Another Great Use for the Analogue Pocket with Save States

I’ve been gushing about the Analogue Pocket portable for over a year now, lauding its crisp screen and its ability to create “save states” anywhere in a Game Boy, Game Boy Color, or Game Boy Advance game while playing. These saves are created on a regular everyday micro SD card thingy plugged into the device.

This ability has allowed me to play through old 2D platformer games without having to repeat difficult sections or battles. Traditionally those games have no save points at all, just continues, making repetition the difficult part of playing those games to completion.

For games that do have saves built into them, the Analogue Pocket’s save states can be a good secondary save option. A game may only save at the end of each level by design, for example, but with save states one can create convenient mid-level saves. 

Finally, I’m starting to see the save batteries fail in Game Boy games older than thirty years. My saves on the Final Fantasy Legend trilogy, for example, are all gone. Thanks to the save states of the Analogue Pocket, those games are still playable by using the micro SD card to create saves instead, should I desire to play those games again.

A new use occurred to me the other day: use the save states to save high scores on arcade games that do not have a battery backup. Games without the battery only save the high scores for each session of gameplay, and the scores are erased as soon as the game is turned off. With the save state on the Analogue Pocket, one can save their high scores for much longer. 

I’m testing it with Xevious for the Game Boy Advance. That mid-eighties arcade classic holds a special place in my heart as it was in the student rec room at Mansfield OSU when I was taking classes there, but I digress:

That’s not a very high score yet, but I just started playing it again.

The ability to play old games with new hardware has been a middle aged joy for me. Finding clever ways to enhance those games using features like save states just adds to their value.

Beaten: Powerslave Exhumed (Saturn/One)

 I've been getting my fix of late 1990s first person shooters over the past few years, beating Marathon:Durandal and Quake for example, but when I saw that Powerslave Exhumed was available I had to get it, as the original Powerslave was one of my "unfinished business" games, which are games that I played in the past but never beat. 

I had purchased the Sega Saturn version of Powerslave in late 1996 as it beat the Playstation version to market for some reason. My purchase of the Sega Saturn at release in May of 1995 had proven to be a mistake once Sony released the Playstation later that year. By late 1996 Sony had clearly already vanquished the Saturn by having games like Wipeout, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider out, so I felt that I needed to boost my Saturn library, and Powerslave sounded cool.

I cannot remember where I was stuck, but it might have been on the first boss, Set. So I downloaded Powerslave Exhumed, a modern port for consoles and PC created by Night Dive Studios that retains the graphics and gameplay of the original. Since the original was so good, that is a plus.

It's a first person shooter, sure, but also a first person platformer at times, getting both gameplay aspects right. The other awesome aspect of this game is it's "Metroidvania" style of progression, created well before that was a word, meaning that the player opens up areas as they go and those areas will require repeated visits once the player acquires new items. Some areas, for examples, have multiple exits with one of them on a high ledge, meaning the player needs to acquire a certain artifact to make the jump.

Powerslave was an Iron Maiden album before it was a game, with a cool ancient Egyptian theme, and the game Powerslave recreates that theme in each level. The levels are large and varied in theme, each with the standard 1990s keys and doors that must be acquired and used during each visit to that level. So the backtracking one does is not that easy, as each key needs to be reacquired and each door reopened, every time one goes through the level.

It's not frustrating, though, as the level design is absolutely awesome, making levels fun to revisit. The weapons keep coming throughout one's playthrough, and once acquired, they remain in one's inventory forever. Starting with a sword (great for underwater fish fights), the player gets a pistol, a large machine gun, a grenade, and then some interesting magical weapons like a snake staff, a fireball ring, and a lightning bolt spell before it's all done. 

Ammo drops from fallen enemies are generic, meaning that whatever weapon one is holding will get the ammo refilled. So if the player is low on machine gun ammo but was using the pistol to kill enemies and some ammo drops, the player must switch to the machine gun before picking up the ammo.

There are a few boss fights, and they are memorable and challenging, but there’s no health meters on these guys, so just keep shooting and moving. While Set gave me some trouble again (I almost gave up there again), I got the final boss on my first try.

The wave of first person shooters following Doom were often creative in their attempts to stand out in the crowd, but the under appreciated Powerslave had more going on in it than I realized back in late 1996. I’m glad the folks at Night Dive Studios released Powerslave Exhumed so I could wrap up that bit of unfinished business.

Beaten: Grand Theft Auto 3 The Definitive Edition (PS4)

There are lots of games I missed over the years, but in 2001 when Grand Theft Auto 3 landed on the Playstation 2, I was off in MMORPG land, playing Ultima Online, and not really paying attention to consoles anymore. Of course I heard about it from all sorts of media and from co-workers who were playing it, but I was too busy with UO and the fansite I had to take notice.

Not that third person open world traversal was all that new to me in gaming (Tail of the Sun on PS1), but the model was solidified with GTA 3. In its aftermath I enjoyed The Simpsons Hit and Run on the Gamecube and later Bully on the Wii before finally getting on board with Grand Theft Auto 4 in August of 2008 on my shiny new XBox 360. 

With the long wait for GTA 6 supposedly ending later this year, I decided to go back to the roots of all this mayhem with Grand Theft Auto 3 The Definitive Edition and just try it out to see if it could hook me. I could have gotten the PS2 version and played it as it was released, but the Definitive Edition has multiple graphic, control, and interface improvements that reduced the frustration of missions that require multiple attempts. The icing on the cake was playing it on my PS5, with load times reduced to seconds.

The core story and gameplay are all intact and GTA 3 reminded me of how much I love the chaos that sometimes comes with these games. The physics of how cars handle takes getting used to as they seem to be lighter than they should be and even a low speed collision can have silly physics consequences.

The story is about what I expected with the glaring exception of the player’s character being mute. It works as a storytelling device as the cast of criminal underworld characters gets to shine with their demands. Cut scenes are all made from the in-game engine and the blocky characters are good for 2001. Whatever level of upgrade they did graphically kept the 2001 look but polished it up really well. Performance is quick and smooth.

The missions that make up the main story are varied, with some on strict time limits. Normally these time limit missions frustrate me, but GTA 3 is so well designed that all it took for most of them are repeated tries once one figures out what to do. One such tight-on-time mission required the player to take out a series of taco stands across all three islands in under nine minutes. It felt impossible at first, but once I realized that they are in the same location during every attempt, it was matter of memorizing those locations, figuring out the most efficient route, and then trying it a few times until I got it right.

Another great design standard established in GTA 3 is the balance between exploration and story progress. By that I mean, if the player follows the story missions, they are introduced to enough of the map to understand the basics of traversal across the three islands and the waterways between them. For explorers like me, the rewards were great enough to give the maps a little more scrutiny. Players can find spawns of health restoring hearts, essential body armor, weapons, and hidden packages by checking out incredibly well-designed map.

The hidden packages were fun enough that I spent a little more time searching for them, and the reward granted for every 10 recovered - a weapon spawn at one' s hideouts - was also worthwhile. I got to about 82 of them, and in the searching I got to to the hidden area in the screenshot above. Other side missions were fun to varying degrees but I did not delve too deep into them.

I had so much fun playing this landmark game over the last month, which is so well made that even the frustrating parts - mostly time limit missions - were manageable and even fun to repeat. Like real life, even when you plan every detail out, running a mission in Grand Theft Auto The Definitive Edition can go a lot of unexpected and crazy ways that are usually so chaotic and silly that one can't help but laugh.

Beaten: Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear (Gameboy)

One of the hardest action-platformers I had left unfinished for the Game Boy was Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear, a continuation of the NES game series. Those games were fun and frantic, with the first one made easy to beat with unlimited continues, and the second one being much more challenging.

For the Game Boy entry into the series, they made a tighter, tougher, and shorter experience built solely around horizontal side scrolling in a single fortress. There are no wilderness areas nor vertically scrolling levels. 

Armed with just a sword and a flighty, pointy-toed jump, the player fights their way past all sorts of monsters and other defenses, picking up minor loot like gems, food, drink, keys, and extra lives. Every ten gems collected equals an extra life as well.

Keys unlock the chests one encounters, but the placement of these items is not usually connected. Grab keys when you see them, a chest will be around at some point. Chest items are either more gems, an extra life, the Shield of Protection (no idea what it did), and the most useful Boots of Jumping.

I always tried to get and keep those boots, which allow for farther jumps and soft landings. Luckily the chest loot is not random so one can note which chest has what reward.

Some levels have multiple paths through them and hidden areas discovered by exploration, including the classic “above the screen” areas as seen since Super Mario Bros. The healing items are relatively scarce so it’s best to not get hit at all.

Of course this was easier to achieve with the use of save states on my Analogue Pocket. The crisp screen and the elimination of blurring while scrolling helped as well. There were five sections to the game, with the first four broken into subsections 1.0, 1.1, etc. The final section was just one large area with multiple paths. 

I entered the final boss battle with Malkil unexpectedly but had six hearts and nine lives to burn as the battle does not stop upon death and regeneration. He fell after I sacrificed about three lives. 

The under appreciated Wizards & Warriors series was unique and challenging and I’m glad I got to play three of them. On the Game Boy, Wizards and Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear captures the style and gameplay of its NES brethren while presenting its own vibe as well.

Why Do I Still Have My Matchbox Cars at 58?

 I'm a nostalgic guy, and have kept a few toys from my childhood. There are scattered parts and pieces of Micronauts, one small Lego spaceship, a few other minor things of sentimental value to me. This includes a small, officially branded carrying case with a few dozen Matchbox toy cars in it. Unlike my old Odyssey 2 videogames, none of these memorable trinkets of my youth that somehow survived are engaging to me now.

But there they sit, my Matchbox cars, on a high shelf in a closet, where they have been in the seven years since I moved to my current apartment. Before that, eleven years in storage at a previous apartment, eight years at another apartment, and so forth back through my past of many apartments I've lived in since leaving home forty years ago.

Once in awhile I do check on them, get them down, admire the craftsmanship, remember their old value to me and the times my friends and I had with them, and put them away. I never wanted to pass them along to a child in my family (I was smart enough to not have kids myself in our pre-collapse civilization), they certainly never will reach a meaningful collector value without their original boxes, they just...take up space.

In our youth, those cars, as well as the American made Hot Wheels toys, were a part of all of our lives. Each of us curated a collection and finding that one Matchbox that no one else had was always a win. 

They were cheap enough in cost that it was relatively easy to convince mom or dad to get you one when they dragged you along to go shopping for something else. One time, mom took me along to a craft store a few blocks away, a quaint basement store with a side entrance under the owner’s home. Sure enough, they had a few toys by the cash register and I got mom to buy me this beauty:

 I never had much in the way of those orange Hot Wheels tracks, but some of my friends did, and I would take my cars over to enjoy their elaborate racing setups. Those were good memories.

Our “peak Matchbox” times involved two small model cities we constructed to play with our cars. The first one was called Ourtown and was a spontaneous creation one day when we were hanging out in the far back scrap yard of Gledhill Road Machinery. The dirt was dry having not been rained on in awhile, but there was a small gully that was the width of a two lane Matchbox road.

We didn’t even have our cars there that day, but we brought them back later. Over a few weeks we expanded the roads, created our own “homes” out of the scrap around us, and made little roads signs using pieces of slate we had found, scratching names of places in them. It grew big enough to have a countryside and a second, smaller town, with the whole area becoming called Miniland.

It didn’t last very long, though, as someone from Gledhill ran a tractor over the area to cut down grass and weeds. Years later I had the thought to draw a map of Ourtown to the best of my memory:

Next came an indoor Miniland, built on the unused ping pong table in my folks’ basement, which rested atop a similarly unused and neglected pool table. We used construction paper to build shops and homes, roads and a bay with a dock. In the center of downtown I used a piece of poster board to create a massive skyscraper.

It was all pretty cool, but we were kids and got bored with it in a few weeks. I don’t remember getting any other Matchbox cars after that and we soon reached an age where our activities were more teenage in nature.

So the Matchbox cars went into the case and travelled with me from apartment to apartment, providing occasional reminders of the above memories, but something else too. 

Holding onto them is holding onto a small part of myself that, to this day, doesn’t want to grow up and hopes that my friends and I will gather again and play with those cars. It’s absurd and will never happen, but it’s there. Adult friendships are a lot different than childhood friendships and a part of me misses the simplicity of those bonds.

I can spare the closet space for the foreseeable future to hold onto that.

Here is the carrying case:

Here are a few of my favorites:

Parked in front of the open case, from left to right, we have: 

Commer Ice Cream Canteen

This is my oldest Matchbox, made a few years before I was even born it seems, and acquired as a hand me down toy, I think. There is no number or date on the bottom of it. It’s actually kind of creepy too because the little guy inside is oversized compared to the rest of the vehicle. His legs should be sticking out the bottom, Flintstones-style.

Racing Mini (Series No.29, 1970)

This early acquisition (I was four years old) was a personal favorite as I seemed to like small, zippy European cars. As an adult I had a few VW Beetles, but joy came during a trip to San Antonio a few years back when we got a real Mini Cooper as a rental car. 

Volks Dragon (No.37, 1971)

This red souped up VW Beetle became reality for me in the mid to late 1980s as my second VW Beetle of the era was a souped up, jacked up, near replica of this toy. Hot rod red with after market modifications including jacked up rear tires and a pair of badass Monza exhaust pipes. The Matchbox sat on the dash for awhile.

Cosmobile (No.88, 1975)

Competition with Hot Wheels was fierce back then, so things got weird, with Matchbox releasing some strange space-themed models with different colors of metal and amber-tinted windows. 

Rolls Royce Silver Shadow II (No.39, 1979)

This gorgeous toy features a silver finish with red interior, front doors that actually open, and tiny shock absorbers. It was one of two Matchbox cars that sat in the driveway of my home at indoor Miniland.

Porsche Turbo (No.3,1979)

This remains the pride of my collection and was the other car sitting in my driveway at indoor Miniland. If filthy rich money ever rains down on me, I’d track down a restored real life version of this car. The Matchbox sports a unique metallic root beer brown color with a dull yellow interior. My friends were able to find this Matchbox too, just not in this color.

Editor's Note: This is the first entry into my "Half a Century" series which will explore not just video games, but other nerdy stuff I was into fifty years ago. 

Beaten: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (Series)

 I've only ever played two Indiana Jones videogames, and I've beaten them both. The first was the masterful Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Atari VCS, when I figured out that the clock was actually moving and you had to be in the map room at the right time, just like the movie. After that I just never came across an Indy game in my decades of gaming across various hardware, but they kept making them.

The most recent one dropped into my lap - or more accurately, onto my pricey XBox Gamepass Ultimate Super Platinum thing, and seeing it was from trusted studio Machinegames, I decided to download it and see if it was as good as their Wolfenstein games.  It was better.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has been carefully crafted to be a videogame that feels very much like playing through an Indiana Jones movie. The look of everything, the music, the font used to introduce a new area, all are very authentic. As is the incredible voice talent they found to sound like Harrison Ford. Speaking of voice talent, the late Tony Todd put in one last performance here as the mysterious giant Locus, another perfect role for the horror movie legend.  It was kind of bittersweet knowing it was his last.

A break in at Marshall College sends Professor Jones on a journey to capture the thief, which in turn leads to a bigger mystery with another Nazi once again arrogant enough to try to use the power of God resting in some ancient device for evil ends. This seems to take place in the timeline, if one cares, after Raiders of the Lost Ark as it’s prize is mentioned once if I recall correctly.

The game plays in first person and while Indy can use guns and blast away at enemies, it clearly wants the player to be more Indy like and just whip and punch enemies. Shooting summons every guard in the area whereas a stealthy approach is better. With a few upgrades, the whip-punch combo works well, Whip an enemy to make them drop their weapon and stun them, then punch them repeatedly until they fall. There is a block option too, so some fisticuffs require finesse.

And since the enemies are fascists, it was timely fun just punching them over and over. By that I mean, in the game's larger areas, the respawn of enemies behind you means that all the backtracking one does requires clearing out areas repeatedly. I'd take it as a sign of our times rather than design intent that makes punching fascists the least tedious part of such a game.

The game's main areas are pretty large and deviously designed to require tons of exploration. Later in the game, the player gets the option to travel back to them to complete any unfinished business, a feature which encouraged me to do exactly that. I did not go for 100% but I was close.

There is lots of lore to collect and read, as well as a camera that didn’t exist in the 1930s because it somehow instanly puts the printed photos into your inventory. Indy uses the camera a lot as a puzzle solving tool, and for general sightseeing. Weirdly enough, he doesn’t use it during the endgame cutscene where some truly historic shit is happening.

There were some weird design quirks and a few glitches but the game autosaves frequently enough that this was not an issue. Enemy AI was a little dopey, too, sometimes missing obvious chances to detect me. Or was it actually truly accurate AI, as being a fascist does require an unbelievable degree of stupidity? I’d say in this America “You know who you are” to them, but they are also too stupid to know how stupid they are.

There are lots of great puzzles for Indy to solve and they are not too challenging, but are rewarding nonetheless. Truly each large region itself is a puzzle in and of itself to explore. Indy uses his whip to swing over pits and to pull on certain switches out of reach.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a complete joy of a game, authentic to fans of the character while fun for us few gamers who appreciate archaeology and punching fascists.

Beaten: Cthulhu Saves Christmas (Switch)

 “What the what?” I said to myself as I pulled the small red case that said “Cthulhu Saves Christmas “ off the shelf of my local mom and pop video game store, where it blended in with hundreds of other Switch games.

As I turned the case around and read the back it was clear what I was holding. Chtulhu Saves Christmas is a classic 90s style top down turn based RPG from the same crew at Zeboyd Games that brought us Chtulhu Saves the World as an XBox 360 indie game way back in 2010. Mind blown.

I purchased and downloaded Chtulhu Saves the World when it came out but only sampled it at the time, so I had to check to make sure it was still there on my 360, as a part of that console’s downloaded library. Thankfully, it was, because it turns out Chtulhu Saves Christmas is actually a prequel to Saves the World, so I was right to hold out these fifteen years so I could play them in order!

It’s also worth noting that I am out of touch with wherever video game journalism is these days, so news about this game never reached me until I found it on that store shelf. Finding it that way was also a weird thing, as it is a Limited Run game, produced by a small company that releases physical versions of some downloadable games for a premium price. So, it's sort of rare.

Graphically, it's gorgeous, as these modern top-down games tend to be. Cthulhu is joined by three party members as they attempt to save Santa from various non-Grinch Christmas villains. The party themselves are also characters from Christmas lore and each has unique abilities to add to the mix. Even though Cthulhu desires to destroy the world, he's a likable, personable character who gets along well with others in this quest.

The story is great and the writing and humor are superb. There is a central hub called Christmastown where, in between parts of the quest, Cthulhu can do various activities with the other party members or on his own which lead to useful loot items for the four party members. This part is important as the relationships he makes with the party members seem to play some role.

Turn based combat is fun, and sometimes challenging, but never unmanageable. What is manageable is the grind, thanks to monster variety in each area, as well as an actual countdown of the random encounters per area. A three bar meter on the screen builds up as the player explores the area, and when it turns red, a battle begins. After the first area I noticed it had a countdown number above it for the number of these encounters remaining.

In addition, there is a button on the menu to just go ahead and start an encounter. So I would start a new area, fight every encounter, then be free to explore and loot the remaining dungeon before fighting the boss. There is not a lot of loot, and it's just items, no money. There are no shops and upgrades come from the few chests found as well as the relationship quests back at Christmastown.

I had a great time playing and beating Cthulhu Saves Christmas, even though I hate the holidays myself. It's just long enough to matter and a great game for the Switch itself. I also love the fact that small games are getting physical releases thanks to Limited Run Games. I'll certainly be paying them and their releases more attention going forward.

2024 Year in Review

Well shit, 2024 was a shitfest of a year, weren’t it? I reckon it’s only a matter of time before one of these sociopaths in charge of all the nukes has a temper tantrum and all these video games I own get EMP’d or just plain vaporized, so the idea is to play them while I can! 

Back in 2020 I decided to go full retrogamer, that is to play various titles from my collection from various eras on various devices, rather than the decades-old drive to play the latest and greatest. This year I decided to formalize that a little, by creating a spreadsheet to track each category that I filled while playing every game I beat.

Some categories are eras in which the game was released, from the 1980s up until the modern decade. Under miscellaneous, the categories are "Play at Release" which is pretty self-explanatory, "Unfinished Business" meaning a game I put some effort into back in the past but never beat, and "Portable" encompasses games played on portable devices, mostly those made by Nintendo.

"System" involves games played on a particular system, and currently includes the last three generations of consoles from Microsoft and Sony. Next year I am definitely adding the Nintendo Switch to that list as I am starting to realize how awesome the Switch library has become.

The results show that portables exploded this year with my acquisition of an Analogue Pocket, which allowed me to beat a whopping four Game Boy games and two Game Boy Advance games, with a 3DS game thrown in for good measure. My love of what I call the eighth generation of games has me still playing lots of stuff on the XBox 360 and PS3, with five games beaten between the two systems. The XBox One and PS4 era took a hit this year with only one game each, while the current generation each provided two games for me to take down. 

As far as eras, the aughts were clearly still the decade my head is at, but other decades still got some attention. The exception is the 1980s, where I failed to beat any game from that era. I was close - level 47 out of 50 on The Adventure of Lolo for the NES, but ultimately I did not dedicate the time to the eighties that it required. I tried to start Ultima 3 Exodus, but the instant grind-or-die from starvation problem at the beginning of the game deterred me.

Noteworthy is that I beat an Atari VCS game, sort of. Blue 21 is a homebrew I had downloaded with hundreds of other Atari VCS ROMS back in the 2010s when I purchased an Atari Flashback Portable. It's strip blackjack for one player against a female opponent, and I beat it just to see how graphic the Atari could be with this. It's an impressive feat:

Other than the games I beat, I tried out a few other games like the aforementioned The Adventures of Lolo for the NES, playable on the Switch via their online library, to scratch my occasional puzzle game itch.  

Over on XBox, Game Pass allowed me to play a good chunk of Gears 5, which I abandoned at some insane boss fight. Also on Game Pass was Squirrel with a Gun, which I only dabbled in a little, and Star Trucker, which was an amazing game to play a little but ultimately was too harsh of a sim type game to dive any deeper. Another Crab's Treasure looked like fun until I realized it was Dark Souls difficult. I hit up STALKER Shadow of Chornobyl, Demon's Tilt, Powersalve Exhumed, and Back 4 Blood on the recent XBox consoles as well.

My heart still remains with my old Xbox 360, as I put a little time into El Shaddai, a stylish action hack and slash, and two of the three legendary Burger King games - Pocketbike Racers and Big Bumpin'.  Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth reminded me of my inability to stay too long in those sorts of strategy games. Kengo: Legend of the 9 similarly reminded me that Japan makes some brutally unforgiving fighting games. Add to the list for the 360 Guncraft: Blocked and Loaded, Yie-Ar Kung Fu, Assault Heroes, Sega Superstars Tennis, A World of Keflings, Risk, and Worms, some of which were last minute downloads before the XBox 360 store closed. 

Over on the Playstation 3 I finally played Tokyo Jungle, a crazy animal survival game. On the PS5 I tried a little of Sekiro Shadows Die Twice and died a lot more than twice.

And as always, I walk around our apartment and stop by the Vectrexes for a quick game, or play an Atari VCS classic on my Atari Flashback Portable, or just see what's in my Odyssey 2 library.

Of course my wife still pushes me to play Mario Kart 8 on the Switch, even though the entire franchise has sucked since Double Dash on the Gamecube. She wants me to help her get 3 stars on all 150cc tracks, so we make a little progress on that here and there. Mario Party Superstars wore out its welcome this year in time for Mario Party Jamboree, which I'll be forced to play until I die thanks to its seemingly endless content.

My goals for 2025 inlcude more of the same - playing all sorts of games from the now forty-plus years of software acquisition. Acquiring classics and new games I want will continue. I really should start looking at Vectrex homebrews too. 

I need to make time for another eighties classic or two. I also plan to acquire an second Switch for the upstairs setup and squeeeze in a few more Switch games, For my portables, my Sony, and my Xbox consoles - I plan to keep building up their libraries as well and beating a few from each.

I also want to devote more time to this website and have already expanded it a little by adding a new section called Mutliplayer Hall of Fame. Be sure to check it out! As the world burns down around us all this year, and my dream of gaming retirement seems to be more of a fantasy than ever, the remaining time left becomes even more special.

Damn right I'm filling those remaining moments with fucking video games.