Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the well-kinda-sorta dept.
LinuxBand sent in linkage to a nice story talking about the NES as it now is celebrating its 15th year. I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't had a nintendo, I woulda had a full half point better on my high school GPA.
I woulda had a full half point better on my high school GPA
full half point huh? 100% of 50%? why not "almost all of half of the portion equaling approximately 90% of the whole of the whatever it is we're talking about?" time for some caffeine
The subject says it all. Does anyone know if the U-Force bears any electronic similarity to a Theremin? If you've never heard of a Theremin, then does anyone know where I might be able to get some technical docs on the U-Force? I'm suddenly extemely curious about this.
Wow. Thanks for the link, it's been quite a while since I've used REND386. It also appears that Bernie released the 'final version' of AVRIL under the GPL.
--
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
Nintendo was the greatest
by
StevieFlamingo
·
· Score: 1
I remember the day I got my nintendo, my life was changed, I think my parents are still upset they ever got me into gaming, if it wasn't for that easter morning I would probobly b a whole different person. The only system I think that has the possibility to match its number of great games is the dreamcast and it has a ways to go. you may think I am crazy for saying that but DC has some good games, Sonic Adventure, Chu Chu rocket, Crazy Taxi, NFL2k1, Quake 3 Arena, Samba De Amiga(play it and you will never stop especially if you have the maraca controllers), Soul Caliber, marvel Vs Capcom 1+2, and many more to come, this is only for being around 1 year I think it has a chance at matchin the greatness of nintendo, any1 else agree??
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Geeks Rule~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Re:Nintendo Marketing Practices
by
g_mcbay
·
· Score: 2
Yes, the Genesis had a similar setup. I forget the exact details, but it was Acclaim who was sued for eventually releasing a non-official game that included Sega's trademarked text (which needed to be in the ROM's header for the Genesis to run the ROM).
Acclaim won the suit, but eventually became a registered Sega developer anyway.
Re:Gender bias was rampant on the NES
by
b0z
·
· Score: 2
Actually the ability to float like that was pretty important to me. Even though I am a big somewhat macho guy, I always used the princess as my character in SMB2 because it was just so damn easy to fly past all the obstacles in my way. Luigi was probably the worst character in SMB2 but I'll leave that game alone as it was just generally bad.
I have read the above posts about Metroid. Now, that may or may not count because you didn't know it was a woman until the end. She did kick butt though.
There is another thing to take into consideration. The NES was meant for a younger audience than a lot of the games that are out now. Most boys that are 5 years old or so don't really like girls, and the NES was mostly meant for pre-pubescent boys I think. The Super Nintendo eventually came out, with games for older audiences, like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2. These games featured women characters that kicked ass. This has continued today, even in the computer gaming arena. Even though Lara Croft looks like a ho, guys love to play her game, and you can't say that a woman running around playing Indiana Jones and shooting everything in sight is not a woman kicking butt.
As far as physical strength in real life, generally men are stronger than woman in how much we can pick up or lift. Women seem to have greater endurance though, and we are just made differently.
In any case, it is true that there were a lot more games with guys running around being macho, but I don't think it was necessarily because of a problem of the adults making this game, but that the audience was for little kids, who at that age the majority don't associate with the opposite sex all that much.
Whoa.. I wonder if I can get all my old NES stuff back from the little kid I gave it to. I had all of the Dragon Warrior series for the NES. Even the original.. That was one of my favorite series. Fear my low SlashID! (bidding starts at $500)
-- Do not anger the worm.
Re:Gender bias was rampant on the NES
by
lakdjfalkdj
·
· Score: 1
You know, I've seen a lot of "How come there aren't any girl games for whatever". So my question is, is why don't women get out and write games for other women? I mean, it can't be that difficult in this day and age with all the tools available to women to write games that they themselves would enjoy. So am I totally missing something here? What's the problem with writing games for women by women?
Or have I just totally missed the point cuz I'm a guy and all?
ignoring the emulator dev going on all over, does anyone know of how to get or use an orginal nintendo development system.. this would be a valuable history read..
-isnt it strange to be anything at all....
-jeff mangum
--
-isnt it strange to be anything at all....
-jeff mangum
Re:The Game is on GBC, with MORE
by
Aash
·
· Score: 1
The original (1985) Super Mario Bros is on the GBC, with pixel perfect reproduction and color. You get all
32 levels, the star levels, and 'Super Mario for Super players' (Hella tough), challange mode, and a 2 player
race game. All for 30 bucks.
I just cant stop playing this, I haven't even been playing Tetris since I got it.
Agreed. The game is awesome. If your a fan of Super Mario Brothers and you have a Game Boy Color, you owe it to yourself to buy it. Heck, even if you don't have a Game Boy, buy one, then buy SMB DX.
But nothing beats Tetris. I've been playing that game for years, and I don't think I'll EVER get sick of it. Sure, there will be spans of a month or so where I won't. But I always come back.
--
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Re:Anyone remember the Power Glove?
by
Tuzanor
·
· Score: 1
The Wizard? If that's the name of that movie with fred savage and the little retarded kid who could play video games really good all the while just wanting to go to California. Which it turned out all he wanted was to leave some pictures is soem giant dinosoar....if you don't know what i'm taking about don't ask...
Re:Anyone remember the Power Glove?
by
kmwertma
·
· Score: 1
I always liked the music in Lemmings. (Yeah,
most of it was a classical music knock-off but
they synthesized it well) Especially the music
the gameboy Lemmings game played when it's paused.
Heck, maybe it's worth making an archive of
pause music?
--
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
Re:Only another 2 years...
by
Mitaphane
·
· Score: 1
Nintendo used to have a patent on the cross design on the D-pad so all of Nintendo's competitors had to make different versions of the D-pad as not to be sued. IIRC, their patent has expired on it and you now free to make your own cross-looking D-pads. Yippie!
This makes me wonder if it's possible to use the Duck Hunt gun with an emulator. Since I have read about hacks that allow you to use the NES controllers, and monitors still emit light, this should work. I can't think of too many NES things with more hack value than playing Duck Hunt in an X11 window and shooting at the ducks in the office.
Re:U-Force, ROB, and other useless accessories
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
Don't forget about the NES advantage, which was a big joystick-like input controller. also supported the autofires and slow-motion.
Then there was another smaller input controller I forget what it was called, but they claimed it supported 360-degree motion. Ie, instead of the normal NES paddle that had up/down/left/right, this one had a circle that you would slide around to the different positions, so that I guess it would dither the four cardinal directions to make all sorts of inbetweens.
I never used it, but wasn't there that track&field thing, where you'd run on a pad to get the guy to run?
I think the game Robbie was used for was Gyromite, or something like that. It was really weird, they made such a big deal out of those spinning gyros and stuff, it was pretty cool, but all for one lame-ass game.
Yeah - it's funny turning the framerate "meter" o in REND386 on any moderately powerful machine (like, on my P200) - framerates go over the top (>100+). I would love to see how well it works on anything recent (1 GHz Athalon, etc).
Still, it probably can't beat out a good 3D card, since it is only software. I would love to see a hibrid of REND386 or AVRIL on the front end, with OpenGL or GLIDE on the back end for rendering. Then maybe the spinning bananna could be textured, and we could see the amusement park rides the way they should look.
Pity not many care about homebrew VR anymore (my site rarely gets any hits, though that could be because of my lack of attention to it - I am thinking about replacing it with something else)...
It has features like the 20 worst NES games of all time and the 10 worst things to base a game on. Lots of other funny stuff on there for any child of the 80s.
I'm quite sure. My certainty comes from having been there to see them when they were new. I've owned both a Commodore 64 and an Atari 65XE and they were not the same system. I personally liked the Atari systems better, especially the original 800 model. It had the best keyboard of any of them. The 800 and its descendents were based off the 6502 processor. This cpu was used in many different systems back then including the Commodore Pet, Vic20, Apple II+/IIe/IIc, BBC Acorn, OSI Challenger I/II/III, etc. etc. The Commodore 64 used the 6510 which was a derivative of the 6502. I don't really know what exactly the difference were architecture wise. I don't know of any other system which used the 6510.
Lee
-- Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Those lost points were worthwhile...
by
uzioriluzan
·
· Score: 1
...even more if CmdrTaco is involved in the game development field.
One very important question is if it is worthwhile lose some points at college or university in order to develop (computer) games. As should be expected of course it is.
First of all, the market is extremely huge and under growth. The US$6,1 billion figures in 1999 is higher than the cinema.
In addition, developing games has a great academic importance. Its involves a lot of subjects such as computing, arts (graphical design, audio and video), modelling (psychology, tactics and sociology) and entertainment (game desing and level design). Its also not little challenging from the computing view (complex algorithms and need for realism). Even better, there are many courses out there in universities all around the world.
Lastly, why not just have fun and exercise your imagination?:)
That way, CmdrTaco, if necessary lose even more points...
6502 the same as the Development machine which was the Apple II (I believe?).
Don't ask me how I knew that...
-- Do not read this.sig
Re:FLASHING ON AND OFF--
by
dark_panda
·
· Score: 4
I, like every single NES owner in the world, also had this problem. Even this past summer, I could barely get one of those 42-in-one Asian carts. You know, the ones with 4 versions of Super Mario Bros., 2 versions of Tennis and at least 3 Galaxians on them. The screen would always flash green and black until I applied The Method.
Insert cart.
Press down on poorly conceived "VCR like" cartridge bay.
Turn on NES.
Watch green and black screens alternate.
Wiggle cartridge around a bit while NES is still on.
Watch as green and black screens become blue and white screens.
Remove cartridge.
Throw caution to the wind and disregard warning on back of cartridge by blowing on the connectors.
Re-insert cartridge and turn on power again.
Watch as scrambled sprites and backgrounds flash on the screen.
Wiggle cartridge some more.
Remove cartridge and blow on the connectors even harder. Wave cartridge around a bit just to be sure.
Insert, power on, pray, play.
Repeat procedure as necessary.
Many a times have I applied The Method to great results.
As a side note, does it seem strange to any of you just how indestructable those NES controllers were? I mean, they were built like brick shit houses. I've beaten those things silly and they just don't give in. Many a times have I taken one of the controllers by the cord and reamed it against the wall after constantly losing at the Adventures of Lolo, Ninja Gaiden and the nefarious last levels of Megaman. In my entire NES career, which includes up to this day, I've only replaced one controller. Meanwhile, I've gone through 2 MS Sidewinders in 2 years.
the contacts are copper. they get wet, touch oxygen, and turn brown. the contacts are no longer any good..
you blow on them (breathing on them works better, adds more moisture to the game) this causes the contacts to temperarily work better.
the permanet fix: take a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a q-tip. dip the q-tip into the bottle. rub the q-tip on the contacts of the video game cartrige. you can also clean the NES consol with the same method, but there are easier ways for it (buy one of those NES cleaners. that is what they really do, they clean the contacts. it doesnt hurt the fuggin consol like all the nerds say)
anyhow, once you rub alcohol on the cartrige, you will notice green and brown shit all over yoru q-tip. that is all the shit that was up on there...
now your game is fixed. it should work perfect untill it gets moisture to it again. i seem to have to clean my games once every few months to keep them from locking up.
the reason sega genesis and newer games do not lock up and need blowing is because the manufacturers used higher quality contacts such as gold plated, etc.. the same principle here is like pc100 memory, the contacts get corroded, if you use a pencil eraser to clean them, then they work better.
-- Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Re:Does it run Linux?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
The NES is based off of MOS Technology's (which was later bought up by Commodore Business Machines) 6502 series microprocessor for it's main CPU. (The graphics engine used a different microprocessor, though I do not know it's specs off the top of my head.) The very same processor used in early Apple computers, Commodore 64 and 128 (the latter of which actually used a variant of the 6502, the 6810 (correct me if I'm wrong...it's been a while and i don't feel like cracking open my C128 right now to check) which was not actually 100% compatible, but was compatible enough to run 99.7% of C64 software out there, as well as having a Z80 under the hood so the C128 was able to run CP/M. My spies tell me that someone even wrote a mini-Unix for the C128 using the Z80 as an MMU), as WELL as in most of Commodore's disk drives! And, of course, numerous other systems and embedded applications that I can't even list. Very popular CPU, the 6502. Check out 6502.org sometime. It's still in use among hobbyists to this very day.
I seriously doubt the NES could run Linux as you would very likely need an MMU for memory management which the 6502 is fairly incapable of. However, I see no reason why someone couldn't kludge up a primitive DOS for it now that you're fairly unlikely to find a Famicom disk drive. Anyone for porting over Microsoft's BASIC 2.0 kernel?:)
All I know is I want one when I go to college. With it I want Bubble Bobble (I wasted too much of my life on that game and was dissapointed to not eve see it get mentioned on the gamers.com article) excite bike, FFI, MMII and say like zelda and a bunch more. I bet I'd get a lot of people in my dorm and we could play team nintendo, just like the old days...you know...
Player: *jumps* I keep missing that jump! You said there was a 1up up there?
Observer1: no, no no, you are doing it wrong, you have to jump *points* there to get up
P: OH!, I get it
O2: You missed again, thats thre ups you lost, my turn
P:Na ah...we get four lives, not three, and anyways see, I just got up
O1 and O2 pout and slouch back waiting for the next chance to try to get the controller
Anyway, what about games like Contra and all, for hardest game, you can't get past the 4th level in contra.
That clicker hasn't changed since then, they still use the same design on the gameboy today, I wish all games had clickers like that...
Contra wasn't that hard. I remember being able to beat Contra without dying ONCE, back in the day.
You just have to memorize the whole fucking thing:)
Anyone remember the Power Glove?
by
micahjd
·
· Score: 3
The Power Glove was basically just a cheapo VR
device for the NES. It has little resistive sensors for detecting finger position, and a sort
of 3D sonar to detect the position of the hand
relative to the TV. AFAIK they only released one
game for it on the NES (Glove ball?) and it was
pretty much a flop. But interestingly enough they started sort of a cult following among the 1337 DOS programmers of the day.
I remember ordering my Power Glove used for something like $8. (like I said, a flop) I built the quite simple paralell port
adaptor, and stuck the little sonar doodads on my monitor. 386s were new back then, so the graphics weren't great, but it was still pretty darn cool.
I remember this demo with a "western" town (saloons and things) and being able to pick up tables and even open the safe with my pixelated and jittery virtual hand.
It was neat, especially for that time period. I wonder if there's any linux software for that thing...
--
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
Re:Anyone remember the Power Glove?
by
DoasFu
·
· Score: 1
For the record, yes, it was "The Wizard." Talk about your insidious marketing campaigns.
Dan
Re:Anyone remember the Power Glove?
by
DrPascal
·
· Score: 1
I know I'm gonna get slapped for this, but the actual quote was "It's so bad", not "It's so rad."
I just re-watched that movie like two weeks ago. God bless Digital Cable.
--
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
Re:Anyone remember the Power Glove?
by
DoasFu
·
· Score: 1
But... but... "rad" is so much cheesier! Don't mess with memories!
Re:Anyone remember the Power Glove?
by
DoasFu
·
· Score: 1
"I love the Power Glove. It's so rad."
Place that quote!
Dan
Re:Anyone remember the Power Glove?
by
Count+Spatula
·
· Score: 1
I wonder if there's any linux software for that thing...
Hell, man, I'd be down for developing something like that. Could you imagine navigating X with that glove? It'd 0wn.
-- --
Count Spatula: The Culinary Vampire
"...because my cooking sucks."
Computer: $2000
Nintendo: $150
Besides, I already had an old 8086 that I played King's Quest and 4x4 Offroad Racing on. It couldn't, however, play Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior IV.
Re:The Game is on GBC, with MORE
by
kubrick
·
· Score: 1
BlockOut (don't know if that was *ever* available on any console system)
I've had BlockOut on the Atari Lynx since it first came out in the early 90s -- I still play that occasionally, and it's one of the best three or so of the 30-odd games I have:)
Tetris *is* a great game though... WRT the Lynx, I'm hoping that the GBA brings Lynx-like games to the masses, as obviously Atari couldn't market or improve the machine like they should have - second generation Lynxen were cool, but the battery life sucked.:(
I loved that game. I remember playing it in the arcade, and then bieng so excited when it came out on the NES. Remember when the guy says "Bad Dudes" or something at the end of the level and it sounded like someone ripped out his larynx, put it through a blender, then put it back in. I am pretty sure it was an attempt at actual digitized speach, but the NES kinda choked on it.
-- Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
A friend of mine had a running pad thing
by
protein+folder
·
· Score: 1
You would jump up and down on it or run or whatever. It kind of sucked, though, because it didn't accurately reflect what you were doing--he recorded somebody playing the game on a videotape, and then I ran and jumped, etc. for about a half-hour before I realized that the vcr was going, and that the vcr wasn't.
The NES was cool, I still play Super Mario Bros on an Emulator, it was one of the most addictive games ever made, wasn't it? (or was it just me?)
15 years already?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2
Man, it's hard to believe how time flies. I still remember first getting my hands on games like the original Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda. They seem so laughable now (especially the plots), but it's easy to forget that at the time, these games were state of the art! When you talked about Sniffits and Digdoggers, every knew exactly what you meant. Mario Brothers 3 is still the most anticipated game in history... remember its infamous debut in the movie The Wizard? Every kid on the block couldn't wait to get his hands on the new Raccoon Mario and map screen!
Those NES games always seemed to have something today's big-budget... I guess it was just the innocence of a fresh new industry, so eager to try out new ideas (some of those NES were pretty damned weird). There was a true creative spirit then, and what the consoles couldn't do, the programmers made up for. I still love to leave my NES on and walk around my office with the Zelda overworld theme playing...
Oh christ, not again. Am I EVER going to read a slashdot gaming article without somebody perpetuating this tired and completely false cliche?
Games are the same as they always have been. There are some bad ones, tons of decent ones, and a few really good ones. That was true then, it's true of todays games as well. That aspect of gaming hasn't changed, you have.
I totally remember how awesome Nintendo was (is). The realization hit me when my friend invited me over to play Super Mario Brothers. I thought it was JustAnotherAtari-LikeConsole with maybe a slight variation on the original Mario Brothers game (remember that one? POW.)
But it wasn't just one screen of action. I was totally floored when I saw the screen actually scrolling by, with all the colors and backgrounds and many sprites on the screen. Damn, I was hooked from then onwards.
That seemed like the big, hate to say it, but Paradigm Shift. Since then, IMHO, games have gotten far more gee-whiz with graphics/sound effects, but this one step of going from simple atari-like games to super-mario-like stuff was totally HUGE for me.
Just my reminisces back towards junior high/high days. Most others will probably disagree...
Oh christ, not again. Am I EVER going to read a slashdot gaming article without somebody perpetuating this tired and
completely false cliche?
Interesting how such a cliche can be false, considering it's totally one's opinion.
I at least said IMHO in my post, thus allowing people to disagree. You are entitled to your opinions, and me to mine.
Basically to sum up what I was trying to say, because I think you completely missed my point, was that the jump from Atari-like games to NES-like games was a far bigger jump relatively than from subsequent gaming systems down the line. I did NOT say that today's games are not as good as the ones 'back in my day'. And once again, a big fat IMHO applies.
I had the Atari and the NES as well as several others, but for me, the *jump* from to amazing graphics and sound came when a friend gave me a single 1.44 HD disk containing Wolfenstein 3D. This was the first *true* 3D shooter and it amazes me to see that almost ten years later, we haven't advanced all that much. I'd take Wolfenstein over Q3A anyday.
--
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Thats not the CPU, thats the slot the cartridge plugs into. It's either worn or dirty. There was a very specific trick I would do that would make a good connection almost every time. Instead of pushing the cart all the way into the slot then pushing the slow down I would push the cart in sort of diagnally in such a way that it clipped the edge of the NES as it went in. This worked most every time.
Man, if you never had a NES, well, your unlucky. They were so fun.
Then mine broke.:-)
Moral of story: The first Nintendo games were totally superb, and really, all console games now are incredibly boring and, just plain not very fun. But Duck hunt, and all the Marios were so original (maybe because they were the only ones) and so fun!
Unfotunately, emulating them on my Linux box just isn't the same... (*fond memories of playing Duck Hunt*)
But I am still happy, because KSpaceDuel is one of the first games that is pretty creative and well thought out, and very fun. So I have hope... but not if all the games I ever see are the same thing. This is why I haven't bought any consoles since my Genesis and NES.
-- ---------
The 'gui' in 'penguin' is pronounced K-D-E .
One of the orangey colored mini bosses towards the end of Megaman 1 was TOO hard to beat. It had some eye thing and broke up and shifted itself to other side. I know you needed the electricity to kill him, but I never got past that!:(
--
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary'
but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
Re:U-Force, ROB, and other useless accessories
by
h_jurvanen
·
· Score: 2
Anyone remember the various input devices Nintendo tried to market with the NES? I think ROB was the first- that robot that only worked with one game where you had to stack discs...or something like that. My friend had one and we could never get it to work.
When my friend got an NES for Christmas his cat promptly peed all over the robot.
Likewise, I find it funny that anyone would purchase a personal computer such as the A1000 when Cray has had vastly more powerful machines available for years. So much for the progress of technology.
Re:U-Force, ROB, and other useless accessories
by
diamondc
·
· Score: 1
I'm sure Mattel brought out the Power Glove.
--
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary'
but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
Re:I remember the NES coming out in '85
by
h_jurvanen
·
· Score: 1
I learned that success in life is not based on your ability to play video games, but is based on what other things that you do to help improve your life.
Depends on your line of work! For example, I am a black-clad nano-augmented super-agent and I've gotten a lot of practical work experience through video games.
I remember playing this game as a kid; hours and hours and hours upon end. I think I stayed up all night playing it the first time at a friend's house.
I have to agree, I wonder how much better I would have done in school if I had never come across gaming systems:)
-- EOM
Re:Distributed Computing Power and NES
by
Mooset
·
· Score: 1
Once the old guy who owns the Atari Store in the town I'm from told me that blowing into the cartridges could eventually damage the metal on the circuits due to the moisture in breath.
Then again, he also thinks the Atari Jaguar is far more powerful than the Playstation or N64, so take it with a grain of salt...
I'm sure I cannot be the only one who is concerned about the oversight of Metroid having the best ending. I mean, I felt my heart drop when Samus revealed that she was a she. Why, then, did the choose what they did for the best?
more emulation for profit
by
donglekey
·
· Score: 2
I think it would be cool if nintendo would take all of their games and license as many of the third party ones as possible and create a cartridge for N64 or a CD for the gamecube to pack tons of old nintendo games into one game for a newer system. They could make some money off of it I am sure, especially if they put some antialiasing in the games and some more color depth, and jazzed up the sound a little. That would be great. I would buy it, and they sure aren't making any money selling those games anymore (not the companies themselves anyway).
Great post. But what do you do when that damn switch breaks! The whole effing thing is usless until you get it fixed, and who fixes NESs nowdays? On a wholly unrelated topic, Did you ever buy the Advantage joysticks? Now those suckas were built tough! Metal bases that weigh 2 tons, quarter inch ABS cases, and damn near indestructible buttons. Even the stick had this ball that screwed on with brass threads ! They really don't make stuff like that anymore. It was practically arcade quality.
And who can forget the Cyclops. It was this really lame attempt at a "full 360 degree contoller". It was almost completely useles. The only game it actually worked better on was Ice Hockey.
-- Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
Re:Gender bias was rampant on the NES
by
enneff
·
· Score: 1
The Atari XE was NOT a Commodore 64 clone
by
leereyno
·
· Score: 2
The Atari 800 predates the Commodore 64. The 65 and 130 XE computers were simply the last in the series.
Lee
-- Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Re:The Atari XE was NOT a Commodore 64 clone
by
N8Magic
·
· Score: 1
Don't forget about the Atari 600XL! My first computer. I'll always remember it, cause it could take cartridges (Moon Patrol...yes!) or we had an Indus disk drive (which I thought was the coolest thing as it had a flip up dust cover to keep stuff out of the drive and an LED indicator to tell you what track the drive was reading/writing)
Oh well... forget my rambling!
Re:The Atari XE was NOT a Commodore 64 clone
by
Pfhreakaz0id
·
· Score: 2
The Atari 600XL was also my first computer. I remember my dad helping my upgrade it to 64K.... ---
Blah blah blah. Those types of games weren't made because nobody would buy them. Guys like shooting things and heroically rescuing women, sorry.
Guys also like boobs and hips, again sorry.
Many attempts were made to cultivate a female audience (not just athena), and there were tons of games that had no gender bias, but still females didn't buy games. Should we be sorry for that also? Who's fault is it?
Christ, don't you have a nike commercial to protest or something?
I can tell you this, if every game made was geared towards cultivating a female audience, it would hardly have mattered. Guys -still- would have bought the games. Why is that?
Hrm.. oh wait! Scarey thought! Maybe men and women are different!
yeah and then hooking up the archive of pause music up to your digital phone system, so when you put somebody on hold they will get a random pause music. makes sense, right? 'You are on pause.':)
eudas
-- Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
Re:Gender bias was rampant on the NES
by
jidar
·
· Score: 1
A bad message of what? That women are physically weaker? Uhh... aren't they?
yeah and then hooking up the archive of pause music up to your digital phone system, so when you put somebody on
hold they will get a random pause music. makes sense, right? 'You are on pause.':)
It's a nice thought, but I don't think it would be practical in my house... The wiring's so bad, the local radio station is always in the background. With two phones off the hook at the same time it's so bad you can barely hear the people.
Oh well, sometimes I do put music on the phones,
just by setting one of those little hands-free headsets next to my computer speakers and firing up XMMS. Now all XMMS needs is a NES emulator plugin!
--
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
I begged my parents for a computer..
by
Squarewav
·
· Score: 1
I use to beg my parents nearly every day for a computer, but computers were too exp. and not functional enofe to be more then just a toy to warent my parents going into debt just so I could play some games. the NES on the other hand was cheap (200$ I think when it first came out then it droped to 100$) had many fun games, and was easyer to use ( my parents still dont know how to use a computer). even after I got the NES I still kept begging for a computer, eventualy getting a job and buying my own
Re:The Three Best Games EVER!
by
wass
·
· Score: 1
IMHO, I'd actually have to add BattleToads to that list. It came out rather late in the NES lifespan, but damn, was it so fscking cool. I don't know if there's been other sequels to it, though, so it may not have the 'legacy' the other games have. But I do agree with you on those three.
--
make world, not war
Re:U-Force, ROB, and other useless accessories
by
diamondc
·
· Score: 1
the paddle 360 degree joystick was the NES Max and was specifically made for Nintendo's Ice Hockey game.
--
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary'
but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
Long live Sentinel Worlds and SubSpace
by
ndege
·
· Score: 1
2D games like Sentinel Worlds and SubSpace will live forever. They are not that flashy, but there is a genius behind each of them that isn't always seen in today's games. ---
If I recall correctly, Gyromite wasn't included with the system, which is why most R.O.B.s* were hardly never touched. But yeah, after owning Nintendo systems most of my life I was pretty pissed off when my Playstation didn't even come with a RF adapter!
Metroid doesn't refute anything, because you didn't learn Samus Aran's gender until the very end (or entered the cheat code). They deliberately hid it, which proves either of two reprehensible facts: 1) they knew that her gender would negatively impact sales, so they didn't reveal it at first or 2) it was a mere afterthought, not worthy of our attention.
It's not possible, then, that it was "deliberately" done just to turn our stereotypes on our collective ears? I mean, everyone went through the game thinking that Samus was a guy, and then, once the game was over, one of your basic assumptions regarding the character (one which, I might add, had absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay) was proven to be completely false.
Sheesh. I thought it was pretty clever, myself, and certainly not an afterthought, since you could play through the entire game again with your helmet off. I think you're reading malicious intent where there was none at all...
I had that problem with my NES, the problem was the connectors in the machine eventually getting bent back over time. What you do is open it up, and bend those connectors back down with a small screwdriver, and works like a charm.
*sigh* Didn't you learn your lesson from your poorly-informed (and similarly Amiga-centric) posting on Linux-kernel? Your ramblings are making all Amiga fans look like idiots, and that bothers me, because I'm one of them.
Lara Croft, for example, might be liberated in the sense of freely committing violence normally reserved for men, but she's still chained to an image of large breasts and a sexually inviting pelvis.
It's better than some of the guys. Sure, we have the male characters that are macho, big muscular guys that can kick ass, but, back in the days of Nintendo particularly...we were given some pretty ugly characters.
Mario - I don't know about most guys, but I never wanted to grow up and become a short fat guy with a beer belly and a huge moustache that you know catches at least half of the food he eats in it. Nevermind the bigass nose.
Kid Icarus - A midget version of Harpo Marx with a pair of wings strapped on his back, running around in his underwear is not my idea of an ass kicker either.
A boy and his blob - A lot of kids pick their nose and never give it a second thought. But, when a big ball of snot comes to life and you play with it, then you have real problems. That kid is a dork, not a hero.
We could go on to other game systems that do a good job. I think Sega has done excellent with games like Sonic the Hedgehog. Rather than having it be completely biased that he is a man and saving the princess, he is simply a mutated animal trying to save all the other animals. While there really is no female interaction there that I am aware of, it's not such a bad thing as it deals with animals, so it is more abstract than some guy running around shooting other army guys and ok for even young children, as you never kill the bad guys, simply free the animals from their robotic forms. Anyways, that is off topic so I will end this post now.:o)
-- Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Re:and if you do it even faster..
by
WzDD
·
· Score: 1
That was a great cheat. Spandex, funky green flowing hair, plus all the power-ups. Spending hours typing in the names of various game designers just to see if they worked, and later figuring out how the passwords in Mega Man 3 worked enough to win levels and get power-ups without all that tedious hand-eye co-ordination, probably marked the start of my interest in computers and programming.
Re:Nintendo Marketing Practices
by
phillymjs
·
· Score: 1
?
?on the history of Nintendo can be had if you get a hold of this book.
Nintendo did do a lot of underhanded stuff. I particularly remember them price-fixing the Advantage joystick, which remained at $40 for YEARS, I think even after the SNES came out. I simply did without until I picked a used one up at Funcoland for significantly cheaper, and then about 4 or 5 years ago my local Toys R Us blew out a pallet of them that must've been buried somewhere in the stockroom for chump change-- I think they were $2 or $3 apiece, brand new, in boxes that were so thick with dust you could write your name in it.
I think the *real* reason Nintendo gets upset over old NES roms is that they allow you to play the game without the need to coat the circuit contacts with slobber first.
Sure, Nintendo says you're "not supposed to blow on the contacts" but everyone does it anyway because it's the only way to make the damn things work. The slobber later causes corrosion which means the more you like a game, the more you have to slobber on it to get it to work each time you play it, the quicker it corrodes and the sooner you have to replace it. And replacements mean more money for Nintendo.
I personally like emulation better - it's all the fun of classic gaming with none of the slobber!
-- --- Replace ISA with USB? Great idea, I love more cables...
...until their patents expire! Look out baby, I'm going to topple Nintendo with my own cheap knock off version of the NES!
Okay, I admit, I actually don't know if Nintendo patented anything on the NES, or if they did, whether it's covered by Japanese or American laws, but things like this are still useful in illustrating how long 17 years is in technological terms.
-- "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Also, blowing inside the NES itself seemed to help occasionally, especially on those occasions when you didn't let the thing cool off for the recommended period of time (you did follow the manual's safety instructions, yes?) before playing again.
Shadowgate wasn't on the list?...::sob::
by
Shaolin+Z
·
· Score: 1
I agree that Metroid has nice music, but I Shadowgate's music was what stood out the most to me. Of course, it was fairly easy to memorize how to beat the game (I don't remember who told me how to do it, but I was still able to pull it off ever since) =). Hell, Nintendo liked it so much they made a version for the Gameboy Color! I couldn't even find the game listed once in the article!
It's evil, I tell ya...you just don't do that...
Shut-up, I'm not crying! I just have something in my eye...
Re:Nintendo Marketing Practices
by
micahjd
·
· Score: 3
Video game manufacturers have always had quite
evil marketing and legal practices. All of the
console systems I've programmed for or investigated have proprietary APIs, but that's not the real problem- at least on the simpler 2D systems these are quickly reverse engineered. The game companies made it illegal to write games without their special licence. I don't know the technical details of most systems, but I'll use the Gameboy as an example:
The Gameboy itself has a tiny (512 bytes IIRC) boot ROM. It doesn't perform any initialization, its only purpose is to scroll the little "Nintendo" logo down the screen. The logo itself is stored in the game cartridge, but if it doesn't compare exactly to another copy in the ROM, the game never loads. This forces developers to put a copy of the Nintendo logo in their games, and buy the special license so it isn't "illegal".
I forget whether this was ever challenged in court. (Never stopped the hobbiests, of course:)
I think there was a legal case involving something similar with the Sega, but I don't remember the details.
Though I've never programmed for the NES, I have modified mine to play unlicenced cartridges. (Shhh... experimental purposes only;-) The NES and the cartridge both have an identical proprietary chip. They exchange data of some sort, and if the chip in the NES doesn't like the other chip, you get the flashing screen. This is easily remedied on the customer's part by clipping a wire in the NES, but I think Tengen built their own chip to release Pac Man (and maybe some other games) without a Nintendo license, and they got sued.
--
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
Re:The Three Best Games EVER!
by
fiziko
·
· Score: 2
IMHO, I think that "Crystalis" is one of the best NES games I've ever played. Maybe it doesn't belong in the top three ever list, but I think it should be in the best Action/RPG list. I found it far more fun and original than Castlevania 2, and it actually had a decent story to go along with gameplay!
Re:The Game is on GBC, with MORE
by
Deluge
·
· Score: 1
But nothing beats Tetris. I've been playing that game for years, and I don't think I'll EVER get sick of it. Sure, there will be spans of a month or so where I won't. But I always come back.
I used to be that way with Tetris (not on the NES though), then I got my hands on BlockOut (don't know if that was *ever* available on any console system) and wow, that was the most addicting game I can remember. Even moreso than Zoop:)
The blinking is in fact not the processor, what happens is after repeated use the pins that the game comes in contact with with bend or rust to the point that no contact is made. Where did the rust come from? Well remember the days when you used to blow into the game or machine to "get the dust out"? Well you were also depositing your spit, which caused rust. The top loading released NES's dont have the bending problem but dont blow in those either (If you can find them, pretty rare and they dont work with all NES accesories IE game action replan and game genie). So what can you do? There are 2 ways to fix this and I have done them both many times. First is to open up the NES, pull off the cart reader, and using a paper-clip bend the pins that contact the game up a bit, but not too much. There are web sites out there describing the "paper-clip method" in more detail. Or you can go to http://www.matelectronics.com and get a catalog or call them and get a replacement cart reader. I bought some last year and assume they still sell them. They werent very expensive and they will illimiante your blinking woes. Good luck. The NES will live forever:)
Wish I could write the script for it, make it not completely based on any particular game. Maybe if they use the basic idea (characters, triforce, good vs. evil), and make a movie that could be a normal fantasy style movie, just with some Zelda stuff in it.
Plus, I'd love to hear the Zelda theme in surround sound.
Actually, it should get a lot of money. Apparently when the original shipment of NESs went out, they came with a little robot called ROB. As I understand it, he could interact with some of the games. ROB is a really rare collector's item now, but I have no idea how much it would be worth.
I'm a hard core gamer, I started on my Commodore 64 and moved on up to the NES, and beyond. Is it just me or when you go back to playing the good ole NES, the controller feels a lot smaller and weird?
Also, is there a non-duct tape related fix for the cartidge holder that just won't stay down;-)
P.S. Proud owner of 72 mint NES games, good systems don't die, they just end up in yard sales
Yeah, we always used to stick another game in on top of the game that wouldn't stay down. Using another controller worked as well. The thing about using the cartridge method though was that it had to be in the little plastic sleeve, otherwise it wasn't thick enough to keep it perfectly in place.
Ninja Gaiden was the best, then Castlevania, then Metroid!!!!
-- My hypothesis regarding monkeys and typewritters revolves around the concept of broken typewritters and smeared feces on
Once he turned into little pieces, they always flew past in the same pattern. Once you master the pattern, you could survive fighting him. It was tough, because two of the pieces were really close together, you kind of had to jump, run with the pieces flow, then jump again. The hard thing was that each shot of electricity you did on him was the same damage as he did to you, so you had to just make sure you were one-up on the damage if you couldn't master jumping over his pieces.
There was also a cheat, where you could pause the game as the lightning is hitting him. every time you pause and unpause it, it gives him another hit of damage, so you could kill him in only a few lightning bolt hits.
well I can't say that. For consoles I guess. I had a C64 for my game playing. A bit more expensive, but at least I didn't have to go buy/trade/rent games to play (CopyKit was my savior). It had much better graphics and sound. I was never a console controller lover either. Give me my god damn joystick anyday.:)
I think you're thinking of the Atari 2600, not the Nintendo. The C64 was a much more limited gaming platform than the Nintendo (the lack of tiled backgrounds, scrollable buffers, per scanline interrupts, and multi-window modes made the C64 much more limited than a Nintendo). Of course it has been so long since I fired up a C64 that I may be talking out of my ass.
Metroid doesn't refute anything, because you didn't learn Samus Aran's gender until the very end (or entered the cheat code). They deliberately hid it, which proves either of two reprehensible facts: 1) they knew that her gender would negatively impact sales, so they didn't reveal it at first or 2) it was a mere afterthought, not worthy of our attention.
And like I said, I'm not entirely convinced the stereotyping has stopped. Lara Croft, for example, might be liberated in the sense of freely committing violence normally reserved for men, but she's still chained to an image of large breasts and a sexually inviting pelvis.
Well, I've seen quite a few ROBs in thrift store junk piles, so I suppose it depends on the condition and all the parts being there. (I'm more into pre-crash stuff myself.)
For those that might not remember when the NES was introduced, ROB was the big sell -- Every NES advert prominently featured it. (As the article pointed out, the NES was originally pushed as some sort of educational/entertainment system, not as a pure video game box. The early games were very cartoony -- not at all the outer space shootemup Atari-style games.)
--
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Re:Distributed Computing Power and NES
by
ActMatrix
·
· Score: 1
I'm not sure about damaging the metal on the circuits, but the moisture in your breath can cause more dust to stick to the cartridge contacts. Maybe that's what he meant. ---
While not trying to start a flamewar, why exactly did so many of you ask your parents for an NES? A home computer, while being somewhat more expensive, would have been so much more useful, as well as being able to play more sophisticated games...
The XT was hardly the ideal gaming platform (or computing platform in general) in the '80s -- but don't confuse that with home computer gaming.
The Apple ][ (particularly with the double hi-res of the//e and//c, and the ][gs of course), the Commodore 64, Atari 400/800, not to mention the early Amigas and Atari STs, all had better graphics than CGA or the NES. And when you consider that a C64 could be had for only around $250, the price really wasn't that much of an issue.
Exactly what kind of more sophisticated games came out for home computers in the mid-80's? Mind you, I'm talking back then... all I can think of is Ultima - but in terms of playability and addictive nature, the NES would win hands-down on all counts. Unless you like text-based adventures, which means you were probably a very boring child. (last quip was tongue-in-cheek, don't hit me!)
And when you consider that a C64 could be had for only around $250, the price really wasn't that much of an issue.
HAH, for one the c64 by itself was 250$, if you wanted to actualy do anything you needed the ultra slow ultra low densaty diskdrive that costs 200$
As far as better grafix you must have never seen a NES in action even the most basic nes grafix ( Final fantasy comes to mind) made the C64 look like an atari 2600. ive only seen a few c64 games that could only begin to compare with the NES and even then it took over a min to load each grafic thanx to the c64 ultra slow drive
I cant say much about the amiga system, as Ive never used one. but the idea of paying over 2000$ to play a few games is hardly my idea of fun
Actually, I did like text adventures, and in addition I was a fan of strategy games like "King's Bounty" and "Reach for the Stars" -- the forerunners of games like "Heroes of Might and Magic" and "Master of Orion" -- all of which weren't available for the NES.
In addition, programming (even on 8-bit machines with pitiful amounts of memory and bad implementations of BASIC) was a blast.
Well, for one, the Amiga 500 and 2000 were already available during the Nintendo days - and they had games on par with the Sega Genesis before it even existed!
-- A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board:
"You know what? You're right."
I remember the music it would play when you put it on pause...
bu-chck-bu-chck-bu-chckchckchck-bamph-bamph-bamph- chckchckchck
You know, all the playstation games and such still can have never had such a cool beat as the pause music on battletoads. I remember when I figured out how to connect my NES to the stereo (I used the RCA cables to connect everything to a Commodore monitor I had with my C=64) and played that up really loud. I also had a dad that was a big music fan, so he always got me fairly expensive stereo equipment for xmas and birthdays...man did my mom get mad about the bass...
Ah the Nintendo... I still play mine every once in a while. It's important to remember, however, that the NES was not "revolutionary for its time." The Sega Master System, for instance, was a much better system with better sound and graphics hardware (64 colors!). The reason all us American kids can talk about the NES with such nostalgia is because it was all we had, and it was all we had because of marketing practices that rivaled the worst of Microsoft's.
Remember that little gold "Nintendo Seal of Quality"? Well, that seal cost a pretty penny, and a game developer had to sell his soul to get it. Developing for the NES meant that you were not permitted to make games for other systems (i.e. Sega), and since Nintendo cornered the market in the U.S., no one could afford not to make games for the Nintendo (the situation was different in Europe, by the way).
Nintendo also had policies that extended to retailers, and they even threatened to pull their systems from the shelves of Toys 'R Us when the company wouldn't play by their rules. Over the years, Nintendo was involved in countless lawsuits, most of which they lost. The industry was just so profitable, however, that it never really mattered.
I admit that the games were great, but Nintendo was (and probably still is) an evil, evil company.
Re:Nintendo Marketing Practices
by
edp
·
· Score: 1
"It's important to remember, however, that the NES was
not 'revolutionary for its time.' The Sega Master System, for instance, was a much better system with better
sound and graphics hardware (64 colors!)."
The Sega Master System is not a counterexample to the revolution of the NES, since the NES came out first, at least in the United States. The home video game market was dead in the United States. Nintendo revived it.
Re:Nintendo Marketing Practices
by
Zebbers
·
· Score: 1
I personally had a SMS before a NES and I loved the sega to death...and once the genesis came out...I even bought segacd(dumb)...passed on the saturn and went psx...Ill go psx2 next.
On the one hand I want to agree with you, but my brain says otherwise. If the target market for video games are overwhelmingly teenage boys, you're not only going to see an overwhelmingly large number of games targeted to teenage boys, but an overwhelmingly large number of good game developers are going to develop for teenage boys. Athena didn't suck because the industry has it out for women; it sucked because all of the good game developers were writing the latest Legend of Zelda sequel.
It's not sexist, just the naked pursuit of profit. Not that the one is any better than the other, though.
One question I'd rather see answered, rather than "why/how is it the gaming industry has these stereotypes, and how can they be changed?" is... "why is it the gaming industry has so critically few women engineers, and how can this be changed?"
The only engineer I can think of offhand who's seriously involved in game design is Bungie's Quin Denki (I may be misspelling her name). I'm excluding Stevie Case here, because I don't think an engineer needs to be famous for spanking someone in an FPS and posing nude for Playboy... I think an engineer needs to be respected for technical ability, which Denki definitely gets. Roberta Williams would make the list, but she's been Management for some time now and not Engineering.
There was a really good interview with Denki on the Bungie website a while ago; it may still be there for all I know. Had a lot of technical detail in it, but some very interesting opinions on the role of women in engineering and as women as gamers.
Insofar as Metroid goes, I prefer option 3--like a Stanley Kubrick film, they wanted to save the biggest head-twist for the last scene.:) I mean, I sat up and took notice when I discovered Samus Aran was a woman. I wasn't expecting that at all.
Considering that you don't discover the secret of The Crying Game until close to the end, does that prove either 1) that transvestism would negatively affect the movie sales, 2) it was a mere afterthought, or 3) they thought it would get people talking?
Re:U-Force, ROB, and other useless accessories
by
captain_evil
·
· Score: 1
ROB also came with some spinning tops i could never figure out what they did but then again i was five years old when my father handed me this weird contraption called an NES with gyromite and gradius. Gyromite is the Greatest NES game ever made, i spent hours on end playing it, does anyone know if there was a final stage i remeber going from level to level, it had over 80 Levels! Lets just hope nintendo has the brains to make Gyromite 128 with the return of ROB.
Nintendo infiltrates Ohio State Dorms
by
MicroBerto
·
· Score: 1
My roommates and I have a Nintendo and about 50 games, and we play it ALL the time. It's not the original type of NES though -- its the new kind they re-released after SNES came out, with the SNES look to it. It works very well, and we love games like Rampage, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Dragon Warrior, Bubble Bobble, Marble Madness, Techmo Super Bowl (my fav), Adventure Island, and tons and tons of others! Our competition gets fierce -- but we're not total dorks about it, we still go out, drink beer, get activities done, and study.:-)
Are you sure about that? I am almost certain that the machine's even had the same BIOS! I'll have to find an XE, crack it open, and get the model #'s off of the chips (then I'll repost here:).
As a side note, does it seem strange to any of you just how indestructable those NES controllers were? I mean, they were built like brick shit houses. I've beaten those things silly and they just don't give in. Many a times have I taken one of the controllers by the cord and reamed it against the wall after constantly losing at the Adventures of Lolo, Ninja Gaiden and the nefarious last levels of Megaman. In my entire NES career, which includes up to this day, I've only replaced one controller. Meanwhile, I've gone through 2 MS Sidewinders in 2 years.
They weren't that good. I had a friend who crushed a NES controller in his bare hand after losing a heated game of Tecmo Bowl. Of course the friend was the size of an NFL lineman.
The Tecmo Bowl carts weren't that sturdy either. Another friend smashed his into tiny bits with a hammer after a losing experience.
Maybe Rare will make Battletoads for the Gamecube
by
Xenex
·
· Score: 1
Well, I think it would be cool anyway...
Metroid skipped a generation (N64), so, I guess Battletoads may have too...
Goto Rare's website and e-mail them... you never know...
/me waits hoping for DK, DKR, BK, KI, JFG, DI, PD, and BT for the Gamecube (If you're in the know, you'll know what they all stand for....;)
"What would a mint-condition NES with ROB and games be worth these days?"
What about one with a low serial number? I think mine is around 23,000. I got it before the NES was generally available in retail stores.
Gender bias was rampant on the NES
by
Anne+Marie
·
· Score: 3
I too spent many hours playing on my NES in my formative years. But it was true then and it is even more apparent in hindsight: the NES perpetuated negative stereotypes of women (and minorities too --dear lord, look at Superdodgeball and Double Dragon and we'll chat -- but that's a different rant).
And I'm not just talking about mere passive bias of exclusion. The videogame market was directed at boys, and naturally, it was the boys who purchased the lion's share of games produced. Naturally, we'd expect to find a disproportionate number of shoot'em-up games and sidescrollers where the sole objective is to kill everything in one's path and save the planet. I understand the economic pressures driving such a situation, and I can cope (though I'll be critical of whatever games I'll be buying my own kids, when I have them some day).
What I'm complaining about is the actual stereotypes perpetuated by games by girls' and women's inclusion in games, not their mere exclusion. Often, they are comoditized and positioned as a prize to be won, the princess to save from the dragon, and other things consistent with anglo-american literary heritage going back to Camelot. But it got no better once they stepped off their pedestals and entered the actual gameplay itself. Remember Super Mario 2? Remember who the weakest character was? It wasn't the mushroom -- it was the girl. Remember Gunsmoke? The hostages were disproportionately 'helpless women'. Oh save me! Please. And don't even get me started on the whole Barbie videogame franchise.
For a time, there was an attempt to cater to the grrrl's market theretofore ignored by gaming companies. And do you know what the results were? Do you remember the pinnacle of girl-targeted gaming was? Athena, that's what. Finally, a game where girls could play a true female lead-role and save the world, but alas, the game was complete crap. Did they give her a menacing weapon? No, girls can't be trusted with real weapons, so we'll give her a stupid blue mallet thing. Does she engage in fast-paced adrenalin-rushing heart-pounding combat with fierce and fearsome enemies? No, she just wanders around the screen until you get bored and turn the stupid thing off.
I wouldn't be so bitter if I saw any real change in the industry in the years since. But no, the industry is still caught up in some sexist notion that women are different, that girls think differently from boys, and while it may all be true, it's irrelevent here. Girls were robbed of their freedom and denied their equal share and place in the childhood of boys. And now that we're grown up, we're pissed.
-- -- Anne Marie
Re:Gender bias was rampant on the NES
by
ekidder
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, but Princess was the only character I would play simply because she could float. That little ability got you out of a lot of jams (and made beating the end boss so pathetically easy...)
Re:Gender bias was rampant on the NES
by
Anne+Marie
·
· Score: 1
I mean weak in terms of physical strength, measured in speed of picking up objects. Toad jumped the shortest but was strongest physiccally. The princess could jump high and float, but she was physically weakest: she struggled and strained to pick anything up. It sent a bad message.
-- -- Anne Marie
Re:Gender bias was rampant on the NES
by
0xdeadbeef
·
· Score: 1
Oh, quit yer whining. Samus, the protagonist of Metroid, is female. In fact, it made a big deal of it, because you weren't aware of it the first time through the game. Then it's like, "holy shit, I've been playing as a girl!" I suspect thousands of pubescent boys were scarred by this deception. It might have even pushed some into gender-bending deviency, like you, Siggy.
--
Re:Gender bias was rampant on the NES
by
be-fan
·
· Score: 2
A) Like the other poster said, women (in general) ARE weaker.
The point you miss is that women may be just as good or better than men, but it does not mean that they are the SAME as men. The Princess thing is a perfect example. She wasn't a strong character. However, she was probably one of the best because of her other talents. PC (political correctness) throws me for a loop once in awhile. I just realized: It's wrong to say that women can use their particular talents to be successful, but its encouraged that teachers push their right-brained students to use their special talents to be sucessful. Weird.
Maybe, in the end, people might realize that a generalization is just that: A generalization. People do it all the time, that's how people are designed. When you treat a specific person according to a generalization, that wrong, that's prejudice. When you make a generalization that you can support with fact, and use that generalization when talking about the group in general, that's fine.
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I used to smack the TV, rather than the console, whenever I got pissed. To this day, I have to stop myself from punching my monitor when I play a game on the PC. Nintendo warped me.
but this weekend I was re-hooking up my old NES...
after opening the original box and styraphone, i noticed that I still had the original register receipt from when I bought the machine. 1988... $98.06 from CompUSA... oh, those were the days.
of course, getting that first game to play I was frustrated by having the keep on trying to blow in the game, in the machine, hit it a few times on the top... all the same frustrations that remember doing over 10 yrs ago to get the system working.
of course, getting that first game to play I was frustrated by having the keep on trying to blow in the game, in the machine, hit it a few times on the top... all the same frustrations that remember doing over 10 yrs ago to get the system working.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
A) Can anyone verify exactly WHY the blowing thing worked? I think it's a universal part of the NES experience. Strangely, my Sega machines never needed blowing. (Okay, I know I'm asking for a bunch of blowjob jokes)
B) If only blowing on Linux would make it work!
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Wow I've gotten old. I can't believe fifteen years has gone by since the days of treating calloused thumbs and being constantly out of breath from blowing on those cool little gray cartriges.
Tecmo Bowl is the best football game ever!
by
DA_MAN_DA_MYTH
·
· Score: 1
Tecmo Bowl is by far the best football game ever, or Super Tecmo Bowl if you like to throw in a little more strategy 8 Plays instead of four... Tecmo Bowl had Bo Jackson and Lawrence Taylor, Ronnie Lott and Walter Payton... The most dominant digital football players of all time... I'd gladly play any Madden team with STB's AFC all star team...
"If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten."
-- George Carlin
-- "It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Can you explain what a "half point" on a "GPA" is for those of us who don't see Slashdot as simply a gateway to the private life of CmdrTaco? C'mon, man, look around - your little town in the US isn't the only place in the world with high schools.
-- I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
A GPA is a "grade point average". In the US, this generally is a number between 1 and 4, with 4 being perfect. A half point is what it sounds like: 0.5
Dragon Warrior, baby. Granted, it's not the hardest game in the world, but I was only 7 when I was playing it. RPGs are fuckin' hard if you're 7! What's worse, I got it from some mall trade-in shop so it didn't come with an instruction booklet or anything.
Man, that was nuts. Walking around killing slimes till I was sick in the head, just so I could level up... say what you will, but those old RPGs were HARD. Developers had NO bones about throwing in chests that could kill you if you stepped near them, and when you died, you lost half your gold and 10% of your experience. God, that was a bitch.
But I eventually won! I beat that fucker! I did it! And RPGs have been my favorite type of game ever since. You'd better believe I have FF IX on pre-order.
it's only kinda tough the first time around, but I believe if you do it without dying too many times (or something) it gives you a password to a very difficult version of the game that I'm sure is impossible.. it's just too difficult
and if you do it even faster..
by
dwlemon
·
· Score: 1
she appears in a bikini in the ending.
it isn't a rumor.. i've seen it with my own eyes.
Re:FLASHING ON AND OFF--
by
Dark+Nexus
·
· Score: 1
As I remember, mine changed...
Orange and black, blue and black, red a blue, and so on. The odd time, I'd even get a rotation.... Orange, Blue, Green, Black, Red, repeat:)
Dark Nexus
-- Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
yeah... I really miss mine--now all it does is flash black and white on the screen... sometimes if i clean the hell out of it, it will actually play a game, but i think its processor has seen better days, because the screen gets all corrupted--its kind of amusing sometimes.
mov ax, 13h int 10h
--
mov ax, 13h int 10h
Re:FLASHING ON AND OFF--
by
Observador
·
· Score: 1
does it seem strange to any of you just how indestructable those NES
controllers were? I mean, they were built like brick shit houses.
... And does anyone remember the NES MAX 'twas the first joypad I played with that had autofire buttons! And the pad itself, that had a wierd design, worked so flawlessly! I wonder why the design was never copied, was it patentized? No use now with analog controllers anyway.
I still got one of those tucked away in a corner along with dozens of carts, joypads and lightguns...
Of course what this really means is that I am older than I thought I could be when I played on the NES. Come to think of it, when my children start up Virtual Pac-Man 2010 and Super Mario Universe on the virtual reality console of the future I will be able to tell them I was there when it all started. That almost makes up for not being born on time to watch Star Wars in theathers way back in the 70's.
OBS
Keep your feet on the ground, respect in your hand, and let love flow out of your heart.
Keep your mind on the code and your eyes on the boss.
OBS Keep your feet on the ground, respect in your hand and let love flow out of your hand.
-- I wish I could filter out the annoying Pickens articles...
Re:FLASHING ON AND OFF--
by
Alternity
·
· Score: 2
Not so indestructable I fear. I have 3 NES controllers (2 standard and the good old NES Max) and only one is still working properly:o(
Now the main problem is that it's hard to find one to buy these days. But you are right... they were indeed much more resilient than everything currently on the market. The closest would be IMHO the gravis gamepads.
No matter how old that thing is, I still get the kicks from going through the 2 first Megaman. The megaman are among the best games ever.
"When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun...
--
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
black and white? mine was always.. blue and black, flashing constantly. I always used some trick of clicking it up and down the cartridge inside the NES which worked most of the time:)
--
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary'
but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
If I remember correctly the different flashing colors corresponded to different error codes. I had a list of what they translated to for a short while but lost it farely quickly.
as someone who worked for N. as a GPC during the NES days, my $0.02 on the flashing screen:
bad connections. 9 times out of 10, it's due only to the connectors being dirty, which can be fixed with some q-tips and rubbing alcohol. clean both the internal NES connectors and *all* your carts, being careful not to leave any of the cotton from the q-tip on the connectors.
occasionally the connectors have actually been damaged, usually by someone jerking the carts around while they're in the unit. not too much you can do about this unless you want to take the unit apart and try to replace them.
NES was a pretty amazingly well-built piece of equip, IMO. we had units come in for repair that had been thrown in swimming pools and left for months which only needed a serious cleaning to be up and running again. of course we also had lots of units come in with bullets and bullet holes in them...
josh
Re:The Game is on GBC, with MORE
by
ekidder
·
· Score: 1
I am glad to see that there is still attention to old gaming stystems and games through emulation and stuff like this. I am just starting college and it seems like all of my friends have been playing older games systems, like genesis, super nintendo, and NES. The reason being of course that good games are always fun, and graphics and sound are cool, but it is elegance, play control, and originality that poeple love. Because so many games had to rely on these things instead of graphics, there were alot of simple and fun games produced. (Don't get me wrong, there was alot of crap too) But those games will always be fun, and because of things like emulation, I will even be able to show them to my kids someday and not have to worry about blowing into the cartridge just right to get an NES game to work.
And next year will be Sonic's 10th birthday...
by
ChaosEmerald
·
· Score: 5
(1991 - Sonic the Hedgehog was released in the US)
When you think of all the video games that just go right by its amazing. Sure, the NES was great, but there were some pieces of crap too. I honestly can't say that I've played more than 500 games in the past ten years. And how many were released, 10000?
Think of all the consoles, NES, SMS, TurboGraphix16 (awwwwwwwwwww yeah!), Genesis (+ SegaCD + 32X), SNES, NeoGeo (Metal Slug!), Saturn, PSX, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and soon to come out PS2.
There have been many series, from Mega Man to Mario to Sonic to Zelda to Phantasy Star to Street Fighter to Double Dragon to Battle Toads to... But when was the last time you saw a Double Dragon game or a Battle Toads game? I'm just amazed at the amount of games I've never played, and the amount that will keep on coming.
--
I am a bad speler. Please ignore speling meestakes in me poast.
Re:And next year will be Sonic's 10th birthday...
by
British
·
· Score: 2
And I think 90% of them were SMB clones to some extent(run n jump)
My roommate and I have got an NES a few months back... Didn't really play much til he got Super Mario Bros off of eBay... Well, that cartridge had some difect or something, so it took a whole lot of blowing on the contacts to get it working.
I have to say we didn't turn the machine off ever since for the fear that the cart would go dead. It's pretty much been on for the past two months. (How's that for an uptime?)
I wish they still made 2-D games like that. I mean there's nothing wrong with today's crop of 3-D stuff, but one does yearn for a bit of hand-drawn cartoonish animation from time to time...
the contacts on the cartridge AND the nintendo are probably dirty. Either get a nintendo cleaning kit, or take the whole thing anpart and use rubbing alcohol.
Open the cart and get the battery out, if the contacts are not rusted or the battery has not leaked then go with the battery to a clock shop and ask for a battery with the same dimensions; buy it then plug it in and seal the cart again (clean it up while you are at it)... it should save your games just fine... repeat when it does not.
man that was a hell of a long line
OBS Keep your feet on the ground, respect in your hand, and let love flow out of your mind. Keep your mind on the code and your eyes on the boss.
OBS Keep your feet on the ground, respect in your hand and let love flow out of your hand.
-- I wish I could filter out the annoying Pickens articles...
I love my NES. I can't bring myself to get rid of it, and frankly, I'm glad I've kept it. I now have a 5 year old niece learning to play video games, and it's great watching her play classic games such as Mario, and Zelda.
The Nintendo Entertainment System helped make me the geek I am today. Without it, I probably would never have gained such a strong interest in technology. (Well, that and my Atari XE, a Comedore 64 clone.:-)
It's good to see that people still appreciate this very important piece of legacy hardware! Long live the NES!:-)
I remember the NES coming out in '85
by
cecil36
·
· Score: 1
I was in third grade when the NES came out, but did not actually get one until '87. Why the long wait? I was still getting my kicks out of an Atari system (I loved playing Asteroids on that thing). When I got my NES, I got 6 games with it, and could not drop the controller for a period longer than for me to eat my dinner or to take a potty break. Needless to say, my grades in school took a plummet, but my mother saw what was happening, and was forced to unplug the NES until my grades rebounded. 15 years later, I'm still a gamer, but not as much as I was for the previous 14. I learned that success in life is not based on your ability to play video games, but is based on what other things that you do to help improve your life.
I never throw away anything, and a couple of years ago I dug my old NES out of the storage bin, dusted it off, and plugged it in. Not only did it still work, but my Legend of Zelda game still had my original games saved. (ISTR that the Zelda booklet warned that the internal battery would only function for 3-5 years... mine has made it ~14 years and counting!)
I've moved twice since then, and the NES has come with me. I suppose I could pluck down the couple-hundred needed for one of the much newer and better console systems, but why? Most of the games I would be interested in playing on a new system are also available for my computer -- and I already have the hardware. No, I enjoy playing my old Nintendo half for nostalgia and half for the "mind-numbingly simple" plot lines that most follow. (Which is a good thing, 'cause with few exceptions -- like Zelda -- you can't save your session.)
And even after all these years, I can still navigate the first level of Contra without looking at the screen -- with the help of up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-select-s tart. 8^)
-- "I came here to kick ass and chew
bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum."
MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
Another good site for bad games
by
thiophene
·
· Score: 1
I actually found this one on somethingawful.com a couple days ago, and spent about a half an hour peeing my pants from the commentary.
One word refutation: Metroid (if you look past the fact that you can't tell for most of the game)
For the most part, you're right. I think the system couldn't support many of the things that appeal to women today in video games, such as deep character development and graphics. The stereotyping and such is bad, but for the most part it's stopped.
Also, remember that many of the games were made by japanese developers, whose only experience with minorities is in foreign movies and TV (Japan being 98% racially pure and all). So what you're seeing is the way the rest of the world represents minorities in the media through the eyes of japanese game developers.
It would have been really dumb to buy an Amiga instead of a NES if you wanted to play games.
We bought an Amiga 1000 in Christmas of '85. (my parents did actually, I was pretty young back then.:) ) It cost us $3500 for a machine with 512K and two floppy drives (and $50 for our first box of 10 880K 3.5" disks(!)).
It was a great games machine, but it really didn't get any games worth mentioning for nearly two years after its release. That whole first year I think we had two games to play: "Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One", and "Archon". Archon was an incredible version and helped tide us over until the next wave of games showed up, like "Arcticfox" (a game I would probably still play today, if I could find a copy to play under WinUAE.)
Compare that utter paucity of games to a NES, which cost 1/35th as much and had 50 times as many games. I'd say buying the NES made a hell of a lot more sense. Some of the Amiga games were amazing, but so were some of the NES games, and the barrier to entry was a lot lower on the console!
That music sounds almost exactly like the original unless you have a wavetabele soundcard like me:D
Try the NSF version at this link here and get a player from zophar's domain. You can also find a lot more NES music there: this is one of the most comprehensive archives of NSF's i've found.
Just realized that offsite linking to the vgmusic.com archives doesn't work, so click here and naviagte to NES music section. Journey to Silius is in the list.
Pity he didn't, it would have saved us all from the CmdrTaco Ego-Fest.
-- I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Re:I got into a fist fight over a SNES game
by
b0z
·
· Score: 1
Street Fighter 2 was a good game, but I had some friends that liked to constantly remind me that they were better than me at the game. Well, after enough taunts and being beaten, I was tired of it, so I yanked the cartridge out of the SNES, threw it out the window, then proceeded to have a fist fight with the cocky SOB that was taunting me. I had almost forgotten about that incident. Ahhh...the days when I had a bad temper...
They make mention of the Super Mario Bros SuperShow with Captain Lou. Back in the days when video games were so "great" they made movies, cartoons, and television series over them.
The Legend of Zelda cartoon (shown every Friday) was wonderfully great. Link was the perfect character in that, an arrogant sarcastic jerk and hero at the same time. That's exactly what Link should be.
Anyone know of a location/hyperlink to buy or download those episodes?
Think Hollywood could pull off a good movie based on Zelda (if they don't pull the same mistakes that they always do with video game movies)? I've been waiting for that for years.
If you play Gyromite you will notice that the second controller buttons take care of the red and blue columns. You were supposed to put the second controller in a holder on ROB. There was 2 gyros(tops) that spin up in a battery operated motor. You would have ROB spin up gyros and put them on the arm of the controller holder to activate the appropriate columns. It was fairly cumbersome but was pretty cool at time.
my nes isn't dead, it still works 11 years after getting it. Though that might have something to do with me taking it abart, and soaking the contacts in rubbing alcohol for a week, then scrubbing them real good before putitng them back in.
Yeah, I had an NES when I was a kid. (Hell, everybody did) Hard to believe it's been 15 years since then..wow..
And look at how far the industry has come.. We've gone from games that were mostly short on flash and heavy on fun to nearly the opposite. Game companies seem more interested in polygons and resolution than actual gameplay(with some exceptions of course). Although nowadays, there's a lot more games marketed to older people instead of just kids (unless you own an N64. You have 3.).
You'll forgive me if I wax sentimental here, but I loved playing those older games. They were just, well, fun. Granted, I still love my Playstation, and will be getting a PS2(eventually), but I still really enjoy pulling out my old NES and playing a little Zelda once in a while. It's relaxing for me, and I find that there are few newer games that can give me that same sense of sheer enjoyment. (The Crash Bandicoot series, Spyro series, and Chrono Cross are a few of a pretty short list)
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to try to save the princess.
-- I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that you're an idiot!
Re:Distributed Computing Power and NES
by
iankerickson
·
· Score: 1
You'd have to target the 6502 first, which is about the same as porting linux to the Apple II.
Kinda fails the "reasonable architecture" requirement for Linux.;-)
--
Democracy. Whiskey. Sexy. Pick any two.
Re:The Three Best Games EVER!
by
psankh
·
· Score: 1
I never have been able to undertsand why the original Metroid always seems to be absent from these "best games" lists. The three days I spent as a kid locked in my room defeating that thing (only to find out Samus was a girl) ranks right up there with other cherished teenage memories such as first sexual experience, obtaining a driver's liscense, ect.
2). Super Mario Brothers or RC Pro Am, depending on my mood.
3). Legacy of Kain. Oh wait, that's PlayStation.
That would have been a GPA total of...
by
dumdeedum
·
· Score: 1
I woulda had a full half point better on my high school GPA
...one full half point.
Actually, the extra time in front of the tv probably bathed you in sufficient radiation to kill the majority of your neurons anyway. ---
I find it ironic that the NES, a seriously inferior system, was released *later* than the A1000. So much for the progress of technology. --------
Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
Hey, does anyone know what kind of proc the NES used? I know it was around 1.7-something megahertz, but what type?
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:Sure it wasn't a full grade LEVEL you missed?
by
be-fan
·
· Score: 2
Ahh, the subtlties of the English langague. In this case, "full" isn't used to denote a fraction, but as an emphasis to mean an entire fractional point. For example, you can have a whole half-pie, or you can have a fraction of a half-pie. It's still correct.
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Woo-woo! Fun train coming through!!!
by
BilldaCat
·
· Score: 2
(sits down at NES, inserts cartridge)
TV: (flash)
TV: (flash)
TV: (flash)
me: (turns off NES, pulls cartridge out)
me: (sharp intake of breath)
me: "FFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTFFFFFTTTTTTTTTHHHHH"
me: (another sharp intake of breath)
me: "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF F F F FF FFFFFFFF FFFF"
me: (puts cartridge back in NES, turns on power)
If you like Contra, you'll love The Minibosses. Among other classic NES games, they did a cover of the music from the first three levels of Contra, and it's probably the best thing they've done--it's amazing how well it translated to hard rock.
If you haven't seen it, you should take a loot at seanbaby's NES page. I'd recommend the this page to, be sure to watch the video. Pretty hilarious.
The Game is on GBC, with MORE
by
FunOne
·
· Score: 1
I know, I sound like a PR guy.
The original (1985) Super Mario Bros is on the GBC, with pixel perfect reproduction and color. You get all 32 levels, the star levels, and 'Super Mario for Super players' (Hella tough), challange mode, and a 2 player race game. All for 30 bucks.
I just cant stop playing this, I haven't even been playing Tetris since I got it. FunOne
-- FunOne
15 years, and NES games are still being developed
by
yerricde
·
· Score: 3
Distributed Computing Power and NES
by
1nt3lx
·
· Score: 4
Yes! It has a processor and a way to accept user input. Someone should port LINUX to it! Once someone found a way to network them the possibilities would be endless...
Imagine a pile of NES's running linux in some sort of a cluster. Wow, I can just hear the tech's now. "Quick! Number 342-32 is down! Get over there and exhale into the cartridge!"
Most of the time breathing on the contacts would work, too. I can't say anything ever beat a good swift punch, though.
I enjoyed the hell out of my NES as much as the next guy, but I have to say that it provided personal outbursts of frustration unmatched since. Take, for instance, the cart "The Mafat Conspiracy." This was a follow up to Golga 13. Yeah, the cool spy-themed side-scroller. Anyway, board 4 of this games involved a herd of jumping wolf-dog-things and floor spikes (the one-touch-kills-your-whole-life-meter variety). The dogs would bounce poor Golga off the catwalk and onto the spikes. I could consistently reach one specific catwalk jump every time. And, just as regularly, a fucking lupo-canine thingamabob would launch my butt to certain doom. Every damn time. I would try different things. It didn't matter -- this game was the genesis of the destruction of two nintendo controllers. And let me tell you, those puppies were hard to break. I had to pull out the old clawhammer.
Anyone out there defeat this blasted game? It was really fun, up until the dog-creatures
A friend experienced similar emotional turmoil from the original Ninja Gaiden. He actaully went so far as to kick the console off the tv stand. Anyone else have any tough-game war stories?
...by Bernie Roehl and Dave Stampe - go to my site for more PG/homebrew VR action.
It really was something the first time I hooked my glove up to my 486. I was worried the timing wouldn't be right (the parallel port polling used hard coded timing loops), but it worked OK. I even toyed around with hooking the thing to my Amiga 2000.
Someone should try to make a hybrid of Quake and Rend386 (or Avril), with the glove for a controller. With a strong hand (those gloves sucked for flexability), one could form a "gun" with the hand, then motion to fire in some manner - could be interesting...
Yeah, the Lemmings music was awesome. I had no idea there was a GameBoy version, but back when I would play it on my 286 (AdLib soundcard) there were some pretty cool tunes.
U-Force, ROB, and other useless accessories
by
ActMatrix
·
· Score: 2
Anyone remember the various input devices Nintendo tried to market with the NES? I think ROB was the first- that robot that only worked with one game where you had to stack discs...or something like that. My friend had one and we could never get it to work.
I Did get suckered in to buying a U-Force, which had a clamshell design with motion sensors. The idea seemed cool- controlling Mike Tyson's Punchout by moving your hands, or driving Rad Racer by pretending you're holding a steering wheel. The motion detection was crap though...(and trying to play 'normal' games like Zelda was a riotous exercise in futility)...I fortunately managed to get my parents to return it.
Now the Power Glove may not have been very popular, but I have to give props to Nintendo for putting it out. It was clunky, but you could get it to work with some effort...and it did look cool in its own late 80s geekish way. Check out http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigarch/pgsi/ for a nice little hack that lets you hook one up to your PC.
Ah...such fond memories... ---
George W. Bush, Jr. says...
by
1nt3lx
·
· Score: 1
According to George W. Bush, Jr. this means your soul has been darkened by the internet. You must report to the Internet/Computer Related Violent Tendencies Court for immediate execution.
Slashdot Mirror
I woulda had a full half point better on my high school GPA
full half point huh? 100% of 50%? why not "almost all of half of the portion equaling approximately 90% of the whole of the whatever it is we're talking about?" time for some caffeine
My Home: Apartment6
Awsome Possum Kick Dr. Machino's Butt
In the context of this headline, it's "NES's", not "NESs".
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
The subject says it all. Does anyone know if the U-Force bears any electronic similarity to a Theremin? If you've never heard of a Theremin, then does anyone know where I might be able to get some technical docs on the U-Force? I'm suddenly extemely curious about this.
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
I remember the day I got my nintendo, my life was changed, I think my parents are still upset they ever got me into gaming, if it wasn't for that easter morning I would probobly b a whole different person. The only system I think that has the possibility to match its number of great games is the dreamcast and it has a ways to go. you may think I am crazy for saying that but DC has some good games, Sonic Adventure, Chu Chu rocket, Crazy Taxi, NFL2k1, Quake 3 Arena, Samba De Amiga(play it and you will never stop especially if you have the maraca controllers), Soul Caliber, marvel Vs Capcom 1+2, and many more to come, this is only for being around 1 year I think it has a chance at matchin the greatness of nintendo, any1 else agree??
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Geeks Rule~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Acclaim won the suit, but eventually became a registered Sega developer anyway.
I have read the above posts about Metroid. Now, that may or may not count because you didn't know it was a woman until the end. She did kick butt though.
There is another thing to take into consideration. The NES was meant for a younger audience than a lot of the games that are out now. Most boys that are 5 years old or so don't really like girls, and the NES was mostly meant for pre-pubescent boys I think. The Super Nintendo eventually came out, with games for older audiences, like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2. These games featured women characters that kicked ass. This has continued today, even in the computer gaming arena. Even though Lara Croft looks like a ho, guys love to play her game, and you can't say that a woman running around playing Indiana Jones and shooting everything in sight is not a woman kicking butt.
As far as physical strength in real life, generally men are stronger than woman in how much we can pick up or lift. Women seem to have greater endurance though, and we are just made differently.
In any case, it is true that there were a lot more games with guys running around being macho, but I don't think it was necessarily because of a problem of the adults making this game, but that the audience was for little kids, who at that age the majority don't associate with the opposite sex all that much.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Whoa.. I wonder if I can get all my old NES stuff back from the little kid I gave it to. I had all of the Dragon Warrior series for the NES. Even the original.. That was one of my favorite series.
Fear my low SlashID! (bidding starts at $500)
Do not anger the worm.
You know, I've seen a lot of "How come there aren't any girl games for whatever". So my question is, is why don't women get out and write games for other women? I mean, it can't be that difficult in this day and age with all the tools available to women to write games that they themselves would enjoy. So am I totally missing something here? What's the problem with writing games for women by women?
Or have I just totally missed the point cuz I'm a guy and all?
ignoring the emulator dev going on all over, does anyone know of how to get or use an orginal nintendo development system.. this would be a valuable history read..
I learn at a rate geometric to your own
We all know the catchy themes were what kept us coming back for more...
Who wouldnt love remakes of the old songs?
The minibosses
-isnt it strange to be anything at all.... -jeff mangum
-isnt it strange to be anything at all.... -jeff mangum
I just cant stop playing this, I haven't even been playing Tetris since I got it. Agreed. The game is awesome. If your a fan of Super Mario Brothers and you have a Game Boy Color, you owe it to yourself to buy it. Heck, even if you don't have a Game Boy, buy one, then buy SMB DX.
But nothing beats Tetris. I've been playing that game for years, and I don't think I'll EVER get sick of it. Sure, there will be spans of a month or so where I won't. But I always come back.
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
The Wizard? If that's the name of that movie with fred savage and the little retarded kid who could play video games really good all the while just wanting to go to California. Which it turned out all he wanted was to leave some pictures is soem giant dinosoar....if you don't know what i'm taking about don't ask...
Was that from The Wizard? hehe
"It's Brazilian"
Heck, maybe it's worth making an archive of pause music?
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
Nintendo used to have a patent on the cross design on the D-pad so all of Nintendo's competitors had to make different versions of the D-pad as not to be sued. IIRC, their patent has expired on it and you now free to make your own cross-looking D-pads. Yippie!
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
"Swing your arms, from side to side! Come on it's time to go DO THE MARIO!"
It's not for everybody
This makes me wonder if it's possible to use the Duck Hunt gun with an emulator. Since I have read about hacks that allow you to use the NES controllers, and monitors still emit light, this should work. I can't think of too many NES things with more hack value than playing Duck Hunt in an X11 window and shooting at the ducks in the office.
Then there was another smaller input controller I forget what it was called, but they claimed it supported 360-degree motion. Ie, instead of the normal NES paddle that had up/down/left/right, this one had a circle that you would slide around to the different positions, so that I guess it would dither the four cardinal directions to make all sorts of inbetweens.
I never used it, but wasn't there that track&field thing, where you'd run on a pad to get the guy to run?
I think the game Robbie was used for was Gyromite, or something like that. It was really weird, they made such a big deal out of those spinning gyros and stuff, it was pretty cool, but all for one lame-ass game.
Yeah - it's funny turning the framerate "meter" o in REND386 on any moderately powerful machine (like, on my P200) - framerates go over the top (>100+). I would love to see how well it works on anything recent (1 GHz Athalon, etc).
Still, it probably can't beat out a good 3D card, since it is only software. I would love to see a hibrid of REND386 or AVRIL on the front end, with OpenGL or GLIDE on the back end for rendering. Then maybe the spinning bananna could be textured, and we could see the amusement park rides the way they should look.
Pity not many care about homebrew VR anymore (my site rarely gets any hits, though that could be because of my lack of attention to it - I am thinking about replacing it with something else)...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
IGNCube has a decent story about the new Metroid game here, and a short mpeg demo clip of game here. Oh, I can't wait for the Gamecube....
Every NES fan should take a look at Seanbaby's NES Page.
http://seanbaby.com/nes.htm
It has features like the 20 worst NES games of all time and the 10 worst things to base a game on. Lots of other funny stuff on there for any child of the 80s.
I'm quite sure. My certainty comes from having been there to see them when they were new. I've owned both a Commodore 64 and an Atari 65XE and they were not the same system. I personally liked the Atari systems better, especially the original 800 model. It had the best keyboard of any of them. The 800 and its descendents were based off the 6502 processor. This cpu was used in many different systems back then including the Commodore Pet, Vic20, Apple II+/IIe/IIc, BBC Acorn, OSI Challenger I/II/III, etc. etc. The Commodore 64 used the 6510 which was a derivative of the 6502. I don't really know what exactly the difference were architecture wise. I don't know of any other system which used the 6510.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
...even more if CmdrTaco is involved in the game development field. One very important question is if it is worthwhile lose some points at college or university in order to develop (computer) games. As should be expected of course it is. First of all, the market is extremely huge and under growth. The US$6,1 billion figures in 1999 is higher than the cinema. In addition, developing games has a great academic importance. Its involves a lot of subjects such as computing, arts (graphical design, audio and video), modelling (psychology, tactics and sociology) and entertainment (game desing and level design). Its also not little challenging from the computing view (complex algorithms and need for realism). Even better, there are many courses out there in universities all around the world. Lastly, why not just have fun and exercise your imagination? :)
That way, CmdrTaco, if necessary lose even more points...
6502 the same as the Development machine which was the Apple II (I believe?).
Don't ask me how I knew that...
Do not read this
- Insert cart.
- Press down on poorly conceived "VCR like" cartridge bay.
- Turn on NES.
- Watch green and black screens alternate.
- Wiggle cartridge around a bit while NES is still on.
- Watch as green and black screens become blue and white screens.
- Remove cartridge.
- Throw caution to the wind and disregard warning on back of cartridge by blowing on the connectors.
- Re-insert cartridge and turn on power again.
- Watch as scrambled sprites and backgrounds flash on the screen.
- Wiggle cartridge some more.
- Remove cartridge and blow on the connectors even harder. Wave cartridge around a bit just to be sure.
- Insert, power on, pray, play.
- Repeat procedure as necessary.
Many a times have I applied The Method to great results.As a side note, does it seem strange to any of you just how indestructable those NES controllers were? I mean, they were built like brick shit houses. I've beaten those things silly and they just don't give in. Many a times have I taken one of the controllers by the cord and reamed it against the wall after constantly losing at the Adventures of Lolo, Ninja Gaiden and the nefarious last levels of Megaman. In my entire NES career, which includes up to this day, I've only replaced one controller. Meanwhile, I've gone through 2 MS Sidewinders in 2 years.
They don't make 'em like they used to I guess.
J
ok people... think about it.
the contacts are copper. they get wet, touch oxygen, and turn brown. the contacts are no longer any good..
you blow on them (breathing on them works better, adds more moisture to the game) this causes the contacts to temperarily work better.
the permanet fix: take a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a q-tip. dip the q-tip into the bottle. rub the q-tip on the contacts of the video game cartrige. you can also clean the NES consol with the same method, but there are easier ways for it (buy one of those NES cleaners. that is what they really do, they clean the contacts. it doesnt hurt the fuggin consol like all the nerds say)
anyhow, once you rub alcohol on the cartrige, you will notice green and brown shit all over yoru q-tip. that is all the shit that was up on there...
now your game is fixed. it should work perfect untill it gets moisture to it again. i seem to have to clean my games once every few months to keep them from locking up.
the reason sega genesis and newer games do not lock up and need blowing is because the manufacturers used higher quality contacts such as gold plated, etc.. the same principle here is like pc100 memory, the contacts get corroded, if you use a pencil eraser to clean them, then they work better.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
I seriously doubt the NES could run Linux as you would very likely need an MMU for memory management which the 6502 is fairly incapable of. However, I see no reason why someone couldn't kludge up a primitive DOS for it now that you're fairly unlikely to find a Famicom disk drive. Anyone for porting over Microsoft's BASIC 2.0 kernel? :)
All I know is I want one when I go to college. With it I want Bubble Bobble (I wasted too much of my life on that game and was dissapointed to not eve see it get mentioned on the gamers.com article) excite bike, FFI, MMII and say like zelda and a bunch more. I bet I'd get a lot of people in my dorm and we could play team nintendo, just like the old days...you know...
Player: *jumps* I keep missing that jump! You said there was a 1up up there?
Observer1: no, no no, you are doing it wrong, you have to jump *points* there to get up
P: OH!, I get it
O2: You missed again, thats thre ups you lost, my turn
P:Na ah...we get four lives, not three, and anyways see, I just got up
O1 and O2 pout and slouch back waiting for the next chance to try to get the controller
Anyway, what about games like Contra and all, for hardest game, you can't get past the 4th level in contra.
That clicker hasn't changed since then, they still use the same design on the gameboy today, I wish all games had clickers like that...
I remember ordering my Power Glove used for something like $8. (like I said, a flop) I built the quite simple paralell port adaptor, and stuck the little sonar doodads on my monitor. 386s were new back then, so the graphics weren't great, but it was still pretty darn cool. I remember this demo with a "western" town (saloons and things) and being able to pick up tables and even open the safe with my pixelated and jittery virtual hand.
It was neat, especially for that time period. I wonder if there's any linux software for that thing...
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
Computer: $2000 Nintendo: $150 Besides, I already had an old 8086 that I played King's Quest and 4x4 Offroad Racing on. It couldn't, however, play Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior IV.
Remember the funny stock names, like boing?
--
The shareholder is always right.
BlockOut (don't know if that was *ever* available on any console system)
:)
:(
I've had BlockOut on the Atari Lynx since it first came out in the early 90s -- I still play that occasionally, and it's one of the best three or so of the 30-odd games I have
Tetris *is* a great game though... WRT the Lynx, I'm hoping that the GBA brings Lynx-like games to the masses, as obviously Atari couldn't market or improve the machine like they should have - second generation Lynxen were cool, but the battery life sucked.
deus does not exist but if he does
I loved that game. I remember playing it in the arcade, and then bieng so excited when it came out on the NES. Remember when the guy says "Bad Dudes" or something at the end of the level and it sounded like someone ripped out his larynx, put it through a blender, then put it back in. I am pretty sure it was an attempt at actual digitized speach, but the NES kinda choked on it.
Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
Yeah, I'm dumb.
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
It's amazing what some sites will do to increase banner hits.
What would a mint-condition NES with ROB and games be worth these days?
heh, I've gone through 3 monitors...and 8 broken fingers..
Oops....you'll know what I'm talkin about in a bit.
I believe that around 3500 games were made. (English only?)
:-)
I heard this while I was looking for someone with (at least nearly) every English NES rom. If anyone can send me this, please email me.
paulN0SPAM@simer.net
The NES was cool, I still play Super Mario Bros on an Emulator, it was one of the most addictive games ever made, wasn't it? (or was it just me?)
Those NES games always seemed to have something today's big-budget ... I guess it was just the innocence of a fresh new industry, so eager to try out new ideas (some of those NES were pretty damned weird). There was a true creative spirit then, and what the consoles couldn't do, the programmers made up for. I still love to leave my NES on and walk around my office with the Zelda overworld theme playing...
Thats not the CPU, thats the slot the cartridge plugs into. It's either worn or dirty. There was a very specific trick I would do that would make a good connection almost every time. Instead of pushing the cart all the way into the slot then pushing the slow down I would push the cart in sort of diagnally in such a way that it clipped the edge of the NES as it went in. This worked most every time.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Then mine broke. :-)
Moral of story: The first Nintendo games were totally superb, and really, all console games now are incredibly boring and, just plain not very fun. But Duck hunt, and all the Marios were so original (maybe because they were the only ones) and so fun!
Unfotunately, emulating them on my Linux box just isn't the same... (*fond memories of playing Duck Hunt*)
But I am still happy, because KSpaceDuel is one of the first games that is pretty creative and well thought out, and very fun. So I have hope... but not if all the games I ever see are the same thing. This is why I haven't bought any consoles since my Genesis and NES.
--------- The 'gui' in 'penguin' is pronounced K-D-E .
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
One of the orangey colored mini bosses towards the end of Megaman 1 was TOO hard to beat. It had some eye thing and broke up and shifted itself to other side. I know you needed the electricity to kill him, but I never got past that! :(
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
When my friend got an NES for Christmas his cat promptly peed all over the robot.
Herbie J.
Likewise, I find it funny that anyone would purchase a personal computer such as the A1000 when Cray has had vastly more powerful machines available for years. So much for the progress of technology.
I'm sure Mattel brought out the Power Glove.
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
Depends on your line of work! For example, I am a black-clad nano-augmented super-agent and I've gotten a lot of practical work experience through video games.
Herbie J.
I remember playing this game as a kid; hours and hours and hours upon end. I think I stayed up all night playing it the first time at a friend's house.
:)
I have to agree, I wonder how much better I would have done in school if I had never come across gaming systems
EOM
Once the old guy who owns the Atari Store in the town I'm from told me that blowing into the cartridges could eventually damage the metal on the circuits due to the moisture in breath.
Then again, he also thinks the Atari Jaguar is far more powerful than the Playstation or N64, so take it with a grain of salt...
I'm sure I cannot be the only one who is concerned about the oversight of Metroid having the best ending. I mean, I felt my heart drop when Samus revealed that she was a she. Why, then, did the choose what they did for the best?
I think it would be cool if nintendo would take all of their games and license as many of the third party ones as possible and create a cartridge for N64 or a CD for the gamecube to pack tons of old nintendo games into one game for a newer system. They could make some money off of it I am sure, especially if they put some antialiasing in the games and some more color depth, and jazzed up the sound a little. That would be great. I would buy it, and they sure aren't making any money selling those games anymore (not the companies themselves anyway).
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
no, women just like to bitch...
Oops....you'll know what I'm talkin about in a bit.
Great post. But what do you do when that damn switch breaks! The whole effing thing is usless until you get it fixed, and who fixes NESs nowdays? On a wholly unrelated topic, Did you ever buy the Advantage joysticks? Now those suckas were built tough! Metal bases that weigh 2 tons, quarter inch ABS cases, and damn near indestructible buttons. Even the stick had this ball that screwed on with brass threads ! They really don't make stuff like that anymore. It was practically arcade quality. And who can forget the Cyclops. It was this really lame attempt at a "full 360 degree contoller". It was almost completely useles. The only game it actually worked better on was Ice Hockey.
Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
Jill of the Jungle.
She rocked.
Simple: everyone had them.
Remember, we're playing with REAL POWER!
The Atari 800 predates the Commodore 64. The 65 and 130 XE computers were simply the last in the series.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
With the Gameboy version too.
And I'm not talking about the fake Mario 2 that the US got, either.
Blah blah blah. Those types of games weren't made because nobody would buy them. Guys like shooting things and heroically rescuing women, sorry.
Guys also like boobs and hips, again sorry.
Many attempts were made to cultivate a female audience (not just athena), and there were tons of games that had no gender bias, but still females didn't buy games. Should we be sorry for that also? Who's fault is it?
Christ, don't you have a nike commercial to protest or something?
I can tell you this, if every game made was geared towards cultivating a female audience, it would hardly have mattered. Guys -still- would have bought the games. Why is that?
Hrm.. oh wait! Scarey thought! Maybe men and women are different!
*shudder*
Sigs are awesome huh?
it was originally .5
then he got his NES
just kidding, dammit!
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
Woops, missed that. Heh.
------
The end-of-stage voice was "I'm bad!", I think...might have been "we're bad!", I don't remember...
You are right, it did sound terrible, though.
Wherever there's a will, there's a motorway.
yeah and then hooking up the archive of pause music up to your digital phone system, so when you put somebody on hold they will get a random pause music. makes sense, right? 'You are on pause.' :)
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
A bad message of what? That women are physically weaker? Uhh... aren't they?
Sigs are awesome huh?
It's a nice thought, but I don't think it would be practical in my house... The wiring's so bad, the local radio station is always in the background. With two phones off the hook at the same time it's so bad you can barely hear the people.
Oh well, sometimes I do put music on the phones, just by setting one of those little hands-free headsets next to my computer speakers and firing up XMMS. Now all XMMS needs is a NES emulator plugin!
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
I use to beg my parents nearly every day for a computer, but computers were too exp. and not functional enofe to be more then just a toy to warent my parents going into debt just so I could play some games. the NES on the other hand was cheap (200$ I think when it first came out then it droped to 100$) had many fun games, and was easyer to use ( my parents still dont know how to use a computer). even after I got the NES I still kept begging for a computer, eventualy getting a job and buying my own
IMHO, I'd actually have to add BattleToads to that list. It came out rather late in the NES lifespan, but damn, was it so fscking cool. I don't know if there's been other sequels to it, though, so it may not have the 'legacy' the other games have. But I do agree with you on those three.
make world, not war
the paddle 360 degree joystick was the NES Max and was specifically made for Nintendo's Ice Hockey game.
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
2D games like Sentinel Worlds and SubSpace will live forever. They are not that flashy, but there is a genius behind each of them that isn't always seen in today's games.
---
Sig Return: 204 No Content
The system
Two controllers
A light-gun
Robbie the Robot (or whatever his name was)
Super Mario Brothers
Duck Hunt
Maybe Gyromite, I can't remember...
Now those were the good old days. Happy birthday NES!
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Metroid doesn't refute anything, because you didn't learn Samus Aran's gender until the very end (or entered the cheat code). They deliberately hid it, which proves either of two reprehensible facts: 1) they knew that her gender would negatively impact sales, so they didn't reveal it at first or 2) it was a mere afterthought, not worthy of our attention.
It's not possible, then, that it was "deliberately" done just to turn our stereotypes on our collective ears? I mean, everyone went through the game thinking that Samus was a guy, and then, once the game was over, one of your basic assumptions regarding the character (one which, I might add, had absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay) was proven to be completely false.
Sheesh. I thought it was pretty clever, myself, and certainly not an afterthought, since you could play through the entire game again with your helmet off. I think you're reading malicious intent where there was none at all...
Wherever there's a will, there's a motorway.
I had that problem with my NES, the problem was the connectors in the machine eventually getting bent back over time. What you do is open it up, and bend those connectors back down with a small screwdriver, and works like a charm.
*sigh* Didn't you learn your lesson from your poorly-informed (and similarly Amiga-centric) posting on Linux-kernel? Your ramblings are making all Amiga fans look like idiots, and that bothers me, because I'm one of them.
It's better than some of the guys. Sure, we have the male characters that are macho, big muscular guys that can kick ass, but, back in the days of Nintendo particularly...we were given some pretty ugly characters.
Mario - I don't know about most guys, but I never wanted to grow up and become a short fat guy with a beer belly and a huge moustache that you know catches at least half of the food he eats in it. Nevermind the bigass nose.
Kid Icarus - A midget version of Harpo Marx with a pair of wings strapped on his back, running around in his underwear is not my idea of an ass kicker either.
A boy and his blob - A lot of kids pick their nose and never give it a second thought. But, when a big ball of snot comes to life and you play with it, then you have real problems. That kid is a dork, not a hero.
We could go on to other game systems that do a good job. I think Sega has done excellent with games like Sonic the Hedgehog. Rather than having it be completely biased that he is a man and saving the princess, he is simply a mutated animal trying to save all the other animals. While there really is no female interaction there that I am aware of, it's not such a bad thing as it deals with animals, so it is more abstract than some guy running around shooting other army guys and ok for even young children, as you never kill the bad guys, simply free the animals from their robotic forms. Anyways, that is off topic so I will end this post now. :o)
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
That was a great cheat. Spandex, funky green flowing hair, plus all the power-ups. Spending hours typing in the names of various game designers just to see if they worked, and later figuring out how the passwords in Mega Man 3 worked enough to win levels and get power-ups without all that tedious hand-eye co-ordination, probably marked the start of my interest in computers and programming.
? ?on the history of Nintendo can be had if you get a hold of this book.
Nintendo did do a lot of underhanded stuff. I particularly remember them price-fixing the Advantage joystick, which remained at $40 for YEARS, I think even after the SNES came out. I simply did without until I picked a used one up at Funcoland for significantly cheaper, and then about 4 or 5 years ago my local Toys R Us blew out a pallet of them that must've been buried somewhere in the stockroom for chump change-- I think they were $2 or $3 apiece, brand new, in boxes that were so thick with dust you could write your name in it.
~Philly
Yeah, and then you would blow on the connectors on the cartridge. Imagine how much spit got in there...
sup
I think the *real* reason Nintendo gets upset over old NES roms is that they allow you to play the game without the need to coat the circuit contacts with slobber first. Sure, Nintendo says you're "not supposed to blow on the contacts" but everyone does it anyway because it's the only way to make the damn things work. The slobber later causes corrosion which means the more you like a game, the more you have to slobber on it to get it to work each time you play it, the quicker it corrodes and the sooner you have to replace it. And replacements mean more money for Nintendo. I personally like emulation better - it's all the fun of classic gaming with none of the slobber!
--- Replace ISA with USB? Great idea, I love more cables...
Or so I hear...
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Okay, I admit, I actually don't know if Nintendo patented anything on the NES, or if they did, whether it's covered by Japanese or American laws, but things like this are still useful in illustrating how long 17 years is in technological terms.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Also, blowing inside the NES itself seemed to help occasionally, especially on those occasions when you didn't let the thing cool off for the recommended period of time (you did follow the manual's safety instructions, yes?) before playing again.
I agree that Metroid has nice music, but I Shadowgate's music was what stood out the most to me. Of course, it was fairly easy to memorize how to beat the game (I don't remember who told me how to do it, but I was still able to pull it off ever since) =). Hell, Nintendo liked it so much they made a version for the Gameboy Color! I couldn't even find the game listed once in the article!
It's evil, I tell ya...you just don't do that...
Shut-up, I'm not crying! I just have something in my eye...
The Gameboy itself has a tiny (512 bytes IIRC) boot ROM. It doesn't perform any initialization, its only purpose is to scroll the little "Nintendo" logo down the screen. The logo itself is stored in the game cartridge, but if it doesn't compare exactly to another copy in the ROM, the game never loads. This forces developers to put a copy of the Nintendo logo in their games, and buy the special license so it isn't "illegal".
I forget whether this was ever challenged in court. (Never stopped the hobbiests, of course :)
I think there was a legal case involving something similar with the Sega, but I don't remember the details.
Though I've never programmed for the NES, I have modified mine to play unlicenced cartridges. (Shhh... experimental purposes only ;-) The NES and the cartridge both have an identical proprietary chip. They exchange data of some sort, and if the chip in the NES doesn't like the other chip, you get the flashing screen. This is easily remedied on the customer's part by clipping a wire in the NES, but I think Tengen built their own chip to release Pac Man (and maybe some other games) without a Nintendo license, and they got sued.
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
IMHO, I think that "Crystalis" is one of the best NES games I've ever played. Maybe it doesn't belong in the top three ever list, but I think it should be in the best Action/RPG list. I found it far more fun and original than Castlevania 2, and it actually had a decent story to go along with gameplay!
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
I used to be that way with Tetris (not on the NES though), then I got my hands on BlockOut (don't know if that was *ever* available on any console system) and wow, that was the most addicting game I can remember. Even moreso than Zoop :)
---
The blinking is in fact not the processor, what happens is after repeated use the pins that the game comes in contact with with bend or rust to the point that no contact is made. Where did the rust come from? Well remember the days when you used to blow into the game or machine to "get the dust out"? Well you were also depositing your spit, which caused rust. The top loading released NES's dont have the bending problem but dont blow in those either (If you can find them, pretty rare and they dont work with all NES accesories IE game action replan and game genie). So what can you do? There are 2 ways to fix this and I have done them both many times. First is to open up the NES, pull off the cart reader, and using a paper-clip bend the pins that contact the game up a bit, but not too much. There are web sites out there describing the "paper-clip method" in more detail. Or you can go to http://www.matelectronics.com and get a catalog or call them and get a replacement cart reader. I bought some last year and assume they still sell them. They werent very expensive and they will illimiante your blinking woes. Good luck. The NES will live forever :)
I thought Super Mario Bros wasn't too bad. :)
Wish I could write the script for it, make it not completely based on any particular game. Maybe if they use the basic idea (characters, triforce, good vs. evil), and make a movie that could be a normal fantasy style movie, just with some Zelda stuff in it.
Plus, I'd love to hear the Zelda theme in surround sound.
Actually, it should get a lot of money. Apparently when the original shipment of NESs went out, they came with a little robot called ROB. As I understand it, he could interact with some of the games. ROB is a really rare collector's item now, but I have no idea how much it would be worth.
Also, is there a non-duct tape related fix for the cartidge holder that just won't stay down
P.S. Proud owner of 72 mint NES games, good systems don't die, they just end up in yard sales
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey
There was also a cheat, where you could pause the game as the lightning is hitting him. every time you pause and unpause it, it gives him another hit of damage, so you could kill him in only a few lightning bolt hits.
make world, not war
Just click above and be mostly ad free.
well I can't say that. For consoles I guess. I had a C64 for my game playing. A bit more expensive, but at least I didn't have to go buy/trade/rent games to play (CopyKit was my savior). It had much better graphics and sound. I was never a console controller lover either. Give me my god damn joystick anyday. :)
- Bill
Metroid doesn't refute anything, because you didn't learn Samus Aran's gender until the very end (or entered the cheat code). They deliberately hid it, which proves either of two reprehensible facts: 1) they knew that her gender would negatively impact sales, so they didn't reveal it at first or 2) it was a mere afterthought, not worthy of our attention.
And like I said, I'm not entirely convinced the stereotyping has stopped. Lara Croft, for example, might be liberated in the sense of freely committing violence normally reserved for men, but she's still chained to an image of large breasts and a sexually inviting pelvis.
-- Anne Marie
/me sneaks over and snatches the [select] from that sequence and runs away...
;)
BytesTemplar.com
It might be that the connectors in the cartridge slot are all worn down, or very dirty.
I think a while back I saw an electronics surplus store selling a the replacement part but I can't remember which store it was.
Try opening up your system and cleaning the contacts with a q-tip and some rubbing alcohol or something. (it worked for me).
Well, I've seen quite a few ROBs in thrift store junk piles, so I suppose it depends on the condition and all the parts being there. (I'm more into pre-crash stuff myself.)
For those that might not remember when the NES was introduced, ROB was the big sell -- Every NES advert prominently featured it. (As the article pointed out, the NES was originally pushed as some sort of educational/entertainment system, not as a pure video game box. The early games were very cartoony -- not at all the outer space shootemup Atari-style games.)
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I'm not sure about damaging the metal on the circuits, but the moisture in your breath can cause more dust to stick to the cartridge contacts. Maybe that's what he meant.
---
While not trying to start a flamewar, why exactly did so many of you ask your parents for an NES? A home computer, while being somewhat more expensive, would have been so much more useful, as well as being able to play more sophisticated games...
bu-chck-bu-chck-bu-chckchckchck-bamph-bamph-bamph
You know, all the playstation games and such still can have never had such a cool beat as the pause music on battletoads. I remember when I figured out how to connect my NES to the stereo (I used the RCA cables to connect everything to a Commodore monitor I had with my C=64) and played that up really loud. I also had a dad that was a big music fan, so he always got me fairly expensive stereo equipment for xmas and birthdays...man did my mom get mad about the bass...
Thanks battletoads!
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Ah the Nintendo... I still play mine every once in a while. It's important to remember, however, that the NES was not "revolutionary for its time." The Sega Master System, for instance, was a much better system with better sound and graphics hardware (64 colors!). The reason all us American kids can talk about the NES with such nostalgia is because it was all we had, and it was all we had because of marketing practices that rivaled the worst of Microsoft's.
Remember that little gold "Nintendo Seal of Quality"? Well, that seal cost a pretty penny, and a game developer had to sell his soul to get it. Developing for the NES meant that you were not permitted to make games for other systems (i.e. Sega), and since Nintendo cornered the market in the U.S., no one could afford not to make games for the Nintendo (the situation was different in Europe, by the way).
Nintendo also had policies that extended to retailers, and they even threatened to pull their systems from the shelves of Toys 'R Us when the company wouldn't play by their rules. Over the years, Nintendo was involved in countless lawsuits, most of which they lost. The industry was just so profitable, however, that it never really mattered.
I admit that the games were great, but Nintendo was (and probably still is) an evil, evil company.
At great risk of sounding like a complete idiot--
:) I mean, I sat up and took notice when I discovered Samus Aran was a woman. I wasn't expecting that at all.
On the one hand I want to agree with you, but my brain says otherwise. If the target market for video games are overwhelmingly teenage boys, you're not only going to see an overwhelmingly large number of games targeted to teenage boys, but an overwhelmingly large number of good game developers are going to develop for teenage boys. Athena didn't suck because the industry has it out for women; it sucked because all of the good game developers were writing the latest Legend of Zelda sequel.
It's not sexist, just the naked pursuit of profit. Not that the one is any better than the other, though.
One question I'd rather see answered, rather than "why/how is it the gaming industry has these stereotypes, and how can they be changed?" is... "why is it the gaming industry has so critically few women engineers, and how can this be changed?"
The only engineer I can think of offhand who's seriously involved in game design is Bungie's Quin Denki (I may be misspelling her name). I'm excluding Stevie Case here, because I don't think an engineer needs to be famous for spanking someone in an FPS and posing nude for Playboy... I think an engineer needs to be respected for technical ability, which Denki definitely gets. Roberta Williams would make the list, but she's been Management for some time now and not Engineering.
There was a really good interview with Denki on the Bungie website a while ago; it may still be there for all I know. Had a lot of technical detail in it, but some very interesting opinions on the role of women in engineering and as women as gamers.
Insofar as Metroid goes, I prefer option 3--like a Stanley Kubrick film, they wanted to save the biggest head-twist for the last scene.
Considering that you don't discover the secret of The Crying Game until close to the end, does that prove either 1) that transvestism would negatively affect the movie sales, 2) it was a mere afterthought, or 3) they thought it would get people talking?
ROB also came with some spinning tops i could never figure out what they did but then again i was five years old when my father handed me this weird contraption called an NES with gyromite and gradius. Gyromite is the Greatest NES game ever made, i spent hours on end playing it, does anyone know if there was a final stage i remeber going from level to level, it had over 80 Levels! Lets just hope nintendo has the brains to make Gyromite 128 with the return of ROB.
My roommates and I have a Nintendo and about 50 games, and we play it ALL the time. It's not the original type of NES though -- its the new kind they re-released after SNES came out, with the SNES look to it. It works very well, and we love games like Rampage, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Dragon Warrior, Bubble Bobble, Marble Madness, Techmo Super Bowl (my fav), Adventure Island, and tons and tons of others! Our competition gets fierce -- but we're not total dorks about it, we still go out, drink beer, get activities done, and study. :-)
Mike Roberto
- GAIM: MicroBerto
Berto
Are you sure about that? I am almost certain that the machine's even had the same BIOS! I'll have to find an XE, crack it open, and get the model #'s off of the chips (then I'll repost here :).
You're lucky. The battery's shot on my copy of Zelda. Hasn't kept the save in the third slot for at least 5 years, and now won't keep any of them.
As a side note, does it seem strange to any of you just how indestructable those NES controllers were? I mean, they were built like brick shit houses. I've beaten those things silly and they just don't give in. Many a times have I taken one of the controllers by the cord and reamed it against the wall after constantly losing at the Adventures of Lolo, Ninja Gaiden and the nefarious last levels of Megaman. In my entire NES career, which includes up to this day, I've only replaced one controller. Meanwhile, I've gone through 2 MS Sidewinders in 2 years.
They weren't that good. I had a friend who crushed a NES controller in his bare hand after losing a heated game of Tecmo Bowl. Of course the friend was the size of an NFL lineman.
The Tecmo Bowl carts weren't that sturdy either. Another friend smashed his into tiny bits with a hammer after a losing experience.
Metroid skipped a generation (N64), so, I guess Battletoads may have too...
Goto Rare's website and e-mail them... you never know...
"What would a mint-condition NES with ROB and games be worth these days?"
What about one with a low serial number? I think mine is around 23,000. I got it before the NES was generally available in retail stores.
I too spent many hours playing on my NES in my formative years. But it was true then and it is even more apparent in hindsight: the NES perpetuated negative stereotypes of women (and minorities too --dear lord, look at Superdodgeball and Double Dragon and we'll chat -- but that's a different rant).
And I'm not just talking about mere passive bias of exclusion. The videogame market was directed at boys, and naturally, it was the boys who purchased the lion's share of games produced. Naturally, we'd expect to find a disproportionate number of shoot'em-up games and sidescrollers where the sole objective is to kill everything in one's path and save the planet. I understand the economic pressures driving such a situation, and I can cope (though I'll be critical of whatever games I'll be buying my own kids, when I have them some day).
What I'm complaining about is the actual stereotypes perpetuated by games by girls' and women's inclusion in games, not their mere exclusion. Often, they are comoditized and positioned as a prize to be won, the princess to save from the dragon, and other things consistent with anglo-american literary heritage going back to Camelot. But it got no better once they stepped off their pedestals and entered the actual gameplay itself. Remember Super Mario 2? Remember who the weakest character was? It wasn't the mushroom -- it was the girl. Remember Gunsmoke? The hostages were disproportionately 'helpless women'. Oh save me! Please. And don't even get me started on the whole Barbie videogame franchise.
For a time, there was an attempt to cater to the grrrl's market theretofore ignored by gaming companies. And do you know what the results were? Do you remember the pinnacle of girl-targeted gaming was? Athena , that's what. Finally, a game where girls could play a true female lead-role and save the world, but alas, the game was complete crap. Did they give her a menacing weapon? No, girls can't be trusted with real weapons, so we'll give her a stupid blue mallet thing. Does she engage in fast-paced adrenalin-rushing heart-pounding combat with fierce and fearsome enemies? No, she just wanders around the screen until you get bored and turn the stupid thing off.
I wouldn't be so bitter if I saw any real change in the industry in the years since. But no, the industry is still caught up in some sexist notion that women are different, that girls think differently from boys, and while it may all be true, it's irrelevent here. Girls were robbed of their freedom and denied their equal share and place in the childhood of boys. And now that we're grown up, we're pissed.
-- Anne Marie
I used to smack the TV, rather than the console, whenever I got pissed. To this day, I have to stop myself from punching my monitor when I play a game on the PC. Nintendo warped me.
Pax Digitalia
but this weekend I was re-hooking up my old NES...
after opening the original box and styraphone, i noticed that I still had the original register receipt from when I bought the machine. 1988... $98.06 from CompUSA... oh, those were the days.
of course, getting that first game to play I was frustrated by having the keep on trying to blow in the game, in the machine, hit it a few times on the top... all the same frustrations that remember doing over 10 yrs ago to get the system working.
oh, the memories...
Got Rhinos?
Tecmo Bowl is by far the best football game ever, or Super Tecmo Bowl if you like to throw in a little more strategy 8 Plays instead of four... Tecmo Bowl had Bo Jackson and Lawrence Taylor, Ronnie Lott and Walter Payton... The most dominant digital football players of all time... I'd gladly play any Madden team with STB's AFC all star team...
"If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten."
-- George Carlin
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Can you explain what a "half point" on a "GPA" is for those of us who don't see Slashdot as simply a gateway to the private life of CmdrTaco? C'mon, man, look around - your little town in the US isn't the only place in the world with high schools.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Dragon Warrior, baby. Granted, it's not the hardest game in the world, but I was only 7 when I was playing it. RPGs are fuckin' hard if you're 7! What's worse, I got it from some mall trade-in shop so it didn't come with an instruction booklet or anything.
Man, that was nuts. Walking around killing slimes till I was sick in the head, just so I could level up... say what you will, but those old RPGs were HARD. Developers had NO bones about throwing in chests that could kill you if you stepped near them, and when you died, you lost half your gold and 10% of your experience. God, that was a bitch.
But I eventually won! I beat that fucker! I did it! And RPGs have been my favorite type of game ever since. You'd better believe I have FF IX on pre-order.
it's only kinda tough the first time around, but I believe if you do it without dying too many times (or something) it gives you a password to a very difficult version of the game that I'm sure is impossible.. it's just too difficult
she appears in a bikini in the ending.
it isn't a rumor.. i've seen it with my own eyes.
As I remember, mine changed...
:)
Orange and black, blue and black, red a blue, and so on. The odd time, I'd even get a rotation.... Orange, Blue, Green, Black, Red, repeat
Dark Nexus
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
yeah... I really miss mine--now all it does is flash black and white on the screen... sometimes if i clean the hell out of it, it will actually play a game, but i think its processor has seen better days, because the screen gets all corrupted--its kind of amusing sometimes.
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
Do you get the -1 World? :)
I am glad to see that there is still attention to old gaming stystems and games through emulation and stuff like this. I am just starting college and it seems like all of my friends have been playing older games systems, like genesis, super nintendo, and NES. The reason being of course that good games are always fun, and graphics and sound are cool, but it is elegance, play control, and originality that poeple love. Because so many games had to rely on these things instead of graphics, there were alot of simple and fun games produced. (Don't get me wrong, there was alot of crap too) But those games will always be fun, and because of things like emulation, I will even be able to show them to my kids someday and not have to worry about blowing into the cartridge just right to get an NES game to work.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
When you think of all the video games that just go right by its amazing. Sure, the NES was great, but there were some pieces of crap too. I honestly can't say that I've played more than 500 games in the past ten years. And how many were released, 10000?
Think of all the consoles, NES, SMS, TurboGraphix16 (awwwwwwwwwww yeah!), Genesis (+ SegaCD + 32X), SNES, NeoGeo (Metal Slug!), Saturn, PSX, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and soon to come out PS2. There have been many series, from Mega Man to Mario to Sonic to Zelda to Phantasy Star to Street Fighter to Double Dragon to Battle Toads to ... But when was the last time you saw a Double Dragon game or a Battle Toads game? I'm just amazed at the amount of games I've never played, and the amount that will keep on coming.
I am a bad speler. Please ignore speling meestakes in me poast.
I have to say we didn't turn the machine off ever since for the fear that the cart would go dead. It's pretty much been on for the past two months. (How's that for an uptime?)
I wish they still made 2-D games like that. I mean there's nothing wrong with today's crop of 3-D stuff, but one does yearn for a bit of hand-drawn cartoonish animation from time to time...
Ñ'
Did anyone play Super Mario Bros. so much, that you could play through the first couple of levels with the TV *OFF*?
I remember doing that when I was 14. Man, those were the days. I can barely stand to play any game for more than an hour at a time anymore.
Open the cart and get the battery out, if the contacts are not rusted or the battery has not leaked then go with the battery to a clock shop and ask for a battery with the same dimensions; buy it then plug it in and seal the cart again (clean it up while you are at it)... it should save your games just fine... repeat when it does not.
man that was a hell of a long line
OBS
Keep your feet on the ground, respect in your hand, and let love flow out of your mind.
Keep your mind on the code and your eyes on the boss.
OBS
Keep your feet on the ground, respect in your hand and let love flow out of your hand.
I wish I could filter out the annoying Pickens articles...
I love my NES. I can't bring myself to get rid of it, and frankly, I'm glad I've kept it. I now have a 5 year old niece learning to play video games, and it's great watching her play classic games such as Mario, and Zelda.
It's good to see that people still appreciate this very important piece of legacy hardware! Long live the NES! :-)
I was in third grade when the NES came out, but did not actually get one until '87. Why the long wait? I was still getting my kicks out of an Atari system (I loved playing Asteroids on that thing). When I got my NES, I got 6 games with it, and could not drop the controller for a period longer than for me to eat my dinner or to take a potty break. Needless to say, my grades in school took a plummet, but my mother saw what was happening, and was forced to unplug the NES until my grades rebounded. 15 years later, I'm still a gamer, but not as much as I was for the previous 14. I learned that success in life is not based on your ability to play video games, but is based on what other things that you do to help improve your life.
I never throw away anything, and a couple of years ago I dug my old NES out of the storage bin, dusted it off, and plugged it in. Not only did it still work, but my Legend of Zelda game still had my original games saved. (ISTR that the Zelda booklet warned that the internal battery would only function for 3-5 years... mine has made it ~14 years and counting!)
I've moved twice since then, and the NES has come with me. I suppose I could pluck down the couple-hundred needed for one of the much newer and better console systems, but why? Most of the games I would be interested in playing on a new system are also available for my computer -- and I already have the hardware. No, I enjoy playing my old Nintendo half for nostalgia and half for the "mind-numbingly simple" plot lines that most follow. (Which is a good thing, 'cause with few exceptions -- like Zelda -- you can't save your session.)
And even after all these years, I can still navigate the first level of Contra without looking at the screen -- with the help of up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-select-s tart. 8^)
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
I actually found this one on somethingawful.com a couple days ago, and spent about a half an hour peeing my pants from the commentary.
------
SMB3 won best game of all time. We've all been playing NES for years and years, we all know Zelda is the best video game ever created.
Yep. There was a Super Nintendo version of Battletoads. It definately kicked ass like the original.
One word refutation: Metroid (if you look past the fact that you can't tell for most of the game)
For the most part, you're right. I think the system couldn't support many of the things that appeal to women today in video games, such as deep character development and graphics. The stereotyping and such is bad, but for the most part it's stopped.
Also, remember that many of the games were made by japanese developers, whose only experience with minorities is in foreign movies and TV (Japan being 98% racially pure and all). So what you're seeing is the way the rest of the world represents minorities in the media through the eyes of japanese game developers.
BBK
It would have been really dumb to buy an Amiga instead of a NES if you wanted to play games.
:) ) It cost us $3500 for a machine with 512K and two floppy drives (and $50 for our first box of 10 880K 3.5" disks(!)).
We bought an Amiga 1000 in Christmas of '85. (my parents did actually, I was pretty young back then.
It was a great games machine, but it really didn't get any games worth mentioning for nearly two years after its release. That whole first year I think we had two games to play: "Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One", and "Archon". Archon was an incredible version and helped tide us over until the next wave of games showed up, like "Arcticfox" (a game I would probably still play today, if I could find a copy to play under WinUAE.)
Compare that utter paucity of games to a NES, which cost 1/35th as much and had 50 times as many games. I'd say buying the NES made a hell of a lot more sense. Some of the Amiga games were amazing, but so were some of the NES games, and the barrier to entry was a lot lower on the console!
I think they missed one game for the Best Music category:
:D
:D
Journey to Silius.
Hold on while I find some links...
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
That music sounds almost exactly like the original unless you have a wavetabele soundcard like me
Try the NSF version at this link here and get a player from zophar's domain. You can also find a lot more NES music there: this is one of the most comprehensive archives of NSF's i've found.
Listen, and remember!
Pity he didn't, it would have saved us all from the CmdrTaco Ego-Fest.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Street Fighter 2 was a good game, but I had some friends that liked to constantly remind me that they were better than me at the game. Well, after enough taunts and being beaten, I was tired of it, so I yanked the cartridge out of the SNES, threw it out the window, then proceeded to have a fist fight with the cocky SOB that was taunting me. I had almost forgotten about that incident. Ahhh...the days when I had a bad temper...
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
They make mention of the Super Mario Bros SuperShow with Captain Lou. Back in the days when video games were so "great" they made movies, cartoons, and television series over them.
The Legend of Zelda cartoon (shown every Friday) was wonderfully great. Link was the perfect character in that, an arrogant sarcastic jerk and hero at the same time. That's exactly what Link should be.
Anyone know of a location/hyperlink to buy or download those episodes?
Think Hollywood could pull off a good movie based on Zelda (if they don't pull the same mistakes that they always do with video game movies)? I've been waiting for that for years.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
my nes isn't dead, it still works 11 years after getting it. Though that might have something to do with me taking it abart, and soaking the contacts in rubbing alcohol for a week, then scrubbing them real good before putitng them back in.
Yeah, I had an NES when I was a kid. (Hell, everybody did) Hard to believe it's been 15 years since then..wow.. And look at how far the industry has come.. We've gone from games that were mostly short on flash and heavy on fun to nearly the opposite. Game companies seem more interested in polygons and resolution than actual gameplay(with some exceptions of course). Although nowadays, there's a lot more games marketed to older people instead of just kids (unless you own an N64. You have 3.). You'll forgive me if I wax sentimental here, but I loved playing those older games. They were just, well, fun. Granted, I still love my Playstation, and will be getting a PS2(eventually), but I still really enjoy pulling out my old NES and playing a little Zelda once in a while. It's relaxing for me, and I find that there are few newer games that can give me that same sense of sheer enjoyment. (The Crash Bandicoot series, Spyro series, and Chrono Cross are a few of a pretty short list) Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to try to save the princess.
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that you're an idiot!
You'd have to target the 6502 first, which is about the same as porting linux to the Apple II. Kinda fails the "reasonable architecture" requirement for Linux. ;-)
Democracy. Whiskey. Sexy. Pick any two.
I never have been able to undertsand why the original Metroid always seems to be absent from these "best games" lists. The three days I spent as a kid locked in my room defeating that thing (only to find out Samus was a girl) ranks right up there with other cherished teenage memories such as first sexual experience, obtaining a driver's liscense, ect. 2). Super Mario Brothers or RC Pro Am, depending on my mood. 3). Legacy of Kain. Oh wait, that's PlayStation.
I woulda had a full half point better on my high school GPA
...one full half point.
Actually, the extra time in front of the tv probably bathed you in sufficient radiation to kill the majority of your neurons anyway.
---
I find it ironic that the NES, a seriously inferior system, was released *later* than the A1000. So much for the progress of technology.
--------
Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
--
You don't become a failure until you are content with being one.
Hey, does anyone know what kind of proc the NES used? I know it was around 1.7-something megahertz, but what type?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Ahh, the subtlties of the English langague. In this case, "full" isn't used to denote a fraction, but as an emphasis to mean an entire fractional point. For example, you can have a whole half-pie, or you can have a fraction of a half-pie. It's still correct.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
(sits down at NES, inserts cartridge)
TV: (flash)
TV: (flash)
TV: (flash)
me: (turns off NES, pulls cartridge out)
me: (sharp intake of breath)
me: "FFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTFFFFFTTTTTTTTTHHHHH"
me: (another sharp intake of breath)
me: "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF F F F FF FFFFFFFF FFFF"
me: (puts cartridge back in NES, turns on power)
TV: (flash)
TV: (flash)
GODDAMMIT.
:\
BilldaCat
If you like Contra, you'll love The Minibosses. Among other classic NES games, they did a cover of the music from the first three levels of Contra, and it's probably the best thing they've done--it's amazing how well it translated to hard rock.
If you haven't seen it, you should take a loot at seanbaby's NES page. I'd recommend the this page to, be sure to watch the video. Pretty hilarious.
I know, I sound like a PR guy.
The original (1985) Super Mario Bros is on the GBC, with pixel perfect reproduction and color. You get all 32 levels, the star levels, and 'Super Mario for Super players' (Hella tough), challange mode, and a 2 player race game. All for 30 bucks.
I just cant stop playing this, I haven't even been playing Tetris since I got it.
FunOne
FunOne
You can find a prototype ROM image of GNOME vs. KDE along with the rest of the NES development effort.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Yes! It has a processor and a way to accept user input. Someone should port LINUX to it! Once someone found a way to network them the possibilities would be endless...
Imagine a pile of NES's running linux in some sort of a cluster. Wow, I can just hear the tech's now.
"Quick! Number 342-32 is down! Get over there and exhale into the cartridge!"
Most of the time breathing on the contacts would work, too. I can't say anything ever beat a good swift punch, though.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
Good info on the Mario Bros. TV Show.
http://www.yesterdayland.com/popopedia/shows/sa
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
of a game designer or anybody..
"bailey" is slang for swim suit.. and so samus aran appears "just in" her swim suit.
'course I read this on the net somewhere, so it could be horribly wrong.
I enjoyed the hell out of my NES as much as the next guy, but I have to say that it provided personal outbursts of frustration unmatched since. Take, for instance, the cart "The Mafat Conspiracy." This was a follow up to Golga 13. Yeah, the cool spy-themed side-scroller. Anyway, board 4 of this games involved a herd of jumping wolf-dog-things and floor spikes (the one-touch-kills-your-whole-life-meter variety). The dogs would bounce poor Golga off the catwalk and onto the spikes. I could consistently reach one specific catwalk jump every time. And, just as regularly, a fucking lupo-canine thingamabob would launch my butt to certain doom. Every damn time. I would try different things. It didn't matter -- this game was the genesis of the destruction of two nintendo controllers. And let me tell you, those puppies were hard to break. I had to pull out the old clawhammer.
Anyone out there defeat this blasted game? It was really fun, up until the dog-creatures A friend experienced similar emotional turmoil from the original Ninja Gaiden. He actaully went so far as to kick the console off the tv stand. Anyone else have any tough-game war stories?Glazik
...by Bernie Roehl and Dave Stampe - go to my site for more PG/homebrew VR action.
It really was something the first time I hooked my glove up to my 486. I was worried the timing wouldn't be right (the parallel port polling used hard coded timing loops), but it worked OK. I even toyed around with hooking the thing to my Amiga 2000.
Someone should try to make a hybrid of Quake and Rend386 (or Avril), with the glove for a controller. With a strong hand (those gloves sucked for flexability), one could form a "gun" with the hand, then motion to fire in some manner - could be interesting...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Yeah, the Lemmings music was awesome. I had no idea there was a GameBoy version, but back when I would play it on my 286 (AdLib soundcard) there were some pretty cool tunes.
I Did get suckered in to buying a U-Force, which had a clamshell design with motion sensors. The idea seemed cool- controlling Mike Tyson's Punchout by moving your hands, or driving Rad Racer by pretending you're holding a steering wheel. The motion detection was crap though...(and trying to play 'normal' games like Zelda was a riotous exercise in futility)...I fortunately managed to get my parents to return it.
Now the Power Glove may not have been very popular, but I have to give props to Nintendo for putting it out. It was clunky, but you could get it to work with some effort...and it did look cool in its own late 80s geekish way. Check out http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigarch/pgsi/ for a nice little hack that lets you hook one up to your PC.
Ah...such fond memories...
---
According to George W. Bush, Jr. this means your soul has been darkened by the internet. You must report to the Internet/Computer Related Violent Tendencies Court for immediate execution.
Lets close the gap and ban the internet.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.