gdement

A long time ago, somebody posted a hires demo on the 7800 mailing list using the arcade Galaga graphics as standins. They looked great. It had massive flickering problems, but that was because of a design flaw in the code. Galaga doesn't need very many colors, I believe the graphics would come out the best using one of the hires modes.

It's perfectly fine to use Genesis controls on the 7800, the only drawback is only 1 button will work. I don't know anything about the SMS, but I've heard that 7800 controls don't work on it. If you're using 6-button Genesis controls, maybe you need to hold down the "Mode" button while you turn on the SMS. I have no idea if Genesis controls are even supposed to work on the SMS. There are some Genesis games (at least "Golden Axe II" to name one) which have control problems with the 6-button pad. Holding down the "Mode" button during startup will put the controller in legacy 3-button mode.

That NASCAR (1) disc is interesting. I didn't know they made a "Sierra" branded version of that game. That's the best racing game I ever played, and I swear it saved me from wrecking my (unfamiliar at the time) car on a rainy day once. I was aggravated waiting at a stop light at school, and having forgotten the road was wet I blasted into a left turn when the light changed. I began to spin out and was in a serious oversteer situtation with opposing traffic that had nowhere to go. But even though it was the first time I'd experienced this in real life, I had been through it countless times in that computer game. I went back and forth a couple times and recovered. Thanks Papyrus! I never cared as much for NASCAR 2, it just didn't seem to add anything other than the spotter's voice, and Sierra's big-budget cinematics annoyed me. For whatever reason it just wasn't as fun as the original. I'm not sure it was as customizeable either, but I don't remember it well. There is a utility that converts NASCAR tracks to run on IndyCar and vice versa. I didn't have IndyCar but I used the demo to put Laguna Sega into NASCAR.

I have Callus, which runs Capcom 16-bit era arcade games very well. I also have Retrocade, DTMNT, and some other system-specific emulators whose names I don't recall. All of these are faster than MAME and worked well when my computer was slower. I haven't used them in a long time now, and my computer has caught up to where old MAME versions can do the same job. I don't see any reason to "upgrade" MAME, as the newer versions are just even slower and add nothing that I can see. I also keep Nesticle around, because it has a unique ability to run NES games on old machines. It isn't just emulators though, I keep old versions of computer software in general. By default I am grumpy about software "updates". They often don't work as well, waste memory, and run slower. So I keep an archive of old versions of every program I use. It's a bit excessive, but it doesn't hurt since the disk space isn't worth much. I see no reason to delete them, and once they're gone, they're often hard to get back. I was bit by that a few times before I started keeping the old versions.

I think the biggest hindrance was ROM sizes. I loved Genesis' Golden Axe, but was somewhat disappointed by the various cut corners. A long time ago I remember checking the size of the MAME image and it's something like 4MB. The Genesis version is 512KB. The SegaCD version of Final Fight is outstanding, owing to the fact that ROM size is no longer a problem on that version. The Genesis version of Gauntlet is also very good, but again I think it benefits from the fact that, by the time it was released, they could give it a 1MB ROM. If it had been released earlier, it would have probably been 512KB and been an inferior version. I remember my friends and I drooling over that machine, but we knew we couldn't afford $200 per game. But it actually came out in the early 90's, like 1991 or so. My mom saw these for sale at Babbage's for $600 (might have been $649) one time and was shocked. She ended up in a conversation with the salesman who argued that this would be the ultimate, last game system anyone would ever need.

Which would be fine for the vertically scrolling areas, but if you recall there are sub areas ("LUCKY!" and "DANGER!"), as well as the labrynth palace areas for each stage which are all side-scrolling. I'm no programmer but from what I'm to understand it would take a little more programming wizardry to get those horizontal side-scrolling areas to work properly, would it not? Yeah, side scrolling would be slower. You'd have to update the horizontal position of each object in the display list, which takes longer simply because there's more things to change. The only time I ever played deep into this game was at a friend's house about 15 years ago. I've only played the cartridge I bought recently once, and right now my NES isn't hooked up. Suffice to say I never knew the game very well and remember even less.

I meant to refer to the sound of the ship explosion, not the graphics. I wouldn't be surprised though if the sound isn't emulated accurately, as that is a pretty common issue. But if the real NES version isn't choppy, then fine, that's my biggest complaint whenever I've tried it in Nester or FCE Ultra. The ships that are attacking you mostly look fine, but the rest of the ships are choppy. I just tried it again, and was reminded of another problem I have with it. They play the music while you sit there and wait, rather than playing it while the game is starting. So instead of the music feeling like part of the game, it instead just feels like a forced pause. That's a relatively minor thing, but the startup of a game shouldn't be annoying. I hope I don't sound too picky. My first impression of the NES version was that it played badly despite the good graphics, and my impressions never much improved. So I've been surprised how much love this game seems to consistently get, and feel obliged to put out my criticisms.

I seriously used to play that game against myself, quite routinely. I don't remember if anyone ever played it against me.

I've never seen a NES Galaga cart, so my experience with the game comes from the few times I've tried it in emulation. But it really seems overrated to me, I'm surprised how consistently it gets rave reviews. The animation is horrible, it appears that they had to render the enemies as background tiles or something. I find the choppiness of the NES version to be very distracting and irritating to look at. The music is good, but why is the ship explosion so wimpy? I'm guessing that might be an emulator issue. The graphics are better than the 7800, but it's too crowded for me to enjoy the game. Maybe this is arcade accurate, but I don't think I ever found the arcade version so difficult to maneuver in. To me the NES version is as much a mixed bag as the 7800 version, and I find the 7800 version more fun to play. But yeah, it could be improved graphically. The 7800 port of Karateka is just plain lazy. They didn't even bother to use hi-res in the status display or the title screen. It's inexcusable that the A8 version has better graphics.

Sony has taken the success of PS3 for granted, and intends to use it as a trojan horse for Blu-ray. If Blu-ray ends up as the HD movie standard, then Sony stands to make a lot of money on royalties. I'm guessing here, but I suspect Sony could be in trouble with this PS3/Blu-ray gamble: My guess is that the Blu-ray isn't coming down in cost as quickly as Sony expected. They've been forced to delay PS3 because they need to control how much money they lose on the console. Meanwhile, Microsoft decided to launch their console rather early, using a conventional DVD drive. XBox360 is getting established, so Sony can't afford to wait any longer. Now they have to put a higher price on PS3 than people were expecting/hoping for, and even then Sony is probably losing a lot on the machine. They may have put themselves in a tight spot by getting out too far ahead of the curve. Of course, Sony has lots of money and other businesses. A PS3 failure can't ever hurt them as much as the console crash hurt Atari.

I used to have problems like that on my Genesis. In my case I found that pushing down on the console would fix it. If I sat there and pushed my thumb into the machine just right, then the controllers would start working correctly (until I let go). The weird thing is this problem has been gone for years now, ever since the machine spent years in storage. If you get convinced that it's a console problem and not the controllers, then maybe you could try poking around in the machine while it's running. Maybe there's a bad solder joint.

Sure. In fact, the display list architecture should favor vertical scrolling. You could just leave the display lists largely intact and edit the DLL, and everything would magically move down the screen. (The DLL controls which scanlines should use each display list.) I never played the arcade, but I fairly recently got the NES version. I never much cared for it though.

You get about 1 per box and\or 9 per case. So ya your right, it's pretty common. I'm confused. 1 per box? Wouldn't that be every game then? How many games in a case? I'm curious what the proportions are.

The amazing thing about this game is that somehow, the ROM image is 128KB. Is that just a bad dump? I can't see where there'd even need to be any bankswitching. The whole game is on one screen!

Thanks so much for posting that. I'm in a reverse situation. I recently found a network router at a thrift store, which my sister needed. But I had to loan them my NES adapter to run the thing. My USR modem adapter was packed away separately (with the modem), so I didn't see it before when I looked for compatible power cords. Now that problem is solved and I can get my NES cord back. A while back I checked eBay for NES power adapters, and was surprised how rare they are. Seems everybody just sells generics.

Thanks for getting this dumped, Mitch. Good old Atari quality control. Not only is there no sound in the Bobsled, but there's none in the Ski Jump either. Overall a pretty sleepy version. At least I finally understand why so many people liked this game better than me. I think somebody owes us a refund.

I've seen claims that the drive eject belt tends to snap. Dunno if that was what you wanted. It seems the machine would still turn on in that case. I remember reading a long time ago about something like a diode or cap or whatever, but I haven't been able to find it. Maybe I'm nuts.

I first heard about it on this web site maybe 2 years ago. I never heard of it before then. I found a tutorial on google but it didn't work for me, and I didn't care enough to keep trying for very long.

I used to have an early Sega-CD, and it died on me twice. The 2nd time it was no longer under warranty so I tossed it. I later read somewhere in these forums about a design flaw that causes them to fail. So it might be an easy fix, but I don't remember what the flaw is. I think it was some passive component that fails, but I can't find it anymore.

Atari 2600 - my dad bought it, I didn't even understand what it was at first. Probably Pac-Man, because I remember he bought that game separately along with the system, which came with Combat. Apple IIc - Math educational software. Really. The school had Apple II's running these educational programs on them and that gave me the idea of asking for an Apple. Atari 7800 - It could run our old games, so hey, it must be a better idea than the NES, right? NES - Super Mario Bros. I can't even describe how cool I thought this was, and the 7800 didn't have it. Ironically, I never got this game. I got Zelda with the system instead. Game Boy - Maybe Super Mario Land, don't remember if I saw that game before getting it. Really just got this because it was a programmable game system with the Nintendo brand on it, so I knew it would be a good investment. Never used it much though. It's been sitting idle for years now. Genesis - I got into arcade games and the NES didn't satisfy me anymore. So I got the Genesis because it was "truly 16-bit" and NEC looked like a loser without a track record. Altered Beast looked more technically impressive than Bonk's Adventure in the store displays. N64 - Mario Tennis PS2 - Final Fantasy 7/8. These were given to me but I couldn't play them at home. Lots of other games available. Doubles as a DVD player (yes that was useful to me). Got stuck in FF7, and FF8 went over my middle-school romance tolerance level. I gave up on them. If not for the above considerations I probably would have bought a Gamecube.

I guess I'm not familiar with those... it's somewhat reflective of the light, but no more so than any of my other carts, so I think the answer is no.

Just to clarify, both versions have the double click when reloading the rifle, as well as the gunshot sound. But only the better version has the swoosh sounds while skiing. Here's a picture of my cartridge label, though I expect they all look the same. I don't have the box anymore: Here's the telltale indication of a reworked C100339 board. U3 pin 11 was bent up off the PCB and shorted to pin 10. They also apparently cut some traces involving the WE pin on the RAM chip - my multimeter readings didn't match Dan Boris' schematic in that area. It's possible that the versions with bad sound might also be the ones with this reworked PCB, but I see no reason why those factors would have to coincide. The better ROM runs fine in this board. As noted above, this PCB has date code 4187, and the ROM chip has date code 8737.

Maybe - I wonder if they ran off some incorrect ROM images before getting the final version. It seems these sound effects might have been the last thing put in the game before it was called done. For anybody wondering about the ROM - I don't think I have any way of dumping it. I don't have a proper EPROM burner - I programmed my flash chips using an old motherboard. I'm not sure there's any way of plugging a 28-pin mask ROM into a 32-pin BIOS socket.

I've finally confirmed this. There indeed are two different versions of Winter Games. I desoldered the ROM from my Winter Games board (which is apparently a reworked version of the C100339), and converted it into a 128KB flash cart. I have flashed the ROM from this site which has different sounds, and it works fine in the board. Graphics are the same (as far as I've noticed), but the sound is significantly different between the two versions. I played both in the same console. Agent X indicated above that his sound is the same as mine, so it's unlikely that this is just a chip malfunction.

I got angry about dying in Shining Darkness on the Genesis, and smacked the cart. The cart popped out and my saves were wiped out. I've still never completed that game, though I did surpass the point where I had to start over. I've also had some tragic failures to backup my game before formatting a hard drive on the PC. That's happened a few times.