Andromeda Stardust

You might need to plug the power conditioner for the projector into an isolation block transformer to prevent ground loops if it doesn't already have one. I wasn't aware projector bulbs could just go poof if turned off cold. I thought they were just like incandescent lamps: full spectrum radiation (except from a single point rather than a filanent) cut the circuit and it goes off. You are right though, the lamps are pricey.

I use 720p 4:3 pixels. It's slightly stretched compared to CRT but not screen filling. I've messed with 5x 1080p crops and was never fully satisfied.

Why not just split your game stuff off of one single UPS? It's not like they draw a ton of amperage...

I was referring specifically to the Atari 2600. YEs, I am aware of the history behind the Atari 2800, which seemed to go over with Japanese consumers about as well as the past three iterations of Xbox did in the 21st century. It launched almost simultaneously with the Famicom and Sega SG-1000. The SG-1000 was on par spec wise with Colecovision, and the Nintendo Famicom quickly dominated in the Japanese homeland, followed by the NES worldwide. Let's check the facts: Atari VCS/2600, United States, 1977. NES, United States, 1985. Nintendo Famicom, Japan, 1983. Atari 2800, Japan, 1983. So yeah, the Atari 2600 was a joke when it attempted to launch in Japan, with all it's rectangles, beeps, and farts, six years late. It's like comparing the Game Cube to the Xbox One. Face it, most Asians have zero nostalgia for the VCS/2600. Otherwise we would have seen plenty of clone chips for it like everything else (besides the Flashback 2).

Is it coming out still? This game is awesome. Albert should do a "double ender" with Galactapus and Ms Galatapus!!!

Something is definitely not right with either the outlets or your AV equipment. The spark could potentially indicate improperly wired outlets (ie hot and neutral swapped, a common and potentially dangerous mistake often made when diyers attempt to rewire an outlet), or a ground loop fault in the circuit path. Ground loops could be caused when two devices share a connection to neutral or earth ground, the voltage potential may not be truly zero volts, and shorting the grounds together (ie connecting a cable between two devices) creates a current path. I would be concerned about ESD or shock hazard if your plugged connection is doing that. ESD could easily kill the Super NT. I would recommend plugging the TV and Super NT into the same outlet in case there are multiple branches in the room, and get a GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) installed to protect against potential shock hazards. If the GFCI outlet repeatedly trips, call an electrician to troubleshoot the wiring and connected electronics.

It really is a great game. Please don't berate yourself because you built the title screen entirely out of playfield blocks, or came up with clever little shortcuts. It's brilliant. All Atari games bitd took liberties and shortcuts to do tricks onscreen for stuff that wasn't previously possible. Those tricks get copied and adopted by other programmers. Games like this showcase the sheer variety that is possible with 4k titles. It could have easily existed bitd, but Nintendo would have sued. LOL. I think this game is well enough below their radar, still mourning the takedown Princess Rescue.

I have the 1up Arcade and I rarely get past the first set. My high score on Galaxian is less than 7000 but I scored over 100k twice in Galaga (so far). Scoring is a bit low unless you hit em in formation, but it's balls hard to hit the enemies when they are doing a sine sweep as they nose dive towards you, and you can only have one bullet onscreen at a time. I don't know what it is with Galaxian. It's an spiritual sequel to Space Invaders which evolved to perfection with Galaga. Gaplus annoys me in that if you die during an intro sequence, you restart the entire sequence. The enemies are harder to dodge during the stage intros. Gaplus is almost Gyrus-like with the enemy attack formations, but you can't escape through the sides. I played it on Wii VC and never got far. I should revisit it if I ever decide to boot my Wii-U back into Wii mode again. Shop is shutting down and Gaplus was one of the last titles I downloaded some time ago. I ended up with 100 points leftover. Good luck trying to spend that... Galaga '88 / '90 for Turbografx is a great modernization of the concept even if it has a definitive ending. My one gripe is the backgrounds are too bright making bullets harder to see. Another great but rarely mentioned theme is Galaga Arrangement for Namco Museum Game Cube. It's stupid two player fun, you can earn a triple ship, and there's an option for infinite lives. Perfect for my fiance to tag team with me since she has trouble dodging attacks...

It is plausible this cart, with it's advanced coprocessors, may or may not play nice with an XM attached. Suffice to say, as the XM has not been released, CPUWIZ made carts that support the extra ram, bankswitching, plus Pokey, so all they lacked is the keyboard accessory, Scoreboard, and Yamaha sound. This cart goes beyond vintage soundchips by doing it's own synth using an ARM. I wish it included an EEPROM or flash to save progress but I digress. It's impressive tech. 2600 games are already approaching 7800 quality with the CDW bankswitch scheme, and surpasses it with bus stuffing. Late era NES games weren't that far away from early SNES sans enhanced graphics and audio. Maybe someday we'll see Xbox games on the 2600. Oh, wait!

He said they have a different shape. Exteriorly, that is fine, however if the interior dimensions don't align well with Atari brand shells, then commercial pcbs as well as homebrew pcbs may not fit. The pcbs might need a redesign to fit the new shells.

I need to get this game!

Yes, Super Mario Bros has influence. Much of why Super Mario Bros was designed to scroll left (with character moving right) has a lot to do with how the pages are indexed in the Super Mario Bros engine. Super Mario uses vertical mirroring, which means that the PPU can store two pages of CHR tiles (with color palettes) side by side. The characteristic 16x16 pixel bricks are indexed starting from the zero (0) index on the left hand side to (F) on the left. Additionally, the scenery and character blocks can be scrolled incrementally by pixel precision. When the right hand screen fills the display, it is copied to the left bank of PPU memory and the objects and tile data for the next screen is drawn adjacent to it. Each time the screen scrolls left by 256 pixels or 16 "blocks" (each block consists of two 8x16 tiles side by side), the next screen and all the objects therein are loaded into the PPU memory buffer. Because the engine cannot read backwards, only forwards in the ROM level data, scrolling is only permitted in one direction. So it made logical sense from a design standpoint to have Super Mario Bros run right (scrolling left) from one screen to the next, and all future games pretty much emulated this. Redesigning the engine to run backwards would have been a headache to program. Later game engines on the NES allowed for two way scrolling but the character and enemy data had to be reloaded every time you scrolled back, creating dreaded "respawning" of enemies you just killed, at least in most games which did not utilize PRG RAM on the cart. Even many games where you can backtrack to some extent, and are often required to do so, generally have a map layout which gradually proceeds to the right in order to complete the stage. This correlates with player's learned instinct that the finish line is always near the right hand edge of the stage. In games that do not follow this left to right tradition, there are usually arrows or some indicator telling the player which way to go, unless it's a Metroid-vania style maze exploration game. And Nintendo even developed games which broke this rule, as the affformentioned Balloon Trip mode in Balloon fight, always auto-scrolling to the left.

I for one am glad you got some proper usage out of that "doorstop." Fun thing to think about, the 7800 really does have much superior sprite handling characteristics compared to NES/Famicom, but the NES has superior audio and a much more powerful scrolling engine. Robotron 2084 for instance would have been a terrible flicker fest if ported to the NES, though that didn't stop the amazing Spook-O-Tron from being developed for it. Tramiel was a cutthroat businessman and pinched pennies whenever he could. That is why the Pokey chip was offloaded to the cartridge port (and subsequently never used outside of two games) as opposed to including it in the hardware. He was vehemently against using expansion mappers in the early days because $$$, and the planned 1984 launch lineup was all that the 7800 had when it released alongside the NES nationwide in 1986. The arcade ports, while classics now, were considered old and dated at the time so they never really got off the ground. There are a few gems in the 7800 library, for instance Food Fight and Robotron (especially with a custom dual joystick) really standout as arcade exclusives to the platform. But I mainly invested in the 7800 to enjoy the great homebrew library being developed for it. So many amazing games have been ported to it, original and arcade. So I am looking forward to this release.

Super Mario Bros scrolled only left to right, but that trend was pretty much status quo prior to the early/mid 80s. Humans read left to right for most languages, and the scanning electron beam sweeps left to right in the tube. The bigger answer is early arcades were the wild, wild west with no set conventions. Balloon Fight / Trip mode on the NES / Famicom moved left, but the conventions were already set in place to move right. Nintendo released a "Luigi" mode with NES Remix which is a 100% mirrored port of Super Mario with tweaked jump physics. After decades of running left to right and memorizing the layout, I found it challenging to beat even 1-2.

You might have some competition. Someone designed a controller adapter to use nes pads on a 7800 without modding!!! http://www.tailchao.com/ProSystem/index.php

Doo... Want...

You guys are quite a dynamic duo then. Looking forward to getting the game...

Really looking forward to this. It easily surpasses every 7800 game in existence, as well as many of the best NES games ever made. If I may ask the developer a question: You say you have experience with Famitracker and presumably NES games as well. I'm aware the NES is far more popular than 7800 in general and has a much larger market. What made you decide to develop on the 7800 instead? Really awesome that you did, but just curious. I do collect homebrew for both Nintendo and Atari, so this has definitely piqued my interest. = = = = = = = = = = = I would assume not.

Thanks. I need to lookout for this title!

Funny you mention, I read an article where Display Port to HDMI cables were banned by the foundation. Does this also retroactively apply to DVI/HDMI cables? I've had a few kicking around for years, and use them to connect my PC up to old monitor.

RetroUSB launched the AVS without excessive shipping charges. You should see the post where he filled his living room with AVS shipments:https://m.facebook.com/retroUSB/photos/a.1027304100682326/1201311603281574/?type=3&source=54 I also never understand why small companies insist on UPS/Fedex when USPS is both cheaper and faster in most cases. Mega corporations like Amazon get volume discounts (each warehouse facility has a dedicated UPS hub) but not the small frys.

I thought the license is only necessary if you feature the logo on your product. Just like not all USB devices have the embossed USB logos on them if they aren't certified. It is plausible whatever corporation produced the encoder chip they used could have been licensed by HDMI? HDMI ports are 50 cents. And there are other ways around it. DVI port and bundled adapter for instance. I believe DVI adapters have all the necessary pins as they are straight connected, so you could technically pass audio through the HDMI port even if not supported by DVI standard. https://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/adopter_registration.aspxSo it appears the hdmi licensing program is like the usb licensing, in that you have to apply for a license to use the hdmi branding on the port. If you release an unlicensed device containing an hdmi port, but contains no marks on the product indicating it is hdmi licensed or certified, I think you are okay. Just like the "humping dog" usb thumb drives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P76yiSP6Rg that do not contain a certified usb mark of any kind, it seems safe to market and sell. You don't have to be a licensed adopter to buy a 50c hdmi port from a part supplier and include it in your product. You just can't use the logo or mark on your product. More evidence. Previous hdmi standards are available to the public and can be used without royalty: https://www.semiconductorstore.com/blog/2014/licensing-costs-HDMI/654/Presumably this applies to earlier, low speed hdmi standards (720p/1080i only). That would explain why a lot of hdmi cloned gaming devices are limited to 720p output. This includes stuff like RetroUSB AVS as well as console-on-a-chip clones with built in upscalars and emulator boxes, none of which support 1080p. That said, advertising your product as "hdmi-compatible" might be legal gray area. I am no lawyer though so don't take anything I say as legal advice.

I can't really get into the Turrican games (gets ass handed to self very early on) but I don't mind their inclusion and am happy for the fans who get enjoyment out of it. I feel the same about Megaman and Contra as well. I am more of a classic Shmup fan (from Galaga to Blazing Lazers), and generally prefer run-and-jump platforming style (ie Mario, Sonic) over run-and-gun. Having a free game on the boot menu that you aren't interested in playing doesn't make owning the console any less fun, so I cannot see why anyone would argue for it's omission. I hope we get a free game on the Mega SG but not going to hold my breath. So the alt Ghostly boot menu is technically included on recent firmwares, just locked out unless you bought the Ghostly version? Gotcha. Yes, and the Super NT is more a spiritual successor to the AVS based upon price point and features, than the NT Mini. I think it's plausible the AVS is why Analogue hasn't released a competing price reduced NT yet. Based on social media posts and forums I have read, many people have bought the AVS and Super NT. I gotta admit, not a fan of solid white consoles, but that would look nice sitting next to the white Mega SG.

Lemme guess, you bought one first, went outside, put it in your car trunk, came back to the mall, then reported their asses...

A hundred years isn't long enough. Nintendo-on-a-chip is eternal. Maybe somebody makes a decent curated list in 2080 after all the copyrights on the games are expired. People read and even reenact Shakespear 400 years later, so it isn't far fetched to assume people will play Super Mario Brothers centuries from now.