Tuesday, August 31, 2010

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/

Sunday, August 29, 2010

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

Saturday, August 28, 2010

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

Thursday, August 26, 2010

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

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

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 ;)

Thursday, August 19, 2010

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/

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

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! :)

Monday, August 16, 2010

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;)

Thursday, August 12, 2010

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

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

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/

Monday, August 2, 2010

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

Sunday, August 1, 2010

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/