🎵 Currently listening to… 🎧

👾 czip://retro.run/1_my_current_setup 🏃‍♀️

❔ What? ❓

I thought it’d be fun to start a little “series” or “column,” however you’d like to word it, sharing my experiences with “retro” games. retro.run seemed like a good enough name 🕹️ For the first entry, I think kicking off with my setup is the most sensible. After, I’ll go on to briefly discuss the 2 games I’ve been playing the most lately, Super Mario World and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 as well as sharing some upcoming plans!

⚙️ The Setup 🔧

📹 Video 🎥

Currently, for a TV I use a Trinitron PVM-14N6U. It has 3 inputs: Line A, Line B, and RGB. I got the best deal outside of being paid to take it (in other words: free), as it was destined for the trash. Despite its relatively small size, I’ve been really enjoying my time with it.

I use Line A for composite video and Line B for s-video. RGB is unfortunately currently unused. The composite video is plugged into a composite AV switch, which I’ll describe after the audio setup.

🔊 Audio 🔊

My audio setup consists of a Lepai LP-2020TI amp, and a pair of Dayton Audio B652 speakers. You might be able to guess, but these components are actually a holdover from my previous turntable setup. The amp supports both composite (“RCA”) and 3.5mm (“headphone jack”) input, and seems to play nice having both plugged in at the same time. Its composite input is plugged into the AV switch’s audio output.

🔄 The Switcher 🔀

I only just realized that my AV switch doesn’t seem to have a brand name on it, but according to my prior Amazon order, it looks to be the Panlong 8-Way RCA AV Switcher. For its price I’d say I’m relatively happy.

🎮 Consoles 🕹️

🔵 Line A: Plugged into the AV switcher 🔵

1. Dreamcast (model VA1)
   • Retro Fighters StrikerDC controller
2. Sega Genesis (model 2)
3. NES (unknown revision)
4. Emerson EV598 VCR
   • Mono only
5. PS2 (unknown revision)

🔴 Line B: Nintendo to s-video 🔴

Currently these consoles share their s-video input, necessitating manual switching.

1. SNES (likely 3chip model)
2. N64 (likely model NUS-CPU-05 to 07)
   • with Red EverDrive-64 X7

🎮 Gamin’ 🕹️

🍄 Super Mario World (SNES) 🕺

What a great game! I didn’t have a SNES growing up, and the only Mario games that I regularly played were Super Mario Bros. on NES and Super Mario Land on the original GameBoy, though I never owned and only ever borrowed the latter from a friend. It might be sacrilegious to say but I’m actually not a big fan of Super Mario Bros. and I probably spent more time playing Duck Hunt as a kid.

That said, I played through Super Mario World recently and I absolutely loved it. I’m still working on finding all of the exits; I’m at 56 right now and I’m not sure if I’ll end up completing it or not but I haven’t given up yet. The game felt far more forgiving than the Mario games on NES from what I recall, which I really appreciated. It made it simple when I would get stuck: I could replay that section of the game with 5 lives, and if I failed I could just retry that section again, only occasionally losing a relatively small amount of progress.

I would say that this experience has made me more of a Mario fan, and more interested and eager to play more Mario games. I guess I always viewed these more retro Mario games as “one-note,” probably because I only ever owned the first game as a kid and I was terrible at it! Super Mario World is a phenomenal game and a worth a visit (or revisit) if you haven’t played it recently.

🛹 Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (Dreamcast) 🤙

I would generally consider the N64 to be “the console of my childhood,” and it’s hard to say if I spent more time playing Goldeneye or the original Tony Hawk on it, as I was/am a massive fan of both. I do remember putting some serious hours into THPS 2, likely on PlayStation, but I never owned a Dreamcast and I only remember having the chance to play one once as a kid.

THPS 2 is the only game I currently own on Dreamcast, as it was an okay price and a game I knew I loved; it unlocks something in my lizard brain that I forget is there. There’s something about stringing together the longest line possible, spamming special moves, and racking up high scores that is just so satisfying.

After I beat the game a single time ¹, a friend asked if I would replay with another character; I laughed and said of course not… and then I picked it right back up! 5 days ago I beat the game for the first time, 4 days ago I created a custom character (complete with camo pants) to play through the game once more, and as of today I’ve finished the game 7 times. What a fun and addictive game and series! I’m not even sure if I will unlock anything more than each skater’s video, but I’m having a great time revisiting it.

As an aside, I ended up watching a couple YouTube videos about the series, and, though it doesn’t fit into the theme of retro.run, “THUG Pro” looks like something I would definitely enjoy checking out.

🚀 Going forward… 🔮

There’s a lot to discuss but I’ll try to keep it brief. Simply put, I would love to have proper RGB on all of my consoles that support it, but I have no near-term plans for this. This is a hobby that I enjoy very much, but I try to limit spending, and the various cables to bring RGB to several of these consoles are not inexpensive. Additionally, something I’ll have to consider as I continue down this path is that utilizing a “switcher” is only going to become more and more complicated as I go. An all-SCART setup may be “ideal,” but the TV doesn’t support SCART natively and not all SCART-to-BNC adapters are the same as one another ²

That said, I have many things already on order that I’m looking forward to:

• gdemu for Dreamcast: an SD card mod, removing the need for burning games onto CDs; a little like an EverDrive for Dreamcast
• Noctua fan mod for Dreamcast: a simple fan mod to replace the Dreamcast’s rather noisy fan
• Mega EverDrive X5 for Genesis
• Super EverDrive X5 for SNES
• 64MB Free McBoot Memory Card for PS2: same general premise as gdemu or an EverDrive, but for PS2

I am completely ecstatic for all of these goodies on their way. After perusing the Dreamcast’s library, I decided that I would really enjoy experiencing a console that I would’ve loved to own as a kid, and that I’m not super familiar with as an adult. I’m not big on fighting games but I’m looking forward to trying out what’s on offer; plus, games like Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, Crazy Taxi, the Sonic games, and maybe even Skies of Arcadia all interest me. Additionally, I have a spare Raspberry Pi kicking around and I’m interested in bringing this console online and even checking out Phantasy Star Online via the DreamPi – I haven’t ordered everything I would need to do that yet, but it’s certainly on my radar.

On SNES, I mean, what a library. I’ve felt fortunate to have been experiencing Super Mario World for the first time, and I’m excited to give Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI (III in NA) specifically a try, and I will very likely be replaying A Link to the Past and perhaps one day completing EarthBound. Obviously the library is much larger than this however, and I’m curious to peruse the library more deeply as time goes on.

On Genesis, I’m looking forward to revisiting Contra: Hard Corps and putting some more time into Sonic 2 (one of the few Genesis games I physically own). I’m definitely looking to “broaden my horizons” a bit on this console as well, as I’m probably the least familiar with its library outside of the handful of games I played as a kid.

🏁 Some concluding words ✅

Ah! I’m overjoyed to continue my little retro gaming adventure, exploring all of the games that I never had a chance to from yesteryear.

There are classic pieces of art across all conceivable mediums. Whether we’re talking paintings with the Mona Lisa from hundreds of years ago or Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks from less than a century ago, or if we’re discussing movies it could be 1939’s The Wizard of Oz or 1999’s Fight Club – the point is that we may not have the perfect context for a piece of art, like today’s audience will never truly know what it was like to watch The Wizard of Oz when it was released, but these pieces of art can still be experienced and appreciated for what they are today.

There are modern reinterpretations of many pieces of art, meant to be consumed by a more contemporary audience, to varying degrees of success – to tie this back to video games, I played through Mario 64 for the first time on Nintendo DS, for example. There are many games like this that have been either been modernized, or otherwise had their “essence” distilled for a modern audience. And of course, someone could always emulate the original games.

I don’t have anything against emulation and I take part in it here and there myself, but I do feel that video games are a form of art and, since it’s still possible to experience them as they were (mostly) originally intended to be experienced, why not? People visit museums to view pieces of fine art that they could view on their computer or phone, so doesn’t it only make sense for some of us to prefer to experience video games in the same way? But hey, if you get the urge to play a Tony Hawk game after reading this post but sold your PlayStation years ago or can’t deal with the input lag on your modern TV, go ahead and emulate! I put a lot of hours into NHL Hitz recently (link to YouTube playlist), all emulated, and it was a great experience and well worth it.

Anyways, I didn’t intend to write an entire essay that seems to argue something like “if gamers aren’t playing retro games, they should be,” but maybe another day? 🗒😊

In any case, I’m looking forward to continuing this journey, and sharing my experiences with anyone interested in following along! Videos are a possibility for the future, but I don’t currently know how I’d want to go about that sort of thing so don’t hold your breath!

Thanks for reading

c.zip