Ask any of us who grew up in the 1980s with a Nintendo Entertainment System controller in our hands and we'll all tell you the same thing: that controller is iconic.  Sure, it's been surpassed by the controllers that came after it (the Super NES controller made it immediately obsolete), but there's a certain special something about that solid rectangle with the red buttons that evokes all kinds of nostalgia.  Nintendo has sold its classic back catalog through download services on its modern consoles for fourteen years now dating back to the original Wii, but players have relied on the modern controllers that belong with those modern consoles to play those old NES games.  You can turn a Wii remote on its side to sort of approximate the NES controller and a 3DS has all of the necessary buttons to simulate the experience, but there's a magic ingredient in the authentic old NES controller that is somehow essential to the experience.  Now that Nintendo is releasing NES games for its Switch hardware, you might expect that the company would have you turn a Joy-con on its side and somehow play Super Mario Bros. 3 and The Legend of Zelda with a tiny little controller, but there's a far better option than that.  Nintendo sells real honest-to-goodness Nintendo Entertainment System controllers designed for the Switch, wireless communication and rechargeable battery included.  At $60 for a pair it seems steep, so when the package was on sale at half off over the holidays, I decided to take a chance and welcome nostalgia home.  I ordered a pack, charged 'em up, and my girlfriend and I set out to explore the two-player library of the Switch's NES library.

Capcom adapted their popular Mega Man games for the Nintendo Entertainment System into Game Boy counterparts that mashed up elements of the first four games in the series in unexpected ways allowing for, say, Cut Man and Heat Man to exist in the same game.  Want to shoot Fire Man's weapon at Quick Man?  Go for it!  Mega Man V, however, was an entirely new adventure with original elements, and after that the handheld series went on hiatus.  No Mega Man VI.  Certainly not a Mega Man VII.  And definitely not a Mega Man VIII... unless you count this bootleg knock-off version cobbled together from bits of Mega Man III for Game Boy and the real Mega Man 8 for the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn.  Check out this video of Rockman 8 for the Game Boy from Makon Soft and watch for oddities that imply the creators were either confused about Mega Man or just plain didn't care.  For instance, because Mega Man's portrait is traditionally in the center of the stage select screen, the creators assumed that he's an enemy Robot Master with a stage all to himself, so selecting that portrait brings up a Rock Man stage.  Here's the Bootleg Games wiki to fill us in:

The engine contains many glitches throughout. One serious glitch is that sometimes, after killing so many enemies all of the remaining enemies and moving platforms disappear, making the level impossible to complete. Another major glitch is found when battling the boss on Clown Man's stage, where the game will sometimes reset itself without warning. Rockman's health bar is bigger than normal and he can't collect any weapons in this game, nor does he have any extra weapons at the start. As a result, he only has the Mega Buster and the pause screen is blank, aside from showing his health bar. Charging up the Mega Buster is completely useless, as a charged shot does no damage. As there's no weapon energy, all of the items refill Rockman's health. The graphics are taken from the Rockman games and simplified. The music is poorly remade from Rockman 3 and 4. There is no ending, with the game going back to the robot master select screen after beating all of the bosses.

It's fun to point and laugh at pitiful attempts to con the audience like this, but just think what Capcom could have really accomplished with a Game Boy (Color, by that point in time) version of Mega Man 8.  I bet they could have created a game that maintained the spirit of the original game meshed with the classic NES/GB style.  We'll never know, but there is a fan-made demake of the PS1 game for PC that converts it into the traditional 8-bit style and structure that comes what I have to imagine is pretty close.

As we close in on our landmark 300th episode, this week Blake Grundman and I take an hour to tie up some loose ends still lingering from the holidays.  My girlfriend and I bought classic Nintendo Entertainment System controllers for the Switch and put them through their paces on a variety of NES games, and we're getting into Star Trek: Bridge Crew for the Sony PlayStation 4.  She's getting into Destiny 2, too.  I also have a lot to say about the surprisingly decent Sonic Forces and my amiibo obsession continues.  Finally, we turn our attention to Zen Studios and their work on the Williams pinball tables in Pinball FX3.  Fish Tales, Theater of Magic, Attack From Mars... what else could we want?   Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes and Google Play, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan, or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 

With the holiday season of 2019 becoming a hazy memory, Blake Grundman and I catch up on our December doings with a look at all of the games we played during our time off.  New games, backlog games, and everything in between is up for grabs in this seventy-five minutes of discussion of games such as Shovel Knight: King of Cards (and the new amiibo!), Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Borderlands 3: Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot, Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn, and much more.  We also take a sidequest diversion into a fun little retro game shop that I discovered while traveling over Christmas where I surprised my girlfriend with an in-box copy of her favorite NES game and Blake's new obsession with smart technology.  If you want to check out the amiibo mini-shelves I mentioned in this episode, check out this Amazon link.   Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes and Google Play, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan, or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 

We've just come out of a series of major twenty-fifth anniversaries for some major video game releases, so for this week's podcast we're turning the calendar back to late 1994 to remember the launches that would CHANGE EVERYTHING in the gaming world: Nintendo's Donkey Kong Country for the Super NES with its rendered visuals that would hold back the side of advancing consoles for another year, Sega's 32X add-on for the Sega Genesis that landed with a thud and began the company's protracted downfall, and Sony's entry into the business with the first model of PlayStation.  The 90s had firmly arrived that things would never be the same.  Join us as we remember what it was like to live through these turbulent times and reflect on how these three releases shaped the industry for years to come.   Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes and Google Play, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan, or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way.