 64 and loves it! He's got if guess close to 10 games including Mario 64. Now I've always been on the lookout for good deals in retro gaming and I've recently nagged a good one. I'm currently in the process of fixing this because from the pic I was given, it looks mighty scary! I paid $10 for an original Gameboy that looked horrible and the guy didn't even know if it worked. So I messed with it for a minute and got the power light on, so I knew I could fix anything that maybe wrong after that.

I take it home and was grossed out from this


It smelled so bad of tobacco and booze that I couldn't stomach working on it further before cleaning it at least a little. My wife came home and instantly started yelling from the door thinking I not only started smoking but was smoking in the house
So I cleaned it a bit and then got a game to work. I got lucky because it works perfectly! The screen doesn't even have lines, there was so much tar on this little guy that the contrast button was glued shut more or less and you couldn't get the screen adjusted. So now I've taken it completely apart and it's been cleaned and been soaking in a bath to take the yellowing out of the console for a day now. It's almost brand new looking. At this moment all I need to restore to 100% new is the screen lens has a gouge and the select buttons look like a chew toy (which is weird to say the least) other than that it's rocking. I plan on buying a backlight kit eventually so I can better see what the hell I'm playing. More pictures later on the progress!

That is a neat story.

Well thanks for that. I got it all back together and working. I want to replace the lens as mentioned then I'll call it done. I only have a Bo Jackson football/baseball game and it's GAWD awful so I'll need to get something worth playing if anyone knows of games outside of Pokémon. Cheers

Great job on the spruce up!

I'd recommend the Kirby games, and Mario titles. They're very hard to beat for pure simplicity and joy.

Wow, vast improvement would it have been cheaper to buy another than to fix it though? Does it still smell?

 Cheesecat wrote:
Wow, vast improvement would it have been cheaper to buy another than to fix it though? Does it still smell?

Probably smells of disinfectant for a week or so.

 KingCracker wrote:
Well thanks for that. I got it all back together and working. I want to replace the lens as mentioned then I'll call it done. I only have a Bo Jackson football/baseball game and it's GAWD awful so I'll need to get something worth playing if anyone knows of games outside of Pokémon. Cheers

Super Mario Land 1, 2 and whichever one has Wario
Final Fantasy Adventure 1, 2 and/or 3
Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening
Metroid II

Off the top of my head

Hehe.

Confused my kid when I told him the best thing to wish for as a parent is for my children to surpass my achievements!
It would not be easy, spent way too much time gaming in my early teens.
That was the days of Atari 2600, Colecovision, Intellivision for starters, never mind programming and games on the Vic20 or Commodore 64.
Though the original Nintendo was when it got the most fun in my mind... nevermind Sega or TurbographX 16.
I did not get much into portable gaming for some time, though I was an early adoptor of the Space Invaders watch.
(Omni space defender)


Could anyone do a modern version of Zaxxon please??

 Cheesecat wrote:
Wow, vast improvement would it have been cheaper to buy another than to fix it though? Does it still smell?

Nope much cheaper to do it yourself if possible. I paid 10 bucks for it, spent 3 dollars on peroxide and oxiclean powder and took a day in the sunlight to bring it back. In this condition they go for 30ish and up. And no more smell, I got lucky there though it took 8 qtips to clean just the board inside. If it still smelled I was just going to buy a new shell those are only a couple bucks.

Today I found an original PlayStation at a thrift shop for 6 bucks. They didn't know if it worked. I figured why not, at this price I could still sell it as broken for 10 bucks or so and I could show my son how to tear into these things. Brought it home and it works! It's pretty dirty, so much so the open button got stuck as soon as we pushed it and I had to test it while holding the lid down. So I showed the boy real quickly how to take apart a ps1 and had him clean the button assembly and put it back together. Works a treat.

More on this later as I need more peroxide to clean the shell back to factory grey and the inside is pretty gnarly and even has some rust on the metal plate. So thanks for the game ideas on the Gameboy! I'll have to check some of those out, never had an original Gameboy so I'm a total noob when it comes to games worth playing

Today the wife and I are going thrifting. Now I live in an area that has like 10 stores within 20 minutes in all directions and we decided we are going to start thrifting, looking for deals to both keep and sell and the best part is you can find retro games stuff at these places. So with a little luck I'll have some projects to add on here today.



Also went out and bought Mario land 2 6 golden coins for the Gameboy. It's a friggin good game! My son and I spent a few hours playing it yesterday and had a blast, so thanks to anyone that suggested it.

Ahh all these old systems bring me back I played all the D&D Games on Intellivision forever and ever. Also, if you can find Clay Fighters for Sega get it! 'Watch the hair, momma!'. I still confuse my kids by saying that to this day.

I think I had games for the Gameboy, but really never played anything besides Tetris. Love that game.

Tetris is a classic but I prefer dr Mario, always have always will. Struck out on the thrifting. Maybe next time

I'm amazed at how much retro games go for these days. You can still find some at garage sales, but most stores sell them for high prices. I held on to mine and they're carefully preserved.

Yeeeeah the prices seem to just keep going up. Specially on the really good games. Good gravy!