555 Top Dog.

Thanks for the tips about soldering, those who gave them.  I’ve never done it before, but I have done two kinds of welding, so I should be okay once the occasion presents itself.  For what is soldering but tiny welding?

So far I haven’t found any decent deals on a GBA.  Everyone seems to think they are worth a great deal more than I do.  Or maybe Ebay is just still full of douchebags and fuckheads even after all this time.   In any case the quest continues.

I’m still not sure where I’ll get the light bits for the actual lighting procedure.  They must come from someplace other than kits.  Also, with LED light becoming even more efficient it seems like that might be something to look in to.  I have a flashlight that’s more powerful than a bulb light that runs on two AAAs.  Surely and LED would draw a very minor amount of power from the GBA…

I don’t know any of that.  It’s just guess work.  I wonder if Nintendo still provides replacement screens…

In other news, I downloaded Castlevania Adventure Rebirth for the Wii.  I still have a working copy of the game it’s based on.  The horrifying, annoying, frustrating, game it’s based on…  Rebirth is actually pretty good.  Very old school, but not extremely hard.  In the old game if you took a hit you lost one level of whip strength.  A mechanic Konami was in love with for some time.  Thankfully that shit doesn’t happen in Rebirth.  If you die you have to repower the whip, so that sucks, but not as much as taking a cheap shot from a boss and having to fight the rest of the battle nose to nose with the bastard.

The game’s obsession with giant, rolling, spectral eyeballs and annoying birds, that double back on you and attack at high speed, remains intact.  I’m kind of disappointed that they didn’t upgrade the game play a little bit more.  Being able to jump on to and off of stairs would have been nice.  That said, you are many times more spry than Christopher Belmont of old.  Bitching aside, it’s actually a pretty sweet Castlevania.  Easily worth the $10.  There’s hidden areas and junk, so you can play a bunch of times trying to find them.  There’s no save feature as far as I can tell, at least in so far as stage progress, which kind of threw me off. The game does seem to save junk you unlock as you go, but once you quit it’s back to the start next time.  I’m not real sure I’ll ever finish it.  Games with long stretches of time with no saves don’t fit in with my lifestyle.  Which is part of why Dr. Wily remains undefeated in Megaman 9…