A very cool dude named Jason has submitted the current high score (other than mine) for Retro Blaster. It stands at 99,734,135. Send me your scores as a PNG,/JPG/ BMP/GIF screen cap and I’ll post them too.

I have been searching the local stores for a copy of Konami Arcade for the DS. It seems to be as hard to find as Puzzle Quest right now. I took my 16 year-old nephew, Jeremy, with me to some local shops and we couldn’t find it anywhere. I mention Jeremy because he is up on what all the "COOL KIDS" are doing and listening to right now. I was surprised to hear this band named Machinea Supremacy on his myspace page because they sound like 8 Bit Weapon crossed with Anthrax or Master of Puppets era Metallica. This probably won’t suit the taste of many older readers, but the kids seem to enjoy these Nintendo and C64 sounding rhythms mixed with various form of punk, speed metal, and hard core. Check ’em out if you have a chance.

Anyway, I was mentioning Konami Arcade for the DS because it contains both Contra and POOYAN! I was dejected to not have found it, so I sat down at the video game TV we have set up and tried to show my 2 year-old son what games used to be like. He doesn’t really get what video games are yet, but he loves to watch me crash cars in Burnout 3. I plugged in this 128-in-One unit called "FUNTIME" that I purchased at a local mall a few years back. It contains 128 classic NES games. I don’t play it much because it doesn’t feel much like a NES, but beggars can’t be choosers when you want to play Contra. Unfortunately, the version of Contra on this contraption is not any version I remember, and must have been mislabeled Contra instead of "Utter Piece of Crap". It puts the player at the bottom of the screen and you have to shoot up the screen at charging enemy units. That last sentence actually makes it sound better than an eye gouge, but rest assured, it isn’t. If anyone knows what game they put on this thing and called Contra, please send me an email (jeff@8bitrocket.com) I would like to know the name of the game I am ruing the day since I played.

I next tried the version of Super Mario Bros and it played very well and was exactly like the version I played at my friend Wesley Crew’s house in the mid-80’s. I also remember trying it once or twice at Ian Legler’s, but that was after high school and we were more into Contra and the javelin event in Track and Field than Super Mario. I haven’t played any Mario games much since then, and never owned an NES of my own or a copy of any Mario game on the GBA. My son seemed to get a kick out of it, so I jammed over to Target and purchased Super Mario DS. I have just started playing it and it seems like quite a good little title. Unfortunately, my son seems to hate it. I think he just doesn’t understand the DS because the whole time I tried to play it he kept saying "NO!" and pointing at the TV. Maybe he figures that all games should to be on a TV. As soon as I started crashing cars in Burnout again he was satisfied. It will be another year before I have the chance to really teach him the beauty of Retro Games. I’m sure he will slowly, but surely understand their charm and their place. Until then, the DS is all MINE! I just need to find POOYAN!