If Neo Fami is any indicator on the quality of the Pocket Fami, expect bad sound (way off key) and palettes that are slightly off. I'm not sure if the two are made by the same company, but I would expect ANY nes-on-a-chip clone to not quite reproduce the real thing.
It looks a little bulky and expensive compared to the Game Theory Admiral. You could probably find one of those for $60, still. If the screen is excellent, then it'd be worth it (if you wanna play your original carts).
Someone mentioned legal problems on the site... don't worry. this is completely legit. the patent on the NES/Famicom went up years ago. And most of the TV-Games you find in stores are based off the NES-on-a-chip. Just as long as they're not selling pirate carts with it, there's no copyright problems. Plus, the box says it is "FC Compatible", and it's up to your imagination to figure out what that means.
yeah, I'm surprised that no one else has mentioned it. I'm curious to find out how you find the hidden games and see what other secrets you can do with it that weren't specifically mentioned. Maybe you can upload more programs to it?
http://www.smart-games.com/igowin.html demo version of "The Many Faces of Go". I highly recommend the full version, but it's very very expensive. if you get to the point that this demo is no longer challenging, you should probably purchase it...
there's NO excuse for not putting a recall on this. there's not much you can do about the people who get the magazine via mail (other than warn them with a nice letter, or offer a replacement), but they could at least pull the known bad copies off the shelves of bookstores and whatnot before any further damage is done. because, who doesn't leave their memory card in the system when they're not playing it?
On Dish Network, I've been holding onto a package of channels just because of TechTV. Now I can drop it, and I will.
There is good news, though. Leo Laporte made a deal with the Canadian TechTV and has been making episodes of Call For Help there... and apparently, people have been putting up torrents of episodes online. Leo Laporte's site has some links in the forums. Even if Call for Help is geared towards newer computer users, I always enjoyed the show.
I've gone through a few palmtops. The main need I have out of one is the ability to type notes on it, my Phenom hp/c has been perfect for that, as it has near full sized keys. Unfortunately, when the battery dies, I lose all of the internal memory. That means I can't even use the ethernet card anymore until I synch up with a serial port to restore the driver. Then I have to restore a backup. I don't ever want to get another palmtop that doesn't keep its memory when the battery dies. I'd like to turn it off, and it stay off... or at least be able to plug it into a wall and forget about it. The Phenom's battery would die after a while when it was plugged up. I don't want to have to keep taking care of a palmtop when it's in storage.
The psions look nice, as they take just regular batteries. I wouldn't mind having one of those, even if I couldn't run any games on it. They're really small and are nice for typing things on it. But I don't know if they have models that keep their internal memory when the battery dies.
there were a lot of big games. paper mario being one of the largest. but, besides the size of the games... imagine the memory requirements for it. if an xbox can barely run an n64 emu (it required a virtual memory driver!), I doubt a handheld would be able to do it sufficiently
and just where are you gonna stick the CD in? unless you wanna buy a gigabyte memory card for it.
seriously, there's no reason to diss the 8/16 bit. they haven't been established on this platform yet. he's obviously pleasing as many people at once with der uberemulator. if you want 32 bit, get the gba emu. I don't expect n64 emulation, either, the games are big, and 95% of the games wouldn't play right on its controller. be realistic.
I'm betting that people will be able to hack it to run homebrews off the memory stick. Thankfully, it's just right in the resolution department, but it'll look kinda small when emulating SNES, GB, NES, etc. (BIG gaps in the widescreen). And no, stretching it would make it really ugly.
BTW, does this thing have L1,L2,R1,R2? Any other hidden buttons I don't know about?
That mailto handler is a pretty cool idea, I don't think I've seen that before. Is there a mailto handler for any other web based email service like Yahoo? That would be handy for my mom, who doesn't understand the whole mailto thing.
On a slightly related/unrelated note, some people here are mentioning webmail to pop conversion programs like yahoo pops and pop goes the gmail. Does anyone know if there's such a program available for everyone.net webmail users?
looks like it's just a cable to multiboot the gba. I have a coder's cable for my gba that allows me to run small homebrew programs. One homebrew program, for instance, lets me use my GBA as a virtual keyboard (or really, a virtual joystick!). I never thought of actually displaying info on it, it's pretty ingenious of them (and pretty cheap to manufacture, just a GBA link cable). Imagine if someone displayed the weather, displayed RSS feeds, or alerted you when you got email? all on it's own little screen sitting next to your PC... that would be a pretty cool alternative to the LCD mods people have on their cases (full colour! high res!).
dahrkdaiz has made a neat little hack for Super Mario Bros. It randomises the levels and enemies... just need to patch your game (that you own): Dahrk Hax
This hack starts you at level 1-1. After that, it's all craziness from there. Every enemy, except Bowsers, have been randomized. The positions of the enemies have been slightly altered to prevent impossible situations. Not every possible enemy is included in the randomization: Spinies, Lakitus, Green and Red Koopa Troopas, 4 types of fire bars, long fire bars, Bowser's fire, Bloopers, and many more. Sometimes, due to a certain mix of enemies, the game will glitch due to the game's original coding. Each level after 1-1 is randomly chosen. You can go from 1-1 to 8-4 or 7-3 to 2-3. Beating a castle stage will also make the next stage randomly chosen. Beating 8-4 does the same thing. So you never get to save the princess. This is more of a marathon Mario game than an adventure that ends. Everytime a new level is chosen, the enemy speed changes. The enemy speed is randomly selected for four choices. Finally, the level pallete is changed everytime a level is loaded. Every possible pallete was included, from night, to snow. This hack was generally made for fun, a few people love it due to the fact you'll never really "master" this game.
Funny thing is, the public domain clone of "Bust a Move" is better than the commercial releases. It's uses the same sprites and puzzles of the original Neo Geo arcade version. I don't know why the commercial releases insist on using such small bubbles... you can't see them!
I've actually used save states to challenge myself. I always played Contra with "the code" as a child... I wanted to play it now without dying constantly.... So, every time I died, I'd load a save state from the beginning of the level. This way, I learned how to play the game without dying so much. I'm working on being able to play the entire game without dying. So far, I'm doing pretty well. The next challenge will be to play the game without getting weapon upgrades.;)
There is a way to bring your grey flashing screen NES back from the dead: get a new 72 pin connector! They should run you about $10. I used to refurbish NES systems for a local used game place just by replacing the 72 pin connector, it's not that hard... it's just a bunch of screws. The games will work every time (unless it's got bad dirt on it). No more blowing out the cartridges. The real culprit was the worn out pins not making good contact.
My NES works so well now, I don't even have to press cartridge down for it to startup. If your game still doesn't work after that, then the game battery might need replacing (if it had one, of course).
I'm told that a 256 megabit flash cart can fit every US release NES game on a single cart. But I'm sure getting an old outdated 64 megabit cart would be more cost efficient if you just wanna put your favourites together... especially if that's all you want to do with it (since those outdated flash carts aren't big enough for most games, and won't save properly on half of them). It'd possibly be even cheaper if you can find a 32 megabit cart!
Take a look at Nintendojo's source. The-Magicbox clearly states:
- UNCONFIRMED: Nintendo will release the next batch of Famicom Mini titles for GameBoy Advance in Japan on August 10, for 2000 yen each. The 3rd volume will contain 10 classic Famicom Disk System games...
While I'm sure it's a plausible rumour, it's still a rumour.
I personally hope it's true, I've always wanted to try the 8 bit version of the Lost Levels. It's a shame they didn't re-release Super Mario DX on GBA with its bigger screen and possibility of scaling down the original gameplay. I thought the challenge modes were quite fun. Sadly, I was never good enough to unlock the Lost Levels.
The Lost Levels did make it to the US in pirate cart form, back in the day. From what I understand, a lot of places were renting them out. But, Nintendo did a good job of making sure something like that didn't happen again. I always wanted one =(
I was about to say the same thing. It looks mostly like screenshots of the game blurred. But if you think about it, a lot of American comic books are going for the ultrarealistic look with blurs. I saw a Batman comic book not too recently that looked as if they dressed up a man in a bat suit, took pictures, and put crappy photoshop filters all over the comic. It was absurd. Drawing photorealism is an accomplishment in itself, but it isn't visually appealing to me. Especially when you make the Dark Knight look just like a regular guy in a stupid costume. There's no stylization, they leave no room for your imagination. And honestly, reading a blurry comic would make me want to gouge my eyes out.
And is it just me, or is Canada going the opposite way in its comics?
Well, if ANYONE remembers, Dead or Alive 3 was upgraded via the Official Xbox Magazine (before Xbox Live was in place). I still have the disc, I paid $10 for the mag just to get the upgrade. I hope there's a way to upgrade Ninja Gaiden via the magazine, too, cause I don't have Live (nor will I ever get Live).
The book just came out this past week or so... it's been running in the US ver of Shounen Jump, too. I had given up on Go for a while, but reading this for the first time inspired me to get my Go set back out and try to get good at it again.
I've heard the anime will be picked up, any truth to that?
Actually, I wanted desperately to do something similar my first year of college. The need for it became more apparent as the university kept tightening restrictions on our internet use. They definitely said you couldn't host your own servers, and eventually they blocked almost every port. I also saw the need need for an anonymous message board and filesharing, also... but I didn't see a single person outside with their laptops, ever. There were plenty of ethernet plugs around, but our campus' wifi setup was a joke. Only worked within a few feet of certain buildings.
People didn't even take their laptops to class to take notes. Plus, I couldn't even gather enough money to get the equipment.
I'd love for this to work, but I honestly don't think people would take the time to get within range and setup their laptop to browse an intranet (if they even have a laptop or wireless card).
Maybe it's just too early (or maybe my university just sucked). I honestly don't think I'd have gotten a single hit on my BBS the entire time I was at college.
The only people that would use it would be the kind of people that wardrive. And you'd be lucky if they ever connected to your server. And even if they did that, they probably would move on to somewhere they get unrestricted internet access.
I'd love for it to work, but I know in my heart that no one would care about it. =(
I actually looked and couldn't find a single place that carried it. I was surprised that even Kinko's didn't carry it. But, I did find some available online on the Office Max and Office Depot websites. It's available, just not at your local stores.
Has anyone actually gotten this program to work? I've never been able to get this program to work on my Windows system. It always spits out "Couldn't get DRM key for user." Even as I'm playing the song in iTunes, it still says it can't find the key. The instructions say you don't need an iPod for the Windows version... maybe it's not true.
Good point, someone DOES need to mirror their content before their site is possibly killed off. There's a plethora of information that should never die off. I've still gone back to look for things on their Internet Tonight links.
Slashdot Mirror
If Neo Fami is any indicator on the quality of the Pocket Fami, expect bad sound (way off key) and palettes that are slightly off. I'm not sure if the two are made by the same company, but I would expect ANY nes-on-a-chip clone to not quite reproduce the real thing.
It looks a little bulky and expensive compared to the Game Theory Admiral. You could probably find one of those for $60, still. If the screen is excellent, then it'd be worth it (if you wanna play your original carts).
Someone mentioned legal problems on the site... don't worry. this is completely legit. the patent on the NES/Famicom went up years ago. And most of the TV-Games you find in stores are based off the NES-on-a-chip. Just as long as they're not selling pirate carts with it, there's no copyright problems. Plus, the box says it is "FC Compatible", and it's up to your imagination to figure out what that means.
So now it's illegal to play Asteroids on the clouds?
yeah, I'm surprised that no one else has mentioned it. I'm curious to find out how you find the hidden games and see what other secrets you can do with it that weren't specifically mentioned. Maybe you can upload more programs to it?
http://senseis.xmp.net/
s html?tid=202&tid=106
Here's a wiki dedicated to Go. I've found it very useful.
http://playgo.to/interactive/
An interactive tutorial
http://www.britgo.org/cartoons/
comic for beginners
http://www.usgo.org/
the American Go Association
http://www.smart-games.com/igowin.html
demo version of "The Many Faces of Go". I highly recommend the full version, but it's very very expensive. if you get to the point that this demo is no longer challenging, you should probably purchase it...
http://gobase.org/software/editors/
SGF editor
http://gobase.org/software/clients/
play go online with other ppl
http://go-club.1up.com/
a club I started on 1up
http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/09/24/1742243.
like knoppix, but for go players
ok, that's all for now =P
there's NO excuse for not putting a recall on this. there's not much you can do about the people who get the magazine via mail (other than warn them with a nice letter, or offer a replacement), but they could at least pull the known bad copies off the shelves of bookstores and whatnot before any further damage is done. because, who doesn't leave their memory card in the system when they're not playing it?
There is good news, though. Leo Laporte made a deal with the Canadian TechTV and has been making episodes of Call For Help there... and apparently, people have been putting up torrents of episodes online. Leo Laporte's site has some links in the forums. Even if Call for Help is geared towards newer computer users, I always enjoyed the show.
The psions look nice, as they take just regular batteries. I wouldn't mind having one of those, even if I couldn't run any games on it. They're really small and are nice for typing things on it. But I don't know if they have models that keep their internal memory when the battery dies.
there were a lot of big games. paper mario being one of the largest. but, besides the size of the games... imagine the memory requirements for it. if an xbox can barely run an n64 emu (it required a virtual memory driver!), I doubt a handheld would be able to do it sufficiently
and just where are you gonna stick the CD in? unless you wanna buy a gigabyte memory card for it.
seriously, there's no reason to diss the 8/16 bit. they haven't been established on this platform yet. he's obviously pleasing as many people at once with der uberemulator. if you want 32 bit, get the gba emu. I don't expect n64 emulation, either, the games are big, and 95% of the games wouldn't play right on its controller. be realistic.
BTW, does this thing have L1,L2,R1,R2? Any other hidden buttons I don't know about?
That mailto handler is a pretty cool idea, I don't think I've seen that before. Is there a mailto handler for any other web based email service like Yahoo? That would be handy for my mom, who doesn't understand the whole mailto thing.
On a slightly related/unrelated note, some people here are mentioning webmail to pop conversion programs like yahoo pops and pop goes the gmail. Does anyone know if there's such a program available for everyone.net webmail users?
Here's some links I collected for my Japanese 101 classmates:
Hanafuda Card Game (Windows)
Hanafuda plugin for Flowersol (multiplatform)
Go Trainer (Windows)
Go SGF Editors (multiplatform)
Online Go IGS Clients (multiplatform) Ask people for a teaching game after learning rules, practising
The Interactive Way to Go Easy to follow online tutorial (requires Java)
Go An introduction Outlines basic rules in easy to understand comic
American Go Association The info hub of American Go players
Shogi Variants (Windows) Japanese Chess, Shogi
Ricoh Shogi's Page Rules of Shogi (harder to learn rules than Go, IMHO)
Online Mahjong on Yahoo! Games Requires Yahoo! account, web-based
Rules of Mahjong this isn't the Shanghai Mahjong you know! Real Mahjong is like poker, not a tile matching game.
looks like it's just a cable to multiboot the gba. I have a coder's cable for my gba that allows me to run small homebrew programs. One homebrew program, for instance, lets me use my GBA as a virtual keyboard (or really, a virtual joystick!). I never thought of actually displaying info on it, it's pretty ingenious of them (and pretty cheap to manufacture, just a GBA link cable). Imagine if someone displayed the weather, displayed RSS feeds, or alerted you when you got email? all on it's own little screen sitting next to your PC... that would be a pretty cool alternative to the LCD mods people have on their cases (full colour! high res!).
It randomises the levels and enemies... just need to patch your game (that you own): Dahrk Hax
Funny thing is, the public domain clone of "Bust a Move" is better than the commercial releases. It's uses the same sprites and puzzles of the original Neo Geo arcade version. I don't know why the commercial releases insist on using such small bubbles... you can't see them!
I've actually used save states to challenge myself. I always played Contra with "the code" as a child... I wanted to play it now without dying constantly.... So, every time I died, I'd load a save state from the beginning of the level. This way, I learned how to play the game without dying so much. I'm working on being able to play the entire game without dying. So far, I'm doing pretty well. The next challenge will be to play the game without getting weapon upgrades. ;)
There is a way to bring your grey flashing screen NES back from the dead: get a new 72 pin connector! They should run you about $10. I used to refurbish NES systems for a local used game place just by replacing the 72 pin connector, it's not that hard... it's just a bunch of screws. The games will work every time (unless it's got bad dirt on it). No more blowing out the cartridges. The real culprit was the worn out pins not making good contact.
My NES works so well now, I don't even have to press cartridge down for it to startup. If your game still doesn't work after that, then the game battery might need replacing (if it had one, of course).
I'm told that a 256 megabit flash cart can fit every US release NES game on a single cart. But I'm sure getting an old outdated 64 megabit cart would be more cost efficient if you just wanna put your favourites together... especially if that's all you want to do with it (since those outdated flash carts aren't big enough for most games, and won't save properly on half of them). It'd possibly be even cheaper if you can find a 32 megabit cart!
Take a look at Nintendojo's source. The-Magicbox clearly states:
- UNCONFIRMED: Nintendo will release the next batch of Famicom Mini titles for GameBoy Advance in Japan on August 10, for 2000 yen each. The 3rd volume will contain 10 classic Famicom Disk System games...
While I'm sure it's a plausible rumour, it's still a rumour.
I personally hope it's true, I've always wanted to try the 8 bit version of the Lost Levels. It's a shame they didn't re-release Super Mario DX on GBA with its bigger screen and possibility of scaling down the original gameplay. I thought the challenge modes were quite fun. Sadly, I was never good enough to unlock the Lost Levels.
The Lost Levels did make it to the US in pirate cart form, back in the day. From what I understand, a lot of places were renting them out. But, Nintendo did a good job of making sure something like that didn't happen again. I always wanted one =(
I was about to say the same thing. It looks mostly like screenshots of the game blurred. But if you think about it, a lot of American comic books are going for the ultrarealistic look with blurs. I saw a Batman comic book not too recently that looked as if they dressed up a man in a bat suit, took pictures, and put crappy photoshop filters all over the comic. It was absurd. Drawing photorealism is an accomplishment in itself, but it isn't visually appealing to me. Especially when you make the Dark Knight look just like a regular guy in a stupid costume. There's no stylization, they leave no room for your imagination. And honestly, reading a blurry comic would make me want to gouge my eyes out.
And is it just me, or is Canada going the opposite way in its comics?
Well, if ANYONE remembers, Dead or Alive 3 was upgraded via the Official Xbox Magazine (before Xbox Live was in place). I still have the disc, I paid $10 for the mag just to get the upgrade. I hope there's a way to upgrade Ninja Gaiden via the magazine, too, cause I don't have Live (nor will I ever get Live).
*holds up his copy of Hikaru no Go vol. 1*
The book just came out this past week or so... it's been running in the US ver of Shounen Jump, too. I had given up on Go for a while, but reading this for the first time inspired me to get my Go set back out and try to get good at it again.
I've heard the anime will be picked up, any truth to that?
Actually, I wanted desperately to do something similar my first year of college. The need for it became more apparent as the university kept tightening restrictions on our internet use. They definitely said you couldn't host your own servers, and eventually they blocked almost every port. I also saw the need need for an anonymous message board and filesharing, also... but I didn't see a single person outside with their laptops, ever. There were plenty of ethernet plugs around, but our campus' wifi setup was a joke. Only worked within a few feet of certain buildings.
People didn't even take their laptops to class to take notes. Plus, I couldn't even gather enough money to get the equipment.
I'd love for this to work, but I honestly don't think people would take the time to get within range and setup their laptop to browse an intranet (if they even have a laptop or wireless card).
Maybe it's just too early (or maybe my university just sucked). I honestly don't think I'd have gotten a single hit on my BBS the entire time I was at college.
The only people that would use it would be the kind of people that wardrive. And you'd be lucky if they ever connected to your server. And even if they did that, they probably would move on to somewhere they get unrestricted internet access.
I'd love for it to work, but I know in my heart that no one would care about it. =(
I actually looked and couldn't find a single place that carried it. I was surprised that even Kinko's didn't carry it. But, I did find some available online on the Office Max and Office Depot websites. It's available, just not at your local stores.
Has anyone actually gotten this program to work? I've never been able to get this program to work on my Windows system. It always spits out "Couldn't get DRM key for user." Even as I'm playing the song in iTunes, it still says it can't find the key. The instructions say you don't need an iPod for the Windows version... maybe it's not true.
Good point, someone DOES need to mirror their content before their site is possibly killed off. There's a plethora of information that should never die off. I've still gone back to look for things on their Internet Tonight links.
Internet Tonight... wow... I miss ZDTV. =(