So I decided to go ahead and open up that poor old Zelda II cart one more time. I wanted to write the date the battery was changed in there. So if anyone else ever opens that cart up they'll know when the battery was changed. Also I could take some pictures of it.




I think sometime next week I'll go back up to radio shack and buy 4 more battery holders. I've got a few other NES carts I might as well replace the batteries in. It's a shame I've got a save on Final Fantasy...it is early in the game. Right when you first get to Elf Land but I've done a lot of level grinding outside of the Elfheim castle so I'd hate to lose that save. But I haven't started in Crystalis so I'll change it's battery too. Then there's Zoda's Revenge and Shadowgate...I think those are all the NES carts I have with batteries in them. I don't really give a shit about Shadowgate though and probably won't ever play it.

Damn it! I should have taken pictures of my battery holder project for the blog. I wasn't even thinking about poor old mondocool.net. Well I do plan on replacing the battery in my Legend of Zelda cart too. It still saves but I've lost a few saves while trying to get the game to work and killed the save in the process. It was the first NES game I bought back in 2000 when I bought my NES so I probably wasn't in the habit of cleaning every cart I get. Last night I did clean it and it was filthy. So since there's no save to worry about I'll take it apart and put in a new battery and give it a more thorough cleaning. So I'll make sure to document that.

Fixed my Zelda II cart. I wish I wasn't so bad at soldering shit. I need to be taught by someone that's a solder master. I want to be way more skilled with soldering so I can work on bigger and better projects. For the time being check out my Youtube page for the video.

I do have an idea for a great project. After hearing about the Game Gear video out mod I want to build myself a Game Gear console. Basically a Master System 1.5. I think it would be pretty bad ass. Then I could really get into playing Ax Battler: The Legend of Gold Axe.

So I was looking at some of my NES games and I noticed my copy of Zelda II the Adventure of Link. I got it from a friend years ago. The carts really beat up and missing a big chunk of plastic and the battery is dead. So I figured I'd open it up and take a look at it. So I've decided I'm going to replace the battery.

The plan is to desolder the old battery, solder some wires to the old contacts then run those two wires to a battery holder! So that in 20 years when that battery dies I can swap it easily!

I just ran up to Radio Shack and picked up a cr2032 battery holder and slapped it inside my Zelda II cart to see if the bugger would fit and it fits great. I'd probably be soldering away right now but my soldering iron is a cheap piece of Wal Mart gargabe and apparently stopped working magically. So I've got to wait till next week when I'll have some more money and will be able to buy a new soldering iron. Woo. I'll be checking all the battery backed games on my shelf and seeing how many need replacing!

Man, I'm really liking my Virtual Boy right now. Just got Mario Clash in the mail yesterday and got a chance to paly it a little while earlier. It's a pretty fun game. I really like the 3d effects, they're pretty damn amazing.

I noticed there's a Bomberman game on Virtual Boy. I must own it! Someday I'll get my grubby mitts on it. I freakin love Bomberman. Bomberman Panic plays like Columns which is pretty cool.

The only problem I have with Virtual Boy is that I'm missing the foam eye piece. So it does suck having ambient light in my perihperal view. Lame.

Have to wait a week before I get my new TG16 with Turbobooster and Neo Geo AES. Really can't wait for those! It's killing me having to wait so long. But the guy from the Saturn League is awesome and holding on to it for me. I really do appreciate it. I thought I'd never have a Neo Geo but being able to make payments on it and not have to engage in a bid war really eases the burden of trying to get a Neo Geo.

Sadly the thought of Neo Geo AES ownership just makes me want to get a Neo Geo MVS to go with it. Having the arcade cab would be pretty damn amazing.

Finally got the first huge box of Laserdisc movies. There's a freakin' ton and they're all awesome! I'll make a video and post it on my youtube account later today. I'm watching Blade Runner right now...but after I flip the disc I'm taking my ass to bed. I'm supposed to get up in about an hour from now. Lame. I'm exhausted as shit.

I got a Psone with the LCD screen for $10! Amazing find. I already have a Psone, which is in much nicer condition, but I was just after the LCD screen. So the crappy Psone is going straight to ebay after I open it up and try to clean it up some. The eject and power buttons are both sticky, it's got stickers on it and the motor is loud. I'll do some google-fu and see if there's anything I can do about the motor being so noisey. Never know, might be a simple fix.

Also for another ten bones I got a Powerbase Converted complete in the box. It even had the foam pieces and the plastic bag it came in. I wonder if there were any manuals, I'm sure there were at least some warranty papers. Oh well can't have it all. Amazing finds. Hopfully that Psone gets me most of my coinage back.

I should make a podcast. How many pod casts do well with just one dude though? Hmmm. Oh well that's not what I logged in to type about.

I'm thinking of picking up a Dingoo a320. They look pretty damn cool. It'd be nice if they had wifi built in but just as a tiny pocket emulator machine it's pretty cool. I'm actually interested in the ebook reader that it has. This thing could offer tons of entertainment for those lengthy bathroom breaks. If I do pick up a Dingoo it'll have to wait some weeks.

There's also a bunch of Game Gear games I discovered. Curse Digital Press' guide! Every time I flip through it I discover a million games that look awesome.

Just started playing The Bard's Tale. I forget what magazine it was but I read a preview of it before the game came out. I thought "hey this looks pretty fun!" But I didn't end up getting it till a year or two ago. The Meijer that I used to stop at on my way home from work had a bargain rack that I'd walk by everyime I stopped in there and eventually I saw The Bard's tale in that rack. It was surprising because the game was so old. I'm sure Meijer shuggles their old games around from store to store till they're gone. Actually the new Meijer has new copies of Halo on the baragain shelf. Interesting. Sorry for the tangent. Anyway I picked this up for $20 a year or two ago and am justs now getting into it.

This game is awesome! The graphics are pretty damn sharp, but I am playing it on a ps3 so its being upscaled. The diologue is great! But what's even better than that are the songs. I'm going to upload a couple to youtube eventually. I had to make some special saves so I can go back and record the songs later. There are some Trows, little goblin people, that keep popping up singing songs that I'm sure offer some foreshadowing somewhat like the Oompa Loompas. Also the beer song is classic. I want to memorize it for the next time I drink a pint of ale out a huge stein.

The plot is nothing amazing but the Bard's lack of enthusiasm for sidequests and insane reguests mirrors my feelings for RPG cliches. I wish I got into this game sooner. It really is a fun little game. The only complaint I have is the camera control. You can swing the camera around your character but its always a top down view. I'd much rather be able to swing the camera down and keep it over his shoulders and be able to see where I'm going. But that's a very small complaint and more or less just a small personal prefference.

This game is mondo cool!




I built some shelves. They're probably the best shelves ever built. Not becuase I built them but because I put some really awesome shit on them. Instead of having a million DVDs stacked up on a window sill now I've got a million DVDs on a shelf. A well crafted expertly constructed shelf. Then on another equally bad ass shelf I've relocated all my Transformers. There's also a Predator and an Enterprise.
Before anyone asks about the tin foil, I've mostly ever worked third shift. The foil keeps out sunlight so my room is always a dank pit of despair regardless of how sunny it may be outside. Surprisingly since I've been doing that I've noticed just how many other bedroom windows seem to have tin foil. I wonder if they work nights too or are just afraid of the alien signals.

Last week I watched Predator on Laser disc. It was awesome. So yesterday I got around to watching Predator II on Laserdisc and it was also awesome. I decided I'd watch AVP: Aliens Vs Predator again, even though I hate it more than I've ever hated anything ever.

There's seriously not one good thing about it. How do you make the Predator not cool? Well they managed. The costumes aren't nearly as good as the ones from 1987 and 1990. The Preds are supposed to be a little slimey and sweaty and look like rough jungle hunters...in this one they're all dry and smooth and not intimidating at all. Some of the masks just don't look right at all either. The Predators in this movie also are supposed to be more buff but they just end up looking chubby. The costumes really do blow in this one. The old ones looked like actual muscle these just look like padded costumes instead of actually looking like some swamp alien master killing machine.

Also the director sucks. A lot of it might be due to the PG 13 rating, which is bullshit as all the Predators and Alien movies are R rated, but the action sequences are terrible. Everyone gets killed by editing menaing all see you is something that implies violence. You see a sweet spear or Xenomorph mouth thing hurtling towards someones face and then it cuts away to a small amount of blood splatter. The editing is awful in general, there's tons of cutting around and the action is really disjointed and you don't get to see shit. There's no excuse, with the technology they had to make this movie it should have looked better than what they made in 1987. You barely see any gore shots at all and when you do it's a close up. When the Predators first show up and start murdering away they hang the victims up in typical Predator fashion. Well you don't see them get skinned. That's one of the most amazing parts of the Predator movies. When someone disappears you find them missing their fucking skin. Or their spine and skull get ripped out. Another thing that pissed me off about that scene...most if not all of those guys were unarmed. Which I wouldn't have minded that uncharacteristic mistake had they been skinned giving me some good gore to enjoy.

Now besides the shitty costumes, the God awful actions sequences and the terrible writing and diologue the main character is the most unlikable piece of shit I've ever seen in a movie. Obviously cast as an X TREME Mountain Dew chugging hard core athlete ice cimber with a bad ass tough take charge bitchy attitude. Every line of hers exists to show how MEGA HUGE her balls are. She's not confident, she's cocky and overbearing obviously knows everything there is about everything. Bitch you're on the mission to climb down a fucking hole. Like I need to kyak off a water fall and go hangliding for 10 years to understand how a fucking rope works. Please.

I don't have a problem with a strong woman as the main character, one of my favorite characters in Predator II is the woman cop, a strong woman...but not a cocky head strong shit bag. Just the movie goes out of its way to make me hate this woman. Every word that falls out of her cock sucker enrages me.

Also the mythos of the Predator is that it's attracted to conflict and extremely hot weather. You find TONS of that in the Arctic right? In an abandoned Whaling Station....tons of conflict and heat there, right? Also the Predators show up every ten years. In 1987, 1997 and oh wait 2004. OOPS lol. Has the director of this steaming pile of doo doo even seen any of the Predator movies?

Now back to why the Predators suck so bad. They're all pussies. They don't even make it half way through the movie. The Xenomorphs fuck them up! Easily! Then if that's not enough the last Predator that's remotely bad ass has to team up with a woman who's only skill is CLIMBING SHIT to take on the Alien. And that moderately bad ass Predator actually dies in the end anyway. I would have been so happy to see that lady get impaled by the Alien Queen. In the end when she gets her trophy weapon for a job well done from the other Predators it makes me happy to know that shes abandoned in the Arctic, without a coat. So at least she probably dies that way...well in my mind she definitely dies that way.

Ok lets take a look at Predator 1 and Predator 2. Those aliens were fucking tough shit. The first one takes out a highly armed extremely talented unit, the best the United States has to offer. Fucking Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura and fuckin Bill Duke...and that Indian dude! Also a guy with glasses with a ton of pussy jokes and another guy that gets smashed with a log...even they were pretty bad ass while not being particularly huge muscle mens. Arnold's character Dutch only manages to take out the Predator due to some quick thinking and years upon years of guerilla warfare experience and some God damn luck.

Now Predator 2. A guy in a comic book store was like "Why would you want to buy that Predator figure it's from Predator 2...he was a pussy Danny Glover took him out!" And I'm like "What!" and I schooled that dude. Set in a fictional future LA where crime has gone NUTS and the streets are a war zone Danny Glover is a super bad ass cop. So he's got some credibility as a hero. Now when he does finally confront the Predator...the Predator was lured into a trap sprung by freakin Gary Busey! In that scene Danny Glover pumps several rounds of buckshot, at point blank range into his chest. That just barely slows down the Predator...if that's not tought I don't know what is. At this point Danny Glover gets ahold of one of the Predators weapons and chases down an injured Predator back the ship and single handedly fucks him up with his own damn disc blade of death.

Also in these scene there's a Skull from one of the Xenomorphs from Alien which is what started this mess in the first place. It was totally awesome and that one nod to Alien spawned tons of Video games, books and comics and this turd of a movie. Anyway Danny Glover has earned the respect of the Predators for taking down a Predator in one on one combat and the leader gives him a trophy, a gun dating back ti 1715. Fucking awesome! Also the leader Predator carried a sword and it was awesome.

Then in this movie we get a group of big clumbsy Predators that get their asses kicked in like 10 minutes. Except one that's got to team up with that hang gliding parasailer extreme sports bitch that's the shit at CLIMBING UP ICE. Shit I've made a few snow forts in my day and had a couple cans of Dew does that qualify me to battle the scourge of the Universe? Maybe if I was an elite commando or a hardened cop battling Voo Doo Willie's Jamaican drug lord gang I'd have some skills useful for battling aliens.

Man. I hate this movie that much. What a turd.

I'm not even a fan of Aliens so I don't know what they butchered from that series, but I'm sure they did a great job of dicking that up too. Somehow this shit fest got a sequel. But you know what? It's halfway decent. They upped that rating to an R and got rid of that terrible director. This time they got it right. The humans are just there to die. This is best show in a scene where the hot young babe of the movie that the main guy has a hard on for...gets cut in half...for no reason...out of no where. She just happens to run in front of a giant flying blade of hellish design. IT WAS AWESOME. It serves no purpose other than to be awesome.

There's not much I have to say about AVP2 other than an entire town of nice folk get mercilessly slaughtered and the few jerks that survive get blown the fuck up. Just the way it should have been the first time.

Now I hear they're making another Predator movie. A directed sequel to the first film, which is fine. But I've heard it might ignore the shitty sequels...which is great, but Predator 2 is an AMAZING sequel! They can ignore AVP...I do and I wouldn't be heart broken over ignoring AVP2 even though it's a pretty good movie.

I'm working on a Metal Gear Solid ps1 project. I'm going to slap a big ol Foxhound logo across the top of my ps1. I've been working on it for hours and it's going slow. This might be a three day project before it's over. Taking apart a ps1 is a lot more complicated than a Genesis and N64 and with the Cd rom drive its a lot more complex in there.

Here are some pictures of what I've been up to. I tested out my stencil. It's rough but it shows that I might know what I'm up to. And then there's a picture of a gutted ps1.







I was feeling pretty bummed today. So I fired up some Fall Out 3 and set some wastelanders on fire. That made me feel better. I also went on youtube and watched the infamous Elvyra booby tassle scene. Now that always cheers me right the fuck up!

Picked up a VCD card for my Sega Saturn. Every day my Saturn becomes more and more a multi-media center piece! I'll upload some pictures I've taked of it and post them here a little bit later.

It's a Victor Saturn VCD card, it came complete with the box and the manuals, warranty information and such. Pretty cool. I need to download some videos and burn them to VCD and give them a watch.

Also I've gotten 51 subscribers to my youtube channel! Cool!










Just got back from picking up my Laserdisc player. Seems to be working fine...it plays CDs anyway. So that's a good sign. There's no on screen menus for me to poke around in though so there's not much I can do besides listen to CDs. I do like how it has a CD tray that comes out independently of the Laserdisc tray. I'm sure it saves a ton of electricity not having to toss around that giant slide out tray when you just want to listen to a CD. It's freaking HUGE! It dwarfs the Xbox sitting on top of it. Hahaha. Can't wait for Whitney to ship me some free Laserdisc movies!

I need to buy some more power strips and crap. I've got about a million things that need plugging in and no where to plug them in at. I'm thinking if I buy a new LCD monitor for my PC I'll have enough room to put my AV splitter up on my desk so I can go Rambo with some zip ties and combat some of this wire hell warzone I've got under my desk. Then if I get that undercontrol I'll get another AV splitter. I've got one with 8 systems hooked up to it, if I had some more space I could get another power squid (which is the best power strip you can get for old game systems and their huge AC adapters) then I would have enough outlets to use another automatic AV switch. I do need to reorganize that mess because I do want to use my Laserdisc player to watch movies. Plus someday I'll have my Laseractive and will want to use it to play Genesis and Sega CD games on it...or if I'm lucky I'll track down the Turbografx pac and I'll definitely want to use that.

Once I stop being a bum and move into my own house I'll have to have a custom wiring job. I've got 15 or so consoles hooked up to my TV and if I had the room I'd probably have closer to 20. That kind of awesome needs a lot of outlets.

Uploading a video of my new Laserdisc player right now check out my youtube page.

Workong on Metroid Prime. I've passed two save stations so there's that much back tracking out of the way. The last two Artifacts are in the same area. I've got to get from the main area I'm in now, pass through some lava area then get to the area I'm looking for. Then once I'm there I've got to tear the place apart looking for two artifacts. Then I've got to back track my ass to where I put all the artifacts and finally get to the last boss. Back tracking fucking sucks!

I have to wait until tomorrow to get my Laserdisc player. Boo! My money needs to get here faster! Anyway, while bragging to everyone I know about my new Laserdisc player my internet friend Whitney told me she's got TONS of AWESOME Laserdisc movies. There's Star Wars, Star Trek Movies, Star Trek Episodes, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones and tons more that I'm forgetting off the top of my head. The amazing part is she's going to give them to me! Woo! See her Dad was one of those crazy people that supported Laserdisc over VHS. I can't wait to have that kick ass collection.

Can't wait to pick up that player tomorrow and really can't wait to get some of those movies. I hope they're all widescreen. That'd be pretty kick ass. I know Laserdisc supported Widescreen so I hope they're all WS and that they look nice on my 16:9 tv.

I'm getting a Laserdisc player! Woo! One more thing I really don't need...but fuck if it ain't mondo cool!

Man, I really need to sit down and finish Metroid Prime! I think that's going to be scheduled for tomorrow. First thing in the morning I'm going on a 40 mile bike ride. Then I'll play games till my girlfriend comes over to kick it. I hope I finally finish Metroid Prime! I really want to start on MP2! I've even got Metroid Prime 3 coming to me in the mail. Got it used for $11. Sweet!

I bought Mad World for the Wii. It was really inexpensive on Amazon. I couldn't pass up such a sweet deal! Haven't played it yet.

I'm thinking about Finishing up Mtroid Prime. I've been workong on that game for years! I got it for free a long ass time ago and started playing it and really liked it. I got really far into the game...but man is it a long game. So eventually my interest tapered off ...then I picked it back up and was really interested again! Then lost interest...then a while later tried to finish it again and got really close. I've just got to find like two or three items and take down the final boss. There's a lot of back tracking involved in the part I'm at...and I hate back tracking. I've got to travel across like the whole damn planet and that's what keeps me from going back. So I really need to just finish the game up.

Then I can finally start on Metroid Prime 2! Which I got the Christmas it came out, brand new. Never played it though. I put it in my Gamecube and played for a few minutes to see what it looked and felt like but didn't want to start working on it until I beat Metroid Prime 1. So that's the longest I've had a brand new game without playing it. It's been like what...five years now? HAHAHA!

Metroid Prime is one of if not my favourite Gamecube game. It's really a lot of fun. Just not that back track quest at the end. That shit sucks. Bad. Every time I try to finish it up I load the game and see just how much I've got to travel to get those last items and get really put off because I don't remember the map or how to get anywhere fast...and yuck. Oh well.