Recently in Retro Gaming Category
New York City artist Rosemarie Fiore has many experimental projects, such as using an amusement park ride as a giant spirograph. Using a long exposure photography technique she has captured movement patterns in several arcade games:
These photographs are long exposures taken while playing video war games of the 80's created by Atari, Centuri and Taito. The photographs were shot from video game screens while I played the games. By recording each second of an entire game on one frame of film, I captured complex patterns not normally seen by the eye.
The patterns are quite striking. It reminds me of the kind of "ordered chaos" you find in fractal patterns.
Automobile advertisers have a long history of targeting young males with their commercials, enticing them with images of coolness and a message of "To be hip you need this car!" Apparently classic gaming is now hip and cool, as this Pontiac commercial demonstrates:
I would play Spy Hunter all the time at my local pizza place when I was a kid...
Spotted at Joystiq.com.
Overheard at Silicon Era, it looks like Nintendo is finally toying with the idea of bringing previously Japan-Only titles to the North American Virtual Console. NOA appears to be testing the water with Do Re Mi Fantasy: Milon no DokiDoki Daiboken, the 16-bit sequel to the Famicom classic Meikyuu Kumikyoku (a.k.a. Milon's Secret Castle). A brief overview from Moby Games:
A young boy named Milon sets off to save Alis, his fairy friend, after she was captured by the evil sorcerer Amon. He later learns that the only way to defeat Amon is by collecting five legendary instruments which Amon has stolen. The sorcerer placed a curse on these instruments so that their true powers cannot be used and then left them in the hands of his minions. The only way to lift the curse is by collecting five stars.
Armed with only his bubble shooter, Milon must retrieve the legendary instruments, lift their curses and use their powers to defeat Amon and rescue Alis.
I'm glad to see NOA finally figure this out and test the waters of bringing over non-NA releases to the Wii VC. This should have been a feature of the VC since day 1 (and the ability to download DS demo software instead of going to a kiosk in a game store, but I digress). Here's hoping we'll see a Gradius 2 release sometime!
In the early 1990s one of the most heated videogame hardware rivalries was in full swing: Nintendo vs. SEGA. Nintendo's NES had been wiping the floor with SEGA's SEGA Master System, but SEGA struck back with their 16-bit monster: The SEGA Genesis (Mega Drive outside of NA). The improvements in graphics and sound provided by the Genesis was astonishing. Nintendo struck back two years later with the Super NES. While posessing a slower clock speed, the SNES boasted even more graphical trickery than the Genesis and had much better sound and music capabilities. It was difficult to create pleasing music on the Genesis, but in the right hands SEGA's powerhouse could positively sing. Castle of Illusion, Sonic The Hedgehog and Toe Jam & Earl are excellent examples of what excellent music could be lovingly coaxed out of the Genesis. The SNES's music system was much more forgiving (and designed by SONY's Ken Kutagari, interestingly enough).
In 1992 HudsonSoft released Super Adventure Island for the SNES. While fairly early on in the SNES's life cycle, this platformer had bright, colorful graphics and large bosses. Stages include a deep jungle (complete with cannibals wearing masks), dark caves, misty forests, a frozen mountain range and even the belly of a whale! The music, composed by veteran Yuzo Koshiro, is where Super Adventure Island truly shines. Each funky piece of music has its own rhythm that matches perfectly with the visuals of the stage it is set against. No stranger to videogame music, composer Yuzo Koshiro began his composing career at Nihon Falcom in 1986 and through the years has provided memorable soundtracks to such games as Ys and Ys II (both for the PC-88), Legacy of the Wizard (NES), Streets of Rage (Genesis), ActRaiser 1 & 2 (SNES), Shenmue (Dreamcast), Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (DS) and is providing several compilations for the upcoming Super Smash Brothers Brawl (Wii).
Take a listen to the music in the flash player below, or download the .zip of MP3s or the raw game music itself (you'll need something that can play .SPC files).
Downloads
Sources
Back when I was first learning procedural programming with C, I remember "gotos are evil! Never use them!" being drilled into my head over and over. I would shrug it off, telling myself that I can easily keep track of where I'm going and what the logic is doing. I really wasn't writing anything complex at the time, and the goto statement in C came in handy for several sticky situations. As my programming grew more and more complex and the need for long debug sessions grew, I started to understand my instructor's reservations about the goto. Stepping through pages and pages of code line-by-line to find the crippling bug was made more and more difficult as each goto blasted the code pointer to far-off places, jumping around like a game of hopscotch, with no easy way to find my way back.
Ben Fry, who has spent many years at MIT combining computer science, statistics, graphic design and data visualization, has traced the operation of several classic Atari games in an exhibit titled Distellamap, including Adventure, pictured to the right. Each game's code has been presented as Atari 2600 assembly code, with arcs drawn between the two points of a goto statement. Pac-Man and Q-Bert are apparently more complex than the other three games analyzed.
Like any other game console, Atari 2600 cartridges contained executable code also commingled with data. This lists the code as columns of assembly language. Most of it is math or conditional statements (if x is true, go to y), so each time there's "go to" a curve is drawn from that point to its destination.
Looking at all the logic traces from just these simple games should easily demonstrate why gotos and other such logic jumps are a pain in the neck to debug and should be avoided wherever possible!
One of the more interesting aspects of video games that sets it apart from other hobbies is the frequent need for importing titles that did not see a domestic release. As the vast majority of video game hardware and software companies originate in Japan, there is a not-so-insignificant expense attached to localizing a game for sale in North America, or any other regional market. Sadly this results in many great and interesting titles being lost in the shuffle, doomed to never be appreciated outside of their home territory.
Since at least the NES era, there has been a small number of avid gamers who would pony up the extra expense and time to import quality titles from afar. That number has grown substantially in the past decade, mostly due to the barriers of communication around the world being lowered substantially by the Internet. It is now possible for any gamer to know what games they are missing and pick them up through any of several online import shops. It is easy to learn how to mod most current, mainstream consoles to play games not available in your home region, and is usually as simple as soldering a few wires to a chip.
While nearly every hardware vendor frowns on this practice on their home consoles, hand-held systems have generally been region-free, allowing playback of any official software regardless of what region it is marketed for. Nintendo's GameBoy is no exception. Chris Covell has pointed out 10 obscure, but excellent, GB and GBC games that should be looked in to:
Here is a fabulously cute and gloriously-designed action game by the masters of NES graphics and sound, Sunsoft. Trip world plays just like a scaled-down mini-version of their earlier production, Gimmick!, with a cute main character, large, slightly linear maps to explore (but with secret passages and divergent paths), and fluffy enemies that let you stand on their heads without being injured... until you decide to boot them out of existence.
Trip World's difficulty is quite low, but with graphics and music (Sunsoft's trademark) as good as these, you don't want to pass it up! I had a blast going through the varied levels and spotting all the unique and adorable creatures along the way.
This game suffered the fate of many of Sunsoft's fantastic games in the 1990s like Hebereke and Gimmick!, namely being withheld from release in North America, and being released in low numbers in Japan. I suppose Sunsoft took a long hard look at the series of mistakes that brought down former powerhouses Konami and Capcom and decided that proliferation was the road to ruin in the videogame world.
The year is 2028. The Rebellion Army, under the control of General Morden, is seeking world domination through military might and has captured much of the Regular Army's soldiers and equipment, including a newly designed tank, code named "Metal Slug." Marco Rossi and Tarma Roving (with other characters appearing in later titles) must fight to stop General Morden's ambitions, finding help from whatever soldiers they can rescue and any equipment they can commandeer. If it can't be taken, destroy it!
...But let's get serious now - plots in most action games just don't matter. Who really remembers the whys and wherefores of Contra? Does it really matter what Dr. Wiley is up to in the NES Mega Man games? Likewise, the background story to the Metal Slug series doesn't really matter. It's just you against the world and your reflexes are your only friend.
The Nintendo Famicom is very much alive and well in its homeland of Japan. Keychains, plushies, desk trinkets, models and garage kits of systems, characters and other related goods are readily available for purchase at many shops across the country (and available online for overseas customers). The Wii's Virtual Console is doing quite well, bringing a new life and a new audience to older classics, and books and magazines about the Famicom are still being produced.
Published October 10, 2006 by Micro Magazine, the Family Computer Dictionary Allround Series: Famidas ファミダス ファミコン裏技編 (Famidas Hidden Secrets or Tricks Collection) showcases some of the more interesting hidden secrets and techniques of Famicom games. One of the most recognizable codes of all, the Konami Code, is emblazoned on the obi strip that surrounds the book. The title itself lends to an interesting societal note: a literal translation from Japanese into English results in "Famicom Reverse Side Skill Compilation". The "reverse side" portion of the title conveys the concept of the "back side" or "hidden side" of something. Japanese culture has a heavy distinction between the "front side" (omote, 表) and "back side" (ura, 裏) of a person or thing. The "back side" is something that is not normally shown.
Until the late 1990s, most forms of Japanese media were usually heavily edited (or mercilessly butchered, depending on your point of view) during the localization process in an attempt to make them more accessible and culturally understandable by a North American audience. DIC's translation of the Sailor Moon anime, or MixxZine's (which became TokyoPop, by the way) "liberties" with the manga, come readily to mind. Thankfully there were a few companies, such as Viz, who did not deviate too much from the source material when adapting the story to a different culture. Video games were not spared during this time, either. Sometimes the modifications were limited to just sprite changes, but occasionally the localization team decided to "go the extra mile" and dramatically alter the game in an attempt to make it more identifiable to a mainstream audience, such as Kato-chan & Ken-chan's transformation into JJ & Jeff.
One of the more dramatic NES conversions is Totally Rad, a.k.a. Magic John.
As I glanced through Magic John's cutscenes, I quickly noticed that the original game had in fact been played completely straight. The bodacious 'tude and happenin' sensibility of Totally Rad had been solely an invention of its localization team at Jaleco, who not only played fast and loose with their translation but also entirely redrew two of the characters. While the story of the original is merely dorky and forgettable, the American release crosses the line into a glorious retroverse that renders it an oddly prescient ironic masterpiece.
Once I realized how much had been changed, I knew that I would eventually need to make an in-depth study of the localization to document the changes. Thus was born The Rad Project.
But enough blather. It's time to be righteous.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Gunpei Yokoi, inventor of Nintendo's Game & Watch lines, the original Game Boy, Virtual Boy, and Bandai's Wonder Swan. He was also at one time the general manager of Nintendo's R&D1 group, which was responsible for such NES classics as Kid Icarus and Metroid. His life was cut short by a tragic car accident in 1997 after he had left Nintendo.
