Do you remember having to blow into your NES cartridges to get them to work? Can you hum more than three tunes from Mario Bros? Did you ever try to get your parents to play your NES games? Then you will definitely appreciate the following stand-up comedy routine by Kyle Cease, courtesy of YouTube! Warning: Contains foul language!

New cartridge cases for the Commodore 64/128: It's always great to see initiatives to mold new cartridge houses so old cartridges - no matter how common - don't need to be cannibalized for new homebrew releasesThese guys make and distribute some of the most exciting new products for the classic Commodore computer lines. I'm a particular fan of the MMC64, which is an invaluable flash memory card adapter for the C-64/128. Here is their latest news, direct from the source:

30.05.2006: New C64 cartridge cases, special prices for clockport-hardware

www.ami.ga/jumpnews_e.htm

New C64 cartridge cases
Our cartridge cases for Retro Replay, MMC64 and other standard C64 cartridges enjoy great popularity, therefore we have made a new production run with a few improvements. The cases that we delivered previously were made out of the fairly soft plastic polystyrene.

Tripod: Did your wife or girlfriend send you this video?While I was away at C&W, I received a link to Tripod's Gamer Love Song. I thought it was absolutely hilarious, as I'm sure you will--particularly if you're a married gamer. If at first you don't "get it," just wait a minute or so. BTW, YouTube is an amazing resource with tons of gamer videos. I also recommend Pac-Man the Movie. I warn you, though--it's easy to get sucked into these and lose a few hours in what feels like a nanosecond.

I am posting here with a slight concern - it is about the content of the blogs posted by the staff.

Is this site simply going to become another "talk about the news" site? I am aware that articles are being written and that these take time, AND that the site is beta, but I would rather have conversations about occasional articles and some major news items than have the site just turn into "yet another news site" - there are plenty of others that do that..

One of the better things in Japan is that is has a lively arcade community. The layout of the arcades seems to be near identical, with "UFO Catcher" games on the first floor, more current 3-D fighters and gun games on the second floor, and retro games on the top floors (some arcades here are 5-6 stories, but the floorspace tends to be crammed).

Here are a few arcade games in Japan I have enjoyed:

PC Magazine has a great feature up about the worst tech products of all time. It's a hall of shame for some truly miserable products. While there's only one game on the list (Disney's Lion King CD-ROM), you'll no doubt chuckle (fondly?) as you remember the items on this list. IBM's PCJr clocked in at at #13 and Microsoft Bob made it all the way to lucky #7.

Super Mario Bros: Has Mario evolved in leaps and bounds?Game Daily is running a nice 6-page feature on the history of Nintendo's uber-famous Mario character. The article takes us through the various iterations of Mario, from the humble platforming days to sports, driving, and role-playing. However, I was a bit surprised that the author didn't mention the original Mario Bros game. True, it wasn't nearly as well-developed as Super Mario Bros. for the NES, but the original game did have some nice platforming action (I especially liked the two-step process required to blast the turtles) and established many of the gameplay elements of the later games. I had lots of fun with it on my Commodore 64.

Our friends at Old-Computers.com have updated their wonderful worldwide computer, videogame and Pong resource with the following:

• Emerson Arcadia 2001 software updated
• Leisure-Vision videogame system added
• Hanimex HMG 2650 videogame system added

Apple //c Cable Connection Photo from Brendan Robert's "Apple Game Server"Anyone who has read my past writings knows that I'm a big collector and a huge fan of playing original games (or code) on original hardware. There are countless solutions for various computer and videogame systems for doing this, and one of the systems that has become particularly robust in its offering of late is the Apple II-series of computers. Between compact flash adpaters, disk drive adapters and countless other often manual and complicated transfer methods, it looks like Brendan Robert has created one of the easiest and cheapest systems to date. While I highly recommend both the Apple II compact flash adapter (dreher.net/CFforAppleII/) and the SVD (www.thesvd.com/ - which is particularly good for multi-system collectors), Brendan's solution seems particularly elegant, though I have yet to try it for myself.