Might not be an appropriate time to post this but......
I've picked up a few games over the past few weeks, incidentally Phantasy Star 2 is actually my 1000th physical, pre 7th Generation game. So thats quite a personal milestone I suppose.
Firstly though, I've still been playing Castlevania: The New Generation getting a lot better and can progress a good way into the game until I start to struggle - although I've made a huge mistake.
The majority of Mega Drive(lets call it that) carts actually have a selection of up to three regional ROM's on their board.
It's the region of the console that will then read the corresponding version of the ROM on the cart.
So effectively, these carts are multi-region, you might just have to get clever with the cart shapes fitting your console.
My MK1 Mega Drive I've had modded to be able to switch what region the console reads carts in EU(PAL), US(NTSC) or JP(NTSC-JP).
This then allows you to run most Mega Drive games, borderless and at the correct speed.
But not for all games, sadly.
Late release games and some SEGA games that have been optimised for PAL regions(Streets of Rage 2) won't boot and will show a region lock screen.
Castlevania being a later run game and a KONAMI release (all my KONAMI games react the same) is region locked, meaning - I can only play it in its regions issue, PAL.
I was cool with this and was enjoying the game massively until I played a NTSC ROM the other week.
The extra gore and Bloodlines theme was cool, as was the difficulty too actually but overall the extra 17-18% speed was killer. It made the game feel so much quicker than the low figures my suggest. It just felt smoother and more fluid - it's killed a large chunk of enthusiasm for my version.
So I've been temped by the fruits of another.
Bubsy is well Bubsy and Phantasy Star 2 is a classic. It still looks really cool and once I get past the horrendous UI for battles I'm sure I can put some time into this. Both of these are complete but sadly the 110 page hint book is missing but all 6MEG's of the 1989 cart are there.
I picked this up as it was fiver, complete and probably one of the better Master System examples you'll see. I've never played it either so will be cool to try it out via my convertor.
Right, Star-Trek is mental, don't have any idea of how to play it, so it loads into some really basic, awful, flight simulator. So I may have to look this one up and see what its all about.
Micky Mouse however, is dope. It reminds me a lot of the Mario vs Donkey Kong on the same platform. It's a puzzle sort of game that requires you searching a castle for keys to move around the floors. It's neat, really neat. Nice little find this both GameBoy games are both sadly cart only. I even had to dip into my spare cases to give them a home.
Then, theres these tidy things. My Virtual, while it sits proudly on my desk in my office, it's a terrible console to use, it literary gives instant headaches. You really have to use it to see what I mean but it's nasty. That said some of the games are really good. I'm hoping to convince a contact of mine to attempt the RGB out mod for the Virtual Boy, so I can plug it into my PVM and use it that way.
In the mean time I won these on eBay for a really cheap price, all complete, all good condition.
I've also got into the habit of cleaning each new cart I receive so that I'm not passing anything nasty into any of consoles.
I use this, Isopropyl Alcohol, cotton buds and fibre-glass pen to clean off any oils, dirt or grime.
I've used this on many a problem cart and more often than not, as long as non of the contacts are badly damaged physically, they end up booting first time and working perfectly afterwards.
Splatterhouse 2 would often not load, crash or just generally not be reliable.
Cleaned, worked instantly afterwards.
Handy stuff to have about it seems.