Tiny Cartridge birthday mini-contest winners

So, a few weeks ago we basically bribed a bunch of our readers to say nice things about Tiny Cartridge, offering everyone free games and merch in exchange for lies about how much they love this site. What can I say, it was our third birthday, and we needed some reassurance.

Anyway, here are the best liars winners we picked!

Read More →

tags / birthday / contest / ec / gaming / undeserved self-congradulation

Tiny Cartridge turns three!

Tiny Cartridge is growing up! Today is the third anniversary of when we decided to supplement our blogging jobs with blogging hobbies, and start posting random DS and import posts, and embarrassing Cutman videos to the weird site you see before you.

Although it might seem at times that we don’t do much outside of putting up our 3-5 posts every day, we actually accomplished a lot this year! We appeared in an EGM article, participated in the Retronauts podcast, provided live moral support during an Adventure Island session, kicked off DS Dates, popped up in an awesome indie game or two, looked at a donkey, and took part in the illustrious My Famicase exhibit with an awesome cart we designed with Ashley Davis. And of course we covered the hell out of the newly launched Nintendo 3DS.

We have a crazy giveaway planned for this birthday, but since we’re running our Bit.Trip Saga / Complete contest soon, you’ll have to wait a few weeks for that.

We’re still going to to get free stuff in your hands, though! Come celebrate with us in the comments by telling us what you love (or hate) about Tiny Cartridge, and we’ll hand out a few goodies and games to the best b-day wishes.

Buy: Nintendo 3DS (Flame Red, Black, & Blue)

Find: Nintendo DS/3DS release dates, discounts, & more

tags / meta / birthday / gaming / tiny / ec / jc

Tiny Cartridge: Year Three begins

Today marks the second anniversary of Tiny Cartridge’s founding. Somehow, two years later, Eric is still talking to me, and we still get to do what we love best in our spare time: linking to random DS imports, old Famicom controllers, and way too much DQIX/Love Plus junk.

Last year, in a post about our first anniversary, I jokingly remarked that I’d never imagined we’d ever achieve the heights of Tumblarity we did. Now, we’ve outlasted the concept of Tumblarity. Truly, we are kings.

In Tiny’s second year, we were graced with a series of incredible guest posts, a topless Asian man dancing with his Neo Geo games, and Slube. We met the Nintendo 3DS, we didn’t buy Retro Game Challenge 2 in English, we kicked it with Yuji Naka, we rewrote Audio Inc’s Space Agency trailer, we explored an Afghanistan arcade, and we learned about microgames as personal snapshots.

To everyone who stuck with us throughout these past two years even though we’re a lot weirder than most other sites: thank you very much. We hope to reward your loyalty with a contest of the likes we’ve never held before, starting next week! And with another year full of Nintendo DS/3DS posts you won’t find elsewhere, as well as plenty of other random junk, if all goes according to plan.

Please look forward to it.

tags / meta / birthday / jc / undeserved self-congratulation / just get back to work already you fucks

Birthday gifts for our Bounty winners

Finally, the randomly picked winners from our week-long contest celebrating Tiny Cartridge’s first anniversary!

• Kobold, the lucky bastard, wins Game Center CX 2 after imagining our mascot as Game Master Tiny
• Flamecondor will receive Shiren the Wanderer 2 for demonstrating his love of Space Invaders Extreme — we hope he finds a way to take some enjoyment from the Japanese roguelike (try the English patch!)
• Hondo takes home a Dragon Quest IX DS pouch, which we assume he’ll use for something naughty
• And a bunch of our Twitter followers won Tiny Cartridge buttons by exerting very little effort

We appreciate all the commentors that left us feedback during the contest period (and we adore the commentors who post when they aren’t trying to win something). If you didn’t win this time around, don’t worry, we have another giveaway coming up soon — while we won’t hand out a game this time, I’m sure it will make a particular set of you happy, as it caters to a niche within this niche site.

Also, much thanks to the readers that buy games or accessories using our Play-Asia and Amazon links at the bottom of most of our posts — that affiliate money made these non-traditional and expensive prizes possible.

[Image via Melanie Stewart Hazlett]

tags / meta / birthday / contest / ec

Tiny Contest: Birthday Bounty

With a year of posts now under our belt, we wanted to host a contest that outclassed our previous giveaways and reward readers with the same junk they come here to read about every day. So, to bring in our second year, we offer you two import sequels you might recognize:

Our inventory of prizes (one item per winner):

• Game Center CX 2, the Japanese sequel to Retro Game Challenge with 11 new knock-off games
• Shiren the Wanderer DS 2, which you can pair with this fan translation patch in development if you have the right homebrew hardware
• Dragon Quest IX DS Lite and DSi accessories
• Maybe more? (Follow us on Twitter for details soon)

To win one of the items, just leave a worthwhile comment in this post or in any posts following this one some time before next Wednesday September 2nd, 11:59 CDT. You can enter as many times as you’d like! Please try not to clutter our site with the kind of comments that a crap dude would leave. Nobody likes a crap dude.

Thanks again for keeping up with our little site. Good luck with winning one of these prizes!

tags / contest / birthday / ec / game center cx 2 / shiren the wanderer / import / dragon quest ix

A Tiny Anniversary

It’s Tiny’s birthday! A year ago, we formally launched Tiny Cartridge, intended as a casual sideline — basically a way to share the weird DS links and retro stuff that weren’t appropriate for the other sites we work at. We never imagined we’d achieve the kind of Tumblarity we have today, mostly because Tumblarity didn’t exist back then and we still kind of don’t know what it is.

Over the last year, we revealed my embarrassing fixations with Takahashi Meijin and Gachapin, shared two Muramasa/ass-related posts, sat on Mega Man’s face, regulated in River City, and pulled a “Dark Side of the Moon” on a Sonic trailer.

We saw Game Center CX clips, games, fanart, buttons, and even met the Rally King himself. We saw me properly dressed down for caring too much about energy drinks.

We gave away noodles, cases, posters, and well over 100 games. We enjoyed guest reviews, guest art, and guest posts contributed by our talented readers. And for most of the first year, we had the privilege of working with Tiny co-founder and Technabob writer Alisha Karabinus.

We sought to build an entertaining DS-focused venue that stands out from other gaming blogs by covering imports, unappreciated releases, homebrew projects, chiptune music, and related curiosities most other sites couldn’t be arsed to investigate. It was an ambitious goal, but we’re proud to say we didn’t fail by that much.

In short, this first year has been one fucking dope situation. Please look forward to our celebration of that dope situation with an upcoming contest of much import, and a week of posts inviting your participation. Thank you for reading the words we wanted to write.

[Image via Sara]

tags / birthday / meta / starfy / tiny / undeserved self-congratulation / ec / jc