Somehow by looking at the Funkos thread inspired me to go dig out my Giant PEZ dispenser collection. It's not a very big collection, though. I bought Darth Vader at the candy store, Shrek at a flea market, and Homer Simpson was a Christmas gift a few years ago. So that makes it three. And then I forgot about it. But at least the good news is I knew right where they were. In the pantry. I have this room that's like an attic between my room and the garage. I call it the pantry. When my grandpa die
I am extremely bored right now. I should be asleep, but I don't want to go to sleep. So I'm staying up. And what have I been doing while staying up? Well, the PS1 game I got in the mail today (technically yesterday) inspired me to work on my PS1 game about Jack and the Beanstalk. I added collision detection for the trees. It took a few hours to get it working, but after multiple tries, tweaking numbers and logic, I finally did it. Also, some very nice guy is going to send me a cable so I can tes
Chip's Challenge is a puzzle game that plays like a platformer. Its top down view is reminiscent of Zelda II, but it has a whole bunch of puzzle elements like Fire & Ice for the NES. There are a set number of chips for each level to collect, but that's not as easy as it sounds, for the programmers put in keys, warps, switches, enemies, fire, ice, water, and even tanks for you to avoid or go across. While the first levels are OK, the later ones are just too hard for me, and there are over 150
AA member Kiwi sent me three elf sprites. I chose the first one. I had been trying to work on some things like collision detection and trying to make the elf not appear on your spot once he moves to the side. The first few times ended in failure, but I persevered and now I think I have a somewhat playable game ready for Christmas of 2013. I'll take suggestions now and try to work on it some more after the holidays are over. I've used up 1,982 of the possible 2,048 bytes of a 2k game, so I have l
It all started so innocently. I made a 2k game called "Explosive Diarrhea." I looked at the title. It started with the letter E. Nothing very special about it, although it's not as popular as, say, S or T (but more popular than U or X.) Then I made another 2k game. I wanted to continue the E title theme, so I named it "Eat Dem Bananaz." So now I feel like if I have an idea for a 2k game, it's title has to start with the letter E. It just so happens that I do have an idea for another 2k game. I m
Looking on eBay, I see Togepi's Great Adventure, and it is selling for $999. Sadly unattainable. Even though I love my Pokemon Mini, there are limits to how much I can spend on one game. And that limit is about $960 more than I care to get one game for. And it's sad that it is that expensive because it looks like it is a good game. Oh well, at least I have a FEW games for it. But why is a tiny hunk of plastic with a chip in it worth $1000? It makes me wonder. And it's not that old, it was releas
I'm going to the store tomorrow to get Super Mario 3D World. And they'd better have it. Because I want a new 3D Mario game. Although I don't know why. I seem to be able to beat the 2D ones. I beat New Super Mario Bros. U. It was hard, though. I stopped playing Super Mario 3D Land (the 3DS game) at world 5 because it just got too hard for me. Hopefully this won't happen in the World. I think part of my problem was the game tried to be super impressive graphically speaking, and for a handheld, I w
So I got this. I played it for like a half-hour. It has Game Gear games on it. Six Game Gear games. Including Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. If he painted it green, it could have been the green mean bean machine. And this game doesn't even have Sonic in it, so I wonder why they included it. Is it because Dr. Robotnik is in it, and he's Sonic's nemesis? I played normal exercise mode and freed over 1,000 beans in one game. I went to Twin Galaxies to see if it's close to a record. I was just cur
I have more PS2 games to play for the first time. I went to a BuyBacks store, and got two PS2 games and a CD. The lady behind the counter said "You know it's buy three get one free, the cheapest one is free." I sort of shrugged it off, but then as I was still standing in line, she said "You sure you're not going to get the free game?" I got angered at her a little bit, and seeing as how she wasn't going to stop until I did, I went back and murmured "Fine, geez." quietly. I went to the discount b
Hey gang, get a load of today's Grand Avenue comic strip. Teachers, get tip #47 on how to keep your class's attention during the final weeks of school. Also, Marion's Carpets, a local carpet company, is celebrating their 47th year in business. Carpet Carl announced in an ad that some carpets are 47 cents per square foot. The normal low temperature for yesterday here is a chilly 47 degrees. The Seattle Mariners played their 47th game of the baseball season about a week ago. Yesterday's issue of m
So I went to the game store. I saw Carmageddon 64 loose for $15. I would have bought it except for the fact that I already have it. If anyone wants it, I can go back next weekend and if it's still there, buy it for you and mail it. It's a pretty rare game. I think I bought mine on the Internet. This is the first time I have seen it in the "semi" wild. I wanted to go to another store as well, but I forgot why, so I just went home and cooked up some French fries. When I got home I remembered why I
With the Oregon football civil war coming up, I made a bet with Mom. Mom's not really a betting person, but I just bet her $5 that the Blazers will not win another game this season. And if there's one team I can count on for losing, it's New Jersey Portland. So, with losses the rest of the season guaranteed for Blazers fans, I smell a #1 draft pick in the Blazers' future. This means they'd have to have a 65-game losing streak. Only 62 more games to go!
So I started work on the PlayStation game I'm making again. Jack and the Beanstalk. You know, the silent one . Anyway, I tried to make the troll chase after Jack, but it looked bad, so I tried to make the troll bump into the trees and not go through them like Jack does. I must have spent four hours trying before I decided it was useless and gave up. Instead, I have the troll go a patterned route, which is much more predictable. I think I'll have the castle guards chase after Jack once you climb
So I worked a little bit more on my game. A few hours later, I came up with this. But the cool thing is, if the guy gets roasted, he'll turn red and run off screen. And then the SELECT GAME screen will come on. I think the trade-off for the sprites looking the way they do is okay. Plus, I think it's harder. Not that there's a score or anything. Now that I think I'm done with it, I'll design a manual to go along with it. Not that it's getting to be put on a cart. Or the manual is going to get pr
Here's why I think this game is so utterly STUPID:
#1 - When you hit an object, you stop completely. Not only that, but all the other racers zoom past you and you'll never catch up to them ever again.
#2 - There is no option during the race to go back to the game selection screen. No option to quit the race. That means if you want to, you have to turn the Lynx off and then back on again.
#3 - If there are 9 drones, you automatically finish tenth, despite your best efforts to try to dodge the
I have to go see the doctor tomorrow. And get a stupid blood test. I don't know why I have to do it every year since every single one turns out fine. I'm never going to die of some stupid blood disease since I don't want one. Five million years later I'll be sitting in this chair typing away blog entries. Although I doubt AtariAge will be around 5 million years from now. But I will be. Got Videocart #4 in the mail today. Was really fast. I ordered it Saturday and it went clear across the count
OK, so I'm definitely quitting homebrewing for the Game Gear. And the PS1. I guess post 1980 hardware is too tough for me to figure out. I've decided to keep homebrewing for the Atari 2600 and Odyssey 2. And the ActionMax, (because that's not really "programming" anything.) I can't believe I actually even figured out how to do anything for the Virtual Boy, which is the only post-1990 machine I can even do anything on. I guess my lesson I have learned is have a lot of respect for those that homeb
If you gave me a Winnie the Pooh game and said "Beat this game." I bet I couldn't. That's how hard in my mind video games are. So why do I enjoy getting so angry playing them? That's a question I just thought up. And I think I know the answer: Give up. To just say "Game Over," sell my impossible to beat games and just keep the ones I made because I make easy games. Not IMPOSSIBLE CRAP that nobody, not even the motherf***ers who programmed it, can beat. I mean seriously, I know it's supposed to b
I fought and fought with the code for a few hours just to get a Virtual Boy test screen in the game. It doesn't seem that hard to do when you say it. First VIDE didn't choose the colors correctly. Then when it did, it only displayed half the corners. After reading about PVB's 2010 contest where it had something similar, I finally remembered and did it correctly. Then I had to change it so if you press Start and then Select, you didn't see it flashing before the title screen. So all in all that t
So I got out my game.com. I put in Resident Evil 2, expecting to be able to walk one step. Boy was I wrong. I tried to go right by pressing right. I twirled around like a ballerina, and then the zombie or whatever right next to me started eating me. I tried equipping myself with a gun. I tried pressing every button. Why do they start you off too close to a zombie? I can't escape. I tried button presses but I couldn't fire any gun of any kind. Boy, if I was a playtester of this game, I have one w
I'm interested in the Didj. I don't know why, I just am. So, it was sad when I heard that it was being discontinued and replaced by the Explorer, which is supposed to be better than the Didj. And sure, it does have a lot more games than the Didj (40+ compared to the 15 of the Didj.) I first heard about the educational handheld system in February of 2008 after reading a newspaper article about it. I thought to myself, I need to get one of them. Two years later, I finally got one, after reading th
I was thinking yesterday about Game Boy games. I thought "These games would be better if they had color." The Game Gear has color. And it had games hardcore gamer kids would like. So that left me wondering. Why didn't Game Gear beat the Game Boy? It can't be because of Tetris. Tetris is just one game. Sega had Sonic. To counter, Nintendo had Mario. But the first Mario Land game was barfy and had little resemblance to Mario. The second Mario game was better, but again, no color. While all the tim
This system is hard to program for! I finally got an idea of what may be causing the reindeer to flicker in Nice Ice. It looked like when I was telling the game to get a new elf position when it and the y position of Santa are the same, I didn't go back to the game loop, instead I went directly to the new elf-generating code part. I know I tried to put a call to the screen drawing code part, but it didn't like it. It only liked it when I went back to the game loop for some reason. So I changed i
This is a hard game. Not that all Sonic games are easy, mind you. They are all horribly difficult. I can beat Super Mario Bros. 3, but god forbid I pass level 2 of Sonic the Hedgehog. Anyway, I think this game borrows a lot from the classic SNES game called Uniracers. In fact, you may call it a total ripoff if it weren't for the platforming elements to it. In this game, you have to race against the computer on tracks which are a lot like Sonic worlds. I played this one until my left thumb got a
I want to play video games with the original controllers and stuff that came with the console. Call me weird. In the case of Mort the Chicken for the PS1, though, I may have to change my thoughts. It's a collect-a-thon, a la Super Mario 64, only instead of the stuff collecting is stars (although there are stars in the game to collect, the manual states nothing about them, though.) the things you're collecting are chicks. And instead of Bowser you're fighting, it's a giant cube. Yes, it seems lik
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