I wasn’t a Kickstarter backer of the Ouya, because I thought an Andoird-powered gaming system sounded pretty dumb. It wasn’t until I started hearing about how it was pretty great for emulation that I started considering it. Then over the summer I got a $100 Amazon card and it was burning a hole in my pocket, so I ordered an Ouya. I’ve been meaning to write up a review for months, but I hadn’t used it much until the past couple weeks.

When I first got it, I loaded up a bunch of ROMs, from NES all the way up to Nintendo 64 and Playstation 1, onto a flash drive and dove into setting up emulators. Some are obviously just ports of Android apps and have very crappy UIs, but there are a few that are very nice and look great on a TV in your living room. Overall, they worked well, but N64 and PSX games were a lot more flakey.

I thought for $99 it wasn’t a bad little gadget to get if you wanted an easy (and couch-friendly) way to get ROMs on your TV. The made-for-Ouya games I tried were horrible, and so I wrote off that whole aspect of the console. Then last week I played Towerfall with a friend.

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Mac people usually expect two things when it comes to software: the it just works factor and beautiful interfaces. One genre of software that has never gotten much Mac love is video game emulators. Often, they have ancient UIs and are buggy as hell. Well, after years of work, OpenEmu 1.0 is finally available for download, and it’s great.

Much like the XBMC media center software I’m obsessed with, OpenEmu automatically scans your system for games and downloads the box art and information, and presents it all in an easy-to-use and gorgeous interface. There are a ton of options for controllers, and I’m hoping to get a Wii U Pro controller sometime soon to use. I’ve had an old 24″ iMac sitting in my desk for about a year not getting used, and I think I’m going to turn it into a dedicated emulation machine now.

I briefly got into the world of retro game collecting over the summer, but my shelves are too packed as it is, and the cost of old games and systems just seems silly when you can play ROMs instead. I think I realized that my favorite thing about buying old games was the packaging anyway. I’m perfectly fine emulating games, and I’m glad to have a good way to do it on my Macs now.

PS – Sorry for being MIA over Christmas. The combination of getting super busy with work and my grandpa dying kind of made me forget about the site for a while. I hope you all had a great holiday and I’m looking forward to the new year!

Note: There’s a contest in this post!

Six months ago I found out Capcom was releasing Ducktales Remastered and I got really pumped about it. I love Ducktales and I love Remastered versions of classic games. Fast forward a few months and I find out that Capcom created these amazing press kits to promote the game, and I was sad because I knew I’d never get one.

Then I found out that Capcom had a few Ducktales press kits left over, and they could be won be either singing the Ducktales theme song or creating some fan art. Now I was really pumped. I sing and play guitar a lot, and I play the Ducktales theme song constantly just because I love it. When I found out about this contest, I immediately threw on my Ducktales game shirt, sat down in front of my computer, and played the song. I should have used something other than my internal mic because the audio kind of sucks, but I was too excited and wanted to enter as quickly as possible.
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Note: This post isn’t meant as an insult to the developers of Robots Love Ice Cream, I’m just using the game as an example to get a discussion going on Kickstarter.

Today I was going about my boring daily routine and I got to the part where I dig through my dresser looking for a tshirt to wear. I pulled out my Robots Love Ice Cream shirt and suddenly I thought, “Hey, wasn’t this from a Kickstarter for an iPad game? Like two years ago?” I hopped on Kickstarter today to check, and sure enough it was. In fact, Robots Love Ice Cream was the third project I ever backed on Kickstarter, and it’s funding was completed un July of 2011. And the game still isn’t done.

This got me thinking hard about Kickstarter and how I see myself using it in the future. When I paid $60 to back this game, I never would have guessed it would be over two years before I’d be playing it. I’m sure it’s really hard to make a game like this and it takes a ton of time, but paying that much money for a game that you might not even like (and I’ve payed $59 less for games I haven’t liked) isn’t something I’ll be doing again any time soon, unfortunately.
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Well, now I feel old. On September 9th, 1999 the awesome and soon to be doomed Sega Dreamcast came out in the US. Back then I was in 8th grade and I saved up money from my crappy after school job to buy one. I have a funny history with the Dreamcast, and hearing about the anniversary got me thinking about it again.

Seeing Sonic Adventure on display at Toys R Us sold me on the Dreamcast, and even sold my parents enough to let me spend my money on it. The funny thing is though, living in a small town with only a Walmart to buy games and consoles, by the time I had my money saved they were all out of Sonic Adventure. I was distraught, but there was no way I was leaving the store without a game to play, so I blindly bought Power Stone. I had no idea what the game was and it was not the type of game I would normally buy, but I was desperate.

Luckily, I ended up loving that game. The kicker? To this day, I have still not played Sonic Adventure. I loved my Dreamcast, but for some reason I never got around to playing it’s flagship game. Some of my favorite games were Toy Commander, Crazy Taxi, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, some football game (I went through a brief sports phase in middle school), Shenmue, and of course Seaman.

I don’t remember how long I owned my first Dreamcast, but eventually I sold it or traded it in, probably for more video games. A few years later when I was in my first college attempt, I bought one used at a game store and enjoyed the hell out of it all over again. But, my history as a serial console-seller caught up with me and I got ride of it again. I don’t know what is wrong with me.

Now I want one again but I’m trying to resist. I’m planning on building a gaming PC instead of buying into the next gen consoles this generation, and I’m hoping I can emulate my favorite Dreamcast games at that point. It’s hard to resist jumping on ebay and buying a bunch o Dreamcast stuff again though.

Who else was a Dreamcast fan? Sound off with your favorite games or memories!