Sega accidentally uploads old build of Sonic 4 on JP Wiiware.

Interesting discovery by Evilhamwizard over at Sonicretro:

"Sega accidentally uploaded an OLDER build of Sonic 4 on Wiiware over in Japan. The build got leaked before they had the chance to upload the new one, but if you want to check it out you need to get the file under the release name "ps-wsnj". I tried looking for it for days, but the only way I was able to find a working download was on Usenet. It was on some file upload sites but they got pulled as far as I could tell. So you're going to have to do some work to find it (maybe)."

For more info on the differences check his post here: http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?s=8219d0e8d26a789ab44cad49a67b5c81&showtopic=23001&st=1815&p=542731&#entry542731

Shadow Man 64 Brazilian Version Released.

Heres a quite obscure regional version of Shadow Man 64 released a month ago by Carrot.

"Title: Shadow Man
Date: 21/11/2010
Company: Acclaim
Area: Brazil
System: Nintendo 64
Size: 256 MBits
Supplier: Rodrigo"

Grab it here: http://www.nesbbs.com/bbs/thread-5937-1-1.html

Prototype of Zelda no Densetsu Released (FDS).

"Merry Christmas, everyone! We've got something special for you today: a prototype of Zelda no Densetsu, better known to most of us as The Legend of Zelda.

This is an early build of the original FDS version of Zelda, complete with different room layouts, sprite changes, new music, and odd glitches. As a lot of you guys know, it's very unusual for first party prototypes like this to make their way out to the public, so this is quite a find. "

Grab it here: http://forums.lostlevels.org/viewtopic.php?t=2471

New Trailer For Sturmwind! (Dreamcast).

Looks freaking awesuuum!.


http://sturmwind.duranik.com/

Merry Christmas!.

Let's hope Santa finds something in the dumpster for you this year!.

Spinouts Pokemon Monster Stadium 2 Extractor.

"Extracts 30 or so files from Pokemon Monster Stadium 2 (J). I have yet to look into any other Pokemon game versions. This extractor works by looking for calls to the file load function and tracing the lui/addiu pairs that make up the arguments to those functions. The files are in a "PERS" or "PRES" archive, whatever those are. It's some Nintendo thing, some files are JPGs in PRESJPEG files, others are Yay0 compressed files in PERS-SZP archives."

Grab it here: http://z64.spinout182.com/index.php?topic=281.msg1416

DC-PC server guide for XP/Vista/7/X.

Kbuzz has written a extensive guide on how to setup a DC to PC server so peeps without a broadband adapter can enjoy Phantasy Star Online!.

Check it out: http://www.dreamcast-scene.com/guides/pc-dc-server-guide-win7/

Reverse Engineering the N64 VRU.

"I have some preliminary information on the VRU that shipped with Hey You, Pikachu! I have hit a stumbling block as I don't have a way to sniff the wire and Mess does not currently emulate Hey You, Pikachu! correctly so I can't trade back and forth comparing query captures in Mess to real hardware responses on target. However, from the small amount that runs in Mess, I was able to figure out some very rudimentary things and can reliably detect a VRU plugged in using the detect accessory commands in libdragon."

More info:
http://beta.dragonminded.com/boards/thread.php?tid=30
http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/VRU

Gerry O'Briens DIY Game Gear Flashcart.

"For a little over a year now, I have been working on 
developing a SEGA Game Gear Flash Cartridge 
for the avid Electronics Hobbyist. 
I am still working on completing my 1 Mbyte + version. 
However, for the time being I have completed a 
circuit design that permits us to 
interface a generic 512Kb Flash chip."

Source: http://www.digital-circuitry.com/GameGear.htm

Pier Solar Released! (Megadrive/Genesis).

"Pier Solar and the Great Architects is the Mega Drive/Genesis game which got its start at an internet forum back in 2004. It began as a homebrew mini-game, but later evolved into the biggest 16-BIT game ever, showing the world unseen features of its hardware more than 10 years after the last original Mega Drive/Genesis release.

By using the Mega-CD/Sega CD add-on for the Mega Drive/Genesis, Pier Solar got a richer atmosphere, stronger emotional feel and more living environment thanks to the hi-fi soundtrack and ambient sound effects on the optional Enhanced Soundtrack Disc. did what SEGA should have done!"

Buybuybuybuy: http://piersolar.com/index.php

Super Smash Land (PC).

"Super Smash Land is completely redone with the original GameBoy in mind, capturing the nostalgic essence with two button controls and piss-green visuals, an interesting aesthetic choice to say the least. Some would argue that the Smash series has some of the most intricate controls in the fighting genre, so the concept of condensing those down to the A and B button could be somewhat baffling. Smash Land uses A for jump and B for attack – there’s no block, dodge or grab. Despite missing these critical elements, the game still plays remarkably similar to its N64 counterpart, which is to say it’s a freaking blast and a half.

Super Smash Land has no official release date, however Piki Geek will be bringing you the official PC demo this Friday, so be sure to stop back so you can get your black-and-white Smash on."

Source: http://blog.pikimal.com/geek/2010/12/13/super-smash-land-a-gameboy-de-make/

Ketsui & DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou finally supported in Mame 0.140u2.

Not much to say , just cool that they're finally supported :).

http://mamedev.org/

A compiled MameUI version can be obtained here: http://www.retroroms.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=32119#forumpost32119

Subdrag Releases N64 Midi Tool.

"It is open source!

Here's a preview release of the N64 Midi Tool. It's an MFC DLL + Test Application. Note that the instruments files are coded to GoldenEye, and I don't know how many instruments are in the other games so you'll have to make your own, and import files for that. There's a sample lookup for GE, as thats the default, included with the zip.

It supports all the US known midi games, so good luck! The intent is for you to use it with your own programs and make your own midi instrument lookups. It also supports extract of midis (although instruments will be their usual #s, so not right), which should be interesting.

It will be posted on RWP soon as well, once it's out of alpha.

You are free to change, use any part of this code as long as you credit SubDrag and the RWP in your release, and you post here showing what you did.

The following games are believed to be supported:
GoldenEye;Perfect Dark;BanjoKazooie;BanjoTooie;Conker;Donkey Kong;Donkey Kong Demo;Jet Force Gemini;Blast Corps;Body Harvest;Cruisn World;Diddy Kong Racing;Diddy Kong Racing 1.1;Duke Nukem 64;Extreme G;Extreme G2;Jet Force Gemini Kiosk;Killer Instinct Gold;Killer Instinct Gold 1.2;Kirby 64;Mickeys Speedway USA;Razor Freestyle Scooter"

Source: http://www.shootersforever.com/forums_message_boards/viewtopic.php?t=5130
Download:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Z7JP5HYU

Dragon Force II Translation Project by Verve Fanworks.

"Special thanks to Reinofhearts, who's made this possible with his awesome bilingual-ism and dedication to Dragon Force. Go check out his Youtube channel /reinofhearts and drop him a big thank you note!

If you're interested in joining the translation team, please get in touch with us at the Verve Fanworks forum: http://www.verve-fanworks.com/SMF/ "

Panasonic M2 Fmvs Partially Viewable.

I saw recently that somebody had dumped "Interactive GM Cadillac Demo" for the Panasonic M2 (actually two years ago but it seems it has passed by fairly unnoticed on the net).

The disc is a DVD meant for the Panasonic FZ-35S, I assume the other models only used a cd-rom?, well I don't own one so I have no idea.

I'm always curious of the various fmv-formats that consoles use so I opened up the image with isobuster which showed 4 .dat files, using the function "Find missing files and folders" on each .dat file revealed .mpeg files and many pictures.

I extracted the vids and they actually ran in VLC but with alot of corrupt frames,corrupt timeline index and no sound , so maybe this is a mission for some codec wizards to make them run using ffdshow :).

There was also some left behind pictures inside the iso indicating that this was going to be ported to the Dreamcast (or maybe it was).

Anyways here are some pictures from the videos in action with all the corrupt frames:

Flutonics Mario in Ocarina of Time Hack

"A little bit under a year after the playable Samus, this is playable Mario. This is a rip and conversion from the 64DD BIOS with even more work done so it would work in OoT nicely. I would like to thank Twili for the following:
+ Finding the 64DD BIOS for us to experiment with super early this year.
+ Being there to point out problems that he saw in my work.
+ Programming some tools for rotation and rescaling.
+ Being a professional at hierarchy and positioning Mario's upper limbs and leaving the bottom half to me."

Source: http://z7.invisionfree.com/Maco/index.php?showtopic=185

Killing Time 2.2 Alpha Released (3DO).

Bitrate over at http://3do.cdinteractive.co.uk has released a Alpha of Killing Time for 3DO , you can grab it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?mj1d4u1o6v1f32r

The .iso is unsigned so you have to run it through http://www.rastersoft.net/3DO/3DOHomebrewSigning.rar to get it signed.

Source: http://3do.cdinteractive.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=19237&highlight=#19237

Satcom - Ppcenters New Sega Saturn Devkit.

"SatCom is a bunch of libraries and development/debugging tools for Saturn. It has been made in order to make progress in the development of ietx2, a Saturn application I started 3 years ago.

It features:

- ietx2 application (see below).
- Saturn <-> PC data transfer tool. Supported Hardware : freewing, commscard (not tested), USB Data Link (not tested).
- Saturn <-> PC debugger, which includes library for Saturn and software for PC.
- Saturn CD-ROM library, based on CyberWarrior X's CDC library and SBL's GFS library.
- Saturn backup library (wrapper to SBL functions).
- Saturn binary -> ARP firmware conversion tool.
- Data compression library (for use on Saturn/PC), based LibLZF."

Go here to check out the whole shabang: http://ppcenter.free.fr/satcom/

64drive Nearing Completion.

"I started making this because I'm tired of half-assed N64 backup crap. They all suck in their own ways, this is my attempt to fix that.

Basic features:
- 64mbytes SDRAM (this will hold any image ever made)
- Full save emulation (EEPROM 4k, 16k, SRAM, FlashRam)
- Load images FAST (9 mbyte/second)
- NO software needed. Loads off plain FAT32 formatted card.
- USB for homebrewers"

As you can see it uses CompactFlash and not SD. No matter how much people bitch I am not going to use SD. Believe me, it's for a good reason.

Saves handling: Save files are autocreated by the menu. They're stored on CF and work just like an emulatro does. For some reason PJ64 and some others use little endian byte ordering on SRAM and flashram saves, after swapping they load fine on the real thing.

Both Z64 and V64 images are supported. The byteswapping is performed in hardware by the FPGA so there's no speed penalty at all.

Bottom line: No cheaping out, no design flaws."

For more info: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30265

Marshallhs OBJN64 Converter.

"Supports Fast3D, F3DEX, F3DEX2

You can choose whatever vertex cache size, but I've only tested it with 32 vertices/F3DEX2

Run without parameters to see options.

If you make it better let me know.

BTW you can try messing with the per-vertex ambient occlusion. Just for shits I tried it on a model I ripped from the Fable silverlight demo, just hacked it into my racing engine.

Also, for the love of god don't develop N64 using an emulator. That 15k model crashes the RSP, lol."

Source: http://www.therwp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=889540&postcount=1
Download: http://sharebee.com/85f45469

Bang Bang Busters, New NeoGeo Game.

Not much info on this currently but theres a facebook group here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bang-Bang-Busters-Neo-Geo-Game-Aes/129060620484009
and a empty site here: http://www.bang2busters.com/

I guess it's a old Visco prototype being released as a new game.

Spinout reveals Aria from 64DD Zelda.

"For the first time, object_human (previously believed to be "Aria") has been viewed properly with proper animations. I figured out the format through guess and check and pattern finding; it is completely unsupported by OoT's (release) engine - the model contains data of an old format."

"This model also most commonly known as the fan-given name "Aria" is a NPC dating back from the first developmental period of Zelda64 when it was still being developed for the 64DD. Not much information is really known about this girl. From Nintendo Power's first pictures of Zelda64 to its change over to Ocarina of Time there has been NO MENTION of this NPC's name, role in the game, except that she appears in a screenshot at the mythical Zola Lake infront of a house. According the text under the screenshot showing 3 different girls, it is shown that they were NPC's with a similar design that needed help with something, as like a side quest or gave information to help link further his quest. "

More info: http://wiki.spinout182.com/index.php?title=Aria

Partner N64 Debugger/Environment Released.

2 discs released containing the debugger/environment for the obscure N64 devcart Partner n64.

Released by Drx over at hidden palace (57meg): http://forums.hidden-palace.org/viewtopic.php?t=2920&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=&sid=29dda63fbdd71e3103c2e7700bb7eff5
User guide: http://www.yntproject.net/HOWTO-KMC_N64.htm

Swamp Thing Prototype Released (Gen/MD).

"Matt and I have been waiting quite some time for SegaAge to open up, and I really have to say that it's off to an amazing start. There are other Sega communities around, and while they offer some fantastic things, I really want to help set this place apart from any other Sega community. We already have a killer database and collection tool, and I'm sure an Ezine isn't far away, but this will also be the only place where you'll be able to download free ROM dumps from Unreleased Sega games that Matt and I own."

Source: http://www.segaage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=49&threadid=41542
Download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=88SVLAFE

Z80 Based Laptop.

"A Z80 laptop? Why not :) I had reduced the size of my ongoing Z80 project down to something more wieldy by using CPLD chips, but it was still a bit too bulky to fit into an acceptably sized case. The next step was to look into FPGAs and see where they could take it. One thing led to another and I ended up building a self contained post modern home computer laptop.. thing."

--> http://www.retroleum.co.uk/electronics-articles/previous/the-v4z80p-a-z80-based-laptop/

A Picture from the Swedish Craigslist.

Well since theres no news I guess i'll post this instead , it's from some guy who bought a house and it was filled with all this computer junk! and now he wants to give it away to somebody cause recycling all that will cost alot :).

SuperFly DX - New Atari Jaguar Game.

Don't exactly know when this game came out but it looks great and the soundtrack is awesome!.

You can buy/download it here:
http://www.superflydx.com/

Chinese SD Adapter for Dreamcast Released.

The Chinese have now begun factory producing SD adapters for the Dreamcast and you can buy one from places like http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=7818521031 (very slow server, might appear dead at times but just keep on hammering;). I guess it's just a question of time until "DealExtreme" and similar stores begin selling it.

This is basically a factory produced version of the SD adapter people have been able to make themselves for a year now so some games still lag when using this , I recommend checking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gTpylJi9wk for what to expect if you ever manage to obtain the Chinese SD adapter.

Source: http://www.dreamcast.es/news.php?readmore=393

Edit: My friend tells me that this adapter is infact not factory produced but made by one chinese modder so my bad!:)

Ice Mario/Subdrags N64 Sound Tool.

"Ice Mario and I worked together to make this a long time ago, and I have kept meaning to post it. Anyways, it's an open source sound tool for N64 ROMs, which lets you play standard format waves, and lets you add/change waves that are in the game already.

As a caveat, we never figured out how to generate predictors, so it uses a fixed set. If you want to try others to get better sounds, edit the source code, and if you create an algorithm to make them, great!

The source and program is free to distribute and use, as long as mention of the RWP and creators is done.

Have fun! Only some games use this format, so good luck. Most Rare games do. Hopefully source can also be of use to someone.

Note: Requres VS2008 Redistributable"

Source: http://www.shootersforever.com/forums_message_boards/viewtopic.php?t=5026
Download:
http://sharebee.com/0309d152

Album On A Megadrive Cartridge.

"The long-awaited IDM chipmusic-on-chip album 'Today' is released as a physical 16-bit cartridge for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis video game console. The sound is generated at playtime by the Yamaha YM2612 FM synthesizer chip that is built into the console. The concept is to do away with the conventional audio recording which is the standard format for practically all music now released. Breathing new life into this obsolete Sega console in 2010, 'Today' aims to reinvigorate interest in old hardware and the idea of listening to music where the sound is generated each time you listen."

Available for purchase here:
http://www.milkcrate.com.au/freezedream/today-released.html

DEFCON 18: You're Stealing it Wrong: 30 Years of Inter-Pirate Battles

You're Stealing it Wrong: 30 Years of Inter-Pirate Battles from Jason Scott on Vimeo.

"Historian Jason Scott walks through the many-years story of software piracy and touches on the tired debates before going into a completely different direction - the interesting, informative, hilarious and occasionally obscene world of inter-pirate-group battles. A multi-media extravaganza of threats, CSI-level accusations and evidence trails, decades of insider lingo, and demonstrations of how the more things change, the more they still have to keep their ratios up."

Thanks to Nitro2k01 for the heads up, check out his blog here: http://blog.gg8.se/wordpress/2010/10/06/jason-scott-an-internet-historian-with-a-taste-for-the-obscure/

System Shock 2 Alpha Released For Dreamcast.

Pato over at Assemblergames has released a very early alpha version of System Shock 2 for Dreamcast, you can grab it here: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29384

SkunkBoard Rev. 3 Available for Pre-Order!.

"Finally, we are doing this as an extended pre-order to ensure that anyone who wants one can get in on it. The pre-order is open right now (links below) and we will start the run based on the demand that the pre-orders show on 12/1/10, with an expected delivery date of 2/15/11! If we do not have enough orders by 12/1/10 to make a new run of SkunkBoards feasible, we will go about returning everyone's money, however considering that the last two runs sold out almost immediately after going on pre-sale, we don't think that this will be likely."

"If you're a Jaguar developer, you probably already know why you need a Skunkboard -- it's a development tool that allows you to test your games on the Jaguar system by loading them via USB onto the Skunkboard's Flash Memory. If you aren't a developer, but you want to explore the world of homebrew and independent games released by others, as well as play special releases you otherwise couldn't play on a real Jaguar console!"

Skunkboard is the only flashcart for the Atari Jaguar to my knowledge so I recommend preordering one since it's not the sort of item that comes along very often:).

Preorder: http://www.goatstore.com/Products/Atari/Jaguar/152920/SkunkBoard_Rev_3/
Information: http://www.jaguarsector.com/index.php?showtopic=31942
More Information: http://www.goatstorepublishing.com/projects/jaguar/skunkboard/

Super Everdrive Flashcart Released.

Biokrik - the dude that made the Everdrive flashcart for MD/32X/SMS has now released a snes flashcart, I'm not sure what all the ups and downs are compared to the retrousb snes cart but it's half the price of that cart (no shell though!:P) so if you want a cheaper alternative then this is the way to go.

-----> http://krikzz.com/severdrive.html

Red Star OS - The North Korean Linux Distro.

So I got bored yesterday and tried Red Star OS and well...it's not much to call home about really, I would definitely not recommend going online with it cause who knows what bombs it might set off he he ;).

"Red Star OS is a North Korean Linux-based operating system. It began to be developed in 2002 by the Korea Computer Center. Prior to its development, computers in North Korea typically used English versions of Microsoft Windows. As of 2010, it is on version 2.0. It is only offered in a Korean language edition, localised with North Korean terminology and spelling"

You can grab it here:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5803379/Red_Star_2.0_(North_Korean_linux_distribution)
Info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS

Ppcasm's Hyperscan homebrew uploader utility.

Another interesting release by ppcasm, this tool(s) will let you upload code to the hyperscan!, you will need a extra joystick to slaughter to make the actual cable though:).

"I am quite aware that this cable and/or programming system could have been designed way better. And maybe in the future I will get around to doing just that
though this should suffice for now. :-)"

http://github.com/ppcasm/cableupload
http://github.com/ppcasm/HScodeuploadPC

Hcs/Ppcasms N64 GSuploader released.

"I would like to give a big thank you to HCS, for whose work with his neon64 gameshark loader edition this would not have been possible.

will need:
Nintendo64 (yeehaw right?)
Nintendo64 GameShark Version 3.3 (the one with the parallel port on the back)
Nintendo64 4MB ram expansion pack (This is where the code resides to handle some of the gameshark utilities while the game is running)
Parallel port cable to connect N64 <-> PC

After you have aquired these things you can create homebrew in any way that you wish so long as you set up your compiler
environment and program to work together accordingly (see "How it works" to get a general idea of how to start)

How to use:
Note: This works most of the time, but surely I've not tested everything to be able to 100% say it will work _ALL_ the time.
After you have generated the gsuploader binary:

1. Start N64 game (as far as I have seen, it does not matter which one, but again, I cannot/have not tested them all)

2. Run program with N64 binary filename as argument, example: gsuploader.exe funprogram.bin

At this point you should get confirmation on the status of the binary upload, etc, etc. If all went well then you should be greeted by your running program."

Download and more info here:
http://github.com/ppcasm/gsuploader

Ps2 Linux Live DVD!

"This is a Linux Live system for the Sony Playstation 2. You need to start kloader.elf from the DVD to run Linux. If you used kernelloader before, you need to delete the file: mc0:/kloader/config.txt or plug out the memory card.
This is the second version of the Linux Live DVD which where created for the Playstation 2. There is no modchip required. If you want to use it with a modchip, you need to convert this DVD video disc to a normal DVD. Just
extract the files from the DVD and burn it with the same file structure but without AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. The directory "blackrhino" contains long file names which are only readable on Linux or MacOS. Joilet is not supported for standard DVDs. You need to create a disc using rockridge extensions."

Linux live dvd download (2,2gig)

Source: http://psx-scene.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65060

Computers from Swedish elections.

(click for larger image.)

Today was the Swedish election and here are some pics I took of various computers that passed by in the archive material that was rolling on the tv while showing some of the Swedish elections from the last century.

It's pretty impressive that already in the 1960s they were using computers to count some of the votes!.

The one with the blinking buttons appears to be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360

Music produced on two Swedish computers from 1967.

Saab was the main computer company in Sweden from the 1950s up until the 1980s and around 1967 Göran Sundqvist produced some music on two computers made by Saab called D21 and D22. You can listen to the mp3s of this fantastical music here: http://www.datasaab.se/D21_D22_musik/musik.htm

The computers of the Third Reich!.

The amazing stuff you find on wikipedia, a line of four computers made during the german nazi years, check them out here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z2_(computer)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z4_(computer)

I also remember watching a Swedish tv program where they had located a computer that was used by the East German Stasi, but since the fall of the Berlin Wall nobody knows how to use it anymore since everyone is dead or 100 years old, thats what I call security through obscurity!:).

I couldn't find any wikipedia page or any page at all in google concerning the Stasi computer so I guess it must be very obscure, it was definitely not a "consumer" computer like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC_85

Sydney 2000 beta/complete released for N64.

CARROT comes with another N64 release within the span of a month! , this time it's the unreleased port of Sydney 2000.

Download it here: http://www.emulation64.fr/?page=news&id=354

The release contains US and EU versions of the game:).

K145VX1 - Exotic Soviet CPU on Ebay.

"RAREST USSR Soviet Russian Spider-like CPU in the Computers Networking

MADE IN USSR (Svetlana factory) in 1991 for military dataplotters and computers."

I have no idea if it actually is that rare but anything from the Soviet Union equals awesome:).

http://cgi.ebay.com/K145VX1-RAREST-USSR-Soviet-Russian-Spider-like-CPU-/180554302383?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a09e003af#ht_1087wt_1137

History of the Svetlana factory: http://www.encspb.ru/en/article.php?kod=2804001437

64drive work in progress.

Heres demonstration video of the upcoming n64 flashcart by marshallh called "64drive" and as you can see by the loading times it will be an absolute Z64/Doctor V64 killer :).

Andlabs GenesisTracker (Linux/Windows/Mac).

"I've been working for the past few months on a music tracker for the Sega Genesis sound chips for use in a sound driver I will eventually write. I'm here now with a feature-packed public beta. A lot of the functionality is present, though some things (such as New and Nearest Possible Timing) have yet to be implemented, while others have bugs. However, you can save modules and export to VGM and SMPS (though the SMPS export is the most unoptimized SMPS export ever). FM voices can be loaded in TFM and X3V format. The PSG voice format is just like that in FamiTracker. The only supported effects right now are 1xx, 2xx, and Mxx. 1xx/2xx are the same as in every other tracker (pitch slide up/down) and Mxx is a general miscellaneous (M00 is nop, M01 takes the PSG noise out of Channel 2 mode and silences both PSG3 and PSG noise), M02/M03 turns FM retrigger on/off. Timing is in XM format and DAC is always on (FM6 is always shown and will be saved but ignored during playback/export). There's more but right now I don't remember everything =P"

Download

Sharp MZ-2500 emulation in MESS.

"Working on Sharp MZ-2500 (Super MZ), a Japanese computer system of the mid-80. It appears to be a sort of follow-up of the Sharp X1 system, with the same basic characteristic plus (attempts to) remove bottlenecks of that system (color limitations, PCG uploading etc.). I’ve seriously started to work on this system in these few days"

--> http://mamedev.emulab.it/kale/?p=1193 & http://www.bannister.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=64080#Post64080/

StarCraft 64 German Prototype Released.

CARROT (the last N64 group!) has released a german unreleased/proto version of Starcraft 64 , it should be identical to the english version but i'm not sure so you'll just have to go and try it:p

You can grab it here: StarCraft 64

SNEON64 - SPC Player for N64.

Hcs dusted off his compiling tools and released this .SPC player he made two years ago for the Nintendo 64.

"Based on the SPC decoder in Rockbox, which was based on Game_Music_Emu,
which derived some code from OpenSPC.

It uses the "emulation standard"; simply append an SPC to the end of the .n64.
You can then theoretically run it in your favorite emulator, or byte swap it to
use with your favorite backup device. -hcs"


Download -> sneon64-66.zip
Hcs homepage: http://hcs64.com

64NIC+ - Surf,irc,tweet and bbs on your C64 :)

Open up the cybernet on your c64!.The 64NIC+ is a cheap way to network with your C64,it should be noted that it does not load disk images over the network but you can use 64HDD for running stuff or buy the much more expensive Retro Replay,MMC64 or wait for the Chameleon 64 but my pockets aren't that big and the others aren't available in many stores anymore!;).

*Edit: I must be blind!, jbrain is also selling a SD adapter for the C64 so thats a great option for loading stuff:)*

The main reason to buy this device is to use Contiki and the irc,bbs,twitter clients and there are actually 2 online games made by Leif Bloomquist: NetRacer and Artillery Duel! that you can play using the 64nic+.


There is one way to actually run games/apps on the c64nic+ but it requires you to burn the games/apps to a eprom and then you can slap that on the c64nic+.

WizardNJ has made a little app where you can easily choose your own games/apps and then it merges them into a eprom image ready for burning , I don't have a eprom burner but it looks pretty straight forward.

Download Wizard's Game Cartridge Maker

You can also find precompiled images over at http://www.n2dvm.com/blog/

For just $50 this is a really great device , you even get a shell with it! but you have to cut out the holes yourself;).

I bought mine from:
http://www.jbrain.net/products/64NIC%252b.html/ and it came within a week.

Check out Dkovacs review of it on youtube:
Part1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btGpXgzG1fQ
Part2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2psxpnOCmcI

FlashBoy Plus - Virtual Boy Flashcart.

"I'd like to announce Richard Hutchinson's latest creation, the FlashBoy Plus! This new, second entry to the FlashBoy family expands the previous design by an internal save battery and will finally allow Virtual Boy homebrew developers to make use of game saving mechanisms in their games. Or, better put, it will finally allow people to actually use save game functionality of homebrew and commercial games on hardware.

This marks the end of the "old" FlashBoy line, none of those will be produced anymore. The last ever "old" FlashBoy (#284), which was meant as the main prize for the PVB Coding Competition 2010, is being auctioned off. The competition winner will receive a FlashBoy Plus instead.

This also means that the previously announced upcoming new FlashBoy batch will in fact be FlashBoy Plus units. Those 50 units will be available to those who preordered approximately in early October. The price will stay the same at 90 Euro.

Everyone who did not have luck this time should be happy to hear that we plan to create another batch of FlashBoy Plus units at the end of the year."

Source: http://www.planetvb.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=307

Looks sweet, now if I could only find an actual VB in Sweden ;)

Rockman X6 Prototype Released (PS1)

Skaarg over at the Sonic Retro Forums has released a prototype of Rockman X6, for more info and download go here: http://protodudesrockmancorner.blogspot.com/2010/08/early-rockman-x6-prototype-released.html

Shin Master of Monsters Final EX - New RPG for PS2

(Click on the image for correct aspect ratio;))

Starting to feel like the PS2 will almost outlive the PS3!, this rpg came out in Japan today and has a very retro 2d look to it.

It might not be Final Fantasy but it shows that the PS2 still has a strong userbase and it will be interesting to see if it will reach into 2011:).

Official homepage: http://www.ss-alpha.co.jp/products/mofm_ps/

YAP64 - Portable Nintendo 64.

Marshall has made a very slick looking portable N64 , check out all the wonderful photos of it here: http://retroactive.be/yap64/
Retails for $700, not available at wallmart! :)

The Everdrive-MD Sega Flashcart.

(Megadrive says: "Please dust me off!")

Got one of these sweet babies in the mail today, runs more or less everything you throw at it , been playing Ex-ranza,alot of the 32x titles and it's running really great so far.

The Everdrive supports 32x/SegaCD-MegaCD region free bios/Megadrive-Genesis/Master System but i'm not sure if it supports Game gear games if you run it through a MasterGear, atleast it doesn't mention anything on the official homepage about that and I also assume it runs Sega SG-1000 games but I haven't tried that yet either.

Anyways you can buy one here:

http://krikzz.com/
or
http://store.kitsch-bent.com/

You don't get any shell with it but for that price you can't really complain and most people usually have a old snort-encrusted Sonic 1 cart laying around that they can sacrifice;)

PS2PSXe public preview released

Ffgriever has released a preview version of his PsOne emu for Ps2!:

"So as I wrote. Public PS2PSXe preview. Only command line version attached. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get current sources to work properly (I'm halfway with some major changes and it will take awhile to complete them). The one attached you can consider as "the last one that actually works", or simply rev168.

Now all the necessary stuff.

The emu supports both PAL and NTSC display, but I REALLY RECOMMEND leaving the default PAL output. Why? Well, it's the only mode I use. Many fixes were made to make PAL games show less glitches in PAL mode... When you switch the display to NTSC it most often will show more glitches."

For more info and download: http://psx-scene.com/forums/showpost.php?p=493243&postcount=1

Super Pitfall II prototype released for Nes.

"Super Pitfall II was a planned localization of Atlantis no Nazo, a Sunsoft-developed platformer that, thankfully, is completely unrelated to the original (and god-awful) Super Pitfall.

Atlantis no Nazo is kind of awesome. It has terrible controls, and any expert playthrough you watch will be mostly inexplicable, but once you get a sense of how the game’s logic works, it’s actually a whole lot of fun to play.

It’s also really weird and mysterious, which is what I love most about it. Atlantis no Nazo is full of hidden secrets, balance-breaking power-ups, and obscure warp zones. Some of the game’s biggest secrets require you to commit suicide, explore outside of the screen’s borders, or chuck bombs at nondescript background tiles.

It’s not for everyone, sure, but I like it a lot. The changes made to the unreleased North American version make the whole thing even more interesting"

Info,pictures and rom download here: http://dreamandfriends.com/2010/08/09/super-pitfall-ii/

Stone Protectors released (Megadrive/Genesis)

(Snes version)

"Stone Protectors was an ineffective marketing attempt in the mid-nineties to fuse the Troll Doll craze with the popularity of the Ninja Turtles in order to sell toys. I absolutely loved my Mutant Turtles, but as for Trolls, I'll never forgive those cute exhibitionists for giving me a mild case of trichophagia when I was very young. (The synthetic hair smelled so non-toxic nice and was as colorful as cotton candy, who was I to resist a taste?)

Troll Dolls actually go as far back as 1959 when a Dane named Thomas Dam began making wooden collectibles modeled after the trolls of Norwegian folk tales. In the nineties, a resurgence of Troll Dolls hit America hard as one of the biggest fads of the time, overshadowing other hard-hitters as slap bracelets and temperature-controlled neon color-changing clothing. The nineties were a wonderful time in this country's history."

Release page --☟ http://nesplayer.com/prototypes/stoneprotectors/index.htm

The Last Starfighter and Air Race emulation.

(Video from the real hardware)

















(Running in mame)

"Here's an interesting pair which never saw life outside of the Atari labs.

The Last Starfighter is of course, Atari's aborted game adaptation of the film/game within the film. If you haven't already done so, I recommend checking-out the proposal for the game.

On show here is an unfinished cave-chase sequence. You can shoot and destroy the enemy ships in the cave but that's pretty much it (there's no end to the enemies nor the cave). A dogfight sequence was also programmed and can be seen in this game footage.

The unsightly coloured-blocks are due to missing graphics data for the text and HUD :(

Air Race is a slightly more advanced prototype where you pilot a ship around a futuristic indoor race course. Very impressive-looking stuff for 1985. Perhaps too impressive as the high cost of the hardware was the main factor that kept the games from market.

Both games ran on System IV hardware (whatever happened to System III?), comprising a 68000 and a TMS32010 DSP for geometry calculations (an extra DSP was added for Air Race). Rasterization is performed by custom hardware (Hard Drivin' and later games used a software approach).

AFAIK, the hardware for these games no longer exists. There are no ROMs - we're running the binaries that were uploaded to the RAM of the development hardware. You could go as far to say that these games are MAME-exclusives :)"

-------> http://philwip.mameworld.info/

133MHz's awesome blog.

Not alot of news at the moment so i'm just gonna reroute you to 133MHz's extremely cool blog where he posts alot of fun retro tech articles.

http://133fsb.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/famicom-compatible-printer-port-interface/

http://133fsb.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/sega-light-phaser-to-atari-xg-1-adapter/

BrokenLizards Saturn floppy drive SD adapter

"I have been very busy with work and have found few opportunities to work on this project. However, I have made some progress. In a couple of months, I may be able to dedicate more time to completing the design.

The project's goals have evolved over time. Presently, the project consists of two parts, developing a replacement Sega Saturn floppy drive that uses SD cards instead of floppy disks and creating an adapter allowing a Sega Saturn floppy drive to be attached to a computer. The final design will be compatible with the official software.

At the moment, the project is not ready for public testing.

Implementing the SD card protocol - 85%
Hardware design - 25%
Schematic of Sega Saturn floppy drive – 40%
Documenting the serial backup device communication protocol – 60%"

http://segaxtreme.net/community/topic/16648-communication-port-information/page__view__findpost__p__156518

IDE adapter for 3DO

Heres a cool project I stumbled over, it's a russian guy whos made a ide adapter for the 3DO. The whole page is in russian so google translate will have to make do but theres alot of nice pictures :D.

"In February 2009, I began to develop this device.
Because no one could create such a device, I do not was sure that I can,
and therefore did not once again stir the people. (As some are doing: D)

Most of the time left to reverse engineering and theoretical part.
The most difficult thing was to find a way to connect, providing 100% compatibility.
P ervym thing I did was look inside her bus XBUS.
Then dismantled and its Protocol and the command system of the native CD drive.
These searches and research is progressing very hard and looked like searching a needle in a haystack. "

Currently the adapter only works with fz-10, but he plans to support Goldstar(GDO-202) and FZ-1 soon.

http://3do-renovation.ru/IDE_for_3DO.htm

Lethal Weapon 3 SMS prototype music.

"1992 wasn't a great year for movies, and one of the not great movies from that year was Lethal Weapon 3.

Probe Software were apparently speculating on making a game based on it (let me guess... a poor quality platformer?) and again commissioned Jeroen Tel to write a soundtrack for it. Thanks to forum member Kimuji, we got hold of the code and now you can hear great chip music that has been lost for 18 years!"

http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12422

Tree sap decapping :)

"I dissolved the plastic casing in acetone and tried sanding down the epoxy blob which didn’t work real well so I started looking for a chemical solution. Apparently people don’t like giving out Nitric Acid so I had to find an alternative. I found a dead site describing using Rosin which is basically just tree sap. I tracked some down at the local musical instrument store since violinists use it for what not.

After boiling a smartcard in it for about 20 minutes and dissolving the residue with acetone the chip came out beautifully clean and undamaged. I glued it down to a microscope slide to have something solid to work with, it really is incredibly small. Since the Microscope I was using was 30 years old I couldn’t get any decent pictures so I’m gonna try finding a better one."

http://s3cu14r.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/boiling-chips-in-tree-sap/

The idea of something as archaic as tree sap being used to decap chips just sounds awesome :)

64DD Ipl gameshark dumping utility.

The 64DD ipl dump is easy to find but the tool for actually dumping it is very hard to find so the only reason i'm posting this is so that people who google for it will actually find it.

"### What's this? ###
This is a patch for GameShark Ulitiles that can dump 64DD IPLROM.
Please apply patch to "N64 Version 3 Utilities Hi-Res Patch".
download at http://doc.kodewerx.org/

This IPL rom are dumped from retail 64DD.
using GameShark and Hacked GS Utility."

Here is the japanese site of the guy who released the tool back in 2009 http://nekokabu.s7.xrea.com/
A mirror of the .zip incase his site vanishes: ipldmp_patch.zip

UFE - SD/MMC floppy drive emulator.

"A number of SD/MMC floppy emulator projects existed around the time I started working on UFE. These worked well, but there were limitations. The most notable limitation was poor support for the Amiga computers, including lack of write support. In addition, the user interfaces of the existing floppy emulators were not practical. They were either based on a small LCD screen and a few buttons, or they had external connections such as joystick and video ports. Generally, major case modding was necessary.

The underlying philosophy behind the UFE design is that it should support a just few computers, but it should support them as well as possible. The host computer’s keyboard should be used for controlling the floppy emulator. The video output should be overlaid on top of the host computer’s video output. Read and write operations must be fully supported. All these features make UFE an ideal drop-in replacement for a real floppy drive."

http://retromaster.wordpress.com/ufe/

Fm Towns tech demo.

Heres a neat tech demo for Fm towns that I found on a disc. The background song reminds me of early Prodigy songs or UK/Eu electronica from that era so it's a bit odd to find this stuff in a fm towns demo that I think didn't really have much to do with Europe :).

Heat is killing the sk3n3 and Dragon 32 homebrew.

This awful heat wave is making the internet deader than ever so theres really not much activity, but Ciaran Anscomb has released some tech demo homebrew for the old Dragon 32 powerhouse!.

http://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/demo/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_32/64

Rastersofts 3DO homebrew demo

Charles doty has released this small demo for the 3do, the archive also includes some tools:

BMP to 3DO Image
BMP to 3DO Cel
BMP to 3DO Anim

Download: http://sharebee.com/7cd6fbaf

"I finished the demo, and it runs fine on a real 3DO. It should work correctly in either NTSC or PAL modes. I couldn't test the PAL version though. The start button will restart the demo, and the directional pad will move the alien"

http://3do.cdinteractive.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=16375&highlight=#16375

Fast Striker is released.

This ambitious neogeo mvs project has finally been released and it costs a whopping 459 euro but I guess it's not exactly cheap to produce the carts.


http://www.faststriker.com/index.html

Charles Doty's 3DO devkit for windows.

"I'm now setup to do 3DO development on Windows. Previously, 3DO had to be done on a classic Mac or an emulator. I've released a set of tools, headers, and libs and an example project. 3DO development requires one of the ARM SDTs (ARM SDT 2.11a, 2.50, and 2.51 have been tested)."

3DO devkit header, libraries, and support programs:
3DODev.rar
Example program:
3DOBounceExample.rar

Source: http://3do.cdinteractive.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=16327&highlight=#16327

Super Mario Bros ported to Megadrive/Genesis.

"After read the title, maybe some ones thought "WTF means a so strange title?", but I'm sure all the games lovers recognized inmediatly the first 3 letters as from Super Mario Bros, the classic of the classics. Well, that is exactly what is this, a complete port of the Super Mario Bros game from NES to our lovely Genesis.
Of course, some people can say: "oh, sure, this is awsome , well done on copying a game that is ported to at least ALL the consoles in existence", but the amazing of this port in particular is the fact that I used an automatic conversor to "translate" from the 6502 asm (NES processor) into the M68K asm. In fact, despite the HUGE optimisation I did only to fit the game in less that 64kb (I was thinking to create a LAKABAJO version... maybe in the future, when I build mine ), at least the 75% of the code is still untouched after the translation.
Of course, I nedeed to create from scrath the I/O function, which emulates "on the fly" the NES I/O function, since ALL THE ORIGINAL DATA IS STILL HERE. Also, if you check the memory usage, only $800 bytes are used (000-7FF, like in the original NES!!)"

Download the game here
and check out the original post of it here: http://devster.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=dev&action=display&thread=613