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Spinning's a Neat Trick: Megumi Rescue for the System E
One of the last stages of arcade game development is the location test. Everything up to this point has been theoretical; now, real players get to see the game that the developers have poured time and effort into. It’s pretty common for major changes to come out of these, but sometimes, games just don’t make it at all. If the response is too underwhelming, the game will never see the light of day again. That’s what happened to System E game Megumi Rescue. Let’s give it a proper look.
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A Game Console by Narcissus: The Game and Watch Panorama Series
According to ancient Greek legend, there was once a man named Narcissus, who was so beautiful and so aware of his own beauty, that he fell in love with his own reflection, staring upon it so long that he turned into a flower. Well, in the 1980s, Nintendo wanted to give those of us not as gifted as Narcissus a reason to stare at a mirror for hours on end. What am I talking about? I bought a Game and Watch!
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The Sega System E: The Master System Supergrafx
If you’ve read this blog, you know that I like my hardware a little janky and a little weird. A classic example: the SuperGrafx. The beautiful three-chip architecture of the PC Engine, but two of one chip, and a video priority controller whose job is to wrangle things together. But for the really weird stuff, you need to go to the arcades. Let’s take a look at the predecessor of the System C. How did Sega reuse the Master System hardware in the arcade?
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The Sega ST-V's MIDI OUT: A Quick Examination and Failed Experiments
A “shaggy dog” story is a category of story in which a large number of words are used, but with a wholly disappointing and uninteresting conclusion. Why do I mention that? No particular reason. So, the Service Manual for the Sega ST-V Saturn-based arcade board mentions the existence of a “MIDI OUT” port. But what does that mean?
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Soviet Game and Watch: The Elektronika IM-32
The Soviet Union was an ancient Eurasian empire based in the city of Moscow, a former Mongol vassal that came to make Mongolia its own vassal. Its state ideology of communism has caused almost as many wars as differing video standards have. But let’s face it, you already know all that. What about the video games? Surely they had video games!
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The Apple II Yellowstone Floppy Interface
When I got my Apple ][plus back in 2017, it came with two all-important cards: the Microsoft 64kiB expansion card, and an Apple 5.25” Floppy Interface card. Since then, we’ve added some more: the Microsoft Z80 SoftCard and a Mockingboard sound card. And now I replace one of the original cards. The Apple’s floppy disk controller is a feat of engineering history: why would I replace it? Let’s find out!
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A Last Gasp of 2D: The Cave CV1000
Two-dimensional video game hardware is often considered a solved problem. Things like hardware sprites and tilemaps are basically gone; everything is done in software. Anything past that is done with 3d accelerators that work on entirely different principles. So let’s today take a look at a machine at the very end of the 2d period. And maybe also see why a straightforward platform still vexes emulator developers today. Bonus: A cool game!
