Wonderful Weekend

ON LIKE DONKEY KONG: On Saturday and Sunday mornings we were at the Seattle Retro Gaming Expo at 9 a.m., getting our video game geek on.

It was held at the Deca motel in the University District. For us, the big draw to the show was the fact they'd advertised that EVERY SINGLE Nintendo Entertainment System game ever made would be available in the free play zone. Cool! CJ and Annabelle (getting some mileage out of their Mario and Princess Peach Halloween costumes) made a bee-line for the Virtual Boy. Released in 1995, it was "the first video game console capable of displaying 'true 3D graphics' out of the box" per Wikipedia.

CJ said the Virtual Boy made his eyes hurt. I think he was happy to make that sacrifice, though.

They both also availed themselves to access to the rarest and most valuable NES cartridge ever released"World Championships" game. With only 116 copies made, it goes for upwards of $15,000 at auction. It's a track and field game and really no great shakes as far as graphics or content. Its rarity is what makes it so noteworthy.

CONVERT: The game play area was great, but CJ was even more interested in the vendor zone. For a long time now, one of our goals has been to find a very old, rather rare, import Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game that has a converter inside it that makes it possible for you to play any Japanese Famicom game on US NES systems. There are a few games that were originally for the Japanese market that were rush marketed to the US which have converters inside the case so that the games will work on U.S. machines.

CJ has shown us videos about which games might have the converter embedded and Christian and I have committed this list to our hard drives. ;) There are several games which *might* have the converter inside, but if you can believe what you read on the Internet ALL copies of Stack Up have the converter. Christian found a copy of Stack Up at the show and we bought it.

Once home, we could all hardly wait to crack that case open ...

Once he opened the cartridge, we saw that we'd hit the motherlode (insert sound of a choir of angels singing here). See that black rectangle in the middle? That's the coveted converter!

Once he had that, CJ (with some help from Christian) was able to take that part and use it to make an accessory that allows CJ to play any Japanese Famicom game in a regular Nintendo Entertainment System console.

I am happy to report ...It worked!!!!! (You see it being played above in a nifty new console we picked up at the show that plays NES, SNES and Sega Genesis games). CJ was thrilled his converter worked and we were all very proud of him. :)

In other news, we also picked up another old school console at the show. CJ begged us to buy a Mattel Intellivison system. From 1979. Nearly a quarter century before he was born.
It's an interesting unit. Per Wikipedi, "A series of advertisements featuring George Plimpton was produced that mercilessly attacked the Atari 2600's lesser capabilities with side-by-side game comparisons." I actually remember those ads!

MEMORIAL MONDAY: Naturally, we talked about Memorial Day - its genesis and what it means to our country. We had tickets for the Mariners game and as luck would have it, as we entered Safeco Field, the Star Spangled Banner was being sung. We paused to listen and to think about those who made the supreme sacrifice for our freedoms.

Of course, I thought of the longtime voice of the Mariners today - Dave Niehaus, who got his broadcasting start with Armed Forces Radio.

It was a wonderful afternoon at the ballpark. The Mariners won (first time they've done that when we've been at the game in a couple of years) and as we were walking out of the stadium CJ turned to me and said, "Thanks for taking me to the Mariners game!"
I told him he was more than welcome. :)