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The PolyMega CD games are kinda confusing…

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I review the 8 PolyMega CD game collections including Asteroids, Tiger-Heli, Bad Dudes, Breakers, Heavy Barrel & more. They are cool…but also… kinda confusing. INFO: https://polymega.com

What is the Polymega? — the game console that rolled up to the retro gaming party like, “Hey guys, I brought everything.”

Imagine if a Swiss Army knife, a vintage game collector, and a mad scientist all teamed up to build a console. That’s the Polymega. It looks like a sleek piece of AV equipment from a 2001 sci-fi movie, but inside? It’s harboring dreams of becoming the Peacekeeper of Console Wars.

You know how every retro gamer has a stack of dusty consoles, an HDMI spaghetti nightmare, and a shrine to RF switches and blown capacitors? The Polymega comes in and says, “Bro, chill. I got this.” It plays NES, SNES, Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, Sega CD, and PlayStation 1 games — all with one unified interface. It’s like a universal remote for your childhood.

And let’s talk about its modular design. You want to play NES games? Snap on the NES module. You want to play SNES games? Click-click, new module. It’s like Mr. Potato Head but for gaming, and somehow way more dignified.

The Polymega’s big flex is its ability to rip your discs and cartridges into a digital library. So it’s basically saying, “I’m not just a console. I’m an archivist.” It’s got the energy of a hip librarian who moonlights as a speedrunner.

But of course, there’s drama. The thing took forever to actually exist. It was like Bigfoot for retro gamers — blurry pictures, bold claims, and a small but passionate group of believers on Reddit swearing it was real. And then, years later, BAM — it shows up like Gandalf the White: late, upgraded, and somehow still cool.

In summary: the Polymega is a futuristic nostalgia machine that promises to rescue your old games from the attic and give them a new life — as long as you’re okay waiting for it to actually ship.

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Gaming Off the Grid are Back with a Pick Ups Vid!!!!

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Collecting physical video games is like being a modern-day archaeologist, except instead of digging up ancient bones, you’re hunting for a slightly cracked copy of Final Fantasy VII with the original manual intact. There’s a unique thrill in scouring flea markets, thrift stores, and that one sketchy dude on Craigslist who insists his garage is “climate controlled.” You lovingly stack cartridges like Tetris blocks and alphabetize jewel cases with the kind of precision normally reserved for heart surgery. And nothing beats the heady rush of peeling off a $1.99 Goodwill sticker to reveal Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance underneath. It’s cardboard crack, and you’re hooked.

But let’s not pretend it’s all glory. Your home slowly morphs into a shrine to formats that time forgot—discs, carts, mini-discs (looking at you, GameCube), and mysterious region-locked plastic rectangles. Your friends may not understand why you needed five different versions of Resident Evil 4, but you do: the PAL edition has a slightly different font and that, my friend, is worth celebrating. You tell yourself you’re preserving history, even as your partner gently asks if the Sega Saturn collection has to live in the kitchen. It does. Because in the kingdom of game collectors, shelf space is sacred, dusting is optional, and joy smells faintly of old instruction manuals and 90s plastic.

Featured, System Reviews, Metal Jesus Likes

Amstrad GX4000 – Review & Overview

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Ah, the Amstrad GX4000 — the gaming console equivalent of bringing a water pistol to a laser tag fight. Released in 1990, just as Nintendo and Sega were busy high-fiving their way into history, Amstrad strutted into the scene with all the confidence of a dad at a rave. Clad in a futuristic white plastic shell that looked like a prop from Knight Rider’s deleted scenes, it promised to bring 8-bit magic to your living room — assuming, of course, you could find one of the ten games that actually worked on it. With a controller that felt like it was designed by someone who had only heard of video games, the GX4000 was less “console of the future” and more “forgotten VCR that someone put buttons on.”

Technically, it wasn’t terrible—it could do a decent side-scroller if you squinted and used your imagination. But in a world where Sonic was doing loops and Mario was breaking bricks with his head, the GX4000 was mostly known for porting games from Amstrad’s own CPC computers. Translation: your console games looked suspiciously like something your uncle was programming in BASIC in 1986. Still, there’s a kind of endearing charm to its plucky little heart. Like a Yorkshire Terrier barking at a T-Rex, it had no idea it was doomed — and bless it, it never stopped trying.

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PSVR2 Physical Game Collection (PlayStation 5)

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😎 PlayStation VR2: Like Shoving a Jet Engine of Immersion Onto Your Eyeballs

1. OLED Screens So Crisp You Can Taste the Pixels
Sony was like, “Let’s take two tiny TVs, make them 4K, and put them millimeters from your retinas. You’re welcome.” It’s so sharp you’ll try to clean smudges off virtual glass.

2. Eye Tracking: It Watches You Watching It Watching You
Yes, it follows your gaze like a clingy Roomba. Want to aim with your eyes? PSVR2 says: “You lazy? Got you.” Finally, your eyeballs are part of the control scheme. Next stop: blinking to reload.

3. Haptic Feedback in the Headset: Because Your Skull Deserves Rumbling Too
Remember when controllers started buzzing? Now your forehead does. Take a hit in-game and your headset vibrates like it’s saying, “Hey, maybe don’t walk into the dragon next time.”

4. Sense Controllers: Finger Fondling, Upgraded
These bad boys are like if Play-Doh got a PhD in ergonomics. Adaptive triggers, haptics, motion tracking—your thumbs have never felt so powerful and so judged at the same time.

5. Tethered but Not Tacky
Yes, it’s wired. But it’s one wire. ONE. We’re no longer in the spaghetti vortex of the PSVR1 days. Now it’s more “VR umbilical cord” than “VR S&M dungeon.”

6. Setup So Easy, It Feels Suspicious
Remember PSVR1’s setup nightmare that made you question your own IQ? Now, plug in the USB-C, pop it on, and boom—you’re immediately transported to a shiny future where robot dinosaurs want to eat you.

7. Priced Like a Small Appliance, Feels Like a Small Spaceship
Sure, it costs more than a PS5. But can your coffee machine let you throw fireballs while being chased by cyber-ninjas in 4K HDR? No? Then hush.

In short, PSVR2 is like a personal teleportation device that also occasionally reminds you that you live in a tiny apartment with too many fragile lamps. It’s thrilling, beautiful, occasionally motion-sickness-inducing, and a definite step toward living in The Matrix, but with fewer sunglasses.

Featured, Travel

State of retro game collecting 2025 Edition

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We travel to Phoenix Arizona for the massive Game On Expo to do some video game collecting. I share some of the rare and uncommon things for sale plus I give you an overview of the event itself. WATCH >> https://youtu.be/XtoQeiu6agQ

Retro game collecting in 2025 is a delightful blend of treasure hunting, mild financial irresponsibility, and explaining to your significant other why you definitely needed a third copy of EarthBound — “this one has the original sticker, babe!” Prices for cartridges have inflated like they’re NFTs with nostalgia, and suddenly everyone’s digging through attic boxes like pirates hoping to find a gold-plated Pokémon Yellow. It’s gotten to the point where garage sales are now stealth battlegrounds, with collectors speed-walking like Olympic athletes the moment a “Sega” logo is spotted from 40 feet away.

One day you find a mint-condition Chrono Trigger for $40 because someone’s grandma listed it as “Old Nintendo book,” and the next day that same game is priced higher than your car’s Blue Book value — and somehow, someone buys it. Forums and Facebook groups are full of people arguing over label variants like they’re art historians, and every collector’s dream is to be on YouTube holding a $5 thrift store find while saying “I couldn’t believe it, but there it was — a sealed Little Samson, just next to the VHS tapes!” It’s chaos, it’s passion, and it’s beautiful. Just… don’t check your credit card statement.

Featured, Music

Journey: Restoring Rock & Roll’s Rarest Arcade Game

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Ah yes, the Journey arcade game from 1983—proof that someone at Bally Midway stared into the heart of rock ‘n’ roll and said, “What if we turned Steve Perry into a pixelated superhero with a jetpack?” In this fever dream of corporate synergy and neon bravado, you control the actual members of Journey—each represented by hilariously realistic digitized faces slapped onto cartoon bodies—on a mission to recover their stolen instruments across five mini-games. It’s like Mega Man, if Mega Man’s enemies were groupies and his powers were “bass solo.”

Each band member gets their own personal level, from dodging barriers with a flying drum set to platforming on conveyor belts while trying not to look like a floating head on a stick figure’s body. Once all instruments are recovered, the game climaxes with a full-blown concert scene—complete with pixelated fans losing their minds while Journey rocks out. Oh, and it plays real samples of “Separate Ways” on 1980s arcade sound hardware, which sounds like a fax machine trying its best to sing. It’s baffling, bold, and beautiful—a perfect time capsule of when arcade cabinets, classic rock, and utter chaos collided in a haze of synth and denim.

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Derek’s 2 Year Journey to Solve the 30-Year Myth of Faceball 2000

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Faceball 2000 on the Game Boy is what happens when someone looks at the gritty rise of first-person shooters and says, “What if instead of guns and gore, we had floating smiley faces and pure confusion?” You play as HAPPYFACE, a yellow orb of emotionless optimism, wandering a maze that looks like a wireframe dentist’s office from a cyberpunk fever dream. Your goal? Blast other floating emoji-like enemies into oblivion before they do the same to you. It’s like DOOM, if DOOM was designed by someone who had only ever played Pong and once saw a sphere.

Somehow, this plucky little Game Boy cart managed to cram in a 3D first-person experience using approximately four pixels and the processing power of a microwave. Each enemy has a distinct face, ranging from “mildly annoyed” to “existentially over it,” and they glide silently through the maze like ghosts of MSN Messenger past. The cherry on top? The game supported up to 16-player multiplayer via link cable—because clearly the Game Boy was designed for LAN parties in 1991. In the end, Faceball 2000 isn’t just a game; it’s an experience—a surreal, minimalist art piece disguised as a shooter where every kill feels like you’ve just disappointed a sentient emoji.

Featured, Q & A

The Most SURPRISING Game We’ve Still NEVER Played? 😮

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The Spork Guy from Patreon asks: What would be considered the most surprising game you’ve still never played before?

John Linneman: https://www.youtube.com/@DigitalFoundry
Gemma: https://www.youtube.com/@TheGebs24
Gaming off the Grid: https://www.youtube.com/@GamingOffTheGrid
Rad Junk: https://www.youtube.com/@RadJunk
John Hancock: https://www.youtube.com/@johnhancockretro
Retro Maggie: https://www.youtube.com/@Gamermaggie
Game Sack: https://www.youtube.com/@GameSack

Featured, Metal Jesus Likes

Graphical tricks in classic video games – Your questions answered!

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Here’s a list of graphically impressive retro games—with a side of snark and nostalgia:

🎮 1. Donkey Kong Country (SNES, 1994)

“Rendered so hard, your SNES needed a juice box after.”
Rare flexed its silicon muscles with pre-rendered 3D sprites that looked like someone stuffed a Silicon Graphics workstation into a banana.

🕹 2. R-Type (Arcade, 1987)

“Scrolling left to right never looked so aggressively biomechanical.”
This game made you question whether Giger was moonlighting as a sprite artist. Also: lasers. So many lasers.

🦑 3. Ecco the Dolphin (Genesis, 1992)

“Because nothing says cutting-edge like an emotionally haunted dolphin.”
Wave effects, lighting, parallax scrolling—and existential dread? Ecco had it all.

🕯 4. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1, 1997)

“Come for the vampire hunting, stay for the unnecessarily fancy capes.”
2D never looked so lush. Every hallway looked like Dracula’s interior decorator went to town with a velvet fetish.

🚀 5. Star Fox (SNES, 1993)

“Polygons so sharp they could cut your lunchables.”
The FX chip said “screw pixels” and gave us wireframe dreams rendered in what felt like 4 FPS, but we loved every choppy second.

🏙 6. Shadow of the Beast (Amiga, 1989)

“The graphics were so good, nobody noticed the game was impossible.”
16 layers of parallax scrolling because someone clearly had something to prove.

🌈 7. Chrono Trigger (SNES, 1995)

“Time travel, techy wizardry, and sprites with more expression than most actors.”
Akira Toriyama’s art came to life like a pixelated anime fever dream, and the backgrounds were works of art.

👾 8. Metal Slug (Neo Geo, 1996)

“Beautifully animated chaos. It’s like Looney Tunes joined the army.”
Every explosion was lovingly hand-drawn by someone who really wanted you to enjoy blowing stuff up.

💀 9. Doom (PC, 1993)

“Yes, it ran on a potato. Yes, it still slapped.”
Those pseudo-3D corridors and pixelated demons were revolutionary. Also, 90s kids’ first intro to heavy metal and Hell.

👁️‍🗨️ 10. Out of This World / Another World (Amiga/SNES, 1991)

“When minimalist polygons punched you right in the feels.”
Rotoscoped animation and cinematic presentation that made you think, “Am I playing a game, or watching a French art film about loneliness?”

Want a ranking based on how hard they flexed their consoles? Or ones Claude might enjoy watching with you in a few years (minus the demon hordes)?