Party and Tournament Results

We held a party and Smash tournament on Saturday to celebrate our fifth anniversary of being open, as well as to highlight International Games Day @ Your Library. Both were well-attended, and the cupcakes predictably disappeared pretty quickly.

As promised, we'll post the winners of the Smash tournament here for official bragging rights. Congratulations to our top five winners, who won Amazon gift cards, and thanks to everyone who attended!

The Passing of a Video Game Visionary

Today we were saddened to learn that former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi had passed away at the age of 85.

Working at Nintendo since 1949, he led the company during their most critical times - reinventing themselves as an electronics entertainment business during a time when such things were first being developed. He spearheaded the development of the NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, GameBoy, and GameCube, and his name is widely recognized throughout the history of video games.

Coverage of his passing:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24160150
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/430109/former-nintendo-president-hiroshi-yamauchi-passes-away-at-85/

Motion Gaming Tournament at the CVGA!

Please mark your calendars for March 25th-April 6th and join us as we highlight some of the motion-related consoles and games available at the CVGA by hosting a Motion Gaming Tournament. This tournament will include the following games:

• Sports Champions: Gladiator Duel for the PlayStation 3 Move
• Fruit Ninja Kinect for the Xbox 360 Kinect
• Antigrav for the PlayStation 2 Eyetoy
• Excite Bots for the Wii
• Dance Dance Revolution X for the PlayStation 2 Dance Pad

The event will be a silent tournament that takes place over the course of two weeks (March 25th-April 6th). Participants can come in anytime the archive is open during these two weeks and play the games whenever their schedules allow. Prizes (Amazon gift cards!) will be awarded after points are tallied up at the end.

Anyone affiliated with the university (excluding tournament officials) may can sign up by providing a
valid UMICH ID, name, uniqname and email, and may sign up in person at the archive desk,
via email at video.games@umich.edu, or by phone at 763-6533.

See the full tournament rules here.

Game Week Day 3: Retro Games

Wednesday is highlighting Retro Games, or games from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. The CVGA has a bunch of retro consoles to choose from, including the original Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo, the Sega Genesis, Atari and even an upright Arcade Legends game that has over a hundred arcade games. The CVGA has an assortment of awesome games for each of these systems. Below is just a sampling of what’s being stored in the archive, just waiting for you to come try them out:

Super Mario World (SNES):  Released in 1991, Mario World is the fourth game in the Super Mario series, but arguably the most fun. The plot of the game is for Mario and his brother Luigi, our intrepid Italian brother plumbers are on vacation in Dinosaur Island.  Bowser's kids are really fun mid-bosses. All the things you love about Mario remains in this game, but now you get to ride Yoshi!

Wario's Woods (SNES): Wario's Woods is a falling-block puzzle game.  Wario has infiltrated the Mushroom Kingdom and is filling the area with monsters and it's up to Toad to get rid of those monsters by blowing them up after they fall from the sky using bombs that match the monster's color. There are two ways to play this game. There is the standard one-player version, where the player races against the clock to clear the screen of monsters. The other way to play is to race against another player. The first to clear their screen wins.

Castlevania (NES): Even in the 1980s people loved vampire-themed media! Released in 1986, the popular game, Castlevania sets you up to play as Simon Belmont, the most recent in a long family line of vampire-hunters. Your mission: hunt vampires, obviously! The game is pretty basic, you go through each level and kill vampires and other assorted monsters with your magic whip. The best part is that  the final boss is Count Dracula himself. Big parts of this game are based on Bram Stoker's Dracula, so if you know the book, it adds something extra to the gameplay.

Legend of Zelda (NES): Originally released in the United States in 1988, this game remains popular for a reason. The action is really great, Link is a likeable character and the adventures are challenging. It is a simpler game than its sequels, but still stands the test of time. It's worth a few hours to see where the Legend of Zelda began. 

Bubble Bobble (Arcade Legends): One of many MANY games in this upright arcade system, Bubble bobble is deceptively simple. The dragons, Bub and Bob move along different platforms and try to burst the enemy’s bubbles with bubbles of their own. This can be either a one or two player game, so bring your friends! You will lose track of time so quickly playing this game!

BurgerTime (Arcade Legends): Another simply awesome game! The main character is Chef Pepper, and he’s making burgers. The player moved Pepper around so he can assemble burgers from the available ingredients. That’s not all! Chef Pepper must also fight Mr. Hotdog, Mr. Pickle and Mr. Egg by dropping ingredients on them. 

 

Pigs in Space (Atari): Released in 1983, this game is quite old, but offers a nostalgic look at both classic Atari 2600 games, and a very funny sketch from the old Muppet Show, also called, "Pigs in Space". Much like the format of the Muppet Show, Pigs in Space the game parodies popular Atari games and adds the Muppet flair. This game offers a lot of simple nostalgic fun and charming Muppet characters. 

Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis): This was originally released in 1991.  Sonic is   trying to prevent Dr. Robotnik (aka Dr. Eggman for those who play the Japanese version) from stealing chaos emeralds. You run through levels to collect golden rings and to catch up with Robotnik. Every so often, Sonic must battle Robotnik to move on to the next level. This is a beautiful game filled with bright colors and challenging gameplay. The CVGA has the Genesis game on the shelves, and is waiting to be played!

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (PC): The CVGA has retro computer games as well. This game has had several re-releases through the 1980s and mid 1990s, and the archive has several of these games loaded on their PCs. Carmen Sandiego, a professional, and very stylish thief steals something from a particular country. You are an elite detective trying to catch Carmen. You gain clues by talking to local characters in each country. You must sort through these clues and catch up with Carmen before she can escape.  The game is aimed at kids trying to learn geography, but it is also a whole lot of fun. You lose yourself in the adventure and cheesy jokes!

*Fun Fact! Atari has put a bunch of their old games on their site (www.atari.com) that you can play for free! Now you have the choice of coming to the archive to play, or stay at home!*

*all images came from the game’s Wikipedia site.

All We Needed was One Last Cable

Just got the final connection cable we needed to have full-on 4 player Game Boy Advance on GameCube mayhem! So gather your friends and bring them by to play some Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles or Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventures!

Legend of Zelda: Celebrating an Anniversary

In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Legend of Zelda series, our colleague Joe Dresch has put together an informative display for the archive that celebrates its legacy.

Each smaller section shares a piece of the Legend of Zelda story:

3DS

We now have the new Nintendo 3DS available in the archive, along with two games: Rayman 3D & Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D. (More games to come, of course.)

If you've been wondering how Nintendo can offer a true 3D experience without the need for special glasses, you can now see for yourself!

The Adventure of Links: November 16, 2010

A semi-regular round-up of interesting video game links from around the Interwebs:

Wired Science: "How Wii and Kinect Hack Into Your Emotions"

Nintendo’s Wii game console may owe some of its extraordinary success to emotions that are triggered by specific movements: It might essentially be using your body to hack into your brain.

New York Times Sports: "Image Rights vs. Free Speech in Video Game Suit"

A former college football player’s suit against Electronic Arts could decide when the right to control one’s image trumps the rights of others to use it.

Bloomberg Businessweek: "Video Games Not Harmful to Most Teens: Study"

Most teens who play video games don't fall into unhealthy behaviors, but an "addicted" minority may be more likely to smoke, use drugs, fight or become depressed, a new Yale University study suggests.  

NES Turns 25 Today

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the introduction of Nintendo's NES system in the United States. Although this went on to be one of the best-selling, most popular, and most influential home consoles ever, its roots in the U.S. were far more humble than many might realize.

Happy 121st Birthday Nintendo!

On this day back in 1889 Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo in order to manufacture playing cards.

121 years later, it has all led to this:

Resurrecting Cartridges

I spent the morning resurrecting old non-working SNES cartdiges that had been donated to the archive. This involved opening them up, applying polish & fixer to the contacts, then re-sealing. I went six-for-six in getting the old cartridges working again!

Here's the inside of the SNES game Zombies Ate My Neighbors:




Buoyed by my success, I went back this afternoon and resurrected another seven NES cartridges and eight Atari cartridges. That's twenty-one games in all; pretty good for a few hours' work!

Inside an NES

Yesterday I cracked open one of our Nintendo Entertainment Systems to replace the pin connector which had gone bad. I was successful, so now we have two working NESes (and also an NES clone).

While I was inside, I snapped a couple of pictures:

Nintendo Donations

Got a nice box of donations this morning, full of Nintendo stuff:

Nintendo 64, with controllers & games:


Nintendo Game Boy & Game Boy Color with games:

More Donation Photos

Here are a few more pictures of items we've had donated to the game archive over the past few weeks:

Nintendo Entertainment System:


SEGA Genesis:


SEGA Master System:


SEGA Games:


TRS-80 Color Computer Game Cartridges: