kbf_private_joker

You found a real gem! I am fortunate to have a wife that loves the old school games, but she isn't as hardcore. Of course, I don't consider myself as hardcore as most of you on the site either, so we make a good match in that department. I think of retro games as more of a fond memory that I will always cherish, but I just don't have the time like I used to. One of my favorite retro memories is loading up Super Mario 3 on my laptop and playing it with my wife (gf at the time) at a drive-in theater an hour before the movies started. She also wants a wii, but we don't have the $ for it right now, but that's a different story.

Was the game any good? For some reason when it came out, I wasn't interested.

Let me first congratulate you on getting engaged. I was married July 2008. Not sure if you are stressed yet, but the last 3 months before the wedding are crazy busy. You have a really cool fiancee to even mention that kinda cake. Mine would have had a fit if I had even mentioned it. I would imagine they are expensive though? Everything at our wedding was double what we anticipated so the cake was the last thing on my mind and I was glad we chose a simple one.

GamePro and EGM all are tied up! It's going to be a photo finish.

Nicely done. Congrats on the find.

Bummer about no Prince music. Some of his stuff is just fantastic. And he certainly knows how to handle the guitar so I can understand his disappointment with games like GH. Not sure why anyone would want to play pop music on GH. Maybe they should just come up with Pop Hero for stuff like that.

Glad to see you are interested in helping! Do us a favor and upload a few sample scans to this thread so we can give some advice on how to tweak for the best quality. Every scanner is different and some settings for one person might not be quite right for another.

I really need to get on the ball with sending out some GamePros to you then. Any idea how much it cost last time someone sent some out?

I know this is extreme, but I have most important things in 2 places at home and then I have a 1.5 TB USB drive at my parents' house. If your home ever burns to the ground, losing all data will definitely be upsetting. I used to back up things online using Mozy.com, but with crappy upload speeds and cheap HDD prices, what's the point anymore.

I'm not surprised. I know I haven't bought a game in a while, partly because of being busy working and partly because $50 is worth a lot more now than it used to be. I'm also actually going back and playing a lot of PC games I have but never got to fully experience because of the high requirements at the time.

I know this sounds crazy, but simply asking your internet provider to lower the monthly bill sometimes works. We were paying $46.95 for Time Warner cable internet. I have always been very happy with it and have never had problems with download speeds, even for BitTorrent or news groups. I had read about people calling the provider and asking for a discount, but didn't think it would work for me. One day when I was feeling bold, I searched around for the best deal that is offered for new subscribers and then called them. I thought I would get a discount of maybe $5/ month, but they ended up dropping the price to $32.95/month for 1 year. If you need inspiration for something like that, see this post on LifeHacker.com: http://lifehacker.com/5127638/reduce-your-...-just-by-asking

I agree 100%. 99% of shows on TV, OTA and cable, can be downloaded or watched for free using services such as Hulu. Plus, at least torrented shows, are commercial free and most nowadays are crisp 720p. I wouldn't have a TV at all if it wasn't for playing console games (and because my wife refuses to get rid of it...but don't tell her I said so).

If you really want to cut back, take a sack lunch to work and don't eat out for an entire month. I imagine most people could easily save $100-200/month doing that. Keep the high speed internet!!!!!!!!!! Trust me, having high speed internet is WAY more important that burgers. Plus, eating at home is healthier and usually tastes better, but I guess that depends on how good a cook your wife is

That sad thing is that they don't have the math skills to understand they are being raped by the credit card companies with loan shark rates of 20-30%. Paying the minimum balance means your basically paying for life. I have no idea how people with $30K on their credit card ever get out of that. Anyone with that much debt is really lacking something (not including people who used it for emergencies, like health, etc.) It's sad, but at the same time you eventually have to be responsible for yourself. It doesn't help when the state of CA isn't setting a good example. Out of all this mess, I hope it shows people that you HAVE to live within your means. I blame the leaders of our state for ASSUMING that the tax dollars will always increase every year. They spend like mad and kept hiring up new people up through the end of year. Now they have to shed jobs like crazy and everybody is crying about it. At least this is a time that the state can collect itself together and make some changes for the next few years.

Alright who's the wise guy that changed Fusoya's avatar to be a gay Peter Pan looking dude?!?! Let me be the first to congratulate him.

Only if you make > $250K a year. I might be more concerned if I made that much. As much as I don't like raising taxes on people, I find it hard to believe that most of this mess isn't their fault. Thank god for Amazon.com! I can buy all my non-necessities tax free. Just saved $35 in taxes buying a 32 GB Ipod Touch 2 Gen there.

China basically owns us and all our debt. I wonder if they are as nervous about this year as the rest of us.

I guess it all depends on several things. 1. rent (I guess in country states it might be as low as $400/month if you have a roommate) 2. how many miles a month you drive (I drive 600-700 miles a month ~ $50..more if you have a suv or truck) 3. food (probably could get by on $100 a month if frugal) 4. utilities 5. extras (internet, eating out, etc.) So it might be doable depending on the lifestyle and job situation. Living in CA, I pay $1130/month just on rent for a 1 bedroom! Whatever the case, it is fun to see what you would do with a million dollars

Man I would love to be able to get 5% nowadays. Only problem with your estimate is that there are years like this one where you would only get 2.5% at best. Also please enlighten me on how you are only spending $900 a month. I could learn a thing or two from you

Talk about an awesome Halloween costume!

Holy crap this looks like a gold mine of retro games. Thanks! There goes my evening tonight.

How good is the browser anyways? Can you navigate Myspace.com? Or is it more of a stripped-down browser, like the one on my cell phone (not an Iphone)? I can't see how this is a big concern. Also, aren't kids that play video games all day at home kinda introverted. I know I was. Are they really going to be contacting strangers over the DSi?

I guess the older I get, the less I like clutter. I'm the opposite and wish all my magazines were on my hard drive already. I am surprised I don't get more crap about that from my wife. I guess having it under the bed helps..haha. I'm the same with DVDs. I get no joy out of seeing them take up space on a shelf or rack. Plus, I can see the album art anytime on the internet. Also, if you rip the DVD at a certain bitrate, the quality is essentially lossless at about 1/4 of the size. However, I don't get cheap on the audio and always include the 5.1 dolby surround sound in the rip. The sad thing is that all the DVDs we own (probably 120 or so...which I know isn't that much) will be going the way of VHS in the next 10 years. The quality vs 720p or 1080p is crap once you get a 50 inch TV. I also can believe that in 5 years we'll be able to download 720p or 1080p movies from Amazon.com and store them on a hard drive, similar to Itunes. With hard drive space becoming dirt cheap, I'll probably have a 20TB system in 5 years. At least I'll be able to store all the retromags catalog Important thing about going digital is to always have 3 copies. 2 on separate hard drives at home and 1 copy somewhere in the internet cloud, whether it be S3, Mozy.com or Carbonite, etc.

I found it interesting that they make turntables with USB nowadays I was born to late to be into vinyl, so me it it's just a space waster. I don't even know where my original music cd cases are. Plus, all album art can be found on the internet. Once we have enough for a LCD tv, I hope to convince my wife to put away the DVDs in favor of having a media center with everything ripped onto it. Digital is the way to go. That is one reason I found this site so exciting 2 years ago. It's like I was subconsciously hoarding my gaming mags over the last decades just for this site.

I know nothing about vinyl, but does it degrade over time? That's one reason cassettes are crap. The more you play, the less sound you get.