amongtheworms

I lived with close friends for the best part of a decade and every other evening we’d play Smash Melee (or some other gem). I miss those days!

Awestruck at the greatness of the name that is “Barbara Broccoli”

Polygon Man is encased in carbonite and stored deep beneath SCE HQ in a vault guarded by a cadre of immortal Nintendo employees. They are bound to serve Sony forever as part of a secret severance deal relating to the original PlayStation contract.

I think it’s actually kind of great 😂

Just…what a development! Maybe he’ll shoot a film about it next!

It’s like the plot of some postmodern novel highlighting how absurd and intriguing human relationships can be…

Was just thinking about how I’d love to replay it! One of my fave GC titles.

Consider learning to program for the 6502. Come for the simple instruction set, stay for the joy of implementing shortest path algorithms in assembly!

— the 6502 tourism board

@KitsuneNight @bring_on_branstons

I have a cunning plan, milord!

@KingMike

From the way it’s described, I get the impression that it would have been possible to do it back then, just very expensive due to the amount of memory required. No one back then was going to spend money on R&D to create such a cartridge when it would never have sold due to commanding an exorbitant price. From their kickstarter:

“The most advanced NES games of the original commercial era were almost entirely MMC3 or MMC5 games, which meant that their ROM sizes were capped at 768KiB - 2,048KiB. MXM-1 allows direct access to many times more than this, and indirect access to CD-ROM quantities of data.“

Can everyone please stop this and show some compassion?! They’re not rich guys! They’re “normal, innocent men”!!!

“Argh! I’m so confused! I keep charging people the full amount for my product which isn’t even finished! Argh! God, this is so confusing! I haven’t even completed a fully working prototype but I keep charging people the full amount! Thank goodness I included a clause which lets me do this otherwise I’d be even more confused! Gosh! I really hope that I end up delivering the product which I promised and that I don’t just run away with everyone’s money! That would be incredibly confusing for me!”

— Alejandro Martin, probably

It’s all very David Brent

@PKDuckman

Thank you, good to know! Had a look at First Queen series and love the cover art.

Yet another EGGCONSOLE game I want to play but likely won’t as my knowledge of Japanese is at level 0.

There’s a fork called Swanstation which exists as a RetroArch core. Works well, in my opinion.

Edit: I recall that, according to Reddit, the fork exists due to a falling out between Stenzek and RetroArch. It would seem that forking and renaming it was done years ago in agreement with him, but who knows the truth apart from the parties involved?

Some of the Mario 64 footage looks like a child running through a junkyard. Unsettling.

I suppose we can only hope that VR can bring us experiences similar to Prop Cycle. That sort of game is still unique and currently not easily playable at home. Maybe something for Namco to look into? 👀

@ChaseGP

The Bearded Armadillo was my fave part. That sequence where you ride it though the Halls of Midnight while being chased by the Doughnut King…just perfection. Top quality Star Fox 64!

It’s back, baby, yeah! 🍾🕺

The site was very formative for me growing up and a large part of why I got into coding/programming. I miss those mid to late 2000s days!

Very cool to see, but also…

”sudo apt-get install nethack-x11”

“A tool to help stimulate gentlemen”

“Oh! Like a coffee machine? That’s not a coffee machine…”

I remember being shown some pokemon fan sites in 1998 by this older kid at my school who was sort of my “nerd mentor”. This was just prior to the anime landing in the US (and later UK). The sites seemed to get most of their info from Japanese magazines and western preview articles, and were very 90s, with spinning wordart-style gifs, and garish visitor counters, and all that jazz. One of them had a “Pokédex” section and all the names were transliterated from Japanese. I saw this site before I’d seen or heard anything else about Pokémon, and I think for this reason I like Gen 1 the best. Of course, I love the anime and other games, but there is something about the world of the Gen 1 games that is both familiar and alien. It existed before the anime, before Pokémon was “tidied up” and made slicker, and I quite like its rough, oddball appeal. Yes, even the wonky art!

My nerd mentor convinced me to preorder a copy of Red (he had Blue) at my local Electronics Boutique. I spent all my “savings” on it when it arrived and it was one of the best game purchases I have ever made. Strangely, I no longer own Red and instead have a copy of Blue. I have no idea how that happened!

An excellent read. A lot of Future’s output was formative for me growing up and I really miss that age of gaming magazines. Total!, Super Play, N64, NGC: all of them exhibited a wonderfully playful mix of keenness, sincerity, and irreverence. Dyer made a huge contribution to that vibe.

In many ways, I see the Hookshot Media sites, particularly NL and Time Extension, as the spiritual successors to that style of journalism. Long may it last!

Perhaps it’s just the circles I moved in, but there was always pressure to be working on projects using the latest tools/methodologies so that your portfolio seems current. My friends would ridicule me for coding a NES game in 6502 assembly, or using C and EGA, etc. They’d warn me that I was wasting my time. Of course, they were right in terms of getting a job in commercial software development. However, that’s not what I enjoy, and so programming remains just a hobby for me. I am glad to see these people succeeding in releasing their games and doing it their chosen way, whether that’s a true DOS game or mimicking the EGA style. I will definitely be picking up a few of these!

Edit: forgot to mention that I thoroughly enjoyed the article.

@mariteaux

I don’t understand where your hostility is coming from. It was, in fact, a joke concerning the terminally online etc. Anyway, let’s leave it.

@mariteaux

It’s a little joke about how conspiracy theories seem to crop up about even the smallest things. It’s not targeting anyone in particular. It’s just a bit of fun.

I have provided a template for the conspiracy theorists, who might not be able to accept that changing the anniversary was likely due to something mundane, such as timely PR or an error.

“It’s a conspiracy! I blame [political party/ideology]! Any attempt to reason with me will be taken as shilling for [political party/ideology]! [space reserved for monologue on favourite conspiracy and how it links to Tetris]!”

Edit: I really did mean this as absurdist nonsense and in no way was I intending to cause friction. Long live Tetris!

@NinChocolate

“Caught wind”…

…Blast Wind!

Apologies once again from me! 😂 In all seriousness though, using this cartridge indeed enables one to catch and enjoy Blast Wind!

As long as the game doesn’t play like Perfect Dreck, I don’t mind!

@Zuljaras

I always jump to the comments section of every „What Are You Playing This Weekend?” section of NL just to see what you, @JohnnyMind, and other regular first-posters are getting up to. Gives me ideas for what to play next. Anyway, the box is stunning!

This is terribly crass of me, I know, and I don’t want to be that person, but…

…Blast Wind😂

@Lovelime

Yeah, they are making some of the assets on the fly.

Also yes, modern games have to run alongside an OS, but so do browsers (and modern browsers also benefit from hardware acceleration). So in reality, these 13kb games are running on a browser and alongside an OS. I’m not diminishing the achievement, I was merely stating that it’s not some spooky programming magic which is occurring. My point about NES programming was that the NES doesn’t have an OS or even a proper BIOS. The cart has to setup everything, write the logic, and store the assets. There were different cartridge hardware setups, some with much greater memory, but the basic one was 40kb - the one used for Super Mario Bros.

Edit1: Thank you for the link to Krieger. I will check it out!

Edit2: Very interesting! It certainly reminds me of the various demoscene marvels over the years. While it’s true that the executable is 96kb, it of course relies on the OS to enable all of its asset generation. In no way does that diminish what is a truly amazing achievement! Whether it’s a 13kb JS game, a 96kb PC/OS game, or a 40kb NES game, they all showcase some form of ingenuity. In my original comment I just wanted to highlight what is actually happening.

Edit3: of course, there was some utter garbage on the NES which filled 40kb. I’m talking about the technical marvels!

@Sketcz

It’s not really 13kb if you include the browser it runs on etc. It’s not like 40kb NES games, which run directly on the hardware. In that 40kb you have everything needed to initialise and control the hardware.

I mention this because it’s made to seem as if pure wizardry is involved, when in reality the browser acts like a game engine and software environment.

Edit: I’m not saying it’s not a great achievement and well designed program. It’s just not the same as writing a stand alone game which is somehow 13kb on a modern 64bit system.

Edit2: I mention this because I once saw an article fawning over how one of these js competitions had made a Mario clone at 13kb, whereas the original NES game is 40kb. They’re not comparable. Also, the NES programmers of yore often were wizards! Yes, I idolise them somewhat! 😂

@Lofoten

I came here to mention N64 magazine and “Lex Luther’s ‘Solve My Maze’”! 😂

The SuperPlay/N64 Mag/NGC times were so wonderful.

@Sketcz

This was my dream too and also my experience of having it shattered. Still, I’m going down the indie dev route, “just for the lolz”, and I’m enjoying it!

There are actually two Jeff Hansens. One is the original who won the tournament as a child. His “prize” was to be hooked up to an array of super computers deep below Nintendo HQ, with his living brain adding to their already formidable power, and used to develop the company’s most successful titles. Ever wonder how Nintendo has managed to put out banger after banger since 1990? Jeff’s still going strong and is probably working on the next Mario game. Go, go, Cyborg Jeff!

The other Jeff is, of course, a clone, who was sent back to his family to allay suspicions.

True story. One hundred per cent factual!!!11

Ronald must not be seen to defeat anyone. Ronald must have plausible deniability.
Ronald’s hands must remain clean.

This is why they created the McCIA.

Subtitle should be “When Saturn Becomes Uranus”

Loving the intro music!

Always loved his work: a charming and idiosyncratic style of manga. Loved SuperPlay and all the successor magazines (N64 and NGC). Such a golden age of gaming journalism!

I adore FAQs. Not just for being easier to access and reference than a video, or because they can be almost spoiler free if needed, but because they are often full of the idiosyncrasies of the author. My favourites read like some some sort of gaming memoir, which I periodically reread as you would a favourite book.

At least it had a potentially positive effect, unlike the damnable “My Stop Playing DS Coach: Allen Carr’s EasyWay.” The recursive nature of the game has trapped many people in an endless loop.

I feel that the dreaded “ePeen” has been deployed. Everyone run for cover!

Some of the crumbling retro offerings make me think of the Ship of Theseus. If you keep replacing parts of an item until none of the original remains, is it still the same item? What about a game which has a new a new cartridge shell 3D printed, using the same plastic, with a repro sticker which looks and feels exactly the same? What if it eventually has a new circuit board printed, with new connections, and gradually all of the old chips are replaced by new ones which are perfect replicas? Its functionality is exactly the same and it plays the same, but is it still your OG Super Mario World SNES cart?

The answer is “no”. What a waste of time that was!

Find out how Gizmondo just hit 500 million units sold. Video Game Executives hate this one weird trick!