It Must Be Thursday.

It's been a tough day here at the Vault for your host, dear readers. Want to know what makes a day better though? Capuchin monkeys. Especially when Sir David Attenborough narrates the BBC special Capuchins: The Monkey Puzzle.

Though I need to add that if I hear one more time that Ted has been holding out on giving grapes to Vulcan...science or not...I'll take my hovercraft and a squad of Radium Chimps and pay him a visit. Hear me, Ted?

When you are through watching the the Capuchin video above make sure to jump over to the Retroist site, they have a review of the C-64 game of Short Circuit! http://games.retroist.com/games/short-circuit/

Box Art Wednesday.

Click the pics to Embiggen!

I've not had the pleasure to play Mr. Do!'s Castle on the Atari 2600 but I can honestly say I had no knowledge of the other two titles existence until this evening.

Doing a little research on the Mr. Do! title it seems that it was ported to almost every system during its time with the likes of ColecoVision, MSX, Atari 5200, and the Commodore 64 to name a few. Gameplay seems to consist of Mr. Do! trying desperately to avoid horned monsters that slightly resemble Unicorns by climbing up and down ladders and when standing above the beasts, using his giant mallet to slam the ceiling down upon them. I've included a video of the gameplay from YouTube below:

I have to say that I absolutely love the music that is in that title, very catchy.

Off the Wall was released in 1989 by Axlon, the game company that Atari founder Nolan Bushnell created after leaving the company, and is basically a breakout clone with a Chinese theme. Players take on the role of Kung Fu Lu as he tries to destroy an evil Dragon that is hiding behind a wall. YouTube has once again come to the rescue:


Finally we have Rescure Terra 1 where you try to combat Space Pirates, Asteroids, Robot Interceptors, and worst of all the galaxies most horrifying force fields...Fish Force Fields! What? Perhaps luckily we have no video of this title from VentureVision...at least we have the box art and advice from it's designer, Dan Oliver.

As always a big thanks to Atari Age for the box art posted above as well as to Highretrogamelord89 for his awesome YouTube videos!

Atari 2600 Surprise!

No, you haven't skipped ahead a day and arrived on Box Art Wednesday, dear reader. As I stated yesterday I had planned on reviewing Dead Rising 2 after I picked it up at my local Gamestop at midnight. However that was not to be. I arrived at the store to pick up my collector's edition to learn that they were delayed and wouldn't arrive until this afternoon. I did get my copy today though so perhaps I'll write up a quick review for a bonus Box Art Wednesday post.

What you see posted above, rather crookedly, thanks to the scanner here at the vault are Atari 2600 titles I purchased today at my local Vintage Stock...still in box and miraculously still containing their instruction manuals. Good friend and loyal reader, Jon B., spotted these as they came into the store and was kind enough to send me an e-mail.

Jon, we here at the Victory Pellet Vault salute you! Expect one of my best Radium Chimps as a present...just keep it away from small children and pregnant women.

The Robot Revolution Is In For A Surprise!

Thanks to Gizmodo for the update today on the XOS 2 that you see pictured above with its human user playing a bit of soccer. The video below shows some very awesome footage of the XOS 2 in action with actor Clark Gregg (Iron Man & Iron Man 2) taking the suit for a 'spin'.

This will certainly give us meatbags a leg up when the robot revolution kicks into high gear in 2023 but Clark should really keep an eye out for the unit behind him around the 2:33 mark...because it looks like it's getting angry at what Gregg is saying. The Raytheon Company definitely has some amazing looking things on the horizon...and I can only hope that I will get to wear one of the suits before I die.




Dead Rising 2 comes out at midnight by the way so expect a report on some zombie killing tomorrow!

Saturday Supercade!

Sorry, but there is only the one post today. The Victory Pellet Vault has been busy beyond belief the last few days. It seems that Radium Chimp #34 contracted some type of strange flu during his brief journey to the Moon and spread it to me...which is of course when the electrical systems start to fail and my hands are just full with keeping my prisoners-ahem, I mean guests from leaving their cells. I mean suites.

Thanks to Kotaku for the heads up on this photo snapped by Meeko from the South Coast Plaza Mall in Costa Mesa, California. It seems the mall made this display to celebrate Pac-Man's 30th anniversary. Wow, that makes me feel old.

Everyone have a great weekend and assuming I can crawl out of bed come Monday I will see you all then. If you get some spare time though make sure to jump over to:

http://games.retroist.com/

They were kind enough to post my review of the Spider-Man Atari 2600. While you are there make sure to check out all the other great reviews and hop over to the main site, the Retroist just put up a podcast about the classic Adventures of Superman television show!

Friday Flyers...Sick Day Edition.

Due to feeling like loyal reader, CritAnime, has somehow transmitted his plague symptoms to me electronically and the warm reception to yesterday's post I'm using a sick day and posting pictures of the rest of the Pac-Man car.

This car went from having neat tires to becoming a vehicle of legendary status! A big thanks to Vinvectrex for requesting what the rest of the car looked like.

Now if I could just get someone to come in and work for me...I'd go home and straight to bed. If I get to feel better I'll post some Flyer tomorrow perhaps.

It Must Be Thursday.

This is how I roll!

Sorry, I cannot believe I just typed that...but to be fair I think I am coming down with something because curling up in bed and calling it a day sounds like just the thing for me. Still, while I actually kind of like these Pac-Man tires, I'm sure the wife would hit me over the head with a frying pan if I bought them.

Box Art Wednesday.

Click the pics to make Commodore 64 sized!

I was lucky enough thanks to school associates to have many cracked copies of C-64 games in Junior High, but I never had the pleasure of playing any of the three games presented today.

At least the all powerful Wiki can give us some information on the 221 B Baker Street title:

"Up to four players compete against each other to solve various mysteries in and around Victorian London. Each player can assume the role of one of four characters from the Sherlock Holmes books—Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, Irene Adler or Inspector Lestrade -- and can select from 30 different adventures. Case file for each mystery are provided in the manual and give the particulars of the case, including key clues and suspects.

To solve the case, players roll dice to move among 15 different locales throughout London, collecting the clues necessary to unravel the mystery. Each player also visits Scotland Yard to collect a badge, which allows him to "lock" a particular location on the map, making access to it by the other players more difficult. Once a player believes he has solved the case, he returns to Baker Street where he must successfully answer a quiz. Play ends when a player successfully passes the quiz."

With Badlands I didn't find any information but thanks to Youtube I found the video below:

Reminds me a little of the SNES version of Rock N' Roll Racing.

Lancelot was a text based adventure game that also had some limited graphics depending on what system you played it on. I found one review of it on the Lemon Amiga site that states :

"An interesting text-adventure based around the Lancelot legends. A complicated parser and some obscure puzzles made it quite fun. Also had two parts - the early years of Lancelot's adventuring, and the later Grail quest."

Just a quick plug but since you obviously enjoy blogs about gaming, pop on over to the Retroist site and make sure to take a gander at the games section at http://games.retroist.com/ They have a wonderful selection of games that have been reviewed and they were kind enough to even let me post a few. Give it a look today...you'll be glad you did I bet. :)

Great Scott!

Remember how bad the Back to the Future game was for the Nintendo Entertainment System? I know I sure do...collecting bowling balls indeed. Sigh. Luckily the fine fellows at Telltale Games are bringing us a new Back to the Future title with Bob Gale as consultant on the characters and storyline (a good thing since he co-wrote and was co-creator of the original trilogy) with Christopher Lloyd performing as Dr. Emmet Lathrop Brown, at least vocally. Though if you look at the photo sent to Kotaku up above it doesn't seem like he is just reading his lines does it?

To say I am excited by this bit of news is an understatement. Look for the first chapter in this episodic game to debut next year for most gaming platforms!

New Donkey Kong Record!

The Donkey Kong world record has been broken yet again, the third time this year, and it's title is now held once more by Steve Wiebe! Billy Mitchell's previous record breaking score was done the same day as his induction to the International Video Game Hall of Fame on August 7th of this year, Billy score a whopping 1,062,800. Steve has pulled off 1,064, 500 as his record breaking score!

I know I am a little biased here but I'm thinking that Steve needs to be inducted next year, am I right?

All of us here at the Victory Pellet Vault give you both a mighty salute, keep up the awesome gaming! A big thanks to NintendoLife for the above photo and story.

Some More Saturday Supercade!

There are some that have claimed that I post far too many things concerning Tron on this site...those are the same people that I now have in chains and are tasked the dubious honor of feeding my Radium Chimps!

Up top we have some wonderful digital Lego Tron artwork from Gil P.'s site: http://gil.acroyear.com You know it has to be good, it has my favorite Micronauts name in the web address!

Then we have Chad Mealey a.k.a Lego Tron with his skillful Tron recreations with those wonderful Lego bricks. Of course with a name like Lego Tron you would expect this., right?

Saturday Supercade!

I apologize about the scanned image of the newest Game Informer magazine, the scanner here at the Victory Vault is having some problems at the moment, but hopefully it is clear enough after clicking to Embiggen to see why I was so excited. A Saturday Evening post inspired "steamtech" man with a bowler hat? Awesome!

Apparently Game Informer released two other covers in collaboration with Irrational Games to celebrate the upcoming release of Bioshock Infinite. Expect more posts about this title, friends, as we leave the decayed underwater city of Rapture circa 1959 behind to take to the skies for the 1915 styled floating city/fortress of Columbia! I've included the announcement trailer below...and while I have no fear of water I do have a very real fear of flying and heights...so this game will probably do a number on me.

Friday Flyers.

Click the pics to make 1985 sized!

Hm. Green Beret certainly looks like it might be what we in America called Rush'N Attack. The major difference being of course that the Green Beret flyer is missing the kind of psychotically frightening woman on the Rush'N Attack flyer. Wow. That guy beside her is looking a little tense to me, check out that clutched fist...I think he wants to play that game so bad he is willing to hit that kid in the back of the head. LOOK OUT KID!

The third offering this morning is Samurai Nihon-ichi and I was unable to find any real information about its release or popularity. I did however find a video of its gameplay thanks to the mighty YouTube...looks like it was a fun title! As always you should probably double click on the video window to go straight to the YouTube page.

As always a very large thanks to the Arcade Flyer Archive for the above scanned images!

It Must Be Thursday.

Who hasn't been playing any of the various Mega Man games and thought to themselves that wouldn't he be pretty dang tasty sugary treat on a stick? Well thanks to a vendor at the Tokyo Game Show you can now find out how great Mega Man would taste!

Thanks to Kotaku for the above pic!

Box Art Wednesday.

Click the pics to make Embiggen!

I'm not sure but I believe that someday I might have to hunt down a copy of Mangia' and give it a shot because a game where the point is to eat as much of your mother's spaghetti sounds like a blast. I assume that you'll try to feed the animals when your mother is looking the other way, unfortunately I was unable to find an instruction manual for this game so if you happen to have it in your collection please do not hesitate to give us a yell.

In my youth you couldn't get any more awesome than being the man known as Pele and even though I am not a sports fan I wanted to pick up the Pele's Soccer cartridge. I mean this is the guy that not only hung out with Sylvester Stallone and Michael Caine but kept getting me to drink some Tang every morning...or sometimes I'd just the eat it out of the carton...but I was a strange child.

The only thing I could really find about Avalon Hill's 2600 title Out of Control is that it is rare. A cartridge will fetch you up to $559.00, so says various websites, though if this can be trusted I cannot say.

Tape Invaders?

I loathe days that it is so busy at the Victory Pellet Vault that I can't sneak away and do a proper post. Thanks to Kotaku for picking up my slack with the heads up about Space Invaders packing tape. They are going for $4.50 for a 3-pack roll over at A Brand Called Ed though they are in Australia and there is no word if they'll ship it all over the world. I hope they do though because I can think of a few things in the vault that need to be repaired with some of this tape!

A Salute To Mario.

Well, that closes out the day here at the Victory Pellet Vault and I hope you all had a chance to play some Super Mario Bros. at least once today to celebrate the anniversary.

The above video was produced by Nintendo of Japan for the 25th Anniversary of our most favorite video game plumber...actually is there another video game plumber? Everyone have a great evening and I'll see you tomorrow!

Be Strong - Danny Elfman (The Wolfman Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Something We All Need!

Are you wearing the world's most famous scalp covering article of clothing for Mario's 25th anniversary? Well, neither am I, but I'm glad to see that if I wanted to I could purchase one easily enough online! Hm, my own anniversary is coming up rather quickly...nah, I doubt my wife would wear the Luigi version.

Lego Meet Mario.

We've been lucky enough to find some really cool gaming related Lego projects these last few weeks. This was made possible by using a NextEngine 3D scanner, which provided the blueprint I assume of how to build the much larger Mario with Legos.

Happy 25th To Mario!

A mighty thanks as always to Kotaku for the above pic and for reminding me that today is the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. release back on Sept. 13th, 1985! As far better writers have pointed out, we gamers all owe the mustachioed plumber a great deal of thanks and respect. So today I'll continue to post various photos and videos relating to Mario for this celebration...so break take your NES from the closet and grab a bottle of Jolt cola...it's going to be a long day!

Saturday Supercade...Better Late Than Never!

Wow. Were did the time go today? Things got a little crazy here at the Victory Pellet Vault this morning and while the Radium Chimps were finally corralled and placed back in chains at their terminals this unfortunately meant I couldn't post until this minute.

This small emergency also means that I've been unable to get dinner...and cake sounds so very good right now. Ice cream cake. Yep, I'm headed to the bakery.

Thanks to Geekologie for these delicious photos of sugary retro goodness! I'm pretty sure that I'll have to ask the wife for a Starcraft cake like in that lost photo for my next B-Day.

Eat It - Weird Al Yankovic

Friday Flyers...Movie Pinball Edition!

Click the pics to Embiggen!

As you can tell from the title, this posting for Friday Flyers deals with a few of the motion pictures that have lent their names to pinball tables.

Robocop was released in 1990 by Data East Pinball. I've played this once or twice and both times if I remember correctly it was during an art class school trip. I recall it having digitized speech from the film as well as Robocop on the main playfield with his visor glowing red. Not sure what that was about, I can't recall if it meant some feature was in play during the game.

Maverick was released in 1994 and is of course based on the Richard Donner motion picture adaptation, though I say it is a sequel to the classic television series. I've not had the pleasure of playing this table but I have to say I'm very impressed by the Lauren Belle's River Boat. I'm not much of a fan of country music but I do admit I enjoyed Clint Black's song "A Good Run of Bad Luck" from the movie so I can imagine how fun it must have been to hear that while playing the table.

Back to the Future also debuted in 1990 and if you look at the backglass, zoom in if you can, you'll see that Marty doesn't look anything like Michael J. Fox. He apparently refused to have his likeness anywhere on the pinball machine so Paul Faris, the artist on the table, used his son as a stand-in for Fox. The table allowed you to travel through all three movies with the music changing for each every time you got a ball lock, if I remember correctly.

As always a very big thank you to Arcade Flyer Archive for the pics posted above!


Doubleback - ZZ Top

It Must Be Thursday.

What a wonderful day. The wife and I have just returned from eating at our favorite pizza place, stopped by on the way home and picked up some delicious donuts, and Netflix delivered the first disc of the Planet of the Apes television series. It just can't get any better than-OH MY GOD, WHAT IS THAT?!

We have Kotaku to thank for the above nightmarish image, dear readers. Just try to close your eyes and not see this Okami cosplay slowly stalking you...just try...

Big Girls Don't Cry - Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons

Box Art Wednesday.

Just something a bit different this Box Art Wednesday. Thanks to Boardgame Geek for the pics above of the box art for very popular video games back in my youth...and still popular to this day of course.

Of all of the boxes shown above I have to say that the Pitfall one is my favorite, with maybe Berzerk coming in a close second.

Freedom of Choice - Devo