zovik

http://cgi.ebay.com/COMMODORE-64-128-COMPL...1QQcmdZViewItem This ends in 4 hours, but I thought it appropriate to let somebody know about it.

I'm zovik, 22, from Missouri in the USA. Sadly I don't have the time to play very much anymore, but I've been a watcher of the emulation and vg preservation community since about 1996. Oh crap, 10 years. That's depressing.

Update- the good folks at no-intro (no pun intended) have started a game related art project. Right now it has mostly screenshots, mainly because noone has submitted anything else yet. They also want scanned images of all kinds. http://no-intro.dlgsoftware.net/main.php?lang=1

I'm thinking about installing Plan 9 as the OS on my main machine (from debian). I tried out the live CD and it seems pretty nifty, plus it has nerd appeal. My only concern is the software- all I need is a web browser, tex, a text editor, and maybe a music player. Are there any plan 9 users around here, and if so what can you say about the software that's available?

I don't know if it handles straight up VOB files, but I use DVD Decrypter to burn ISOs. Maybe there's a way to package the VOBs as an ISO?

I'm still a poor college student, so I don't have much disposable cash to spend on DVDs. On Christmases and birthdays my wife and I get each other a season of one of our favorite shows, so we do have the first two seasons of Futurama and the first season of Numbers and a couple seasons each of Little House on the Prairie and Gilmore Girls. However, we are fans of the DVD rip.

There are a couple of different ways to acquire Retromags releases, the most common being BitTorrent and newsgroups. (I've never gone the usenet route, so I'll give instructions for bittorrent.) First you will need a BitTorrent client. Personally, I use Bit Tornado, but I haven't looked at different clients in a couple of years. Next you will need to find a torrent. If you have an account at Transexual-Underground.com, you can find a nice torrent there. If not, mininova.org has some- just search for 'retromags' or 'nintendo power'. (If there is an official torrent, someone speak up- I don't know about it.) After you have a torrent file, just fire up your client and start downloading. Details of this process can be found in your client's documentation or in hundreds of places online. Relevant links- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent - Info about bittorrent with links to different clients http://www.mininova.org/search/?search=nintendo+power - Mininova search for 'nintendo power' A note about bittorrent- try to keep your bittorrent client open as long as possible, even after you finish downloading something. This is considered good etiquette and allows other people to download.

More importantly, while Nintendo is a small player, they are the only profitable player. Both Microsoft and Sony are huge conglomerations, most with (presumably) larger profit margins than game hardware. That is why they can afford to take a hit on the sale of each console- the company is so huge that even if the gaming division has a net loss, it can be absorbed. Nintendo, on the other hand, is very dependent on the success of each product.

If I remember, GMA basically got started by organizing the many hundreds of scans that were already available online, which (of course) were all of varying quality. Their goal is to collect as much as possible as quickly as possible and replace items in the collection with better quality scans as time goes on. So... deutsch_joe, rather than risk sounding rude (which you want to avoid) you could ask if they accept higher quality versions of existing scans and upload yours.

I voted for Zelda 2, because it was my first videogame addiction at the ripe old age of 7. Link to the Past sucked up many hours too, as did Ocarina of Time. I remember the first issue of EGM I bought was off the newsstand; it was the preview issue for OOT. I nearly crapped my pants when I saw the photo of link standing in hyrule field with a caption like 'hero runs miles a day without food to save the world' or something like that.

I'm sure this goes without saying, but that box art would make a very nice addition to the torrent.

Yeah- he does. Here's a direct link for example: http://snescentral.edgeemu.com/pcb.php?id=0177&num=0 The box art may not be so hot, but I doubt many other people collect PCB scans. (It was helpful for ZSNES development, that's why they're there.) It would definitely be best to contact him first, though; he's been around the scene for a long time. Another very old but classic site with some scans of varying quality is tsr's NES archive at http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/index.html It hasn't been updated in 6 years, but is still a font of goodies.

Here's a bit of info that may be relevant- Cowering (yes, THE Cowering, of goodtools fame) appears to be working on a database schema to handle game art and scans. His forum at www.allgoodthings.us has more discussion; perhaps you guys interested in archiving could get in tough with him. That project is already well established when it comes to roms, but the art side appears to be just starting. And I could have sworn evang collected PCB scans...

I post to get gil to spend on str potions, mostly. (Look, there's some more!) By the way, is there a better way to get gil in the attack system?

I used to play for 3 or 4 hours a day, but since I got to college I don't have the time to play that much. (Although, strangely enough, frat boy business majors find the time to play halo 8 hours a day- it helps when you don't bother going to class but I'm not bitter...) Every once in a while I'll whip out an NES or SNES game to clear my head. Emulation is basically the coolest thing ever.

I sympathize with you, Blazer! I was in middle school when the first games came out. I got one for christmas and loved it, but of course had to keep my addiction in the closet. I played Emerald through last summer and really enjoyed it. Anyway, I like pokemon and I'm married, so there is hope for you yet.

My brother and I grew up playing lots of RPGs. Some games have the plot and dialogue to rival a novel. (Chrono Cross comes to mind... man that's a great game.) Anyway, my little brother always had a much larger vocabulary than his friends, and blames it on all the games we played. I think the greatest value games have for young kids is to get them comfortable with computers at a very early age. I know that was the case for me.

Holy crap, Rocko is out there? For me it's music, definitely. Although ironically enough most of the music I listen to is available for free (legitimately) at fine establishments such as ftp.modland.com and amp.dascene.net

badinsults- If you're collecting PCB scans, there is a dude in the ZSNES forum that has a website with a ton of PCB scans. His (her?) name there is EvanG and the site is at www.snescentral.edgeemu.com. If I recall the scans needed to be hi-res enough to read the serial numbers on the board (to help development of zsnes), so they should be archive quality.

Here's what I know. The project now known as gamemanuals.net used to share a forum with grh.se (~2004?), and I lurked there once in a while. The game manual project made major headway and archived a _ton_ of stuff, which you can see (and contribute to) here. GoodRomsHeaven was a great site by the way; this cat called Ragowit bundled up goodsets as torrents and released them to the world. Much easier than finding roms one at a time! Anyway, while manuals were getting scanned, the forum was not a very happy place. Attitudes got a bit out of hand and epic flamewars were waged. Our very own phillyman took some nasty hits from Fenner, a prolific scanner and gamemanuals.net admin. (Fenner's calmed down a lot, but you can still smell the 'tude in their forum.) Most of Fenner's flames were a variation on the theme, "I'm always right because I do all the work." So one day phillyman announces he's starting his own project to complement gamemanuals.net, and retromags launched a few months later.

There was a site called screenshotarchive.com that had tons of art for older systems. I don't know if it's still being maintained, but there is a mirror of the site here. Or the url- http://www.localarcade.com/screenshotarchive/index.htm