My AV Famicom arrived Friday, much earlier than I had anticipated. Friday was also the beginning of a very cold down spike in the temperature so I was happy I actually checked my mail box that day & the blasted thing didn’t end up sitting in there for the entire weekend.
As I had mentioned before, I went with the AV Style Famicom as I knew I was going to be spending around the same amount for a moded Famicom so I could stream these Family Trainer Games and I am so glad that I did. The picture looks amazing and right out of the box I had no issues hooking anything up at all. I am also really glad I got the 3 extra games with this purchase as having more games to mull around with is always a good thing. Overall I am very happy with my purchase and I got down to playing around with my Twitch settings to see how I am going to make Family Trainer Streams a reality.
I really don’t care for the dismal cold weather with no snow like we have right now and usually around this time I fly out to sunny Tucson AZ to spend time with my friends there. This year is an exception and I have next to no solid plans for travel in the next few months. Part of me should have put a lot more thought into planning a proper getaway vacation but I’ve been far too stressed, sick and busy to do that. Maybe in the summer months, I’ll be able to get myself out of my community and checking out different places and relaxing. In the meantime, I’m stuck in the land of the cold and at least I am still able to find cool pick-ups like the 3 games I got this Saturday here at my local retro game shop. As I get around to playing these I’ll break down the reason why I wanted these games and my reviews as well as anything else that comes up when I am playing them.
I have a lot to say already about Fantasia, but I’ll leave that for when it happens.
GUTS, GUTS, GUTS!
Last year I remember Macaw played a PC98 game that really stood out to me as it had so many elements to it for an action adventure game. There were lots of kooky characters, silly situations, guts monsters and a really fun soundtrack that made you wish you could get it out of the emulator & in your playlist. A few months ago when I was going thru all my PC Engine games I stumbled across this Japanese game called “Energy” that looked and felt exactly like the game he played. I was surprised to see that it really was the same game only for reasons that escape me they just renamed it to “Energy” from “Ashe” for the PC Engine release. There was another game that he played that fell under the same pretences where the name changed for the PC Engine release that I was equally drawn to, but this one stood out to me as it had so many cool elements to it. I will plan a proper play thru of the Energy PC Engine but check out Macaw’s vod of his attempts of playing Ashe. He might go for deathless runs in the future and I hope he does as I find stuff like this interesting despite not being able to translate it.
Food
All this talk about GUTS can really work up an appetite. I don’t think I am a great cook, but I sure do like to cook and I love to entertain. A lot of my friends love making curry but I find a lot of them make curry from curry blocks or pre-made curry paste. I try not to do this as pre-packaged vacuumed sealed food is kinda gross and always make a huge production out of making curry from scratch. Try this out if your into food & tweet me your pictures as I’d love to see your attempts at making your own!
Break it on Down
I had the Family Trainer hooked up on Friday but decided to wait until Sunday to stream it as I was very busy with other projects over the weekend. Greg did stop by Saturday morning before I got busy, but he sounded really sick so we didn’t go on our intended nature walk and instead we sat inside where it was warm & I tested the Family Trainer so he could see what all the fuss was about.
I am SO HAPPY that I made this purchase. The colours are nicer on the Family Fitness Pad where on the Power Pad it’s a dull grey colour with red & blue dots for the foot buttons. The material on the Family Trainer Pad is much softer yet is really crinkly so it is louder than using a Power Pad. 
The Family Fitness Trainer feels as if there is more padding for each square foot button area on it making it easier to detect when in bare feet or in your socks. When you compare that with the design of the Power Pad which uses a flat surface with the circle foot buttons it doesn’t seem as precise & it all has to do with how your feet come into contact with the buttons.
Maybe Power pads did have this, but I’ve cut them open out of sheer curiosity and I found that most have this weak foam-like fabric as the only padding between you, the buttons and the floor. When you run for over 45 minutes playing Street Cop, your damn feet HURT because of your constant footsie-button mashing.
As someone who owned several Power Pads in her collecting years, pulled them apart and put them back together again I will say that Nintendo made some quality stuff to still hold up by today’s standards but the Family Fitness Trainer appears to be better manufactured and operational for a game pad that came out of the 80’s.
Every Power Pad I have picked up over the years seems to be opening slightly on one of its ends or often I feel as if I need to stomp the hell out of the thing because the pad wont register my inputs. The Family Fitness Pad was picking up inputs from my cheeky cats rolling on it so if I get a few bottles of wine this summer I’ll do “Cats play Family Fitness Pad Games” if anyone wants to watch that nonsense.
In the meantime, check out the first ever twitch stream of a Family Fitness Trainer. Ever. You’re welcome.
Congrats on the Famicom Ann. There’s a lot of cool games that never made it to the NES and the carts are so colourful – worth looking deep into them. And much, much better than fiddling with any kind of adapters.
My condolences on Rainbow Island. But I guess it deserves a home too ;p