Greetings and welcome to the world of WildWillyWilson (AKA ianwilson1978)

I recently was made aware of this website by a friend and have since been avidly viewing it - having recently made my first purchase from the store (look forward to receiving this guys…)!.

I would like to firstly offer my gratitude to the team at Rising Stuff for allowing me the opportunity to contribute to the website. I have found both Alex and Sensei very helpful and welcoming…

I am 30 years old (31 on 27/9- please make a note in your diaries!) and live in Newcastle Upon Tyne-UK (does this sound like a dating ad?!). Since March this year I have rekindled my love for the Sega Megadrive and started a hardware/software collection. Like many a child of the early 1990’s I owned this fantastic console (at UK launch in 1990) and now 19 years later it still remains my favourite console of all time.

Why is it my favourite you may ask? Well, where do I start…

• Classic arcade conversions (See Golden Axe & Strider…).
• The dawn of the 16 Bit Era- the true Golden Age of gaming in my opinion and never to be bettered.
• Those brooding looks- it really was a fantastic looking machine; especially the Japanese model.
• The birthplace of classic franchises such as Sonic the Hedgehog.
• Fantastic original games such as ToeJam & Earl.
• True heaven for any Shoot-Em-Up fan with a vast array of titles and many many classics.

I could quite happily go on…

To the current generation of kids happily playing their PS3 or XBox 360 (I own a PS3 myself), taking a look at the Megadrive now it might strike them as a simple machine with basic, dare I say crude, graphics and sound. However this is to misunderstand what the Megadrive stood for at the time- in an era where amusement halls where a haven for kids to have a machine that produced near perfect arcade ports was really something special!

However, I am digressing…

Prior to owning my first Megadrive a friend of mine bought an imported machine from a local importer in Sunderland called Megaware. This was in 1988/1989 and its what I now believe was an Asian PAL Megadrive (more on this here). Hence my love affair with the Megadrive started- the first game I played being Altered Beast (which we completed on our first run and the console and game where handed back to his mother- it was a Christmas present!).

Fast forward to 1990 and I received my PAL MD, whilst most of the games I played where PAL region I did play quite a few also which were JPN NTSC (the old method of filing the cartridge slot- shudder to think of it now!). Games like Fatman, Ringside Angel & Dai Makai-Mura etc… I always thought the cover artwork was fantastic and the Japanese/Asian machine itself looked more purposeful with “16 Bit” emblazoned in gold along with the dark red and blue colouring (though I will always have a soft spot for the PAL MK1 machine also).

With this in mind I made the decision this year to collect a full set of official Japanese releases- 427 less Tetris (which wasnt an official commercial release). A daunting task I agree but one which I’m determined to complete funds permitting, I’m not setting a time limit- though to have this achieved by 2011/2012 would be great.

So I needed somewhere to use as a focus point/portal for this project and after looking at various You Tube channel’s (and in particular a certain one by Luke Morse) I decided to create my own You Tube channel. This seemed a great outlet to record the progress of my collection along with recording gameplay footage for each game I purchase amongst other things.

5 months on and I have met some friendly people who share a love for all things retro gaming related. I have a total of 66 games to date in my collection- 30 of which have gameplay videos uploaded and I will be uploading the remainder in the near future.

I look forward to contributing to this site further in the future and thank you for your time!

Ian.

Editors Note: I’ve always been amazed by the bredth of knowledge our forum goers have about modding and repair work. Some of them have even been kind enough to write up their methods for others to follow! So every now and then, we’ll be publishing select articles from these members on how to do everything from fix simple hardware problems to creating full-on customizations. We hope you find it useful!

Hello, this faq is to help people get around the problem of their old NES blinking instead of playing games. It is not too hard to get the NES open, but I will detail it anyway. This faq assumes that you the modder take any responsibility for this modification as this faq exists for like for edjumacational reasons.

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