More RetroGaming: The NES! (1 Viewer)

[JamieD]

Well, turns out my girlfriend is a huge Super Mario 2 nut. So, I dig out the old NES, and go hunting. Through local game stores and pawn shops, I manage to find Mario 2, Ninja Gaiden 2, and Chip and Dale. After having to dissamble the NES and clean the darn thing (NOT a fun process, very tedious), I get them working. So, off I go on a retro hunt. I pick up Final Fantasy from EBay, along with Castlevania 2. Good enough, I putter about for a couple of weeks, when I stop into a local video game store yesterday.
I find METROID, Dragon Warrior, and River City Ransom!! Sweet. Retro Gaming is great, because for about 1/3 the price of a PS2 game, I picked up these three classics. Now if only the NES was less of a hassle. *L* I'm seriously considering modifying one so I could plug the cartridge straight into the connector on the board, much like the portable NES that's out there.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Ah River City Ransom. One of the greatest games of all time

 

[DeathStar1]

There's a portable NES to be bought? Where can we find this unit, since mine has stopped working even after a Pin Bender replacement..

 

[JamieD]

It can't be bought (well, one can, but it's an import, and super rare, and sorta not legal), but a fellow has made one. Essentially he took out the motherboard, connected a screen and some buttons to it, figured out a power supply, and plugs the cartidges directly into the connector. Voila!

 

[Scott Thomas]

I LOVE River City Ransom

the game I wanted Shenmue to be.

 

[DaveGTP]

You can always pick up a toploading Nes to defeat the connectivity, but they are about $75-100, and they don't have a/v out (just rf out). I sold my toploader off and picked up a reconditioned boxy NES from the local game store. Not as good as the toploader for not having the flashing problem, but the improved video was worth the trade-off IMO.
A game recommendation: pick up a copy of Dragon Warrior IV. It's worth the $30-40. You can always sell it back off again later.

 

[Scott L]

To fix the flashing problem pick up a Game Genie. It has clamping contacts and your NES cart stays in place. You don't have to enter in a code for it to work.

If it still doesn't work get a new 72-pin connector off ebay and do both.

 

[Mark Evans]

River City Ransom is one of the best games ever made.

It is without reproach. Some of the most fun two-player action ever made, and just utterly daft in general, but in a good way (who ordered the smile every time they went into Merv Burger? :p)).

Great, great game. Loved the Grand Slam too. My cousin and I would play through, pick up Grand Slam, each get a lead pipe and then basically play baseball with the bosses until they died. Fun!

 

[JamesH]

It can't be bought (well, one can, but it's an import, and super rare, and sorta not legal), but a fellow has made one. Essentially he took out the motherboard, connected a screen and some buttons to it, figured out a power supply, and plugs the cartidges directly into the connector. Voila!

There is actually a portable NES being produced. It's called the Game Axe, and it is a sega nomad modified to play NES games. I've heard that they're VERY fragile though.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

It would be perfectly legal to take an NES hardware and wire a screen to it to make it portable. You bought it, it's yours to mess with.

Someone, I think on TechTV took a server case and put an Atari 2600, NES, Genesis, Saturn, SNES, N64, PS2 and a gamecube into it, all running off a unified power supply and video output

 

[BrianB]

[snip]

 

[Jason F.]

Along with River City Ransom, I would have to say Dodge Ball was my 2nd fav game.

 

[Drew Dockery]

Actually, the Game Axe plays Famicom games and needs an adapter the play NES, and by then the cart is sticking 6 inches out of the machine, so moving much at all kills your game. It's a neat system, but not all that reliable. After replacing the contacts on my "toaster" NES, it's just as good as my top loader. Don't even have to push the games down for them to work.

 

[DeathStar1]

I installed a new Pin connector as well. It worked for a while, but it had tons o' white lines stationary when the game was playing..
I tapped tapped tapped around on the curcuit board to see if I could fix it that way out of luck, but then it stopped working entirley. Even another Pin Connector didn't work...
Maby it's time for a petition for a Top Loader Anniversary re-lease .

 

[Krystian C]

Jeff,
You are correct, they call it the Yoshi Box, anyone interested go here.
Link Removed
This is bar none one of the coolest systems I have ever seen, it would be so sweet to have everything in one case.
There are some step by step instructions for the Techno Savvy

 

[Ron1973]

I was always an Atari 2600 guy and I refused to upgrade to the NES when it was displacing Atari. My ex-wife loved the NES so I wound up buying several in an attempt to get one to work. I did finally get one to work and eventually had to replace the pin connector. Supposed to be "good for life" but I kept having to replace it again and again. I finally trashed it and bought one of those "2 in 1" systems for NES/SNES. The darn thing quit and I had to argue with the seller to get another one. It crashed, too. I seriously need to invest in another NES as I still have a handful of games and a NES joystick I received by mistake.