Data

17 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of opening RM up to magazines of other kinds

I don't play card games so I'm unfamiliar with most of those mags

OPINIONS, PEOPLE!  LET'S HEAR 'EM!

As for uploading things from elsewhere, even with someone's permission...it's something I'm generally opposed to.  As I said above, I'm not really sure Inquest belongs here at all, but let's put that aside and assume that we're actually talking about video game mags you found somewhere and are wanting to upload after getting the scanner's permission.  My first question would be: if you didn't scan them yourself, then where did you get them from?  Because if you downloaded them from somewhere, then that's where everyone else can download them from as well.  If the scanner also wants them here, they can always become a member and submit them for approval.  But what you see at Retromags was created by Retromags members, not found somewhere else and uploaded here.  There are other sites like archive.org that anyone can upload anything to with or without permission (people sometimes take our stuff and upload it there without asking).  I feel that would be a better place for you to upload these scans if you aren't the actual scanner/editor.  So long as they're available somewhere, everyone wins, so we certainly have nothing against archive.org and encourage people to use it as a resource.  But a Retromags scan should be just that - a scan made by a member of Retromags, in my opinion, at least.

These are all valid points which most regular staff would agree with for the most part.  Retromags should remain pretty tight about the person scanning magazines.  I'm not acusing anyone of malice intent but when person A tells me that person B scanned a magazine and I have permission, I become suspicious.  Long story short, I would like to see some type of evidence that permission is granted to use the scans of a magazine on Retromags preservation site.

I looked up Shadis Dualist and Inquest Gamer on Wikipedia and the traits they all share are following card games in the early to mid nighties then expanding to include board games and some types of Role Playing Games.  They are certainly not what you usually find on Retromags but it still has a certain type of nerdyness which is not so out of place.

I say put the covers up once permission is granted, see what we have as far as how many magazines are scanned and then have a vote.  Honestly, all this talk has made me curious about it.

Now, if somebody approached me with some type of computer hardware magazines, I would be completely in favour of preserving them here.  Videogames and computers in my opinion go together like toast and jam.

A shadow looms over the town of Derry.  Derryfolk don’t seem to care at all if anyone lives or if anyone dies.  This callousness is not the fault of the townsfolk rather it seems to emerge from the incredible tragedies that routinely occur every 27 years, sometimes longer sometimes shorter.

Adults in Derry see the suffering and catastrophes in Derry and try finding rational answers to irrational problems.  Every 30 years give or take, children are found mutilated or go missing and every 30 years the townsfolk set a curfew, lock their doors and the police begin the cold search for a specter which doesn’t even exist in the mind of anyone who disbelieves in the paranormal or supernatural.  Derryfolk have lived with this malevolence for so long that they have come to understand it, tolerate it, or in some way even love it.   

This story is not just about a shape-shifting Bogart from beyond the universe, nor is it about traps set for the most vulnerable children in Derry rather it is a story of the passage between adolescence into adulthood, the fears and troubles we suffer through, and how they manifest into our adult lives no matter how hard we try to suppress them.

This would describe the book It by Stephen King in my opinion although my description pays no credit to the incredible amount of detail found in over 1000 pages.  This book took me about two weeks to read or about 30 - 40 hours of reading.  Every little detail is thoroughly fleshed out but the story never becomes dull.  A problem arises when you take a story such as this and try to adapt it to light and sound.  For starters, you are going to have to cut much of the side stories found in the book and focus on the main plot.  This right here is a dis-service to anyone who enjoys the novel but it is also something which is completely unavoidable.  This movie is only part 1 and it is already 2 hours 20 minutes and I would guess part 2 will be the same.  You will never get all the story into a movie unless it was 10 hours long with a huge budget for set and props.

10 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

My dream would be able to type in the name of a game and get an index of all issues it was reviewed in along with the score it was given in each (if applicable), with links to their DB/download pages.  Gamerankings has something like this that includes online reviews with print mag reviews, but their inclusion of print mag reviews is far from complete, particularly with older games.  And while reviews would be my main interest, being able to find what issues had feature articles/previews/strategy guides for a given game would be nice as well.  No need for indexing stuff like codes - that's what Gamefaqs/the internet is for.

Of course, we're nowhere remotely near being able to do anything like this, and probably never will be, but dreams don't have to be realistic.

I was watching the latest season of Halt and Catch fire last night and became inspired by Joe McMillan, a fictional character who made it big in Silicon Valley as CEO for IBM, then Computer Hardware and now web browsers and search algorithms.  There was a time when we had the world wide web but we never had Lycos, Yahoo or Google.  These companies built algorithms which crawled the internet and indexing web pages automatically.  

We have an advantage right now, a relatively limited amount of magazines to index and the tools to do it.  If somebody was to have all the magazines on one hard drive and then they converted it to PDF, they could hold the data needed to index it page for page, title for title and word for word.  This could be relatively easy to do for private use but the problem for me would be coding it so website users could use it.

2 hours ago, Data said:

Congratulations!  You have found one of the two errors I purposefully made in my record of what is known as "Growing Pains".  Find the other mistake I made in this scene with Mike & Ben then share it with you're friends and may the best player win!

Time is up.  This one fried the brain of even our best game garbanzos.  The other mistake in the scene where Ben and Mike play Nintendo is the fact that the control deck is turned around backwards.  Nobody can give a logical reason why this is so unless they wanted to show the RCA cables neatly falling from the coffee table.

6 hours ago, Areala said:

I just want to point out that in the first image (Growing Pains), the black box NES game they're playing is actually Baseball, not Golf.

Otherwise, this is a hilarious list. If we're counting movies, Jackie Chan gives his love interest's little brother his old Sega Game Gear in the movie "Rumble in the Bronx". Unfortunately there's no game cart inside it, even when the kid appears to be playing it.

*huggles*
Areala

Congratulations!  You have found one of the two errors I purposefully made in my record of what is known as "Growing Pains".  Find the other mistake I made in this scene with Mike & Ben then share it with you're friends and may the best player win!

1 hour ago, zdarfan said:

I remember an episode of The Cosby Show where one of the kids was playing a video game on a Super Nintendo. The joke was that grandpa initially criticized video games, then got wrapped up in trying to beat the game himself. The best part was that there was very clearly no cartridge in the system at any time.

Cosby Show Season 08 Ep 09 For Men Only - Despite Theo's reading disorder know as dyslexia, he has graduated university and is teaching high school classes.  The proud father Heathcliff Huxtable has been invited by his son to give a motivational speech to the class, leaving his granddaughter Oliva and friend without a babysitter.  Heathcliff's father Russell is happy to take on the task and we find them bonding while enjoying a game of Nintendo.

Taxi

Season 03 Ep 13 Zen and the art of Cab driving - Jim has this revelation and decides he will work double shift driving cab.  After Jim saves a bunch of money he invites his friends over to reveal his goal.  They are all surprised when they find out he spent all his money on television as he calls it.  This is one of Christopher Lloyd's better character moments in the show and even though Jim only mentions Video Computer Games, this portion of the episode belongs in this collection.

Season 04 Ep 18 The Unkindest Cut - The cab drivers are complaining of boredom because there is nothing to do in the garage so Louie invest in an a Pac Man arcade unit to help boost morale.  Jim overwhelmingly agrees to be the first to try the game and becomes hooked.

10 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Living in Japan, it's still hard for me to accept how ubiquitous portable systems are and how little anyone seems to care about home consoles.  I mean, obviously someone is buying PS4s and Switches, but I don't really know anyone who owns one, and I sometimes feel like I don't know anyone who doesn't own a 3DS.  In fact, just yesterday I was eating lunch in a classroom of students and they were talking about Mario games (Kart, Party, etc.), and one of the kids was explaining to all the others to their amazement that there are in fact Mario games for home consoles as well (aside from that one kid, they all had only ever played portable games).

Forbes.com Switch sells more than PS4

In the 6 month period the Nintendo Switch has been available in Japan (March 4th - Sep 4th 2017),
the sales number have reached 1.5 Million units.  As of June 30 2017 according to wiki Wikipedia 3DS Sales 23.54 million 3DS units have been shipped.

Maybe you're sample of Nintendo fans haven't realized they want it yet, or maybe the price is too high.  I heard the 3DS has the means of playing games unlawfully so it could be looked at as higher value in this regard.

23 hours ago, te72 said:

So what about you? I know it's a divisive game these days, and to those discontent with the game for whatever reason, I still highly recommend you search out a Let's Play by a fellow named Elentor on the somethingawful LP archive. As for me, I think it was the world map reveal that really solidified how much I enjoyed this game. You go through all of the Midgar section of the game, this massive, diverse city, only to find out that it is but ONE city in the world that you're suddenly free to explore. Blew my mind as a kid.

It was divisive in 1997 because Square Enix abandoned Nintendo for Sony's prospective optical media and 3rd party friendly business environment.  The game data was at least 2GB spanning 3 CD-ROM, while the average N64 game at the time was  between 4 and 24 Megabytes.  This would take between 83 and 500 game cartridges.

Square made the correct choice to develop their games on Playstation going forward, no question.  Just look at Final Fantasy 6's renowned opera scene.  To me this is painful to watch.  Square did a magnificent job displaying the emotion of the scene with only a phony MIDI voice and a square like sprite representing a female but this story would have been that much better with a full toolset of FMV and other technological advancements.

N64 was the console that everybody either owned or have played in abundance as well as the Sony Playstation but it was the release of Final Fantasy 7 on the Sony Playstation that became the landmark which signaled which way mainstream videogames were headed and ultimately Nintendo in at least some way was left to suffer for their choices.

57 minutes ago, Jie said:

The NES Classic was really nothing more than a holiday item, hence why supplies were limited.

As for the Switch, can you really blame them after the fiasco that was the Wii U? Nintendo is a very conservative company, and this works for and against them. Their original projections for the Switch was around 8 million for the whole year; when the success caught them off-guard, they said they would increase the supply to 13 million. The problem is that the Switch is also using components used in the newest iPhone so they are competing with Apple for hardware components in this regard. And no one can really hope to compete with Apple in this day and age.

I don't just take Nintendo's word that they made an innocent toy.  They are either mis-managed or incompetent from making important American and European "big business decisions".

I really look at Nintendo from their entire past and although it makes sense that they want to stop competing with Sony and Microsoft's powerful computer like power and instead stick to their type of Nintendo family fun home entertainment, it doesn't excuse their past mistakes going all the way to NES and treatment of 3rd party developers, their ignorance towards the optical media insurgency and the most recent mistep with the Wii U nor their notorious miscalculations for stock supply, in fact they are now starting a trend.

I'll be honest, I had never heard of these NAND flash shortages but it really must not be blamed on anyone but Nintendo.  The fact is Samsung makes these flash memory chips and the first one in line to receive the shipments are Samsung but it is lucky that Nintendo isn't going to have to wait too long.  Nintendo only has one system on the market now and the fact they are now saying they need twice as many console than originally thought says more about their research and development than it does about any cynics. 

17 hours ago, E-Day said:

I don't either. A web search turned up nothing. I just remember it because up to that point, it was always Nintendo, Nintendo, Nintendo when video games were part of a TV show. I clearly remember this and a scene from Fresh Prince when a repairman or someone is describing this dark, gory event, and later revealed is was "Mortal Kombat by Sega".

There has been a recent robbery in Bel Air at the Spelling residence and Philip wants to upgrade the security system.

The security salesman exaggerates the consequences of not upgrading their security and while he is describing this he goes off topic and begins describing mangled bodies and stuff.  Philip asks where this happened and he says Mortal Kombat by Sega. At the time, Mortal Kombat was popular and if you wanted all the fatalities without censoring blood and gore, then you had to purchase the Sega Genesis version because Super Nintendo had this portion removed.

Fresh Prince of Bel Air Season 4 Ep 16 I Know Why the Caged Bird Screams

19 hours ago, E-Day said:

I remember in 1994 or 1995, my parents were watching some show I wasn't interested in. It was the beginning of the show, and the (main?) character was playing Sonic 3. You saw him from the side looking at the TV, but you also heard the Hydrocity Zone Act 1 music. And then they cut at least once to footage of the game. It's the only time I remember a show actually focusing on the game being played instead of it being in the background as a prop.

For those few seconds, I was interested in the show.

I need more clues because I have no idea what show this is from.  I did find an episode of Xfiles in which I hear the music Green Hill Zone playing in the arcade.

X Files Season 03 Ep 03 D.P.O.

Seinfeld Season 05 Ep 12 The Stall - Tetris, Sim City and Super Spike V'Ball make it onto Jerry's shelf mid way through season 5 and it does not change for the rest of the series.

Seinfeld Season 09 Ep 18 The Frogger - George and Jerry visit their old high school hang out one last time before it closes down.  Jerry notices that George still holds the high score on the Frogger machine from 19 years ago.

Sopranos Season 01 Ep 04 Meadowlands - Tony and Anthony Junior play Mario Kart 64 and talk about their day.

Sopranos Season 02 Ep 10 Bust Out - Anthony Jr plays Flag to Flag Racing on the Sega Dreamcast.  Three controllers are plugged in and I would imagine the television crew would be playing some Soul Calibur and NFL 2K

Drew Carey

For the first 6 season a Sega Saturn was often seen sitting above Drew's television.

Season 05 Ep 13 - The Sega Dreamcast makes a cameo appearance on the show right after the launch.  Doreen and Lewis are seen playing Dreamcast on their first date.

Rumor has it that Drew liked the Dreamcast so much that he took it home and kept it.

Season 07 Ep 03 Beginning with season 7 Drew replaced his Saturn with a Paystation 2.


 

Have you ever seen real life videogame like the Nintendo being played or just sitting in the background as a prop?  I set myself on a quest to see if anyone has started a project like this and came upon a website called The electronic Playground  http://www.tepg.se/

This site seems to focus on movies for the most part and the few shows they do mention, I don’t even have.
So I went ahead and recorded all the moments I found in my collection up to 2001 and will share my findings.

Growing Pains Season 2 Ep 8 Jason’s Rib - Mike and Ben are seen playing the black box game NES Golf.  Notice that they use composite rca jacks.  I wonder if they run it to the VCR or if it was to the Television.

That 70’s show Season 01 Ep 22 Punk Chick - Kelso decides that Pong is too easy with the original paddles so he decides to modify it with the help of Red.

Roseanne Season 04 Ep 15 The Back Story -  DJ asks for SNES for his birthday, his parents say they can’t afford it but then his Grandma buys it.  We then see that Dan actually did buy it for DJ because Dan is found testing it out at his shop.   We also find out that DJ’s next door neighbor Todd Bowman owns a Genesis.
Roseanne Season 04 Ep 19 The Commercial Show - Todd Bowman complains about Lanford and says his new friends in Chicago have more games.  After their argument DJ reveals that Todd’s mother needs surgery to have the stick removed from her butt.

Magnum PI Season 04 Ep 03 Smaller than Life - Kid playing missile command on atari 400 then later Donkey Kong.  The kid tells Rick and Magnum that he can log in to this computer they speak of by using his modem.

Magnum PI Season 05 Ep12 Little Games Master - Magnum Plays the PC game Dungeon Master on Robin Master’s expensive security system computer and crashes it.

King of the Hill Season 11 Ep 08 Grand Theft Arlen - Hank becomes adicted to a game called Pro Pain where the protagonist is a Propane Salesman named Hank and you travel around Arlen and do different things in the same manner as Grand Theft Auto.

King of the Hill Season 09 Ep15 It aint over till the fat neighbor sings - Bobby finds Peggies Atari console in the closet and they play each other

Night Court Season 05 Ep 03 Death of a Baliff - After the Court spends alot of money buying computers for the courthouse Mac doesn’t want to give up his paper filing system and calls the computer an appliance from hell. After Mac figures out how to turn it on, Harry asks what the next case is and Mac responds, “The People vs... Pac-Man sir” Laughter ensues.

Home Improvment Season 01 Ep 24 Stereoo Typical - Tim decides they need a surround sound audio system and we  see an Atari 5200 with a paddle on top of the television.

Home Improvment Season 02 Ep 10 Let’s Did Lunch - Mark is seen playing Gameboy OG in the backyard.

Home Improvment Season 01 Ep 13 Up Your Alley -  The boys get bullied by a ruffian at the bowling alley arcade in detroit.  I can see Zaxon and Lady bug


Home Improvement Seaon 05 Ep 22 the longest day - Randy is depressed and goes to the local arcade.  We get to see a number of  arcade cabinets.

This show seemed to push education and  outdoor activities in my opinion.  The Taylors seemed generous with their computer purchases and the whole family seemed to only do work on them.

Full House Season 08 Ep 09 - Michelle Plays SNES with a Super Advantage and the whole family takes over.

Friends Season 02 Ep 08 The One With The List - Chandler brings his new laptop in Central Perk and says, “Alright Check out this bad boy 12MB Ram, 500 MB HDD, built in spreadsheet capabilities and a modem that transmits over 28000 BPS.”  Phobe responds, “wow what are you gonna use it for?”  Chandler, “Games and Stuff.”

Friends s06e08 When Chandler comes to visit Joey after he moved out and Joey’s girlfriend moved in, we can see Joey getting ready to play Nintendo 64.  The two never play although I’m left wondering what games Joey would propose.

Fresh Prince Bel Air Season S06 Ep 16 - Carlton and Will are seen playing some type of game although the controllers are certainly not the originals and I’am suspicious of them even being plugged into anything.  Philip comments that these things are a waste of time.

Fraiser Season 03 Ep 09 Frasier’s Grinch - Frasier’s boring gift get mixed up in the mail at Christmas so Frasier needs to find something quick at the local mall.  We can see on the shelf for the Super Nintendo a game called Mother 2 or what it is called in North America, Earthbound.  Frasier gets something educational instead of any videogames.
Also we can see Super Nintendo basic sets above Donkey Kong Country Deluxe sets as well as a customer walking out with a Gameboy Original.

Frasier Season 07 Ep 09 - Niles and Lilith play Frederick’s Playstion one with a red dualshock controller

Family matters Season 01 Ep 17 The Big Fix - Judy, Laura and Eddie play the NES with joystick controllers and then the parents send them to bed and begin playing themselves.

Family Mater Season 09 Ep11 - Steve gets a part time job wrapping Christmas gifts at the mall and we can see a Sidewinder controller for Flight Sim

CSI Las Vegas Season 01 Pilot - Nick Stokes asks Chemist Greg Sanders if he has NFL 2K for Dreamcast and Greg says he bought it the day it came out, the graphics are killer, I play as the Falcons who do you play as?  Nick simply replies that he plays as Randy Moss of the Minesota Vikings.  He was a first round pick by Minesota in 1998 as a wide reciever and holds records for touchdowns.

North of 60 Season 01 Ep 07 The Reunion - cops son has gameboy playing fake game motion killers 3000

North of 60 Season 04 Ep 01 The Refuges - After the band decides to move Gerry out of his trailer because a band member has returned.  When law enforcement pays him a visit we see that he has a Super Nintendo.

North of 60 Season 04 Ep 08 A Shot Rang Out - Albert has a Nintendo which I would assume belongs to his son Nathan

North of 60 Season 05 Ep 02 Bushman - Tina is seen playing what looks to be a Gameboy Pocket with the rare translucent

Throughout the entire series we see a Ms. Pac Man cabinet beside the main entrance to Gerry’s Store.

I have the stream set to 1080 source and have it recording.  What I've noticed is the quality is higher than the G4 tapes which have been distributed online. 

I'm looking forward to the reboot of Starcade which is to follow in the near future.  I could see them focusing on games from the Xbox 360 era and newer although I pray the show will draw from any and all games.

The show often throws 3 softball questions and one difficult question.  Same idea with the games.  If you want to win a grand prize, then you would either have to be familiar with an obscure game or simply be lucky.  This was the difference between prizes valued at thousands and a toy valued less than 100.

25 minutes ago, te72 said:

How would you prevent scalping for something like this? I've seen some unique approaches with concerts, but those are for a physical venue entry, not an item you buy.

 

Think directly from Nintendo, one per credit card or address?

In this particular case, the one item per customer rule is not enough because scalpers can order from a variety of different online stores as well as local stores such as Toys R Us and Gamestop.

Nintendo creates these artifical shortages for the same reason they do with their toy line, it establishes an artificial appeal for the product because of the shortage of supplies.

After the success of the NES Classic I said Nintendo should make a minimum of 5 Million consoles, I even left the upper limit to 20 Million because I saw the trend and I understand the popularity of Super Nintendo worldwide.

If Nintendo even had a business strategy like this then I would say they are incompetent.

I have been chipping away at the main quest slowly.  Last weekend I made it to Gerudo desert and had to buy these lady's clothes in a bazare from a stranger so I could disguise as a female.  This is the only way for me to sneak into the sex segregated town and talk to chief Riju. 

I am now in the process of retrieving the lightning resistant crown from the thieves at the Yiga Clan so I may approach the divine beast Vah Naboris which has been terrorizing the area lately.

21 hours ago, te72 said:

You know Jake, it's posts like this that I both appreciate on a technical level, and causes me to wonder if you're not yourself an AI haha. Mostly kidding bud.

I recently read an article on someone describing the difficulty in emulating Pong at the mechanical level. I guess the original version of the game wasn't how we think of games, as digital programs, but was rather a mechanical display of light. The computing power to reproduce Pong perfectly was obscene, and we're talking about perhaps the most simple game ever made. This led into brief descriptions of why perfect emulation of more modern games may take a LOT longer to accomplish.

I chose these emulators because they best served my needs today.  I plan on building a Hyperspin arcade and I learned through experience that some emulators won't allow you to map keys in the emulator or the front end wont allow you to map certain keys because of technical reasons.  To have this many emulators working together to make an arcade look like a cool new machine which plays not just arcade games but also lets you grab an original controller and play these games, it took slot of trial and error. 

This sounds like the programmers of the multiple machine arcade emulator.  I have been following them since the mid to late 90's and they have not changed their dedication emulating the arcade games perfectly with absolutely no hacks.  People have complained and begged for years about versions of MAME that break a game which used to work or games they want to have working.

I never followed the original Pong from 1973 although I am aware that it is a mechanical game similar but completely different from Sega's early machine games.  All of these games were not programmed to run on a modern (1950 - 2017) computer rather, they were machines engineered using electro-mechanical parts which made up the controls and circuits.  Sometimes a phosphorus monitor was used in the case of Pong although most of these early games had nothing this fancy.  If you want something  in your vision to move you would have to make something which physically moves.

21 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

I don't claim to know any of the technical processes at work.  All I know is that PS2 games are technically very primitive compared to whatever else I could run on my PC, and yet many PS2 games running through PCSX2 emulation don't run at full speed while maxing out my CPU.  Part is probably due to inefficiency in the emulator itself, and part is simply because emulating something perfectly requires much more processing power than running something on the hardware it was intended for in the first place.

This is very much relative to you're current computer setup.  PCSX2 is a high level emulator which began by making a small number of games working and over time, they added new games, broke older ones and fixed them.  PS2 is interesting because it did not run like a modern computer would with a CPU, RAM, hard drive or optical and a display card.  The Playstation 2 had a CPU which was custom made, multiple co-processors which accompanied it, image processing units, multiple processing units, ram and a scratch pad.

All of these components work at different timings depending on which game is being played.  All of these things happening on the PS2 were individually decoded per game in a programming environment using windows XP and Vista and the only way to compile and run them is with a CPU.  The PS2's CPU was something like 300Mhz alone and even today you still need something between a Gulftown I7 from 2010 to a I6500 from 2016.  A good graphics will add to the visual results and is very much recommended.

1 hour ago, kitsunebi77 said:

1. Am I the only one who thinks dividing up consoles that have nothing to do with each other into "generations" is completely arbitrary and meaningless?  2. I understand it all started because "hey look, this console is 8-bits and so is this one - they must be the same!" but it's making less and less sense to group consoles together these days. 3. Saying that the Switch is the Next Generation of Nintendo consoles is fine, but implying that it should be placed in the same category as any other company's product doesn't make sense to me.  4. If the goal is to look at things from a sales perspective, then again, "generations" should be ignored and sales should be compared by units of time, be it years, months, or the lifespan of a system.

1. I wager you are not although I disagree.

2. It makes less sense because Xbox One and Playstation 4 when first released were seriously underpowered due to the weak co-processors and Sony decided to resell the Playstation 4 again with a better graphics chip and now Microsoft is doing the same.

3. This is why I created two separate graphs. One for handheld and another for home consoles.  The Switch is a handheld with the ability to connect to a television.

4. The goal is to have a visual representation of the total console sales worldwide.  I used the data available to me at the time and I clearly see that consoles and handheld videogame hardware is slipping.

For the Atari 2600 I use Stella

For Colecovision I use BlueMSX

Nintendo Entertainment System I use Punes

Gameboy or Advance Visualboy Advance

Commodore 64 use Win Vice

Turbografx and CD Mednafen

Sega Genesis & CD Kega fusion

SNES Retroarch and Snes9x

Neo Geo Cartridge and CD Final Burn Alpha

Commodore Amiga CD32  Win UAE

3DO use 4DO

Neo Geo Pocket Color  Mednafen

Sega Saturn SSF Use 2 different versions

Nintendo 64  Project 64

Playstation One
epsxe and mednafen - epsxe has graphical enhancements and mednafen doesn't but, because mednafen is a low level emulator, it plays games that other emulators never could with the drawback of not having the graphical advancements which emulators such as  epsxe could provide.  Last I remember setting my front end to using mednafen for on Playstation was a Tomb Raider game which did not work on epsxe.

Dreamcast  demul and nulldc

Playstation 2  pcsx2

Gamecube Dolphin

Nintendo DS  dsemu

MS DOS D-Fend

Wii Dolphin

Arcade mame different version

All these different systems are difficult enough to wield.  There are 3 different people.  One remembers all the games that came out in their environment and may or may not have played or even enjoyed them.

2. Stalks all the games that came out in their environment plus a few which for whatever reason were introduced later with a translation or other means of hack.

3.  Cares nothing but the archiving all games released on planet earth and organizing them.  If you think about it, ten times isn't all that much more records of games released considering they were usually released only in USA, Japan, UK, South America, France and Brazil. 

The problem is when a North American like me browses his games and each game has 10 different versions.  It is tiring an not very appealing.

After you know which videogame systems were released between A.D. 1977 and the current date, 2017, you try to emulate them.  You run into various problems resulting from a Microsoft Windows Operating System combined with a CPU and a graphics card not understanding what the user is asking.  Usually a program begins with high level programming which requires 90% CPU and 10% GPU for advancements and the goal is to have a true low low level one to one interpretation of the computer system being emulated which used to take quite a few years to achieve.  Nowadays, the middle ground is to figure out what a particular game which is usually popular is asking it's console to do an then hacking the program to cater to these whims.

The problem with this is that most other game will not run under the same programming and therfore require their own hacks or programming.

The proper way to emulate a computer or videogame console is to figure out exactly what each component in the host computer is doing and translate it 1 to 1.  This is called low level as well as hardware emulation because it is considered a mathematical equivalent.  In real life, it takes much more time figuring out the computer and when it is, it usual begins with high CPU requirements to relate this 1 to 1 low level.  It is more equivalent to 1 to 10.

1 hour ago, Jie said:

I understand why you would put Switch as a handheld device, but Nintendo themselves have said that the Switch is a successor to the Wii U, and hence the first hardware for the 9th generation of consoles. Whether or not there will be a successor to the 3DS remains to be seen but the Switch is definitely a 9th-gen console that has portable capabilities.

I feel no need to argue generation numbers.  My graphs are an arbitrary measure based upon my prospective although claiming that it is the first hardware for the 9th-gen console is daring.

I have been using virtual DJ since 2005.  Day One Ish!  In 2011 Virtual DJ version 7 was in it's prime and by 2013 the final updates were coming to an end.  A new option to drag a song in real time onto the programs's playlist which is labeled as Genius DJ,  searched the song's parameters against that of paid users and other so called DJ's and created a list of song that these users either played directly after or shortly after.

 Version 7 pretty much ended in 2011 when 8 came out.  Version 8 had the finger on the impulse of earth's Virtual DJ paid users.  I continue to find great music from current last decade pop dance radio stuff as well as even much older stuff from random different sounding localities.

I thought the video of this song showed artistic expression.  Who knows? Maybe he was a lunatic but the penciling was crazy.

So the way I have this figured is, Nintendo has this hierarchy planned for their online customers, starting at the top with the Nintendo Switch Online Service.  This is what Nintendo plans on introducing in 2018 as a place where the users can find all of their Nintendo Universe games, purchases and online friends and what not.  It is believed that virtual console from the Wii days will be another link beneath this but is unclear whether users will need to purchase these games again.

So we boot up our Switch, click Online Services and we likely will find as of July 21st 2017, an option to play Splatoon 2.  This game is significant because it is the first game to be promoted into this new Online Service as well as being the first Switch game to require the smartphone app "SplatNet 2" to be able to have voice chat as well as lobbies and other perks.  This is an early version of the app which Nintendo plans on improving before they start charging money for all this stuff in 2018 and I would guess they will update Mario Kart 8 Deluxe before then to utilize the voice chat and social lobbies as well but don't hold me to it.

I for one think Nintendo could have a smash hit if they can make online multiplayer work with Nintendo Entertainment System games such as Mario 3 and Double Dragon 2.  They only need to get the NES games working properly at first but if they want to keep the millions of subscribers, then they will need to introduce Super Nintendo games.  This is a huge opportunity which hinges on whether customers can easily play a quick game over the network with other quality of life perks such as a better way to save the game.

My feeling on this smartphone app isn't mixed at all.  Nintendo's base is and probably always will be rated children and family so if you are going to allow any child to play their Switch online then there needs to be a layer of supervision or proof of age.  With a smartphone, you at least know that someone is either old enough to enter a contract or is responsible enough to be trusted with the device.

The smartphone app is designed for private messages, inviting friends on social media as well as instituting voice chat and then bringing it all together on the Nintendo Switch.

I have heard people complain about the app because it is an extra step, but these people obviously have no consideration for the nasty and vulgar speech found in uncensored games such as Gears of War or Grand Theft Auto 5.  In fact, I believe that once Nintendo protects itself from litigation derived from allowing such abusive and fowl language, it will allow parties the freedom to comfortably pursue with this kind of immodest discourse if the party finds it is well within their set of guidelines.

To put it into perspective, an average chat on Xbox Live would be rated Adult but this guy playing on the Nintendo channel would be the nice junior high teacher that most people liked.  I for one would want the wild and free internet separated from my families living room.

As for Splatoon 2, it has a July 21 release date on Nintendo Switch.  A new feature called LAN Play will be added, allowing up to 10 docked systems.  That is 8 players and two spectators which can connect via wired LAN.  It is pleasant to see  players creating local Private Battle tournaments without the need for an internet connection although everyone still requires a copy of the Splatoon cartridge.

On 6/28/2017 at 5:33 PM, vice350z said:

I love finding a new song and loving it! Nothing lately but here's some tracks that I either heard on a tv show/movie or happen to hear on a youtube video or something.

FOund it looking for an aquarium video

 

heard it during a funeral scene in Sons of Anarchy

On 7/5/2017 at 9:34 PM, te72 said:

The way they put music to TV scenes these days is quite a powerful thing. I recall an episode of Sons of Anarchy where a song by Straylight Run is played on their way to a brawl, and it just made that song (by a band I was a huge fan of when they were still making music), even better.

When a song plays during a show or movie or something and you go looking for you're cell phone to I.D. it or write down the lyrics before you forget and then spend an hour searching google, you know you're under the age 45.  I could be strung out on the couch watching a movie and if a song triggers me I will do a push up out of my coma and either start typing onto a notepad, google or pen and paper.  This is how I find half the songs I never would have heard otherwise.  The other "half" may be random people on the internet that talk about something and I wind up liking it.

Like the other day I was reading about WWE and somebody mentioned rapper Lil Yachty wanted to appear on WWE and others laughed and said they hoped he gets power bombed off a bridge.  I listened to a couple tapes and found out why.

This video is why they wanted to power bomb him.

After I skipped through two albums I played them again while I was driving on a hot sunny day and I enjoyed listening to this.

I listen to stuff very different to this type of stuff but I appreciated this because it is like looking at someone when they don't know any one is watching.  Natural habitat.

I also remember watching Sopranos when it was in syndication season 3 episode 6 University.  Crew Chief Ralph Cifaretto was dating this girl Tracee who worked at the Bada Bing.  He treated her badly and when she fought back the rest of the family laughed so Ralph abused her until eventually he beat her to death.  Tony and his friends found her dead body after Ralph beat her head so bad she died.  It is not easy to kill a family member but Tony ended up beating up Ralph and letting him live, for now.  Disgusted at what Ralph did to this poor girl, they still had to go to bed tonight knowing that Ralph is a made man and so the credits roll with Tony trying to cope with the events of tonight.  The credits roll at the end with British band the Kinks with Living on a Thin Line.  Sopranos fans have already put together montages of this song with Sopranos because Sopranos popularized it with me and many others.

The purpose of this thread is to analyze Nintendo's Intellectual Property and how it has been used throughout the history of Nintendo's consoles.

Beginning with the NES, Nintendo owned the rights to Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Kirby, Yoshi, Metroid, Little Mac from Punch-Out, Startropics, Kid Icarus and Excitebike.

Nintendo's 1st party developers tend to lean towards making the traditional Mario games and Link games while 2nd/3rd party developers have been assigned Metroid, Kirby and other character cross-overs.

Once the Original Gameboy and later the updated Gameboy Color was released Nintendo introduced the popular character Wario and the hugely successful franchise Pokemon.  Nintendo continued to focus their 1st party developers on creating traditional Mario and Link games but also began licensing many of their properties excessively and with great success.

When Super Nintendo came out, Nintendo raised the bar on the traditional Mario franchise when they created the Super Mario World series.  Besides creating 2 new franchises, F-Zero and Earthbound.  they also re-purposed the Mario World characters into the mega popular Mario Kart.  Nintendo did a major update to the Link, Punch-Out!! and Metroid series.

2nd party developer RareWare had the opportunity of using Nintendo's Donkey Kong assets to create one of the most popular games on the Super Nintendo.  Released in the holiday season of 1994 the game went on to sell 9 million copies making it the 2nd best selling game for SNES.  The game was so good that Shigeru Miyamoto felt jealous when Nintendo and the gaming community gave such high accolades to the quality of the rendered graphics and how they made all Nintendo characters appear primitive in comparison.

Meanwhile, Shigeru had his sequel Super Mario World 2 rejected because the sprites looked too much like the first one and Shigeru refused to use the same computer pre-rendered graphics techniques that Rareware used so he had the characters re-drawn with a crayon style as well as adding an extra microchip to the game cartridge that allowed for rotation, scaling and other sprite scaling effects.

Rareware was upset with the criticism of DKC as well as the arrogance from Nintendo that they decided to make Nintendo's mascot Donkey Kong the character that needed saving in the next instalment of Donkey Kong Country.  This time Rareware designed their own original character monkeys and made them the hero.  In the end, all of these games were excellent in their own ways despite the drama which happened behind the scenes.

With the N64, Nintendo's mascot Mario had evolved from side-scrolling sprite scaling to full 3D worlds and the popularization of analog sticks on a home console.  Link also made a major transition from top down 8 way movement to full 3 Dimensional worlds.  F-Zero, Star Fox and Mario Kart had moderate updates in graphics only.  Yoshi's Story is an indirect sequel to Super Mario World 2 with side scrolling platform action and this unique crayon art style.

Rareware was renamed Rare and they updated Donkey Kong Country to full 3D environments while Hudson Soft began developing the new franchise Mario Party.

By 2001 it seemed that handheld gaming was reserved for Nintendo.  They completely dominated worldwide with the Super Nintendo level graphics found on the Gameboy Advance.

The device was replaced only 4 years later by the Nintendo Dual Screen but the Advance filled a huge gap left between 1989's Original Gameboy and the technology revolution which happened by the 21st century.

Besides mostly Super Nintendo era ports of Mario games and the two Metroid games, Nintendo comparatively did not develop much compared to 2nd and 3rd party devs.

The Intellectual Properties Nintendo owned began to shine in this era.  Advance wars, Golden Sun and Fire Emblem are the latest assets in Nintendo's warchest.  The older franchise characters all had original appearances and the Pokemon franchise was still hot.

Nintendo introduced and developed Pikmin and Animal Crossing for the Gamecube Generation.

2nd/3rd party developers got a chance to produce some original games using Nintendo's assets and done a good job at it too.

With the dual screens on the DS, Nintendo introduced interesting new ways to the play games. Out of the games which use Nintendo's assets, it seemed to me that the 2nd/3rd party devs were doing most of the work creating original fun games using Nintendo's assets.

You could say the most important thing about the Wii was the motion controllers.  They used an accelerometer and a gyroscope to detect how the controller was being moved or held.  It worked great for games which developed around it but many games seemed to play better with a traditional controller.

Nintendo surprised everyone with New Super Mario Brothers.  It seemed to please the nostalgic type of gamer as well as children because of the side-scrolling gameplay.  Not only this but the art style seemed like what people first felt going from Super Mario 3 to Super Mario World. 

Nintendo also pushed their 3D Mario into something much larger being Mario Galaxy.

Again, Nintendo seemed keen on outsourcing development most of their assets to 2nd/3rd party developers.  Xenoblade Chronicles is Nintendo's latest RPG.

The 3DS had all remakes of things from Nintendo's  properties.  Most games were either ports from the Wii U or they were career series titles such as Mario Kart 7, Animal Crossing remakes and Mario & Luigi remakes.

The Switch is to give us more ports and remakes, notably Metroid Prime 4, Pokemon 50?, Yoshi Platformer although some people are looking forward to Xenoblade 2, Fire Emblem and Mario's Odyssey.

To sum this all up, Nintendo has a great amount of Intellectual Properties and they don't seem interested in having the staff to make more than a couple Mario and Zelda games with a wacky mashup and a random game per generation.  Nintendo seems to prefer sub-contracting their characters to other companies with a bias on Donkey Kong, Wario, Mario Party , Metroid, Pikmin, Mario RPG/Paper Mario and many others. 

How are the "Nintendo games" going to compare to the most popular games that will come out on Switch in the Future?  The Switch console seems popular worldwide but the types of games people play today very by region and the ability to appeal to people.