Yesterware

The unit was purchased on Ebay for about $10.  The seller basically said he pulled it out of storage and it just didn't work.  Images in the listing showed both the LD and DVD trays ejected. When it arrived, as per usual, the packing job was not adequate to protect the unit from damage. The machine powered up but the tray would not eject. Disassembled the unit and found the tray was jammed by the yellow switch lever that switches the eject mode from LD to DVD.  It had evidently received a shock hard enough to push it up into the workings of the tray itself.  Carefully prying it loose allowed the tray to be manually ejected by finger-turning the pulley just under the left side of the tray at the front of the unit. The next issue I noticed was that the pickup had received a shock hard enough to move the left side up above its track so that the entire LD pickup was sitting at about a 30 degree angle.  Miraculously the motor holder was not damaged at all.  I re...

Why Laserdisc? Plenty of obsolete formats garner a following because of nostalgia (I can't fathom why else anyone would actually like 8-track cassettes), and a few of them remain popular long after the sun sets on their era because they remain superior in one way or another to the thing that replaced them. Laserdiscs kind of fit in both categories.  I didn't grow up with laserdiscs.  Heck, I only ever remember seeing a laserdisc player once when I was growing up.  But I sure knew what it was when I saw it. Dipping My Toe In the late 90's when DVD was on its meteoric rise as the replacement for both Laserdisc and the vastly more popular VHS, I dabbled a little with laserdiscs.  Being a 12 inch disc format just like vinyl records, the disc jackets featured a whole square foot of artwork.  They were just cool to look at.  So, like a lot of people, I bought a handful of laserdiscs before I even had a player to play them with. Some time in the late 90's, My wife...

Finally working again after 3 years of saying "OPEN" Updated March 2019 Fixed my VDB-100 today. These watches (the VDB-100 and VDB-1000) were, in my opinion the pinnacle of Casio's innovation in the 80's and 90's. This model in particular has a touch screen and dot-matrix display and is more sophisticated than just about anything they've released before or since (android watches don't count as innovation!).  It's a bit of a long story, so if you just want to know how to fix the "OPEN" message, then skip to the last picture in this article. About 3 years ago I changed the battery and when I reassembled the watch it perpetually had "OPEN" printed to the screen. When this happens none of the functions work and the touchscreen is unresponsive. The watch is on but effectively useless. VDB-100 rendered useless because it "senses" the back cover is still open. As popular as these old watches are, it amazes me there aren't be...

In the most recent issue of EGM a writer named Brandon Justice penned an article titled "Used and Abused" wherein he parroted this sentiment that has been floating around that used game sales are somehow harming the games industry. This argument has reared its ugly head in increasingly more video game media outlets, and it is both wrong and shameful, but because these writers have allowed their emotions to guide them they keep regurgitating what amounts to a marketing ploy by certain game publishers all the while thinking they are making a moral stand. I don't have permission to repost the article, but you can see it in issue 249 of EGM - second to last page. Dear EGM, In response to "Used and Abused" by Brandon Justice, Issue 249 No doubt Brandon's heart is in the right place, but this notion that gamers should feel guilt and "take some accountability" over what he dubs "the functional software piracy of used game sales" is not only...

I am a veteran of the console wars that raged through the late 80's and early 90's. At school the Nintendo and Sega fanboys would have such heated discussions that it would sometimes actually come to blows. I was a staunch defender of Mario and his ilk, and I could quote the NES and SNES specs by heart. The SNES color pallet blew the Genesis out of the water - who cares if the Genesis is fast if it's ugly...okay, I better change the subject. (Man, that's easy to slip back into!) So in the midst of the chaos came a relatively unknown. The Turbografx-16. Like a stranger from out of town come to upset the balance between the two dominant gangs, the Turbografx looked almost as good as the SNES and moved almost as fast as the Genesis. But perhaps the thing that most set it apart was its penchant for paradigm challenging. Two things in particular stuck out in my mind. Firstly the system was the first to market with a CD-ROM add on - if it had not been so prohibitivel...

Let me start by saying that I really really wanted this to be a good movie. I was really looking forward to the amp up that Michael Bay had been promising on his website. When the novelization came out in May I had it read the day after it was released. These novelizations almost always have minor differences from the finished movie (presumably because they were based on an early version of the script). While reading the novelization, I began to worry a little, but I kept that mostly to myself. I had no desire to spoil anything, and the text leaves a lot for visual interpretation. I went to the midnight showing in IMAX hoping for the best, and went home wishing I had caught a matinee at a regular theater the next day instead. It wasn't that the movie was particularly bad, it just wasn't the movie that I stood in line for 2 hours to see. Guilty of the same crimes as the Matrix sequels, this one will probably go down as a chapter best forgotten in the minds of most hardcor...

I kicked around the idea of getting Street Fighter IV at release or waiting until I could pick it up used. Anymore I don't buy stuff new unless there's an incentive like pre-order bonuses or truly limited edition packages. Initially I had decided against getting Street Fighter IV at launch, but had a last minute change of heart. I wanted to get the PS3 version because the bonuses were cooler than the 360 version. Normally I place pre-orders months in advance, but this time it was about a week ahead of time that I finally decided to get the game. When I tried to go through Gamestop to place my pre-order they were sold out of the collector's edition of the PS3 version. No problem, I thought, I would just have to go somewhere else. I went to Wal*Mart's website and they had it listed, no problem. "Expected to ship on February 17th." So I signed in and placed my order. According to the site I was supposed to expect it to arrive on the 25th. (I went with the ...

After playing through Infinite Undiscovery I still haven't the faintest clue as to what the title is supposed to mean. It sounds meaningful, but the game is neither infinite nor does it challenge the player to "undiscover" anything. Clocking in at around 20 hours, this game is hardly representative of its impressive pedigree. I can't recall a Star Ocean or a proper Final Fantasy game with so little substance. This is nearly unheard of for a game spanning two DVDs. But what is there is done well. Extremely heavy on story, the narrative and characters are developed well. I happen to be one of those individuals who doesn't cry foul at plentiful cut scenes, but I must admit that this one started pushing the limits of what I thought was acceptable. Perhaps my imagination is running away with me, but I couldn't help but notice some visual similarities with one of my favorite series: Ys. When he's in full armor Capell closely resembles Adol Christin, and Ba...

A couple of months ago, I was reminiscing, as I often do, about the good ol' days of gaming. And, of course, the good ol' days will vary from one gamer to the next, but for me, it was the heyday of the Super NES. One game that held a special nuanced memory for me was Actraiser. It was one of the earliest SNES games and like all good early titles sought to show off the capabilities of the new hardware. To this day I think the phenominal orchestrated soundtrack, tight controls, and gorgeous colorful graphics make it a great demo piece for the SNES. Like many good things, however, there wasn't nearly enough of it to quench my thirst. Just when the game started to hit it's stride, and I started to really get into the "zone", excited about what I'd be doing next, it was over. When the credits rolled, my heart sank. I rushed out and picked up a copy of ActRaiser 2 (I didn't play the first game until well after it came out, so the sequel was readily ava...