@Azuris Personally, what I'm expecting is that the Evercade release of Glover might be a custom emulation job that is half-way like Super Mario Galaxy on the Switch (as part of the Super Mario 3D All-Stars release). Which could mean, theoretically, if the data for that N64 ROM were extracted from the Evercade release, it might not function on conventional N64 emulators or on real hardware via a flashcart.
No way to know for certain until the product is out in the wild and tinkerers get their hands on it!
@Kirbyo I wouldn't doubt the savvy of the types of people playing a homebrew demo of such a game. There's a good likelihood that they played the game on a SNES or Analogue Super NT using a flash cart, rather than a software emulator on PC or similar. These sorts of users tend to know of methods of dumping games, and might already dump their own collections as opposed to downloading them illegally.
The guys at the Rockman EXE Zone have done fantastic work modding the Battle Network and Star Force games in the past, and I'm thrilled to see the end result of this fan translation and finally play these "lost" stories in the Battle Network continuity.
Previous great work they've done includes a fan translation for the Japanese exclusive Rockman EXE 4.5, a gameplay modification patch for that same game to make it play like the main entries, a wonderful overhaul and content restoration patch for Star Force 1, and content restoration patches for Battle Network 6.
My pipe dream is that they'll be able to use the preserved Phantom and Legend of Network mobile games as the basis for making GBA versions of them, using Battle Network 6 and past entries as the engine and resources.
@themightyant I mean, your initial statement seemed to be very dismissive of these games without understanding the significance of them.
They're an entire market of games that was exclusive to one part of the world, and was inaccessible to the majority of the world that loves the games made in that country.
I'd think it a small tragedy if a catalogue of this many hundreds of games were lost, because they still have significant historical value especially in the mobile gaming sector as we know it today.
There's no denying that the initial motivation for some was "I want to play the lost Battle Network games", and this ended up being something much bigger than that.
@themightyant Don't be so quick to dismiss these Japanese flip-phone games! They were fun and important enough that a significant number of them are being ported to the Switch.
@TransmitHim It's conceivable due to the way that many British home computers like the ZX Spectrum distributed games on audio cassettes, with the program data being encoded as audio.
Distributing program code over radio would be highly unreliable though due to probable distortion.
Amazingly, making use of sound recordings to dump ROMs is not a new concept.
My brother has made use of this to make a dump of the Limited Run Games release of Shantae on GBC, though it's through the use of a homebrew tool booted via flashcart to load something into memory first.
The revelation that the "cartridge yank" audio is actually a memory dump and not just random jarring noise though?? That's amazing!
Nintendo no doubt implemented that for debugging purposes.
This is very cool to see.
Challenges with the N64 analogue stick commonly involve how quickly they wear out with plastic eroding.
The unusually high pivot point also means that it offers a far greater range of movement which resulted in greater control of analogue input. Specifically, it was a lot easier to move the stick slightly for slight movements.
Most modern controllers and emulators of N64 games don't account for this, and it can make some parts on N64 games a bit harder than they should be. Many parts of Super Mario 64 were designed around this careful slow precise movement such as the tiny side of Tiny Huge Island.
Honestly, sounds like snake oil. It sounds like all it'll do is determine what game you're playing, then use an AI service over API to tell you "helpful info" that might have no basis in reality.
The claims about the Switch 2 release date stink of being a marketing stunt too, just to get your attention.
"Nintendo’s proprietary libraries"? I don't understand, if this is Valve's position aren't they arguing that all N64 homebrew is legally impermissible?
I'd understand if they were looking to protect their IP (and historically, they're very supportive of fan works with the Half-Life IP), but this doesn't make sense to me.
Even with the Dolphin emulator on Steam situation, there was some decent reasoning that it wasn't okay because of distributing a key used to decrypt Wii games rather than asking the user to provide that key themselves.
Has James Lambert at any point make clear that he's using proprietary Nintendo SDK, tools, software, etc?
Simply making code that can run on a target platform, should be legally in the clear shouldn't it?
Edit: Looked into it, and yes, the Portal 64 project was in fact using an official SDK called Libultra. https://n64brew.dev/wiki/Libultra
This could shake the whole N64 homebrew scene, depending on how many people are making use of it for their homebrew. Super Mario 64 mods in particular come to mind, even if they're using the cleanroom reverse engineered decompilation the projects made could be at risk if they're using Libultra for re-compilation.
There was also the unused twist of Homer Simpson secretly being Krusty the Klown, but they opted to drop that idea. It's why the two characters have virtually identical physiques, right down to their mouth shapes and facial features.
@Serpenterror That's simply because 255 is the largest number that can be stored in an unsigned 8-bit address. 11111111 is binary for 255, or FF in hexadecimal.
Truthfully, 255 is a number that crops up very commonly in 8-bit games using 8-bit addresses to store a number value, even for things intended to store and display a two-digit value like a lives counter.
It's so aggravating that society is quick to put down a young person's accomplishments like this, from the Sky News presenter's unwelcome comments to Twitch deplatforming him due to his age.
This time, I was successful in placing an order and got the colour I wanted! I went for Indigo, which looks like it sold out in just 6 minutes! The second to sell out was Silver, in about 10 minutes. Remarkably, the six remaining colours are still in stock 18 minutes after they opened orders.
Ugh, last time I tried the checkout process was impossible. Stock would sell out instantly and trying to pick another color meant more time in the checkout process.
Ahh, another RK3566 system. A capable CPU that they use in the RG353P, it should be perfect for many arcade games. No idea about Saturn emulation, never tried it but that's the clear appeal.
Does this mean they'll have more stock of the Analogue Pocket at some point? The transparent shells they had a couple weeks ago sold out ludicrously quickly, I couldn't get a look-in.
@MysticX It's entirely possible that they implemented truly random arrangements, play-tested it and didn't like that end result.
They may've modified a working random arrangement function in a way that produced 8 deterministic arrangements on purpose. It may've just been a quick dirty change that they never refactored.
Well, I tried to get myself a Pocket, but they sold out in under 10 minutes. I was in there immediately, and still missed out due to their queue system.
@Damo It could be that users had improperly maintained Game Boy cartridges, as both the cartridges and the connector on the original Game Boy weren't the most reliable back then.
Whether or not it's true, the Analogue Pocket does have that reputation, sadly. That makes it a hard sell.
I get the impression they're re-shelling unsold stock to clear inventory. I was interested, but these things got a reputation for not being ideal for playing from actual game cartridges due to an improperly secured cartridge socket.
@JayJ My current keyboard is a HyperX, advertised as a gaming keyboard but has cherry blue switches. That's a typist's keyboard, not so much for gaming.
And yes, it has LED lights on the keys. Only R, not RGB, and there's lots of lighting options but the only one I use is one that lights up pressed keys that fade back to off. It's not distracting, and it gives some visual feedback on what I just pressed so I leave it like that.
This might be in response to the Powkiddy RGB30, which recently launched and features a unique 1:1 aspect ratio 720p non-touch screen. This makes it remarkably well suited to playing TATE arcade games, Game Boy games, NES/SNES games, PICO-8, and other things.
Under the hood, the 2DS was a single screen as well, using the plastic bezel to hide the fact.
I'd gotten excited at the prospect of Game Boy program code being ported to run natively on the SNES, but this is cool too.
Squeezing an entire Super Game Boy with Game Boy cartridge into a custom SNES cartridge is pretty cool.
Modding in a link cable port is just the cherry on top, bringing it closer to the Japan exclusive Super Game Boy 2.
@themightyant I mean, yeah it's specifically based on the NES version of Super Mario Bros 3, not the SNES version.
Taking a closer look at the Goomba and Mario sprites, they're not 1:1 to the actual sprites from the games but are weirdly re-drawn to closely resemble but not exactly match. This is possible for copyright reasons as to not outright copy Nintendo's works.
I love that the team are continuing to maintain the game with hotfixes and revisions, now up to a v1.5 release from what I can see.
Although the main mode is indeed on the short side, it's a genuinely enjoyable little game, though I'd say the time limit feels a bit strict for how open the second skateboarding level is, at least if you want to find all of the Grimace birthday shakes.
I really enjoy my RG353P, recent custom firmware updates have resolved some issues like sleep mode freezing the system.
What I'd really enjoy is a Linux based successor system that's beefier, because this handheld has the best ergonomics of anything they've put out so far.
I downloaded the ROM directly from the website via DevTools, loaded it up on my Everdrive, and gave it a spin on my GBA.
And it works! Pretty cool stuff, looks well made too.
When you visit the website, the browser downloads this file: https://grimacesbirthday.com/bX4TvUeiUEfKRw8bkPGaB
When downloaded, it saves a 1024 KB .msi file, but when renamed to .gbc will work on GBC emulators and flashcarts.
@smoreon From a business perspective, a business will look to optimise sales of their current products however they can.
The Tears of the Kingdom blockbuster sales of a tentpole product isn't a fair comparison in this instance. I was referring to the grey market, which is an ongoing issue for big games publishers. There are also different kinds of consumers; parents looking to get something to keep their child busy aren't necessarily going to look to be spending big, and would probably be happy setting them up with their own small 3DS to keep to themselves and be loaded with a bunch of games.
It's important to keep perspective in mind, it's not just us enthusiasts that anticipate the biggest releases of the year and have to have the hottest new thing.
@KingMike
The point I'm making is that buying old products on a secondary market, including getting free software for old hardware, will be eating out of sales for new products and software.
If Nintendo can exercise any amount of control over that by making it harder to get free games for a 3DS, they will.
@LunarFlame17 It feels like a Disney vault situation; they dictate when you can buy their goods and services, as a way to build demand for a distant re-release of a game from a retired platform.
It also makes it harder to sell Mario Golf or Mario Tennis for the Switch, when people can get a 3DS for cheaper and then find ways to get Mario Golf or Mario Tennis for free. The point being entries in a series of games can simply be an instance of the activity someone wants to do.
NES RAM initialization is very interesting to learn about, particularly that games will have behaviour that assumes the console boots with RAM in an uninitialized state.
Super Mario Bros makes use to this so that the A+Start trick to continue a world from game over does not persist when you turn the console on after being powered down. Pressing the reset button for a warm start (aka soft reset) versus pressing the power button for a cold start (aka hard reset).
It turns out that the NES game Tennis writes to the same address in memory for SMB's A+Start trick, and that if you play SMB, then Tennis, then SMB, by physically swapping the cartridges whilst the console remains powered on, that you can tamper with RAM initalisation and get access to invalid world IDs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrFHNgJlJSg
So yeah, for Huang Di here, it sounds like an error in uninitialised RAM handling. It's entirely possible, likely even that the Taiwanese developers were using unofficial "Famiclone" hardware that did not handle uninitialized RAM in the same way as official NES or Famicom hardware. Something like a Dendy, a Micro Genius, etc. I would suspect that's the root of the issue, trying to play unofficial software developed on unofficial hardware, on official hardware or emulators targeting cycle accuracy of official hardware.
It's admittedly something I hadn't known, and I'd learnt of trivia like "blue fire can break down bombable walls" before this. It makes sense though, if the spike tracks are technically an enemy like any other, they can be frozen. They're encountered in later parts of the game too like in Spirit Temple or Ganondorf's Tower.
This goes to demonstrate that some features often go unused in games, since the player has plenty of means to tackle problems, especially if they don't consume resources like arrows or magic. For example, in Link to the Past, were you aware that enemies frozen by using either the Ice Rod or the Ether Medalion can be picked up and thrown?
I'm loving this trend of colorization of Game Boy games that otherwise never got an official "DX" release, especially when they refactor the game to perform better on the GBC hardware too. There's been quite the few as of late!
It's honestly fascinating how the early circulation of lower quality images with excessive contrast and over-saturation actually shaped perception of that era of artwork.
Ken Sugimori's late 90s watercolor artwork is famous for its exposed whites as lighting, but that detail was greatly exaggerated and it has been reflected both in official media and fan works inspired by the poor quality scans and prints.
Checking this site daily for updates was a ritual and got me the most excited for a game launch that I'd ever been.
I even have a small mark on the site, back then I was playing the Japanese version of the game on an imported Wii system, and submit one of my own screenshots that was featured on the Japanese side of the site. https://www.smashbros.com/wii/jp/gamemode/etc/etc03.html
"Ｔｏｐ Ｓｃｏｒｅ！（ＲＵＰＥＥ）".
It's not uncommon for European gamers of a certain generation to refer to game cartridges as "tapes", it's a holdover from when games actually were distributed on cassette tapes such as the ZX Spectrum.
Much in the way that the official term for NES and SNES consoles was "Control Deck".
It's pretty remarkable that despite downscaling to GBC, the graphics bare a very strong resemblance to the GBA game. I think that speaks to the graphic design of the original game a bit more, as a launch GBA game.
Comments 172
Re: N64 Emulation Comes To Evercade Via Piko Interactive Collection 4
@Azuris
Personally, what I'm expecting is that the Evercade release of Glover might be a custom emulation job that is half-way like Super Mario Galaxy on the Switch (as part of the Super Mario 3D All-Stars release).
Which could mean, theoretically, if the data for that N64 ROM were extracted from the Evercade release, it might not function on conventional N64 emulators or on real hardware via a flashcart.
No way to know for certain until the product is out in the wild and tinkerers get their hands on it!
Re: N64 Emulation Comes To Evercade Via Piko Interactive Collection 4
This Evercade release likely does not make use of N64 emulation, but is more likely to be built using source code based on the N64 version like the Steam release in 2022.
https://twitter.com/Pikointeractive/status/1500858813632720904
Glover was announced to be coming to current gen consoles (Switch, PS4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X) back in October 2022, but that doesn't seem to have materialised yet.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/10/the-nintendo-64-platformer-glover-is-coming-soon-to-switch
This announcement of its inclusion in Piko Collection 4 suggests that might be materialising soon this year.
Edit: I had my doubts, and it is apparently in fact a newly built N64 ROM, and does actually use emulation.
A company called ByteSwap was involved with rebuilding the ROM.
https://www.gamespress.com/en-US/64-bit-emulation-comes-to-Evercade-devices-with-cult-classic-Glover-an
Re: SNES Dev Explains Why He Spent 600 Hours And $2370 Just To Give His Game Away For Free
@Kirbyo
I wouldn't doubt the savvy of the types of people playing a homebrew demo of such a game.
There's a good likelihood that they played the game on a SNES or Analogue Super NT using a flash cart, rather than a software emulator on PC or similar. These sorts of users tend to know of methods of dumping games, and might already dump their own collections as opposed to downloading them illegally.
Re: Two Incredibly Rare Mega Man Battle Network Games Are Getting A Fan Translation
The guys at the Rockman EXE Zone have done fantastic work modding the Battle Network and Star Force games in the past, and I'm thrilled to see the end result of this fan translation and finally play these "lost" stories in the Battle Network continuity.
Previous great work they've done includes a fan translation for the Japanese exclusive Rockman EXE 4.5, a gameplay modification patch for that same game to make it play like the main entries, a wonderful overhaul and content restoration patch for Star Force 1, and content restoration patches for Battle Network 6.
My pipe dream is that they'll be able to use the preserved Phantom and Legend of Network mobile games as the basis for making GBA versions of them, using Battle Network 6 and past entries as the engine and resources.
Re: The Quest To Preserve Japanese Feature Phone Games
@themightyant
I mean, your initial statement seemed to be very dismissive of these games without understanding the significance of them.
They're an entire market of games that was exclusive to one part of the world, and was inaccessible to the majority of the world that loves the games made in that country.
I'd think it a small tragedy if a catalogue of this many hundreds of games were lost, because they still have significant historical value especially in the mobile gaming sector as we know it today.
There's no denying that the initial motivation for some was "I want to play the lost Battle Network games", and this ended up being something much bigger than that.
Myself, I'm looking forward to a fan translation being made for these two preserved Rockman EXE games.
https://twitter.com/Prof9/status/1750328705048867231
Re: The Quest To Preserve Japanese Feature Phone Games
@themightyant
Don't be so quick to dismiss these Japanese flip-phone games! They were fun and important enough that a significant number of them are being ported to the Switch.
https://www.nintendolife.com/features/japans-g-mode-archives-the-retrogame-series-youve-never-heard-of
Re: You Can Dump A Game Boy Advance ROM By Crashing It And Recording The Audio
@TransmitHim
It's conceivable due to the way that many British home computers like the ZX Spectrum distributed games on audio cassettes, with the program data being encoded as audio.
Distributing program code over radio would be highly unreliable though due to probable distortion.
Re: You Can Dump A Game Boy Advance ROM By Crashing It And Recording The Audio
Amazingly, making use of sound recordings to dump ROMs is not a new concept.
My brother has made use of this to make a dump of the Limited Run Games release of Shantae on GBC, though it's through the use of a homebrew tool booted via flashcart to load something into memory first.
The revelation that the "cartridge yank" audio is actually a memory dump and not just random jarring noise though?? That's amazing!
Nintendo no doubt implemented that for debugging purposes.
Re: New Project Aims To Replicate N64 Stick "As Close As Possible"
This is very cool to see.
Challenges with the N64 analogue stick commonly involve how quickly they wear out with plastic eroding.
The unusually high pivot point also means that it offers a far greater range of movement which resulted in greater control of analogue input. Specifically, it was a lot easier to move the stick slightly for slight movements.
Most modern controllers and emulators of N64 games don't account for this, and it can make some parts on N64 games a bit harder than they should be. Many parts of Super Mario 64 were designed around this careful slow precise movement such as the tiny side of Tiny Huge Island.
Re: GameShark Is Back From The Dead, But As AI
Honestly, sounds like snake oil.
It sounds like all it'll do is determine what game you're playing, then use an AI service over API to tell you "helpful info" that might have no basis in reality.
The claims about the Switch 2 release date stink of being a marketing stunt too, just to get your attention.
Re: Portal 64 Fan Project Shut Down After Contact From Valve
"Nintendo’s proprietary libraries"? I don't understand, if this is Valve's position aren't they arguing that all N64 homebrew is legally impermissible?
I'd understand if they were looking to protect their IP (and historically, they're very supportive of fan works with the Half-Life IP), but this doesn't make sense to me.
Even with the Dolphin emulator on Steam situation, there was some decent reasoning that it wasn't okay because of distributing a key used to decrypt Wii games rather than asking the user to provide that key themselves.
Has James Lambert at any point make clear that he's using proprietary Nintendo SDK, tools, software, etc?
Simply making code that can run on a target platform, should be legally in the clear shouldn't it?
Edit: Looked into it, and yes, the Portal 64 project was in fact using an official SDK called Libultra.
https://n64brew.dev/wiki/Libultra
This could shake the whole N64 homebrew scene, depending on how many people are making use of it for their homebrew. Super Mario 64 mods in particular come to mind, even if they're using the cleanroom reverse engineered decompilation the projects made could be at risk if they're using Libultra for re-compilation.
Re: Did You Know That Konami's Simpsons Coin-Op References A Scrapped 'Rabbit Ears' Plotline?
There was also the unused twist of Homer Simpson secretly being Krusty the Klown, but they opted to drop that idea.
It's why the two characters have virtually identical physiques, right down to their mouth shapes and facial features.
Re: Two More People Have Beaten NES Tetris
@Serpenterror
That's simply because 255 is the largest number that can be stored in an unsigned 8-bit address.
11111111 is binary for 255, or FF in hexadecimal.
Truthfully, 255 is a number that crops up very commonly in 8-bit games using 8-bit addresses to store a number value, even for things intended to store and display a two-digit value like a lives counter.
Re: Teen Who "Beat" Tetris Dedicates Feat To Late Father Who Passed Away Just Weeks Ago
It's so aggravating that society is quick to put down a young person's accomplishments like this, from the Sky News presenter's unwelcome comments to Twitch deplatforming him due to his age.
Re: Yep, More Analogue Pocket Limited Editions Are On The Way
This time, I was successful in placing an order and got the colour I wanted!
I went for Indigo, which looks like it sold out in just 6 minutes!
The second to sell out was Silver, in about 10 minutes.
Remarkably, the six remaining colours are still in stock 18 minutes after they opened orders.
Re: Yep, More Analogue Pocket Limited Editions Are On The Way
Ugh, last time I tried the checkout process was impossible.
Stock would sell out instantly and trying to pick another color meant more time in the checkout process.
Re: Anbernic's RG ARC Handheld Looks Like A Sega Saturn Pad
Ahh, another RK3566 system. A capable CPU that they use in the RG353P, it should be perfect for many arcade games.
No idea about Saturn emulation, never tried it but that's the clear appeal.
Re: Analogue Pocket OS 2.0 Adds A Much-Requested Feature
Does this mean they'll have more stock of the Analogue Pocket at some point?
The transparent shells they had a couple weeks ago sold out ludicrously quickly, I couldn't get a look-in.
Re: Random: The Super Marios Bros. 3 Roulette Game Was Rigged After All
@MysticX
It's entirely possible that they implemented truly random arrangements, play-tested it and didn't like that end result.
They may've modified a working random arrangement function in a way that produced 8 deterministic arrangements on purpose. It may've just been a quick dirty change that they never refactored.
Re: Transparent Analogue Pockets Are On The Way, But You'll Need To Be Fast
Well, I tried to get myself a Pocket, but they sold out in under 10 minutes.
I was in there immediately, and still missed out due to their queue system.
Re: Transparent Analogue Pockets Are On The Way, But You'll Need To Be Fast
@CammyUnofficial
If both you and @Damo can vouch for it, I may be tempted after all.
Re: Transparent Analogue Pockets Are On The Way, But You'll Need To Be Fast
@Damo
It could be that users had improperly maintained Game Boy cartridges, as both the cartridges and the connector on the original Game Boy weren't the most reliable back then.
Whether or not it's true, the Analogue Pocket does have that reputation, sadly. That makes it a hard sell.
Re: Transparent Analogue Pockets Are On The Way, But You'll Need To Be Fast
I get the impression they're re-shelling unsold stock to clear inventory.
I was interested, but these things got a reputation for not being ideal for playing from actual game cartridges due to an improperly secured cartridge socket.
Re: Review: 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard: Mario Teaches Typing
@JayJ
My current keyboard is a HyperX, advertised as a gaming keyboard but has cherry blue switches.
That's a typist's keyboard, not so much for gaming.
And yes, it has LED lights on the keys. Only R, not RGB, and there's lots of lighting options but the only one I use is one that lights up pressed keys that fade back to off.
It's not distracting, and it gives some visual feedback on what I just pressed so I leave it like that.
Re: Review: 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard: Mario Teaches Typing
I'd be interested but the small Enter key and a lack of number pad are big negatives. I can't entertainment a keyboard without them.
Re: Anbernic Might Be Working On A Nintendo 2DS-Style Emulation Handheld
This might be in response to the Powkiddy RGB30, which recently launched and features a unique 1:1 aspect ratio 720p non-touch screen. This makes it remarkably well suited to playing TATE arcade games, Game Boy games, NES/SNES games, PICO-8, and other things.
Under the hood, the 2DS was a single screen as well, using the plastic bezel to hide the fact.
Re: CIBSunday: Sega 3D Reprint Archives 1, 2 & 3 Triple Box (Nintendo 3DS)
I would've loved to get this collection, but it seems to go for stupid amounts of money now.
Play-Asia seems to have a single unit that is selling for a whopping $396.99!
https://www.play-asia.com/sega-3d-fukkoku-archives-123-triple-pack/13/70ai13
Re: Classic Pokémon Games Get 'Ported' To SNES By Industrious Fan
I'd gotten excited at the prospect of Game Boy program code being ported to run natively on the SNES, but this is cool too.
Squeezing an entire Super Game Boy with Game Boy cartridge into a custom SNES cartridge is pretty cool.
Modding in a link cable port is just the cherry on top, bringing it closer to the Japan exclusive Super Game Boy 2.
Re: If You Love The NES, You'll Want 8BitDo's Retro Mechanical Keyboard
Hah, that's really cute.
I need a numpad though, minus points for a small Enter key too.
Re: NES Classic DuckTales Has Been Ported To The SNES
If you're so inclined, you can play DuckTales (and DuckTales 2) with music from the Sonic 3 & Knuckles soundtrack.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4959/
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4958/
I'll definitely be checking out this SNES port though!
Re: Super Famicom Joins Grid Studio's Framed Nintendo Controllers
@themightyant
I mean, yeah it's specifically based on the NES version of Super Mario Bros 3, not the SNES version.
Taking a closer look at the Goomba and Mario sprites, they're not 1:1 to the actual sprites from the games but are weirdly re-drawn to closely resemble but not exactly match. This is possible for copyright reasons as to not outright copy Nintendo's works.
Re: Grimace's Birthday Gets A Physical Edition, With A Catch
Let the demand be known, and maybe it'll happen for real!
Re: The Making Of: Grimace's Birthday - The McDonald's Game Boy Adventure That Became A Viral Sensation
I love that the team are continuing to maintain the game with hotfixes and revisions, now up to a v1.5 release from what I can see.
Although the main mode is indeed on the short side, it's a genuinely enjoyable little game, though I'd say the time limit feels a bit strict for how open the second skateboarding level is, at least if you want to find all of the Grimace birthday shakes.
Re: Review: Anbernic RG353PS - Decent Emulation For Under $100
I really enjoy my RG353P, recent custom firmware updates have resolved some issues like sleep mode freezing the system.
What I'd really enjoy is a Linux based successor system that's beefier, because this handheld has the best ergonomics of anything they've put out so far.
Re: Super Famicom Joins Grid Studio's Framed Nintendo Controllers
It bugs me that the print has NES sprites rather than SNES sprites.
Re: McDonald's Just Released A Game Boy Color Game, In 2023
@romanista
Unless I'm mistaken, the McDonalds DS training game "eCrew Development Program" was fully preserved and accessible.
https://archive.org/details/mcdonalds-japan-ecdp-rom-training-nintendo-ds-cartridge-dump
Re: McDonald's Just Released A Game Boy Color Game, In 2023
@Agent_P
Huh, yeah that's my Twitter. I don't really use it much other than browsing.
Re: McDonald's Just Released A Game Boy Color Game, In 2023
@Agent_P
I can't wait to read the article on The Cutting Room Floor.
Edit: One actually exists.
https://tcrf.net/Grimace%27s_Birthday
Re: McDonald's Just Released A Game Boy Color Game, In 2023
I downloaded the ROM directly from the website via DevTools, loaded it up on my Everdrive, and gave it a spin on my GBA.
And it works! Pretty cool stuff, looks well made too.
When you visit the website, the browser downloads this file:
https://grimacesbirthday.com/bX4TvUeiUEfKRw8bkPGaB
When downloaded, it saves a 1024 KB .msi file, but when renamed to .gbc will work on GBC emulators and flashcarts.
Edit: The original link was removed and changed to https://grimacesbirthday.com/bX4TvUeiUEfKRw8bkPGaB.gb, which also has a new hash meaning it's likely an updated ROM.
Re: Nintendo's Plan To Prevent 3DS Hackers Has Been Defeated Already
@smoreon
From a business perspective, a business will look to optimise sales of their current products however they can.
The Tears of the Kingdom blockbuster sales of a tentpole product isn't a fair comparison in this instance. I was referring to the grey market, which is an ongoing issue for big games publishers.
There are also different kinds of consumers; parents looking to get something to keep their child busy aren't necessarily going to look to be spending big, and would probably be happy setting them up with their own small 3DS to keep to themselves and be loaded with a bunch of games.
It's important to keep perspective in mind, it's not just us enthusiasts that anticipate the biggest releases of the year and have to have the hottest new thing.
Re: Nintendo's Plan To Prevent 3DS Hackers Has Been Defeated Already
@KingMike
The point I'm making is that buying old products on a secondary market, including getting free software for old hardware, will be eating out of sales for new products and software.
If Nintendo can exercise any amount of control over that by making it harder to get free games for a 3DS, they will.
Re: Nintendo's Plan To Prevent 3DS Hackers Has Been Defeated Already
@LunarFlame17
It feels like a Disney vault situation; they dictate when you can buy their goods and services, as a way to build demand for a distant re-release of a game from a retired platform.
It also makes it harder to sell Mario Golf or Mario Tennis for the Switch, when people can get a 3DS for cheaper and then find ways to get Mario Golf or Mario Tennis for free.
The point being entries in a series of games can simply be an instance of the activity someone wants to do.
Re: I Just Fixed This Obscure Unlicensed NES Game
NES RAM initialization is very interesting to learn about, particularly that games will have behaviour that assumes the console boots with RAM in an uninitialized state.
Super Mario Bros makes use to this so that the A+Start trick to continue a world from game over does not persist when you turn the console on after being powered down.
Pressing the reset button for a warm start (aka soft reset) versus pressing the power button for a cold start (aka hard reset).
It turns out that the NES game Tennis writes to the same address in memory for SMB's A+Start trick, and that if you play SMB, then Tennis, then SMB, by physically swapping the cartridges whilst the console remains powered on, that you can tamper with RAM initalisation and get access to invalid world IDs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrFHNgJlJSg
So yeah, for Huang Di here, it sounds like an error in uninitialised RAM handling. It's entirely possible, likely even that the Taiwanese developers were using unofficial "Famiclone" hardware that did not handle uninitialized RAM in the same way as official NES or Famicom hardware.
Something like a Dendy, a Micro Genius, etc.
I would suspect that's the root of the issue, trying to play unofficial software developed on unofficial hardware, on official hardware or emulators targeting cycle accuracy of official hardware.
Re: Nintendo History Site 'Forest Of Illusion' Announces Its Closure
@DanijoEX
It's not, they've lost their Twitter and YouTube accounts as well.
Re: Random: Fan Discovers Hidden Function For Ocarina Of Time's "Useless" Ice Arrows
It's admittedly something I hadn't known, and I'd learnt of trivia like "blue fire can break down bombable walls" before this.
It makes sense though, if the spike tracks are technically an enemy like any other, they can be frozen. They're encountered in later parts of the game too like in Spirit Temple or Ganondorf's Tower.
This goes to demonstrate that some features often go unused in games, since the player has plenty of means to tackle problems, especially if they don't consume resources like arrows or magic.
For example, in Link to the Past, were you aware that enemies frozen by using either the Ice Rod or the Ether Medalion can be picked up and thrown?
Re: Kirby's Dream Land 2 Gets The 'DX' Treatment
I'm loving this trend of colorization of Game Boy games that otherwise never got an official "DX" release, especially when they refactor the game to perform better on the GBC hardware too.
There's been quite the few as of late!
Re: Archivists Rescan Ken Sugimori's Pokémon Artwork, And The Difference Is Incredible
It's honestly fascinating how the early circulation of lower quality images with excessive contrast and over-saturation actually shaped perception of that era of artwork.
Ken Sugimori's late 90s watercolor artwork is famous for its exposed whites as lighting, but that detail was greatly exaggerated and it has been reflected both in official media and fan works inspired by the poor quality scans and prints.
Re: Anniversary: Super Smash Bros. Brawl Is 15 Today
To this day, the Smash Bros Dojo site and the development blog is still accessible!
https://www.smashbros.com/wii/en_uk/index.html
Checking this site daily for updates was a ritual and got me the most excited for a game launch that I'd ever been.
I even have a small mark on the site, back then I was playing the Japanese version of the game on an imported Wii system, and submit one of my own screenshots that was featured on the Japanese side of the site.
https://www.smashbros.com/wii/jp/gamemode/etc/etc03.html
"Ｔｏｐ Ｓｃｏｒｅ！（ＲＵＰＥＥ）".
Re: Random: Italy's Most Wanted Mafia Boss Loves Donkey Kong Country 3
It's not uncommon for European gamers of a certain generation to refer to game cartridges as "tapes", it's a holdover from when games actually were distributed on cassette tapes such as the ZX Spectrum.
Much in the way that the official term for NES and SNES consoles was "Control Deck".
Re: Random: This Castlevania: Circle Of The Moon Demake Reimagines It As A Game Boy Color Title
It's pretty remarkable that despite downscaling to GBC, the graphics bare a very strong resemblance to the GBA game.
I think that speaks to the graphic design of the original game a bit more, as a launch GBA game.