Some of you may be thinking that this blog is a little bit late, but I like to think that I was too busy playingf Max Payne than to bother with this blog post till now.

As you can see, I got it at midnight, (just barely, as I decided to buy it at 10pm that night), and then as we were waiting in line the 5 hour energy guys came by and gave out free 5 hour energys. It was a sweet deal all around. I, just because I could decided that it was a great idea to speed ball 5 hour energy and a "BFC" Monster! Lets just say it had little noticable effect on me except that I stayed up to until 8am. It was quite fun, but I needed a little bit of sleep before work.

Mostly all of my free time has been spent playing, and I think it is a great game. I just need to get XBL Gold again so I can take advantage of the multiplayer. If you haven't picked up this game, I highly reccomend it.

The History of my NES-PC v1.0

(This picture is from before I removed the CD drive, in case you were wondering)

A few years ago I got the idea to build an NES-PC. Actually, more accurately, my girlfriends brother and I started talking about it, and I, being myself, decided that it was a great idea. After a length of time passed, I forget how long, I finally decided to get serious about it. I researched parts I would need and sourced an NES to hack apart. Being that I finished building it and posted pictures on GameSpot in September of 2009, it was hideously underpowered. Given that when I built it, I wanted it to be the cleanest build out there (my research having turned up many crappy thrown together builds out there); I naturally got an itx form factor motherboard, which is only 6.7 inches by 6.7 inches. This is just small enough to fit in an NES case with a very little room to spare.

The motherboard I got was the Intel D945GCLF. It is an Intel Atom processor based motherboard, running at 1.6 GHz, which was anemic even then. My only saving grace was that there were only two Atom based motherboards out at the time, the D945GCLF and the D945GCLF2, the latter being a dual core Atom based board running at 1.6GHz. I picked the cheaper of the two, because it was $69.00 and I didn?t want to waste too much money on something that I might not even be able to do, but alas, it had Hyper Threading!

The D945GCLF had only one slot for DDR2 667, and only supported 2 gigs of ram. It also had a PCI slot, two SATA ports, and a PATA connector. The sad part is, if you look at the picture, the passively cooled heat sink is the Atom processor, and the one with the fan is the north bridge! What a joke. Given all of this, and the spatial limitations of the NES, I was doomed from the outset. However, for some reason I continued on my journey.

Looking at the NES we see that a regular ATX power supply would never fit, as it is almost as big as the NES itself! I briefly toyed with the idea of mounting one on top of the NES like a freaking rooftop a/c unit, but quickly decided that this was a terrible idea. I searched high and low on the Internet and finally came across this thing called a pico-psu. (Spoiler Alert: This was my biggest mistake!) It was billed as the smallest power supply out there, and at 80 watts it was more than sufficient to run my 3-watt Atom processor. I bought it for forty or fifty dollars and was well on my way to building a sweet retro themed rig.

The next thing on my list was to actually get started and rip an NES apart. It was hard for me, as I don?t usually like to destroy things, especially vintage things that aren?t being made any longer, but 60 million units sold helped me through this. I ripped it apart and started planning out the layout. From the beginning I had wanted it to be self contained, and indistinguishable from a stock unit at a glance. Obviously the missing a/v jacks would give it away, but nobody would notice that at first glance. I removed everything from the case except for the LED, power, and reset buttons, and the controller ports. I then removed almost everything that stuck up with a hacksaw. This was very difficult, but a rotary tool costs too much. (I still haven?t bought one)

After this I placed the motherboard in the case, and shockingly it didn?t fit! I being myself had a great idea. I could mount a piece of plexi-glass in the case and then mount the board to the plexi-glass with brass standoffs. I?m a sick bastard, I know. I immediately went out and bought the parts and when I got home I realized something. How was I going to figure out where to drill the holes for the standoffs so they would match up with the holes for the board? Eventually I just put the standoffs on the board and laid the precut piece of plexi-glass on it, using a permanent marker to mark the holes. Being as I didn?t have an electric drill, I used an antique hand drill to drill the holes. (Fun fact: The only thing that I used a power tool to do was cut the hole for the 40mm fan in the back.) After this it was fairly easy to figure out where the holes went to mount the motherboard tray in the case, this being a bonus to working with clear materials.

Next I soldered connectors to the LED, Power button, and Reset button so that they would all work. I could hardly expect people to be impressed if I couldn?t at least figure that much out.

After I saw that I was making good progress I went out and got a 160 gig laptop hard drive, a standard drive being too big to fit in the case. I ended up using a mounting bracket and mounting it underneath the tray in the corner where the a/v jacks were. The hardest part of the whole project was cutting the hole for the I/O shield. I had to continuously test the hole to make sure I didn?t make it too big, and it was just a pain to cut. After that was finished though, it was just a matter of assembling everything and testing it out. Of course everything worked, so I immediately took everything apart and went back to work. In my constant quest to make my NES-PC the best ever, I had a few other tricks up my sleeves.

I got an old CD-RW drive out of a laptop and got a slim CD drive to PATA converter and popped it in. The only problem being that I had to mount it somehow. I finally decided to use some heavy duty Velcro and it worked pretty well. It did however mess with the north bridge cooling fan as it was directly on top of it. After that I decided that instead of having useless controller ports, I would make them useful. I only got around to doing one, but I modded it so that it would accept USB devices, which had to be modded as well. I made a mouse with my modded USB NES controller plug. It worked well, and it was even gray and black, so it matched the NES color scheme.

After putting it all back together I began using it as my everyday PC, as it was freaking awesome to be able to tell people that I was using an NES-PC. It always ran hot, and I had to keep the cartridge bay door open to help cool it. After a while I removed the CD drive to help with cooling, but still it ran hot. Finally I drilled a hole in the back and put a 40mm fan in to try to help exhaust the hot air. That worked fairly well, and I could run it with the door closed.

It ran well for about six months, and then tragedy struck. Whenever I would do something especially strenuous for the computer, it would restart. At first I though it was a random occurrence, but then it started happening all the time. I finally took it apart and put it in my old Dell case to test it with a bigger power supply, and it worked. Unfortunately for me, I was completely screwed, as I had built it for a pico-psu, and the recently available itx power supplies were way too big to replace it with. This marked the demise of my NES-PC, a crushing blow after all that hard work. I left the parts in the Dell case and put the NES case in storage, where it sat for quite some time. All was not lost however, as you shall see in my next blog. (Spoiler alert: The title of this blog gives it away.)

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it/found it useful.

It's been a while since I posted anything here, but I've been hard at work on a project that I was talking about a long time ago, and it is now practically finished. If the title of the blog didn't give it away, it is the NES-PC V2.0. It now runs a dual core cpu, 4 gigs of RAM, 160 GB HDD, and a 250 watt itx PSU. I'm planning on using it as an HTPC, so I want to do a few more mods to it. As of right now though, it works. Here's a picture!

Later on I'm going to post a video about it on youtube, but I still need to make it. I have a whole much of pictures from the building process though. Hope you like it!

While I know I said I'd be a little more active here, and I tried, I apparently failed. It's been a month, but it's only partially my fault. My computer crapped out, and I had a hell of a time trying to reformat it. It took about a week to finish, because I had to call Microsoft to verify my copy of windows, which was pretty interesting, and it took four times to get windows to take to the computer anyway. My cd drive is no longer recognized by my computer...go figure. So I went out and got another. Finally I was back up and running, but still I procrastinated.

Then the fateful day came when I obtained a copy of Dead Island. I didn't expect it, but I've been getting into that game pretty hard core. I really like it. It's a great mix or roll playing and survival horror and I can't stop playing. If you don't have it, I highly recommend it, and if you do have it, you should hit me up on XBL. My gamer tag is MtNgranek, same as my GS name.

Other than that, I need to get back into posting stuff here. I used to enjoy it a lot. I always have difficulty getting back into stuff that I quit for some reason or another.

Well, with that I'm off to plan my next blog. Hopefully it will come soon.

Just thought I'd share some games I've been playing as of late. I had a bit of trouble getting back into the swing of things, after I quit my second job, but I'm confident I'll be able to get back into gear.

To kick it all off, I just started playing Persona 3 Portable again. I had been playing for a while, put in about 30 hours, and then got so busy that I couldn't pick it back up. My one and only problem is that if I put a game down for any length of time, I'll never pick it back up. It happens every time. this time I wouldn't let it happen though. P3P is just too good of a game.

I recently bought Dead Rising for the 360. I'm a cheap-o so I waited till it was $9.99 and then had to find a copy with the instruction book. It's a good game, but the controls are kind of stiff. They definately didn't get the FPS thing right, because trying to shoot anything in that game is terrible. Other than that, I like it. I just have to start playing it again.

I was playing Duck Tales on the NES, and I had forgotten how good of a game that it is. I had played it a lot when I was a kid, but then picked it up a few years ago and couldn't get into it. Then I figured out how to do the special moves, and it's all good. I should go play that now, but I have a few other things that need doing.

Lastly, I want to start playing some Mega Man 2. I got it at the Flea Market a few weeks ago for $10 and popped it in to try it out. I can honestly say that it is as good as everybody says it is. I'm usually pretty sceptical, but Mega Man 2 really blew me away. I don't have any of the other NES Mega Man games, but hopefully I can rectify that soon.

Aside from all this, I've just been working and chilling. I'm planning another big spectacular blog soon, but I still have to write it. Hopefully it turns out well, and gets done soon. Have a great day!

Have you ever played a game so much that you could beat it with one hand tied behind your back? Well, here is your chance to prove it.

Enter the Roll & Rocker accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System. This is a new (in 1989) kind of controller where you stand on this piece of plastic and rock from side to side and back and forth to control the d-pad functions in an NES game. To make this easier, it is designed like a platform that is rounded on the bottom, almost as if you cut a sphere in half and tried to stand on the flat part.

I found this at the Flea Market for $25 last week, which is a phenomenal deal considering they usually hit about $80 on ebay. I finally decided to take it out tonight, and see if it actually works. (The AVGN said it was terrible) I hooked it up to the first controller port, plugged another controller into the second port (you need a real controller for the other buttons) and stuck Mega Man 2 in the NES. I have heard that this thing can't support more than 100 pounds, so I decided not to risk breaking it in half and just use my left to manipulate it while I used my right for the controller. Trying to select the stage I wanted was a pain in the ***, as the selector wouldn't stay put, but I managed to select the Air Man stage after a few minutes. The stage starts, and you tilt the Roll & Rocker to the right to move Mega Man. To my great surprise it actually worked. That's not to say that it worked well though. I spent ten minutes and three continues trying to get past the platforms that you have to jump on. I tried sitting on the floor and using my feet, but that offered little help. Finally I gave up and switched to Super Mario Bros. 2.

Super Mario Bros. 2 worked out a little bit better. I was able to run and jump all the way to the first doorway, but when I entered and had to climb the vine I ran into trouble. It is very hard to position Mario in the right spot and then tilt the Roll & Rocker up to climb without moving from side to side. After a few tries I got it and made my way to the second vine and into the clouds. This is where I got stuck, because I couldn't jump onto the cloud and stop before I got to the black jumping enemy. I will also mention that in my anger at not moving where I wanted I found that the d-pad on the controller actually works while it is plugged into the Roll & Rocker. However, if the Roll & Rocker has priority, as if you are crouching you cant move. I had to hold my left hand behind my back to make it fair.

In all, the Roll & Rocker isn't a bad accessory, it is just very difficult to use, and almost pointless. The only use I could see for this is maybe a one armed person. Other than that, it is cool to have, but definitely not cool to use…unless to only have one arm, then more power to you.

Well, it has been a while since I posted a new blog, so I guess I can post a few things.

First, my last blog, about the PC in a 360 case...I scrapped that idea. I don't really have the time or the tools to build such a thing. I've been thinking about doing another NES-PC, but haven't yet because I have nowhere to hook it up. On the plus side, I did get a Cooler Master 334 Nvidia edition case for my PC, so I guess it wasn't a complete loss.

I just now noticed that I have been climbing the ranks of GameSpot friends, as a GameSpot staff member has decided to follow me sometime in the last...year, I don't know. I rarely check the Friends list. I do have 21 friends now, which is an achievement in itself as I did not add any of them myself. Apparently my blog used to be interesting, until I stopped posting. Go figure.

I've made a lot of new acquisitions as of late, so If I do actually start to keep up with my blog, it could be very interesting again. My latest and greatest find has to be my NES Roll and Rocker. Maybe I'll get some Rollin' Rock beer and do a nerd reference...

Aside from that, its been pretty quiet around here since June when I quit my second job. Unfortunately I have a lot less money to play with, but on the flip side, I finally have time to play some of the over 900 games I have.

I hope everybody has been well.

See you next blog...whenever that happens to be.

(hopefully soon!)

So I've begun working on a new gaming themed PC build. It all started about a week ago when I was at the Thrift Store. Next door to it is a Game Stop, and outside of the two stores is a garbage can. I was walking by, and I saw a 360 box, and was curious. I looked, and inside was a 360 core system. I immediatly took it and put it in my car, and went about my business.

After testing it, just in case, I decided to sell it. I didn't have the time to put up an ad on CL, so it went undone. The next day I got a better idea, and that is where I am now. I disassembled the console and removed everything except for the inside metal case, and the ring of light PCB, obviously keeping the case itself as well. As of right now, I have a custom mobo tray I made out of plexi-glass, and a few of the components. I'm taking a pretty big step here, and upgrading to a dual core CPU, so I'm pretty excited about that. The hardest part is going to be putting in the optical drive, as I'm going to have to use a slim one, and installing the PSW, as I'm trying to drill holes in the 360 case to match up with the retention screw holes in the PSW. This should be a fun and challenging build, and I'll post more updates as I build it.

Have a great day!

I was at the Thrift Store a few days ago, and I found another NES. I have like 8 of them now. Not all of them are still in one piece though. For $8.50 it was a good deal, especially since it had a copy of SMB3 in it.

So today I did what I do with every copy of SMB3 that I have ever had. I played it until I beat the World 2 Koopaling and got the letter from Peach. The picture above is what I was greeted with. This is the first copy of SMB3 that I have gotten that has "Kuribo's Shoe" instead of "Goomba's Shoe" in the letter. The reason why there is this difference is because when Nintendo was localizing the game for NA, they mis-translated Goomba into the English spelling of the Japanese word Kuribo, wich is what Goombas are called in Japan. Later versions corrected this.

I have been on a hunt for this version for some time, and am glad that I finally found it.

On a side note, I have always been convinced that the letter that Peach gives you at the end of World 2 should have been given after World 4 instead, as Kuribo's Shoe appears in Level 5-3 (it's only appearance in the entire game), and if I remember correctly the one after World 4 seems like it should have been given after World 2.

Oh well. I'll stop rambling now...

The other week I was at the local Goodwill and found a copy of Professor Layton and the Curious Village. It was only $6.99, and my girlfriend wanted it so she bought it. This is it.

Upon bringing it home we decided to try it out, and found that it did not work. So today I thought up the brilliant idea of trying it on my DSlite (my girlfriend having a DSi), and it worked. Strange...

It was then that her brother said it might be a bootleg, and our blog begins. The first problem is with the cover art. The cover is missing the "Nintendo Wi-fi connection" logo in the top left hand corner above"Nintendo DS".

The instructions are the best part. Lets see if you can spot the obvious problem here.

Yes, that is right, the screen shot has the "GAMESPOT" water mark on it. At least now I can read the GS review without even powering on my computer. Yes, the instructions are nothing more than the GS review printed in a booklet.That is hilarious.

Here is where things get a bit tricky. Bootlegs dont usually have an "NTR" code (all real games have a code that begins with NTR, and ends with the region code; or USA), but instead a long unrelated code. This cart has one. Also, most bootlegged carts have poorly made, and even more poorly affixed labels. This label is glossy, and centered nicely. Another thing, I'm not sure what picture the cart is supposed to have, but this is merely the cover art reproduced.

Tha back gives away a bit more of the puzzle. (Sorry, I had to make the pun.) Firstly, the Nintendo logo and NTR-005 are in the correct location, slightly higher than centered. This is not good for our case, but the fact that they are actually stamped into the plastic is a tell tale sign. Real carts look like they just didn't pebble the logo and numbers.

Our next problem again consists of correct features and incorrect ones. On most bootlegs the connection pins are black, giving them away immediately. On this one however, they are gold as they should be. The problem we run into here is that the circuit board below the pins should not be green, as they are on this cart. Below is my copy of SMT: Strange Journey, to illustrate what I mean.

As you can see, GameStop aggravates me to no end by putting all those stickers all over everything, but I digress. You can see that the part of the circuit board under the pins on a real cart is indeed white.

Other than that, I can only try to describe what the cart feels like, as it feels a bit off as well. The only way I can think to describe it is it feels like there is a small chip under the case that causes the front of the cart to bulge slightly. I've never had a real DS cart do this, so I'm sure that isn't exactly kosher.

One last thing, most bootleg games look like garbage because they are. They are made of inferior materials, and are notoriously unreliable. There have even been claims of bootlegs messing up DS systems. This is not something that I want, and I'm sure neither do you.

This blog is intended to help others identify bootleg DS games and not get duped into buying them. I am in no way trying to promote counterfeit games. I am trying to educate people so that they know what to look for.