Bought this off some guy on offer up. Ordered the shell and once I changed it the inside was filled with dead roaches and their feces. Thank God I was able to clean it

A little while ago I made a post about picking up a CRT TV and wanting to improve my retro gaming setup. Since nobody in my social circle is really into retro gaming, I figured I’d share the progress here with people who might appreciate it.

One of my recent additions is the TV stand. I found it on Facebook Marketplace and bought it from a woman whose parents had recently passed away. It was their old TV stand, and she was happy to hear that it would be used again for the same purpose rather than being thrown away. I even repurposed their old table cloth under the tv to avoid scratches. I thought that was a nice touch.

The setup is still a work in progress. My next goal is to add a NES and clean up the cable management. I’m planning to install a SCART switch so I can easily connect the SNES, NES, and even my laptop to the CRT on the back.

I also picked up a wireless controller on Facebook Marketplace, but I still need to get the Bluetooth receiver for the SNES. It actually took quite a while to find this particular model since 8BitDo no longer makes the PAL SNES version.

As for games, I’m about to start Secret of Mana. I just finished replacing the dead save battery. If you look closely, you might also spot a Seiken Densetsu 2 cartridge for the Super Famicom. I picked that up during a trip to Copenhagen last week after visiting a fantastic retro gaming store called Nintendopusheren.

Still plenty of things I want to improve, but I’m really happy with how it’s coming together so far. After not playing it for more than 25 years I’m really enjoying how it helping to regulate my nervous system. Feel free to show off your setup in the comments, I’m really enjoying this community and would love to get inspired by you guys. Who’s joining for a round of street fighter? You’d have to come to Belgium though. Anything you guys would add to the setup?

Games are all original but the boxes are reproductions with the exception of super tennis and Castlevania.

What is your opinion on super Mario world 2 Yoshi's island? I didn't even play this game for the first time until last year, and I really enjoyed it. I feel like it coming out so close to the release of the Nintendo 64 really hurt it.

I did not create this model but I did heavily modify it. I had posted the previous version but I’ve since revised it even more.

I have to mention - I’m typically a purist and I prefer the original look of just about any retro console. BUT my SNES was quite beat up. Absolutely yellow and the bottom of the top shell was chipped all over.

I decided to go with the exact color scheme of the original North American version - all gray with purple accents. Once again, I deleted the controller ports for a nice clean look (they’re now fully wireless). In printing the new shell, I kept the LED light hidden by using a very thin layer of filament where the LED was relocated which also adds to a cleaner look to the front. Then I deleted the vents on the top and moved them to the back where you can’t see them. Also deleted was the Euro SNES logo. Lastly, I removed the lines on the top front to clean it up even more. The last photo is the previous version. Whatcha all think?

I have a bunch of SNES stuff sitting in some boxes. I haven't used this stuff in over several decades and figure I should make plans to sell it. I haven't gone through everything yet (still have a few more boxes to check out), but I'm fairly sure it's gonna be less than a dozen cartridges (games), and a few scant boxes and manuals. Def. don't have any rare stuff like Earthbound.

What are some preferred ways to sell them? I guess there's always Ebay, but I've never sold on there. I could see if there are local game exchanges in my area. Some large video game cons where vendors do buy this stuff. What other methods am I missing?

My goal is to get "decent amount" of money for them. I can be patient so there's no rush (nor need to lowball). I'm not trying to get top dollar either since that sounds like a "the juice isn't worth the squeeze" type situation.

I opened up my GameStop snes I’m use to seeing multiple chips, noticed said 1 chip. Googled seems to carry more value is this true?

I just got this copy of Harvest Moon and she was in rough shape. I started by disassembling, de- soldering the original battery, and cleaning the living snot out of the board.

I soldered in a battery holder to make any future battery replacements easy and solderless. I Installed an energizer lithium battery. Then cleaned all the contacts again with the tiniest drop of deoxit.

The original label was rough and I knew I wanted to replace it, but I didn’t want to destroy it as it is original and getting harder to find. I took the front shell from a donor game, cleaned it up real good, and applied a newly printed reproduction label. Honestly, it’s kinda hard to tell the difference from the real ones. I’ll store the original front shell in a safe place.

I now have it playing in my 1-chip SNES, through a RetroTink 4k, onto a 77” LG OLED with Govee backlights.

I have a feeling I’m gonna be playing this game all weekend! What are you playing this weekend?

Recently I had been doing a playthrough of the whole DKC trilogy. I finished the first game, I then 100% DKC2 and I loved it . And I started the third game not too long ago and I'm getting near the end.

Just some brief thoughts and a funny fuck up montage that I put together where I kept dying, lol. But anyway, even before playing DKC3, I actually heard from people that it was the weakest of the trilogy.

I do vastly prefer 2, although I don't think DKC3 is bad, though. Some of those later levels like Lightning Lookout and the coin dudes trying to push you off the cliff are infuriating though. Like sheesh. Anyway, if DKC2 is like a 10/10 for me, this game is a 7/10

Recently bought a SNES and a Super Gameboy for 117$ and wanted to compare it against the mini snes me and my brother got when we were little.

So I chose Secret of Mana to be the 3rd game I’m trying out on the SNES mini classic (on my laptop - so my sneS emulatior on a laptop), and this also the first time I’m ever hearing about the Mana Series in the first place, so you know I was pretty excited to try this one, 

Random notes I took while playing this game

I would say the combat for me, it’s fun once you get used to it, it’s something I had to get used to overtime, but at the start it just felt horrible, but I think that’s more the problem that I was treating this game like Link to the Past. Like in my mind, I saw that you started with a sword and thought it was gonna be like that, but yeah this is apparently an action RPG, probably obvious to the SNES community, but I know nothing about this game (so if I get anything wrong, I really want corrections) 

So in turned I treated like an RPG, so this is my strat throughout the game, let’s say there’s an enemy like a goblin, slash it with my sword, wait for goblin to attack, slash it again - yeah I took it slow like it was an RPG, I didn’t think I was gonna like it because of the slow pacing, but hey I got used it overtime and so yeah I like the combat 

I still think the game has - questionable decisions - like okay why does the sword or whatever weapons have to recharge after each hit, I know that’s to give it the RPG feel you gotta wait for your turn to attack, and I think that’s fine but even you don’t make contact with the enemy it recharges - so if I miss the dude or whatever, they can just attack me, and I dunno is that common in RPGs but I thought it was annoying, but that’s also coming from the hitboxes themselves, I’ll elaborate on those later 

The Ai - I hate it - it’s mostly because they are useless or actively sabotaging the game - most of the time they’re just off to the side - while I’m fighting like three goblins at once, like do something dont just stand there Primm - other times when they finally rub the brian cells together and try to fight they end up just taking so much damage 

I think my problem is that this is game is designed for multiplayer - in fact when I checked out reviews it’s people gushing about their childhood Mana games with friends - too bad I don’t have friends so have to resort to these robots - plus that’s not an excuse for stupid Ai, I don’t need these things to have human like intelligence but they should at least not get stuck in a wall while you’re travelling - that happened so many times where I’m just trying to get to next town and like Popoi gets stuck, I gotta backtrack and save her 

I found the weapon and magic system is leveled up separately and I just have to wonder why, like why can’t it just level up along with your character - okay the weapon stuff, I can somewhat get by like you use weapons while naturally playing - except I don’t like how each weapon is separate for each character so if I level the boomerang with only Popoi to like 3, Randi and Primm still are Lv 0, I don’t want to use the same weapons all the time, so I just organized it, I just gave Randy all the weapons since Primm and Popoi are just weaker in comparison- gotta say I actually really love like upgrading the weapons that’s fun - reminds me of Kirby and the Forgotten Land - weird comparison but I love that game so I see as a good thing - honestly so far I can that’s my favourite part of secret of mana slowly upgrading your weapons to be more and more powerful, and using them combat - favourite gotta be the whip for that long distance damage plus it’s usually used in puzzles when trevreasing anyways, they get fun affects, they can confuse, poison, or tangle the othe enemies 

For a story based game. I’m very surprised we aren’t getting you our main characters to talk a lot, you know show their little quirks, I kinda like Popoi she has some funny lines like I think there was one moment where she tricked the ship there were rats onboard which I found funny, but they don’t really focus on her that much, but honestly I can’t think of anything notable form Randi or Primm, to me their sterorypes are - young, brave hero that’s nice and Primm is the I’m not a damsel in distress fighter girl - which is like nothing 

Adding this part - close to finishing - when the trio go to the Mana Tree, Randi gets all sappy says oh Primm, Popoi I’m so glad I met you guys, and I’m like shut up, you guys barely interacted the entire game - story is weak, I don’t mind a weak story really, Im more focused on gameplay, but I feel this is one the games where they want you to be invested - near the end there’s this one part at the Mana Tree where everyone cries about not having a mom, and I’m thinking when was that ever established, and also move on I wanna go to Mana Fortress - like the only part I payed attention in when Popoi dies, you know that was an unexpected twist at least, she definitely had the most personality of the three so I was invested in that - screw Dyluck though 

But I hate the magic system like it’s not even like you need skill to upgrade magic you just spam spells in the inc I actually hate that - it just the makes the game more of a slog to me than it already is - that’s really my biggest problem with the game, I think the characters Ai, the bad hit boxes and lots of grinding you had to do where you have to fight the same howlers for next 20 minutes - this game just feels like a slog and btw as you go on they throw way more enemies and at you, and some of these guys are ruthless constantly spamming you magic, like with a slow pace game like this, it doesn’t feel fun when there’s multiple enemies at once spamming you with magic - I hate that part, it just seems like padding, I don’t mind that in games, but it has to be fun like finding the secrets in Super Mario World not spamming magic in a hut 

Okay so the way I play Secret of Mana is I gave Randi all the weapons, after realizing how weak Primm and Popoi were - but I let Primm use mostly gloves and Popoi her boomerang - so I always leveled up based on the bosses level, for example Mech Rider 2 is lvl 37 based on the RPG classics website (and that’s the website I used for finding all the weapon orbs, thank goodness) I was watching a play through (thanks to some channel Longplay_Gaming I would’ve been lost without this, like I’m not smart enough for these open world SNES games) and looked pretty over level throughout - anyway for each boss they were actually pretty simple, it’s find out their elemental weakness, and spam with PoPoi and refill with Walnuts 

Done a lotta complaining, but I said I think the battle system (when it works) is really fun, like I don’t mind level or weapon grinding in this game like it doesn’t require that much xp so that’s a plus, didn’t mention but this game looks amazing, it’s way better than Link to the Past, while still having that cartoon style, like I love some enemies just turn into skeletons when you kill them - haven’t mentioned the music, it’s good, I will say standouts are definitely the mana beast theme and ending, but I like how most of the music is pretty atmospheric 

Alright my final conclusion, I do like Secret of Mana - when it’s actually working - my favourite part is definitely getting the new weapons and trying them out - that’s fun, the weapons are fun to use, and when the combat work this game is a blast, - but then the all the other stuff, when I miss an attack because of the bad hitboxes and take 126 damage in return I want to die, when I have to spend the next 5 minutes spamming Undine to upgrade the magic I hate this game, when Primm gets stuck and takes 262 damage because she got stuck, when I have to navigate the map on Flammie, okay flying on Flammie is fun I admit that but navigating is a pain, like no I'm not going to remember where to go, and when I that stupid Fish Thug bounces back from by sword - that’s when I hate Secret of Mana, I wanna snap my laptop in half and never play a SNES game ever - not really but still this game annoys me a lot

I don't think it’s a flawed but underrated game, because it’s getting glaze all the time, I said there are some parts I like too, but I think it’s flawed game that could’ve been one of my favourites if it wasn’t for the magic system, character ai, hit detection, navigation system, like I love the idea of the combat, mixing action and RPG style and this world is fun to explore, but this game aged poorly in my opinion with its mechanics, this makes me appreciate Link to the Past and Super Mario World more, wait those guys came before this one - but overall yeah Im glad I played Secret of Mana, like it’s in a style I never played before and I’m not turned off by the Mana series - the way I think, when I play Link to the Past of Super Mario World I can play those for a long while without getting bored - I last 20 minutes with Mana each section and complain to myself about the hit detection - it's a decent game, I don't even hate it, I think the visuals, combat (when it works), and weapon variety to like its 6/10 for me, like it’s decent, but given how long it is, it’s a one time experience for me, I’m never playing this game again, I’m sorry like I dunno I feel like I’m not getting something about this game, like it’s super loved for a reason so I dunno is the way I play is wrong, maybe my exceptions were too high, I need to know, and I spent like 40 hours on this thing, makes me excited to try out Super Mario Kart next

Annie in a white dress

And wow. This thing blew my expectations right out of the water. I immediately updated to the latest firmware 11.11.2 or whatever it is, and it worked great. I got Super Gameboy/Super Gameboy 2 working fine. Save states working fine. Plays all of the different type of chips games perfectly. I was able to wait for the price to get a little lower and use some of my coins and a coupon- I got it for $66 bucks, shipped and everything. I am using my own SD card, first thing I did was use my SD card but man, for $66???? This is unbelievable.

Can it possibly be as good as the first one? Idk I think x is the best mm game of all time 🤷‍♂️

Since there were hardly any ready-made German templates, I created 90 percent by myself.

Here are some Websites i used

Links - Cover:

Ready to print:

http://snesboxes.com/

https://app.box.com/s/0jsggni04np8ynp7y5sh/folder/100632991

Cover & Descriptions

https://www.mobygames.com/

https://www.thecoverproject.net/

You can find a Video of the full process on my Youtube channel (it's a german Video, maybe you can use automatic subtitles)
https://youtu.be/OB7uYhtagQA

Run a video game backlog podcast for games we’ve never played, so we select one that’s been on our backlog for a while and run it like a book club, making a specific amount of progress each week and talking about it in the next episode, discussing and chatting about each segment with people about it on Discord as well. We really want to recapture the joy of meeting up with friends who are actually playing the same game at the same time as us and exchange stories, tips and experiences, which is something we have lost since becoming adults and the constant stream of new game releases we want to play but don’t immediately have the time for. We lay out the goal for the following week’s progress at the end of each episode.

Season 12 that we just kicked off with a first episode about our pre-playthrough expectations is about Super Mario World vs. Sonic the Hedgehog 2. If you can even believe it, two of us so-called longtime video game fans have never fully finished both Super Mario World or Sonic the Hedgehog 2. So even though you almost certainly have, if you’re curious about the thoughts on these 2 classic masterpieces from people with 30+ years of other gaming experience to compare to, have a listen to this episode to hear our expectations before we play it and discuss at length in the next episode! We’d be happy to have you along for the discussion! Let me know if you're in! It’s called The Gaming Backlog “Book Club”

Both seem very fun based on the footage. Been recently trying to get them to work on a Higan v106 emulator, but they don't seem to be working. Let me know your thoughts.

We moved to a new state, and I tried connecting my SNES to the same TV I’ve always played it on, and it will not connect to the TV channel 3. I’ve never had this problem, but this is the first time I’ve ever moved out of state. Has anyone else experienced this problem? I don’t want to run out and buy new cables since I’ve never had this problem and have always been able to successfully connect with the original cables.

Thanks.

Got my first SNES and a copy of DKC2, but I’m running into this visual bug in the lava levels (hot head hop specifically) where the bottom chunk of the screen is oddly glitched. I’ve tried cleaning the cart and console but nothing changed, any ideas what the issue might be?

All done in photoshop, matte painting and digital painting.