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Every Graphics At Once: Nintendo's Popeye
I’ve made some modern games in retro style, and one thing people will always tell you is, make sure your pixels are the same size. When your base resolution is 1080p, it’s pretty easy to accidentally include sprites scaled differently or at different resolutions; and most retro systems like the NES and Genesis only had one possible pixel size. But all rules are made to be broken– Nintendo brought out a system with three pixel sizes. Powered by spinach.
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Vintage Pachinko: Going Back and Forth Across the Pacific
Did you know: I like pinball! Pinball’s a game with a long history over which the game has changed a lot; its earliest antecedent, bagatelle, was an attempt by pre-Revolution French aristocrats to play bowling indoors using a billiards table. And as the game’s traveled the world, it gained elements and was shaped by its environment. Not only by the taste of players, but also by government regulation– nowhere is that more clear than in Japan. Let’s take a look at vintage pachinko. BONUS: Sega!
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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!
