Bakamoichigei

Wonder if it'll still fit on an SF Memory Cassette after the patch is applied... 🤔

>The discovery was shared on LinkedIn

What, no Reddit post? 😏 This is like the corporate version of the almost daily "Look what I found in my grandma's attic!!!11!1!ONEONE!!" post. 🤣👌

@guy-man Sorry, I got sidetracked, finally got around to trying it tonight. It works on SummerCart64, but I had to hit R and manually select the Aleck64's 5101 CIC chip to make it work.

@Zoinkity Works, see above. And my cart/menu hasn't been updated at least since I got my cart months ago. 😉👌

I'm working on building my own mahjong input panel because those button combinations... YEESH!

@Quick_Man Yeah...there's a lot of them. Like, enough to FILL A BOOK. Search Amazon Japan for "美少女脱衣麻雀スーパーガイド アーケード編" 😏

Not gonna mention Front Mission Alternative?

Fun fact: People think the ordinal numbering scheme was introduced with the PS1 re-release of the original game, but the original titles of FM2 and FM3 are written out in Katakana as "Front Mission Second" and "Front Mission Third" (Which both predate Front Mission 1st), it wasn't until FM5 that they did away with it.

@DoomPlague The evidence "Sounds pretty strong"? The original fan translation—which Retro-Bit swears they didn't use—credits are still in the game! That's not "pretty strong" that's what one would call "damning". 🤨

Somehow I'm not surprised. This kind of shady stuff seems to happen not-infrequently at the indie end of the retro re-release spectrum... (As well as with anime and VNs, though indie anime localization is all but dead at this point.)

I still haven't had a chance to play my Valken gold cart... 🤔 Only copy of Shubibinman Zero I've got is the actual Columbus Circle physical release.

Hmm, I already have a PocketStation SDK, it's called Pocket Jiman. 🤔

In all seriousness though, people should check that out, it's a PS1 game that acts as basically "RPG Maker for the PocketStation" letting you make simple games.

Once my next Sendico parcel arrives, I will have something like five PocketStations, I love the little things! (Still no rare colors though!)

@guy-man I'll try it tonight. 👍 (I'll also give it a go on a PicoCart64 just for good measure. 😉👌)

@jesse_dylan Or if I can get a tested working drive with a freshly replaced belt in brand new condition, in box, for $75. 🤔

As a connoisseur of "tiddy mahjong games" I will have to check this out. 😉👌

@jesse_dylan Nobody's stoppin' you from owning a Famicom Disk System. They're under a hundred bucks complete-in-box. 🤷‍♂️

World's first what? Unlicensed FDS games have been around for nigh-on 40 years. And 3D printing has been employed for years in the manufacture of new FDS disk cards from commercial Quick Disks.

Huh, guess I'm gonna have to get some pi Pico boards! I've already got half a dozen PlayStations on the way from Japan. 🤔

[Looks over at his console shelf]
[Sees 3 Famicoms, a Famicom Disk System, an NES, 2 Super Famicoms, a Super Nintendo, 3 Nintendo 64s, 4 PlayStations, and a Dreamcast.]

Yeah, that tracks. 🤔

EDIT: If anyone is wondering why so many duplicates...well, for example I have an AV Famicom, a late-model original Famicom, and a square-button Famicom. (The OG of OGs) 😉👌

@Damo Well, we already have ways to add CD-quality audio to SNES games; MSU-1 and flashcarts.

Haha, I have one of these in my watched items on Yahoo Auctions. I don't foresee ever owning one, but I like having reference images. (There actually is a series of Japanese guide books for "Not For Sale" versions of games and other special items like this trophy, I need to get my hands on those for my reference shelf.)

This is such a great story, I'm glad he shared it.

I've had the opportunity to interact with Robert Woodhead a couple times, and he is unmistakably "a real one" as the kids would say.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord figures prominently in my formative early childhood memories, and memories of my father. 😌

As usual, more YouTube lies. AI takedown, AI communication, no human contact. "We've done all that we can do on our end" yeah, everything except have anything with even a hint of sapience review the facts before automatically rendering a "final" decision.

A couple weeks ago, 4amLaundry (a retro games and IRL streamer in Japan) had his stream shut down and streaming privileges revoked an hour into day one of a multi-day game hunting trip to Kumamoto he'd been planning and saving for for a month.

Why? In the course of shopping for retro games, he picked up a PlayStation lightgun. Now, admittedly, it was a realistic replica Beretta so you really can't fault the AI for flagging the stream... (Even though before and throughout handling it he kept assuring 'YouTube' that "This is not a real firearm, this is a PlayStation controller" it came out of a PlayStation box, and he was IN JAPAN.) The problem is that instead of having it manually reviewed and cleared up immediately, the AI YouTube reps jerked him around with a combination of nonsense and outright lies for the rest of the trip.

He now no longer streams on YouTube, and that's a significant loss of income for him. Despite that he's under a lot less stress these days... He doesn't have to worry about turning the corner in Hard-Off and accidentally showing an aisle full of airsoft guns on stream. (The other day while he was in a Hard-Off, we could hear someone test firing an AEG elsewhere in the store...on YouTube, if he'd encountered that scene on his way to the register it'd have been all over for him!)

Content creators need to unionize or something so they can have someone lobby for them and protect their interests. These companies have built up content creation as a career path...for some people the only one available to them right now...and use these people and their content as a product, without which they'd have nothing. And they've manipulated things to the point that the only way to be a viable content creator is to do it full time, and yet at any instant it can all be snatched away on the whim of a capricious mad god of an AI with zero human intervention or oversight. This is unacceptable.

@KingMike Bahaha... Too true. 🤣👌

@Digglerdig

the ever growing prevalence of cannibalisation seems at odds with how strongly people say they feel about preservation.

The fact of the matter is that a lot of donor components are available in abundance in games which either no one cares about, or which still exist in quantities far in excess of any possible demand. The Super Game Boy is one such instance; There are more of them out there than anyone will ever want.

Preservation also has practical limits. I'm such a stickler for preservation that I back up the previous owner's saves when I get a used game... But I see no need to preserve every last copy of the 600 different soccer games on the Super Famicom, for example. Sometimes a game has more value to preservation as spare parts than anything else. 🤷‍♂️

@KingMike Not the trash, no. It costs money to dispose of such items. So they take them to second hand stores to get some instead, that's why there's literally thousands such stores. Sometimes people do just straight-up ditch whole game collections in the woods to avoid paying for disposal though...however I think that was mostly pre-2010s, and has tapered off with the rise of Book Off, Hard Off, Suruga-ya, etc.

As for eBay, most people don't want to deal with selling internationally... Book Off even has US stores yet you won't see them selling on US eBay, but they're prolific sellers on Yahoo Auctions Japan. (I've gotten so many items from them...) In general, the best way to get stuff from Japan (Aside from literally going there) is to proxy stuff from Yahoo Auctions and Mercari.

Earlier this week I scored a very nice console lot on Mercari which just arrived at my proxy... 😏 https://jp.mercari.com/item/m26248068797

@Incognito_D Yes. The game wouldn't run at the correct speed. Consequently, only SGB 2 or clock-modded SGB carts are considered 'speedrun legal' by most leaderboards.

It's also a shame that original hardware has to be cannibalised to create this new cart, but alternative solutions may appear in the future.

Have you been to a Hard Off lately? Or on Mercari or Yahoo Auctions? There's more Super Game Boy carts in Japan than anyone knows what to do with. (Especially given the existence of the SGB 2) Repurposing them is a public service if anything.

All hail the Bucket Mouse! 🪣🐭

>there's the small matter of the fact that you can't replicate a CD drive for the SNES, as it was never released.

You may have meant "small matter" ironically, but it is in fact trivial. The Satellaview base unit for the Super Famicom has an unused accessory bay for [checks notes] an unreleased Hard Disk Drive expansion...as best as anyone can tell, it's basically just a standard PATA interface.

So clearly, interfacing IDE devices (Such as an optical drive) through the SNES/SFC mainboard EXT port is possible with the right hardware.

Interesting. I'm pretty sure this is Columbus Circle's first portable clone console. 🤔 I just might have to pick one up on Suruga-ya next time they have a free shipping weekend.

For those unfamiliar with Columbus Circle, they've been a rather prolific maker of clone consoles, as well as a publisher of retro games. (Both licensed reprints as well as modern releases for retro consoles!)

[Laughs in OSCR]
Man, I built an Open Source Cartridge Reader and it makes these ones from Epilogue look like toys. As-built it handles SNES, N64, Sega Genesis, and all Game Boy compatible carts. With adapters it can handle any other cartridge-based format in existence. Not only does it dump and verify games and allow you to backup and restore save data, but you can also rewrite flash carts and things with it. (I use it to rewrite Nintendo Power kiosk cartridges.)

@Tryffel If I'm not mistaken, the entire Super Nintendo library (Including Japan exclusives) is less than 8 gigs. 128gb is a nice round number for a game library SD card, and less than twenty bucks for a fast name brand SanDisk. 128 gigs should fit all the 16-bit games and have plenty of space left for 8-bit, and even some PlayStation. 😁👌

Mine arrived on Tuesday, and I'm loving it. I normally eschew emulation in favor of original hardware—going so far as insisting on CRTs—so I've never had any interest in these devices... But at this price, a handheld this powerful is the perfect way to take my faves with me when I'm forced to venture forth from my cave. 😃👌

I've also always wanted a GBA SP because of how wicked-cool it looked, so bonus! 😁

Personally, I've no issue with the clicky buttons... But then, my daily driver keyboard is an Infinity ErgoDox I assembled as a kit with green switches for max thock. 😏 💥⌨️💥

The RG35XXSP may now be my preferred platform for enjoying the Mystery Dungeon franchise games... 🤔

I bought a couple new 128 GB microSD cards, one for games, and one for an alternate OS. Looking forward to really seeing what this thing can do. 😌👍

Well, it was only a matter of time before we ruined their retro games market too. I'm not going to pretend for even a second that I'm not part of the problem (having racked up like a grand in shipping fees alone in the past year, on massive proxied hauls of SFC and PSX games) but to my credit, every bit of it is for personal consumption. I also preserve and reverse-engineer obscurities and esoterica.

That's damn cool, but it kinda defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it?

And not for nothing, but you can get a 5" Sony PVM with an actual CRT. A 3.5" LCD just seems hard to play on.

I recently acquired a Sony BVM-8045QD, it's rad as heck. 😌👌