Retro Access Museum

07/26/2026

Statement of Use Processing completed! Our trademark should be LIVE very soon!

07/19/2026

Since I often get asked how many game consoles I have connected in my office, I decided that that yesterday was a good day to not only catalog what’s hooked up, but finally make take a crack at making an A/V hookup chart.

My game-room setup is built around an HDR HDMI True Matrix 4×2 Switch, which lets me send everything to both my LG OLED42CSPUA and an AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K 2.1 capture card.

Connected directly to the matrix:

🎮 MiSTer FPGA
🎮 RetroTINK 4K
🎮 Yamaha RX-V477 audio / video receiver
🎮 PlayStation 5

The Yamaha handles:

• Analogue Pocket
• Xbox One X Project Scorpio Edition
• Analogue 3D
• PlayStation TV / PS Vita TV
• PlayStation 3
• Nintendo GameCube and Nintendo Switch on a shared HDMI cable

The RetroTINK 4K handles the older analog systems:

• PlayStation 2 through component
• Panasonic 3DO through S-Video
• Eight RGB systems through a gscart switch

The gscart lineup includes:

• Sega Dreamcast
• PC Engine Duo / Duo-R
• Sega Genesis Model 1
• Sega Saturn
• Nintendo Famicom
• Super Nintendo
• PlayStation 1
• MiSTer FPGA through analog RGB

The gscart also sends a second output to my Sega Saturn kiosk CRT TV through SCART-to-S-Video.

The matrix sends optical audio back to the Yamaha receiver, and the MiSTer has both a direct HDMI path, along with an RGB path through the RetroTINK.

While I’d love to have more hooked up, these systems are the ones I play on pretty regular basis and I like to have an quick way to fire them up. The diagram is pretty accurate for now, but I’d like to eventually edit it, so the system pictures are the real ones and not random AI generations.

07/17/2026

Fresh off remixing one of my favorite songs from the original Alone in the Dark, I wanted to play some of the games in the series I missed. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare was the 4th game released in the series and came out in 2001 on PC and a variety of other platforms. Despite being a huge fan of the original trilogy when this came out, I opted to ignore it. For starters, I didn’t like the concept that Edward Carnby, and really the entire series itself, was being rebooted to tailor itself more towards a Resident Evil survival horror-style game. It’s odd typing that sentence because the original Alone in the Dark came a few years prior to Resident Evil, but it’s honestly how I felt at the time.

So, what do I think about it after finally giving it a chance 25 years later?

Liked:

* Flashlight / lighting system was unique for its time.
* Loved the haunting industrial-style soundtrack.
* Enjoyed the fun nods to the original game.
* Great backstory development while finding books and notes.
* Auto-aim lock is handy in awkward camera angles.

Disliked:

* Enemies that respawn every time you re-enter a room + limited ammo.
* Uneven sound effects.
* Bad voice acting.
* A lack of detail about the boss's weaknesses can make fights longer than they need to be.

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare was decent, but ultimately, I didn’t really miss out on much by not playing it when it was first released. The original game still holds top honors for me.

Did you play Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare? Did you like it? Did you hate it? Let me know!

07/05/2026

Classic Spooky Games I Missed the First Time Around

For the next few weeks, I’ll be getting into a few classic spooky games that I’ve never really had the chance to give a proper playthrough.

First up is Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. While the PC version is pictured, I’ll be playing the Dreamcast version. I’ve finished the original Alone in the Dark trilogy so many times, but I was always a bit put off by the rebooted direction of The New Nightmare.

I started it this weekend, and so far, it’s pretty good. The use of light is unique, and the soundtrack is great. I’m not loving the fact that enemies respawn every time you leave a room, though.

I’ll give my final thoughts once I finish it. For now, I’m running through the game as Carnby.

On the Steam Deck side, I’m playing Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned.

The original Gabriel Knight sits high on my list of favorite adventure games, and while I do enjoy the second game, the shift to FMV took away some of the soul of the original for me.

The third game came out in 1999, and my PC had a heck of a time running it smoothly back then. Unfortunately, I don’t think I had a powerful enough graphics card to run it properly. I only played the demo at the time, and I wasn’t very impressed with the interface or the overall look.

Coming back to it now, it was certainly an ambitious game, but it also kind of feels like I’m using a free camera while doing application testing in Unity.

That said, I’m still going to give it a proper playthrough this time!

06/08/2026

Hey all! I hope everyone is enjoying the start of the summer. Quick update on the museum! If you recall, our trademark received no opposition from the USPTO, and we quickly submitted a statement of use to complete the process and have our trademark live.

Basically, we are still waiting. I was under the impression that it would only take a month for the statement of use to be approved, but as it turns out, they are still reviewing statements of use from February!

And so... we will keep waiting to ensure we are officially in green status before moving on to the next steps. We appreciate your continued patience and support. Rest assured, once we conquer this part, we will have many more updates.

02/18/2026

We are on the last part of our trademark registration journey! Not too much longer!

01/20/2026

If you have been wanting to take a peek at the Japanese stage play for Castlevania: Awakening in the Moonlight, Castlevania Fangirl has an English translation on her YouTube channel. Sure, there are some cheesy parts, but I would have really loved to see this live.

A fan translation I made for the Symphony of the Night Musical.Tags:castlevanianocturnealucardrichter belmontmaria renardvlad dracula tepeslisa tepesdeathdar...