Greetings from Ireland

[Dr. Social]

Hi
thought I'd be a bit cheeky and start my own thread rather than use one of the others!I've been lurking for a while but finally decided to join in.
I'm 32 and from Dublin Ireland.I actually DIDN'T have an S.M.S. back in the eighties , I had a c64 .I did have a mate who'd traded up his beige box and bought an SMS and a copy of castle of illusion.I remember we played that to death.A year or so later I picked up a Sega megadrive (a PAL I one which played Japanese games with English text quite often , but I digress).I somehow ended up with a powerbase converter , and bought a copy of Gauntlet (as it was the best available conversion at the time , and I LOVE gauntlet).I nabbed a copy of wonderboy as well along the way , and then wonderboy III ,which I spent ages finishing.I managed to get a few others too.Eventually the meg' was lost or my brother sold it when I moved out , and with it went my converter and games.
I'd always continued to be interested in gaming , and in the past year or so I did what a lot of guys my age seem to do , which is buy back their youth on ebay!
I'd been hankering after a master system , but its a nightmare to buy any kind of retro system in Ireland .Theres no shops dedicated to it , and when you buy from Ebay you end up paying through the nose for shipping, (oh and my pet hate , ebay sellers who don't list international shipping prices ..oh the amount of bargains I've lost by getting a "shipping cost is X" AFTER the biddings ended ...anyway..)
I picked up a mark 1 (the hangon/safari/snail one) and a few games , no PSU though I ended up having to buy that separately.
I've picked up a fair few games , a lot of stuff that I never had or in some cases heard of as a kid :...so without further ado ..heres the obligatory list:
>boxed<
Action fighter (I was always intrigued by this as C&VG magazine gave it 2% (well maybe not 2 but under 10)in a review
Power strike
Ghouls and Ghosts
Rescue mission: looks great HAVE to buy a light gun at some point
Jurassic Park
Bubble Bobble: I think its a good conversion anyway
Castle of Illusion: great!
Land of Illusion :equally great!
PacMania: I'd rather a copy of Pacland (why no SMS version?!?)
Super space invaders: love this , any game with a cattle mutilation bonus round HAS to be good
Gauntlet: One Of my fave games of all time.
Indiana Jones and the last crusade:not a huge fan of this to be honest
World Class Leader board:I was a veteran of the PGA meg games so I find this a bit tricky.
Impossible mission:"stay a while ..stay forever"
>unboxed< - cos I'm not fussy
Strider_ sorry but its toooo slooooowww
Basketball nightmare
great golf
Mercs: to be honest I bough the meg version the same day - so I'm a bit underwhelmed by this.
Sonic:Great conversion - Its all new to me as I'd only seen it on the megadrive
The Ninja- its rare I hear
SCI - ( I'd mixed it up with SDI ..doh!, but its a good racer)
Secret Command:kinda like commando - apparently its also Rambo II??
Shinobi: I like it ..but Its a little slow compared to the arcade version..blasphemy I know!!
Bonanza bros:really nice sneak em up
Wimbledon:its tennis!
Miracle warriors: keep meaning to have a crack at this RPG , but never have the time.
Enduro Racer: nothing like the arcade but brilliant fun!
Xenon2 - its a bit slow , but I'm rubbish at shooters so It might get better
Olympic gold: umm have to confess I haven't had time to play this properly!
Montezuma's revenge - Conversion of probably my favourite Atari 800 game -almost perfect , I just wish they'd left the graphics as they were.[/i]

I've a few more games due from ebay , so I might add them later.
well thats my lot , I'm delighted to see so many people sharing my obsession with 8 bit sega stuff .(I was always amazed at how in US retro articles it was always referred to as a bit of a failure , seeing as it was neck and neck if not ahead of the NES in Ireland).

oh if I had a wish list I guess it'd be
Gain ground : played this emulated a while back and really liked it.
Master of darkness:as close as I'll get to an SMS castlevania
R-type , just cant find anywhere delivering it for a reasonable price on ebay lately.
oh and a zapper - I'd love to actually play rescue mission one day

[rupert]

Welcome ;D

nice story.. I dont think we have anyone else here from Ireland?

i see your in the 'collecting to play' phase.. will it or wont it move on to 'collecting to complete the collection' phase

Action Fighter I alsways liked, ok graphics and music arnt that great but its a really fun challenging game, can be frustrating at time though.. it no way deserves 10%!

Castle of Illusion was always one of my faves as a kid and i played it through again when i was off work over xmas.

agreed about indy.. not too good, if the controles were improved quite a bit it could have been a great game.

secret command basically is Rambo II (or the other way around) a few US games are re-badged Euro games like this actually.

when looking for a gun id say look for a good boxed one as they have a tendency to not work properly, aim can be totally off. its worth paying the extra to save dissapointment.

Also, a few cheap games missing from your list that i think you should look out for.. Zillion, Putt and Putter, Alex Kidd in Shinobi World and Fantasy Zone.

[playgeneration]

Welcome

Rescue Mission is indeed a very cool game, really unique idea for a light gun game - Its been years since I played it, might have to play it again later

[Dr. Social]

Cheers for the replies guys - I'll keep an eye out for those games alright.
I probably wont ever get to the completist collector stage..I have a wife thats tolerant of my hobby ..for now anyway

[effex0r]

Welcome :,D

[Aypok]

Hey dude, welcome to the forum.

As with rupert, I quite like Action Fighter. Probably because I was addicted to Spy Hunter on my BBC Micro. :P I spent two years trying to find Action Fighter (2000 to 2002) - I had it when younger, but could never remember the name!

I also agree with what you said about Mercs; I had the Megadrive version first - which is a really great game. But the SMS version seemed... Meh. Not as exciting. Especially when you reach the Harrier boss at the end of level one...

That's enough rambling from me. :)

[krooper13]

Yep welcome thats a pretty good list of games, but make sure you get Alex Kidd in Miracle World and the rest of the sonics (bar the cack that is spinball).

[kungfukid]

Yes, welcome aboard! I see you've been registered for a few months anyway, so you probably know most of us already! That was a great intro you gave us, and a nice overview of your favourite games!

[Stan]

Welcome man, we got some big things coming up so you couldn't have appeared at a better time!

[Dr. Social]

cheers guys
I've just bought a few games from ebay (WBIII, psycho fox and...er the terminator[well I like a challenge]..and hopefully they survive the Irish postal service and arrive!) so my allocation of retro buyings probably been used up for a few weeks(as I share an ebay account with my wife:) ), I'll keep an eye out for the games mentioned in the next few weeks.

[Totoro]

Hello. Great inro. Interested about what you said about Action Fighter- I think it's quite fun. I think I remember Mean Machines (or someone similar) giving Transbot 9% way back in my youth.

I recommend you get Golden Axe Warrior and Gollvillius rather than tackle Miracle Warriors. Oh and if you see World Games run a mile.

[Dr. Social]

I found action fighter to be a lot better than mean machines/c &vg or whoever said , however I found it to be massively hard (fnaaaar!), and was a bit rubbish at it .I might try it out again soon though.
In other related news , after seeing a mention of it in the G.O.T.W section , I defied the wrath of my wife and nabbed another game from Ebay - Master Of Castleva...sorry "Master of Darkness" is (hopefully winging its way to me) In honour of its pure awesomeness I've changed my username to Dr Social (probably one of the oddest named main characters in a mainstream game) .Also my copy of WBIII arrived ,its as good as I remember!

[kungfukid]

Master of Darkness is an excellent game, though funnily enough it isn't one that gets mentioned a lot here - I'm not sure why... except for one thread I seem to remember where somebody on ebay obviously couldn't read gothic script and called it 'master of BARKNESS' in the listing! ;D There were a few chuckles at that one. Now that you've mentioned it though, I might give the game a go later on!

[ninjabearhug]

drbob said:

Cheers for the replies guys - I'll keep an eye out for those games alright.
I probably wont ever get to the completist collector stage..I have a wife thats tolerant of my hobby ..for now anyway

Do what i did, tell her the games are an investment and will be worth loads of money in the future. If that doesn't work there's always the expensive option, buy her a horse ;D. She's got just as much stuff as me piled up in the house now and saddles take up way more space than games.

[eday2010]

Greetings, this place is cool, if not a bit slow