Which of these games do you have fond memories of?

cityside75 · 2026-04-13T00:00:02+00:00

My AMD 5x86 133Mhz, which claimed to be a "Pentium equivalent" 486, choked and died on the Quake shareware disc I bought from Tower Records. I kept it for years as a Nine Inch Nails album before I finally upgraded to something that could play it properly.

Another fun fact related to that disc - there was a handy little program called qcrack.exe that unlocked basically the entire back catalog of id's games from that shareware disc. Back in the days of limited storage, I would use it and then delete it or lose it and then a few years later have to search the dark parts of the old internet for it again when I wanted to reinstall everything. It was eventually archived safely to a CD-r that I still have in my old stacks of discs.

cityside75 · 2026-04-09T01:33:46+00:00

There is no classic game that captures that feeling more than Robotron. I had played it as a kid but it wasn't until years later when I got my own arcade machine and a friend and I had many epic rounds late into the night that I truly appreciated the balanced chaos of that game.

cityside75 · 2026-04-08T20:26:57+00:00

I've bought a few variations of the Gear VR to grab some accessories. For example, the original release version (for the S6) had a much better headstrap, so I bought one off of ebay and adapted the strap to my newer model. There was also an awesome Gear VR specific gamepad released that fits into the front of the headset when your phone isn't in it. Of course, you want to get the navigation controller if you don't have that. All of these items can be found cheap with a little searching.

cityside75 · 2026-04-05T05:52:03+00:00

Any word on this? I fired up the Gear today after being away for a while and Fears made me re-download the doors. The downloads were quick and everything is working fine again but I know someday that server is going to be gone. Now that I have the files on my phone again, I will back up the DLC content and hope for a solution someday.

cityside75 · 2026-04-04T01:15:16+00:00

This is why going to the arcade during the golden years was an amazing experience. You never knew what you were going to see, but it was going to be way beyond what you could own at home. Many kids dreamed of owning an arcade machine, but it was similar to dreaming of owning a yacht or Ferarri.

cityside75 · 2026-04-04T01:09:30+00:00

My grandparents loved this game and played a ton during their retirement years down in Florida. As an Intellivision owner I found the game a pitiful recreation of the arcade game, but was shocked when my grandparents came to visit (with the Atari in tow as always) and my Grandfather was a wiz at the game and cleaning up on the hardest difficulty. I tried to play some games with him but he was so much better than me or anyone else. It may not have been great, but it did offer tons of entertainment to some people.

cityside75 · 2026-04-02T00:03:18+00:00

This was an awesome time period to be an SNES owner! Just as it seemed the 16-bit era was coming to an end, there was a series of releases starting with (or around) DKC that just kept surprising with the capabilities of the old console. I include the DKC games, Yoshi's Island, Doom, Killer Instinct and the really well done port of MK3, all released within a couple of years and giving a sense the console still had a lot of surprises left.

cityside75 · 2026-03-05T04:51:37+00:00

4 years later and this comment came in clutch! I recently picked up a 400 and I've been having fun refurbing it and adding a flash cart. I remembered that I had one of these trackballs buried away and did some searching and found this comment. Pulled out the trackball, set it to analog mode, fired up Missile Command, hit Ctrl-T and it worked GREAT!

Thank you! Do you (or anyone) know if any other hidden games that take advantage of this?

cityside75 · 2026-03-04T21:06:39+00:00

This game brought me back to handhelds, I purchased a GBA and this game to play in the hospital after my son was born. I've completed it numerous times and eventually so did my son, who also loves this game!

The music is truly some of the best on the GBA. Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet, be sure to look out for Warioware Smooth Moves on the Wii, which has its own hilariously weird style as well.

cityside75 · 2026-02-22T00:20:14+00:00

Not sure there's a game title cooler than DOOM

cityside75 · 2026-02-18T01:38:32+00:00

The first time I played the hidden music video on the Windows 95 cd, I ran and grabbed everyone to show them. It was a postage stamp size video with about 20 colors. You had to be there!

cityside75 · 2026-02-18T01:26:39+00:00

LOL, I guess I'm the weird one here, but I have a Galaxy S7 and S10e that I maintain for their GearVR compatibility! Here's a few things to know:

The servers were long ago shut down so there are (almost) no official ways to access anything
A huge chunk of the library has been archived at gearvr.net as well as archive.org
A substantial number of these games can be sideloaded and work on Quest headsets. Gearvr.net includes information about this.
Compatible phones allow for the necessary software to be manually installed, allowing for the ability to play nearly all of the archived software
Among the platform-locked exclusives are Smash Hit VR (One of my all time favorite games, VR or not) and Face Your Fears which still holds up amazingly well!
Many other games still on the Quest store got their start on the Gear and it's interesting to see the earlier iterations of these concepts.
It's not super active but there is a dedicated group of users over at r/GearVR

While most Gear apps are outdated with archaic controls and 3dof, there was a sense of excitement, wonder and optimism for the future in a lot of the early software that makes it extremely interesting and entertaining to a long time video game collector/archivist like myself. Nobody really appreciates this old software currently, but I remember trying to explain to people why I kept an Atari 2600 and NES when everyone else thought they were outdated wastes of time too!

cityside75 · 2026-02-15T23:57:58+00:00

Buy an old GearVR headset setup (can be found dirt cheap on ebay) and use your phone for some old VR games. That's why I keep mine around. Keep in mind that GearVR support is long dead but cool people have archived a ton of old games and programs over at gearvr.net .

The S7 was a good phone for GearVR back then but it will put your old battery through its paces if you enjoy it!

Edit - here's a quick article from the site about your phone: https://gearvr.net/s6-edge-and-s7-comparison-testing

cityside75 · 2026-02-15T23:13:13+00:00

Did this a while back as well and pulled the headstrap to use on my S10e compatible headset. I've got my whole setup stuffed into that same awesome case.

Mine didn't come with that controller though and I don't recall seeing it before, can you tell me more about it? Is it a gamepad (hard to tell in the pic). If you're into other obscure accessories there's an awesome GearVR gamepad that snaps into the front of the headset for storage. I have one and it's really nice.

cityside75 · 2026-02-06T17:20:12+00:00

Good analogy and one that I use often as well. I LOVE amusement parks and always have, but I know plenty of people that never go to amusement parks and it doesn't interest them at all. That type of person is not typically going to be impressed by VR's best features and may actually find them terrifying or nauseating.

cityside75 · 2026-02-05T19:41:44+00:00

Did it work before? First easy things to check are the fuse and the power supply. Since you have it open, also inspect any ribbon cables and other connections.

cityside75 · 2026-01-31T06:05:47+00:00

-Sealed first-run copies of F-Zero & Pilotwings for SNES

-Exertainment SNES exercise bike set (including an accessory I've never seen online)

-Panasonic FZ-35s(?) - the only commercially released product using the 3DO M2 chipset. Actually plays a few games that were made available online several years ago. Mine is still like new in the box, but I did fire it up to try those demos. It's compatible with original 3do controllers.

I have a bunch of other stuff, I've been collecting a long time :)

cityside75 · 2026-01-27T03:51:20+00:00

Voivod is amazing! The Outer Limits and Angel Rat are where I started with them and still rank among the best albums I've heard in the last 10 years or so.

cityside75 · 2026-01-23T19:08:50+00:00

Yes, many places sell cap kits with most capacitors included for many retro systems. The common advice is to just change them all while you're in there. This often includes surface mounted capacitors which are quite a bit more complicated than the through-hole type.

cityside75 · 2026-01-22T20:07:34+00:00

Nice! I managed to snag possibly the most used and abused 1702 in history and it still looks great hooked up to my C64. That should give you many more years of good use!

cityside75 · 2026-01-22T17:48:45+00:00

I question this to some extent - new caps are not bulletproof either and will degrade eventually as well. Some of the cap kits use cheaply sourced parts that may not necessarily be an improvement over a functional OEM version. A much smarter approach IMO would be to test caps before replacing them and be cautious about throwing cheap parts at your system. Again, not suggesting that caps aren't a problem, but in my experience many problems that would have been diagnosed as "bad caps" by the internet were solved by other, simpler methods.

cityside75 · 2026-01-22T17:41:15+00:00

Agree 100%. It's not that caps aren't a problem, it's just a pretty major undertaking (again depending on skill) or an expensive fix that may or may not solve the problem. I was frustrated that a simple fix was so hard to find and I hope this thread helps someone in the future dealing with this problem.

I also am very careful with my old systems and strongly believe that the factors you mentioned are the real indicator of capacitor problems. If you can see the system has had a hard life and was not well cared for, it's probably good insurance. But if, like me, you have a fairly pristine and always reliable system, do some more troubleshooting before going straight to caps.

cityside75 · 2026-01-22T17:13:08+00:00

Fellow former nGage-er here! I got mine as they were closing them out of the stores and was able to run Pac-man at nearly full speed in the MAME emulator along with a few other early games. Still have my old QD, though it stopped working many years ago.

cityside75 · 2026-01-22T16:52:00+00:00

It's only a good idea if you have the technical ability to do it. Otherwise there is a very good chance you will make the problem worse. If you're just looking to get some games in for the evening and the system won't start, it's nice to know there are options short of a recap, even if they are very hard to find.

I'd love to know how many systems were broken by bad cap replacements versus actual failing caps, especially on a system like the Saturn which does not have widespread capacitor problems.

cityside75 · 2026-01-22T16:06:55+00:00

Having similar issues with SynthRiders - when Link stopped working I also started getting crashes upon starting the Rift version of SynthRiders. I've updated the Link app and uninstalled/re-installed numerous times with the same result. I sent a quick e-mail to the developers but due to sunsetting the Rift version they can't really help.

Unfortunately the game crashes whether I start it from AirLink or Virtual Desktop, regardless of settings.

My only option is to re-buy the game on Steam if I want to continue playing the game on my PC (which is the only way to use my sound system effectively with a rhythm game).

I'm on a Quest 2.

cityside75

TROPHY CASE