NES PC

Malicious sent us to a little tutorial about transforming that old Nintendo into a PC. This guide will even make your controllers work, although it seems to me that a nintendo that has survived this long might be a cherished heirloom tho. Does anyone else think that Super Mario 3 might have been the best game ever? Course very few people make good sidescroller/jumpers in the era of the 3D console.

Comments

Get the whistle!

[Nick of NSTime]

I loved Super Mario 3. I remember seeing that movie The Wizard and it showed how to get the warp whistle. Ah, the good old days.

There is a resurgence of 2D games, sort of. Contra for PS2 is a good example.

more infos

[odyrithm]

http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/nespc/ for more info and http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/ for many more like it.

mini ITX

[Lxy]

More interesting than the article itself is the motherboard. You can pick up a micro ITX board for $90 here. I think you could gut out an old CDROM drive, pop in this board, put a laptop HD and CDROm inside, and have your very own LittlePC. LittlePCs run around $900, you could probably build one a lot cheaper (and have a lot more fun doing it).

Seen this before a few times

[FatalTourist]

At Mini-ITX.com.
There was a even a company selling converted NES-to-PCs or kits or something. Ah! Here's the link.
They also do Atari 2600s and Amiga 1000s (I would never defile my A1000!).

The Mario series

[yerricde]

• SMB 1: First game. Now sold as "Super Mario Bros. Deluxe".
• SMB 2 The Lost Levels: SMB 1 with harder levels. Now a hidden stage in "Super Mario Bros. Deluxe" for players who play for points.
• SMB 2 Mario Madness: Doki Doki Panic CHR-hacked with Mario characters. Pull vegetables out of the ground and throw them at your enemies. Now sold as "Super Mario Advance".
• SMB 3: First game to use 4-way scrolling on one map (levels were 27 blocks tall on a 15.5x12 window). Fly up to the top half of the level with the leaf that gives you a raccoon tail. Scheduled to be rereleased on GBA as "Super Mario Advance 4 or 5" depending on whether or not Yoshi's Story is labeled SMA.
• SMW: The raccoon tail has become a cape, and you can ride Yoshi. Now sold as "Super Mario Advance 2".
• SMW 2 Yoshi's Island: You control Yoshi trying to carry Mario home. Now sold as "Super Mario Advance 3".
• SM 64: Enter framed paintings in a castle and collect the stars.
• SM 65 Sunshine: Enter graffiti paintings in an island resort and collect the sta^H^H^H shines.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

[paulproteus]

I have mirrored the site here, inside AT&T's network block.

When the traffic normalizes, I'll remove the mirror.

Re:Finally, a use for all these things...

[bludstone]

It is fairly easy to fix a Blinking Nes. The NES was poorly designed and the connector pins bend out over time. In order to fix this all you need to do is a buy a new pin cartridge connector.

Its also a good idea to clean your Carts. Wipe down the pins with a q-tip and some rubbing alcohol. It works great.

Right now Ive got almost all of the NES games I want. I still need to pick up metal gear and contra.

Nothing Like playing metroid, zelda, and the megaman games on an old NES. Mmmmm nostagic.

That was completely untrue and NOT informative.

[Rahga]

The vast majority of NES systems need little work to get past the problems you are talking about, and for what it's worth, those problems show up on every cart-based system.

First of all, the easiest and most successful thing to do would be to replace the cartridge connector. These are all pretty cheap on eBay, right around $10, just search for "NES 72".

Secondly, the blinking red light problem is a result of the NES not finding the on-game security chip. Really annoying when the game title screen pops up just for a second over and over again. There's an easy workaround: Disable the NES security chip. Basicly, you'll break pin 4 of the CIC chip, and that's it. http://nintendope.iodized.net/thisoldnes/lock.txt

Re:Next up...

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest several versions of NesterDC do not suffer this problem. It plays games flawlessly as far as I can tell (I'm sure it's not falwless, but nearly so). It also supports state saving and other goodies (turbo controller emulation, game genie, etc.). My NesterDC disc is by far my favorite dreamcast game; it is a fantastic emulator.

See DCEmulation for more emulators for DC.

Favorite SMB3 Trick

[localman]

Well, not a trick really - it was just the coolest bonus for winning a game ever, IMHO... when you won the game, if you started over without reseting the machine you would find yourself with a full inventory (27 items) of "p-wings" ... these are very rare items in the game up to that point, and allow you to fly continuously through a whole level, provided you don't get hit.

You could then explore all sorts of stuff that would have been impossible before... lots of hidden things to find, etc. What a blast!

For a while my friends and I would start an SMB3 session by winning the game (we got it down to a 30 minute process using both warp whistles) and then we'd go to some of the more difficult worlds with our p-wing collection and have a ball.

Damn those were good times... I don't think there's any game out there that's been more fun, or had more replay value for my dollar.

Cheers!

Re:Best Game

[gid]

Hell ya, I totally agree with everything that articles says. I was looking for a controller for my dreamcast a couple years back and wasn't happy with anything on the market at the time. The NES Advantage was a joystick that acted like joystick when you need it to, but didn't have the DISadvantage that some joysticks have over gamepads with certain games.

THE most durable, intuitive, and easiest to use joystick use ever. The weight and size was perfect for almost all hands of all sizes.

Forget the max, I want a joystick, not a pad.