Tuesday 25 February 2014

TimeWalk Games - Closing the box for good.

As we all know I do like a bit of Blue Bomber action. If you have also be reading this blog regularly you will know that I have now finished and written about all three MegaMan X Games. There other Snes based jumpy shooty games though, to scratch my MegaMan itch. The one that caught my eye most was actually called 'MegaMan and Bass', a Japanese exlusive that there is called 'Rockman man and Forte'. I was aware that various people translated the game and released it as a ROM, but obviously given the name of this blog, I have a fondness for boxes and wasn't very interested in having the game in a purely digital form, even though that was how I was likely to play it on the train.

A bit of research, led me to a company called TimeWalk games. These people are geniuses whom not only take these digital files and put them on a cart for you to play on the actual Super Nintendo, they also packaged them in translated boxes, with instructions and sometimes even posters. All this hard work though came at a premium cost, averaging $100 per game. 

This was not an easy purchasing decision. Yes, I had spent more than that on MegaMan X2, and had settled for a reproduction box for X3, but at least the game itself was authentic. However, when I saw un-boxing videos on YouTube of TimeWalk Game's products I was astounded by the quality. They literally looked like authentic games, made with love and an eye for detail. I was sold, and with a view to it being the 50th game I wrote about on this blog I headed over to TimeWalk's website to place an order.   

Imagine my disappointment then when on this very day that I went to purchase a game from them, TimeWalk decided to shut up shop for good. 

I was gutted. I had wrestled and overcome the guilt of spending so much on a Reproduction game, only for the opportunity to be taken away from me. Eager to know more I contacted them and struck up a friendship with Spencer the fine fellow who ran the site. I was enchanted by the story of a guy who originally just wanted to box his own games and recapture his childhood. 


I hope you enjoy it, and please comment if you've had any experiences with TimeWalk. A company that I found out about just too late.



2 comments:

  1. Hi there. Do you think Timewalk paid the license to redistribute this games by Nintendo? Or they don't need it?

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  2. Hello, Do you know how much cost to be licensing by these big companies? If you want to pay and play for licensed games buy official games or reissued games like Retro Bit compilations or Iam8Bit, they are licensed officially, but the small companies around like Timewalk and many much others were never lincensed and they will never be! The repros are often low quality than large companies productions who put much more money and efforts in their productions, but if you search well, you'll find a few around the globe who make greater quality than the official products.

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