Tuesday, April 9, 2013

New Purchases

I've done a little shopping since Christmas, so I might as well post that stuff here.

I felt my N64 needed another shooter, so I picked up a brand new copy of Quake.  I'm still playing through this one, but it's tough:


I've been meaning to complete my Wario Land collection (with the main entries anyway), so I finally picked up a brand new copy of Wario Land 4.



I also added a couple new NES games to my collection.  Super Glove Ball was picked up brand new for only around $40, and Gotcha! was picked up used, but in excellent condition, for about $25.


But Super Glove Ball isn't much fun without its trademark controller: The Power Glove, so I bought one of those as well.


I have to say, the glove works great with Super Glove Ball!  In fact, I've already uploaded a complete playthrough of the game on my Youtube channel (www.youtube.com/watchmeplaynintendo).  I couldn't believe that I found a brand new Power Glove for only $85.  That's a steal if you ask me.  I'll be having fun with this thing for sure.  Mike Tyson's Punch Out is fun with the glove, but it doesn't dodge left and right very well.  The other movements work fine though.  I'll be trying other games for sure.

In other controller-related news, I purchased a brand new Sharkpad Pro 64:


This one is unusual because the packaging is different.  My prior two Sharkpads came in a fully enclosed box, unlike this one.  You can see the difference by scrolling down and looking at my N64 collection.

I'm not sure why Interact had two different types of packaging for this thing, but I love this controller!  I picked up my first one back in 1997 or so, and it broke after only a few years.  So for a while there I had to switch to the sucky, bat-shaped Sharkpad Pro 64 2 (the revised version that I always hated), but then I found a used, original-model Sharkpad on eBay around 2010 or so.  So I sold the bat-shaped one.  However, my used replacement controller was cracked inside, so that bothered me.  I saved an eBay search to notify me if a new one of these appeared, and lo and behold, this thing appeared.  I love new old stock.  Shopping for old games is more fun than shopping for new ones.

Continuing on to accessories, I decided to finally pick up a new Four Player Adapter for the Game Boy:


I've had a used one without the box for several years now (I bought it from FuncoLand back in 1999 or so), but I felt I needed a box to add to my collection.  These things are dirt cheap anyway, so it's not hard to justify the purchase.

Now here's the real kicker.  The Four Player Adapter features the large, old-style connector that only works with an original model Game Boy.  So to use this thing, you need to have at least one original Game Boy, because every Game Boy model after this (Pocket, Light, Color, Advance) only featured the smaller connector... right?  Wrong.

While it's true that the later Game Boy models only supported the smaller link cable made for the Game Boy Pocket, I did some research, and it turns out there was this adapter released only in Japan called a Henkan Connector.  I ordered one brand new from a website called Arcade-Gear.com, and they had to ship it to me all the way from Japan:



What does a Henkan Connector do?  It shrinks the old, large-style link cable down to the smaller, Game Boy Pocket/Color link cable size, like so:


So what does all of this mean?  This means that I can now connect a Game Boy Four Player Adapter straight to my GameCube's Game Boy Player and capture four player footage with the Hauppauge HD PVR... in progressive scan mode (because I have GameCube component cables).  I'm excited about that.  Hopefully I can get my friends to help me with that and I'll get some footage posted on Youtube.  I'll need to buy additional copies of some four player games though.