Summer Plans

It happens every few years, but my wife goes back home to visit her family and takes all my children with her, giving me free reign of the house and to play and do what I want.

In previous years I have ploughed through some games which require my attention more than a few hours a week, and this year will be no different. It will also give me ample opportunity to work on a few projects as well that I havent had the chance to explore.

My intention is to accumulate money in Paypal to spend on a guitar finally, but also explore some retro goodies before reselling them on eBay at a later date. I hope to try some old computers, such as BBC Model B and the Commodore 64 with Disk Drive. I might even push the boat out and go for some harder to find/rare consoles such as PC Engine or the Atari Jaguar.

I intend to get the spare Wii running Gamecube ISO backups, visit (time permitting) a Retro Gaming Market in London during July as well as visiting a few retro gaming shops in the area.

My Sony laptop that I have owned for over 7 years is getting near to death and I have decided to replace it with a cheap HP cloud laptop and a decent desktop PC.

Updates

I have been reorganising my consoles and gaming life a lot over the last 2 weeks or so, and gotten pretty much everything I want in the right place.

The loft has gone back to being home to orphans from the HDMI era, and I have (for now) kept back 4 retro consoles.

On the modern HDMI front, I have my Xbox 360 (aka Guitar Hero and Rock Band machine) all set up as well as the Xbox One. I haven't yet decided want I want to do with the unit yet, it is earning its keep as a Halo and Rare Reply machine only, as I have yet to see any exclusives worth my money. Also joining the set up is my softmodded Wii which I hope to have running GameCube ISOs very soon. I am also connecting my Raspberry Pi 2 as a retro-console emulation machine.

On the retro console front, I have kept the Playstation 2 as I really want it for Playstation 1 games. I am also (for now) holding onto the SNES, Nintendo 64 and also Sega Saturn.

I have already sold my Megadrive, and the Gamecube is waiting next. I also have my Dreamcast due to go as well, as I cant really find any games for it in the wild.

Soft Modded Wii to use GameCube ISOs

I have 2 Wiis at the moment, and one is proudly in the lounge and is softmodded to play Wii ISOs. I bought the 2nd Wii cheap because I wanted a 2nd unit just in case the original "broke" but when you look at the number of Wiis sold, it will become one of the easiest retro machines to find.

The 2nd unit therefore is going to become my GameCube ISO machine. The Wii already plays GameCube games perfectly well and has a 4 slots of GameCube controllers and 2 slots for memory cards, but I want to take it to the next level and have it play GameCube games directly from an external Hard Disk Drive.

Ive watched enough of Youtube now to give it a go, the problem is I dont have any spare external drives...so I will have to have a look online or see whats cheap in PC World.

Not Been Gaming Much

With my life's focus back on my wife and young family, I havent really been doing any gaming, or have I?

With my consoles relegated to the loft again with no television to play them on, and those few consoles which are occupying the bedroom and lounge being used as a Netflix device... I have turned my attention to an odd combination.

I have an 8Bitdo Bluetooth joypad connected to my Android phone. Running a SNES emulator I have been playing a ton of SNES games. Mostly Secret of Mana. The emulation isnt perfect, but for my purposes its perfectly adequate. Once I have completed this beauty, I will most likely go for a platformer or return to action RPG with Zelda.