Space Ava 201 lands on PC Engine and Turbografx Super CD!

 "Space Ava 201: Quantum Field Theory is a single-player puzzle-adventure game for the TurboGrafx-CD.  It features multiple turn-based gameplay styles, a huge array of levels, and a colorful cast of characters who travel across galaxies in order to save the world and reconnect with a lost friend.

Space Ava 201 requires the Super System Card, a PC Engine Duo, a Turbo Duo, or some other compatible system, or it can also be played on an appropriately-configured emulator. Enhancements are available when run on the SuperGrafx or using the Arcade Card, but neither are required to enjoy the game."

Find out more information about Space Ava 201, and get a download link to the game here!

The Return of Funcoman

This was a rant of mine that was meant to be posted on a site's forums earlier this year. It's a bit of a long one so be prepared:

I can't believe the place one of my favorite used game stores used to be has become.

The story starts like this, there is a game store in the Stonebriar Center mall in Frisco, that used to be awesome and bought and sold anything and everything console related. Now I only got to go to this mall about once a year, so I just took my yearly trip yesterday with a couple of friends who were excited to see it for their first time. Too bad it will probably be our last unless another change in management is made for the better.

You see it wasn't that the manager was a jerk, ok I'm lying he was a complete tool. I don't know if it was just that he had no realistic clue about games and their worth or if his plan was to drive the store into the ground while laughing at the unsuspecting innocent people who would occasionally walk in to buy something only to quickly figure out that something was up. The prices, oh my freaking GOD the prices. Now when Shawn Myers, the old manager, worked there before going to the store in Florida the prices were only slightly overpriced, but still reasonable. At least he was willing to cut you a deal. This is understandable because Frisco is a bit of a richer area, but not for what this new manager was charging. I could actually freaking afford more than a couple of common, oh yes I do mean extremely common, snes games before he came along! Not only that, but Shawn was one of the most awesome gamers and people I have ever met, hell he even gave me a discount because I didn't have all that much money to spend at the time.

Well just to give you an idea of how BAD prices were exactly were, here are some figures, please try to restrain yourself from laughing too hard as this guy was a complete joke.

Atari Jaguar $99.99
Panasonic 3DO (it was the best model, at least according to him) 129.95
Sega nomad $125.95
Colecovision $125.95 (I pretty sure that is what he was asking)
Atari Lynx somewhere between $60 and $80, can't remember exactly (I knew this guy was a joke the second he responded to me saying that price was high, with "Oh, the Lynx is really collectible right now". RIIIIIGHT, sure maybe for some rich ass sucker who doesn't know any better, but then again why would a rich ass sucker being buying a lynx 1?)
Turbo Grafx, with missing back cover...$125.95
Samurai Spirits 2 and various other common as hell AES games all $79.95.
Legend of Mana $69.95
Saga Frontier 1 and 2 $39.95 and $49.95 respectably (I swear he knew nothing of the contents of these horrible games. He probably just saw Squaresoft on the cover and was like, "Squaresoft huh? Don't know what the hell this game is, but I sure can't let it go for under 40 bucks, and a sequel? $10 bucks more.)
Sega Backup ram cart $79.95 (I'm sorry this just cracked me up!)
Atari Greatest hits or whatever it was called $14.95 (see? even cheap ass common games are overpriced!)

The list goes on and on, after a while I just gave up asking prices for the systems, because they were consistently near or over $100.00. I should have looked at the prices for the CD-i games he had for a laugh, but I didn't bother because anytime CD-i is involved my eyes just kind of glaze over it. He had a ton of games tough, especially nes games. A whole case filled with easily over 1000 games. Hmm.. I wonder why, maybe because no one wants to spend what would probably be $9.95 on common ass games like Dragon Warrior? I swear, nothing was cheaper than $9.95 in that store, oh believe me he CLAIMED to have some, he just didn't have any of those titles in stock. Yeah sure whatever. He also proved very unknowledgeable when talking about games, and when it was all said and done I knew what this place had become. Yes people, the Console Game Exchange in the Frisco mall is the freaking Funcoland of the 21st century. It had everything Funcoland had, unreasonable prices on used games, a manager that didn't know crap, hell I was waiting for him to cram some sort of cleaning kit down my throat when I bought the few games that I could afford.

Not only that but there was some sort of tension between him and Shawn. When I asked about Shawn and a way to get in touch with him, he said he had a handle, but couldn't remember it. More like he wouldn't tell me because if Shawn found out what he had done to his old store, he would most indefinitely turn into a hulking mass of a man, run all the way back from Florida, and obliterate his ass. He also said something about that he worked in one of their other stores as manager for 7 years before being "tricked" into being sent to the Frisco mall after Shawn's move. He also spewed crap about how he organized the store better than Shawn had it (in reality he just rearranged it, it was no better or worse organization wise than the was Shawn had it, hell it was slightly worse because you couldn't see all of the nes games in the case the were in due to the way they were stacked.)

Also when I told him I bought a Master System for $20 less than he was asking for when Shawn was manager, he replied with "Well how much was Shawn asking for nes' at the time $100?" When I told him nes' were never more than $60 when Shawn was there nor did any older system that wasn't say Neo-Geo AES go quite so near $100, he replied with this rubbish: "Well I had to raise the prices of systems, just enough to keep a stock and so that they weren't flying off of the shelves, and even when I raised them they still flew off the shelves." Really? Looked like he way too much stock, due to his pricing to me, and why the hell would you want stock of old no longer manufactured systems rather than making money selling them.

Well I could go on and on about this guy and the fall of a once awesome store, but I better stop my rant here before I take up two pages worth of space. Shawn if by some off chance you are reading this PLEASE come back or at least get in touch with me. The downfall of another once great store, the last local one I know at that, has me upset. At least come back to teach this new manager a lesson.

Btw by what the manager there now said they opened up two more stores where Suncoast pictures used to be in Valley View and Collin creek malls. I am hoping they don't suck like this one. Also I just noticed on the business card of that store has a free game of bowling compliments of them. Too bad a free game of bowling will never make up for the way things used to be run there, sigh....

End original rant

After writing this earlier this year and never posting it, I found out that Shawn split form the Console Game Exchange stores to open his own store in Florida. I wish I was in Florida, cause I know for a fact it must kick more ass than Mr. T after finding out that a group of thugs just insulted his mom. We went to the store in the Colin Creek mall, the guy working there was way more cool, although the prices were more of the same. In fact when we mentioned Funcoman to this guy, he called him a dick as he knew who we were talking about, AND he gave me info on how to get in touch with Shawn. Also Mithos happened to buy a Game Gear from Funcoman, which we later found out needed sound AND video cap replacements, and came with a complementary dead gnat in the screen! No wonder why he lied about not having a power supply (of which we saw several behind him) to test it before Mithos bought it. Finally let it be know that if we ever see Funcoman again, that Game Gear he sold Mithos is gonna get implanted into his face, after getting the ass beating of his life of course!

Chip Tunes

So if you ever get to know me, and the subject of music is brought up you will find that there is only one kind of music for me: chip tunes. Now I know what you may be thinking. How is that bleep bloop stuff even considered music and how can it be the only thing I listen to? Well first of all it isn't "bleep bloop" music, it is just as much like music as rock, hip-hop, or whatever it is you kids listen to these days. Chip music, when done right can be just as inspired as "real" music if not more so, and there are countless types of chips that produce different sounds and many different "styles" as I like to call them. Just as with artists of more traditional forms of music, you can often tell when a certain chip tune artist made a particular music for a game. It really is amazing how imaginative these artists can get especially considering in some cases all they had to work with were things like square waves and noise channels. Contrary to what you may believe by this point, the purpose of this article is not for me to rant and rave about how awesome chip tunes are (which they are by the way), but rather to SHOW you how awesome they are and hopefully by the end of this article I will have pointed you out to something you may have overlooked or not given a chance before.

So here's what I am going to do. Every now and then (hopefully once a week), I will pick one console, computer, or hand held that made use of chip music, and go into detail about what is is capable of, and make some recommendations of music to listen to.

First up the Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom. Ah the good old nes, for many it was their first and they hold fond memories of it's games. Who can blame em with such classics as Super Mario Brothers, Castlevania, Metroid, Punch Out, and Zelda amongst others. It wasn't my first system and even I get this nostalgic feeling from playing it's games. However lots of time, the nes gets a bad rap for having lame, simple, or primitive sounding chip tunes. Granted the Super Mario Brothers theme is a classic forever etched into anyone who has ever played a games' memory, but you have to admit that, while catchy, it is a very simple tune. Believe it or not the nes can do better WAY better, and it has. Games like Mother, Batman, Astynax, Journey to Silius, Silver Surfer, Sky Shark, and Target Renegade show what the nes is really capable of. All of those games I mentioned have quite different styles and give you an idea of the range of sounds the nes can produce. Well except for the last three which were all made by the same artist Tim Follin, who by the way made some kick ass tunes for many old systems and computers back in the day.

But that's not all! Those lucky bastards in Japan, boy do they get the good stuff. You see the whole idea behind the nes/famicom was to produce a cheap, not so powerful system and as required allow for add on chips in cartridges, to enhance what the system could do. The vast majority of nes games used one of these mappers as they are called, and it allowed for the pretty weak nes to do some pretty impressive stuff for the time. One such enhancement were mappers that allowed for extra channels of sound, in some cases even fm synthesis! Unfortunately for whatever reason as usual, in the US we got shafted, and the capability for the mappers with extra sound channels was removed. Also due to the cost of these mappers that allowed for better sound, relatively few games in Japan even used them. Well with the exception of the famicom disk system which had the capability built into the add-on itself. There are about 6 said chips total (including the disk system) and each produced it's own unique sounding tunes. Probably the most impressive of the bunch, were the Namco106, VRC7, and to a lesser extent the VRC6. The games using the namco106 like Megami Tensei 2 sound very close to the turbo grafx's music, and the VRC7, while only one commercially released game used it (Lagrange Point), was pretty damned impressive. The VRC7 made the nes sound similiar to the Sega Genesis, but better! It's a damn shame we never got to experience any of it over here, and even more of a shame so few games use them. Fortunately, due to the nes's thriving popularity, there is a community of many people making chip tunes to this day that will run on actual hardware, and yep you guessed it, they often use the special chips to unlock the nes's full potential.

If you want to listen to some good old nes tunes for yourself, you can download a plugin for Winamp called nezplug++ that supports many chip tune formats including nes, gameboy, turbo grafx, amongst others, and then download a mostly complete library of game chip tunes: http://www.snesmusic.org/hoot/nsf/nsf_games.rar and homebrew tunes: http://www.snesmusic.org/hoot/nsf/nsf_homebrew.rar.

There's a lot of good stuff there so it should keep you occupied until next time! I hope...

By Zeon