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)

Gorillas. Nintendo.

There is a general rule that I like to live by and that is if I drop any electronic equipment into an enclosure for Gorillas they can keep it. Especially if they seem to enjoy playing the Nintendo DS.

The story for the photos posted above comes to us from Christina Spicuzza's Flickr page, she was at the San Francisco zoo when a little boy dropped his DS into the habitat, the gorillas confiscated the device and did their best to examine it but decided to trade it for an apple from the keeper. The DS suffered no harm, just a little slobber and some minor scratches...however it has been reported that the youngest gorilla pictured has taken to calling himself Caesar...

Retroist Podcast #49 -Happy Days

Nintendo Power Hotline. No Gauntlet Advice.

Ah, the joys of that particular Birthday so many years past. I open up my last present and there in my shaking hands is Gauntlet for the NES. I love Gauntlet...heck I even tried to dress up as Questor one Halloween in my youth. It didn't quite work out like I had expected. I was asked if I was everything from Robin Hood to Peter Pan. Sigh.

Back to the point of the post, after about two days of playing the NES port of Gauntlet I found myself stuck. I was facing the Dragon at the end of the game and just could not slay the wretched beast. My Grandmother being a saint of video games suggested I call the Hotline phone number listed in our Nintendo Power magazines.

So I jumped up and using her phone dialed the number with bated breath to see if these gurus of gaming could perhaps give me the one vital piece of information that would help me topple my digital foe.

Unfortunately this was not to be.

It turned out that Tengen didn't exactly produce licensed versions of Gauntlet, Pac-Man, or RBI Baseball for the NES. It seems that the company found Nintendo's license too restrictive and as the Wiki states, Nintendo didn't want their licensees to have more than five game released in a year and those titles had to be console exclusive for two years.

When I asked the Hotline attendant to help me with my Dragon problems...he became quiet for a couple of seconds and then informed me he was not allowed to give any advice on Tengen titles. I was terribly confused, he had to repeat that about three times and this guy was really terrific because even at that young age I could tell he really wanted to help me.

In plain desperation I pleaded with him to help defeat the dragon. His reply though pained was brief, "Shoot the Dragon more." He then hung up the phone. I put the phone up and then went back to the game and as if he was in control of my NES unit I was able to defeat the Dragon...just because a Nintendo Hotline attendant told me to do what I was already doing.

Come to think of it I might have been talking to Dio.

Killing The Dragon - Dio

Some more Saturday Supercade!

Wrapping up...see what I did there...the Nintendo Saturday Supercade blanket section with this adorable blanket and equally adorable baby!

Still Saturday Supercade!

Keeping with the Nintendo theme of staying warm.

Saturday Supercade!

It's cold here this morning in the Victory Pellet Vault so allow me to share with you this Nintendo blanket I've found. I figured this would keep me warmer...and safer than being surrounded by my army of Radium Chimps!

Box Art Wednesday Interrupted for...

...Super Mario Bros. Crossover! A big thanks to the awesome Retroist, more than usual that is, for finding this absolutely killer game. The creator of this title, Jay Pavlina, apparently worked for over a year on creating this beautiful flash game and the love he has for the NES is quite apparent from spending a few minutes playing his first ever offered title.

Beside the mustachioed plumber you can also choose the vampire slaying Simon Belmont, the intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran, the jungle fighter turned alien slayer Bill R., the mega-awesome Mega Man, and the Hero of Hyrule, Link. These brave companions have sworn to set out and rescue Princess Peach from the villainous clutches of Bowser.

This isn't a simple mash-up, the music for the game changes for each character, the music from their own titles. Each character brings with them some of their special abilities, like Simon's axe throwing, or Samus's bomb drop.

I can only hope that Nintendo, Konami, and Capcom see what a wonderful piece of work has been given to the masses this day. Take a moment to play and I think you'll agree this is worth its weight in Koopa shells.

Thanks to Wired for the picture above.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/534416

Keep clean with Nintendo games!

Have you ever thought to yourself that taking a bath would be so much easier if you could do so by scrubbing your filthy form with various Nintendo game system cartridges? Well, if you have, I probably don't want to be standing next to your scraped up self but thanks to the incredibly talented Lesley Karpiuk of PinkToque we can all clean up with these very awesome cartridge shaped soaps. There are very reasonably priced, the gameboy carts are $2.00, while the the Super NES and N64 carts are $6.50...the problem I foresee is not wanting to use them but put them on a shelf.

I'm going to post a couple more later today because they have some really geeky things to tempt your wallet.