Flavor working on a new NGPC backup unit.

Flavor has been working on a usb ngpc backup unit, I have no idea if hes going to massproduce it though, check out his blog here: http://ngpc.freeplaytech.com/

Flavor is the same guy that made the liksang multi game menu for the bung backup unit -> http://www.personal.triticom.com/~erm/NGPC/

Biohazard prototypes released by Hidden Palace (PS1).

"Celebrating the 15th Anniversary of the Resident Evil franchise, The Honorable Internet Associates and the Hidden Palace proudly presents a pair of early builds of the original Resident Evil for you all to enjoy."

Go grab them: http://www.hidden-palace.org/?updates/c/37

Scanned backup unit ads from the 90s.

Kazmat has scanned a whole bunch of nice ads of various megadrive,snes,neogeo backup units from Hong Kong. You can grab the scans here: http://www.tototek.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=14448

Vory v Zakone tattoos in Batman Arkham City.

(click on the picture, my blog is too tiny for it;))

Edit: My good Russian friend tells me that the cyrillic text means "Tsar's Joker".

My blog is mainly about retro stuff but I found it fascinating that the awesome brutal clown in the new Batman Arkham City game has Soviet/Russian Vory v Zakone tattoos and I haven't seen anyone else mention it on the net, I guess The Joker hired some old Soviet gangsters to fight Batman :).

The creators of the game must have watched the David Cronenberg movie Eastern Promises or the documentary called "The Mark of Cain" that inspired it, the whole docu is on youtube here if you're interested in that sort of stuff:


(A depressing 1 hour , but well worth it!:) )

Links on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief_in_law
http://russianmafiatattoos.blogspot.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark_of_Cain_%282000_film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Promises

Sega Saturn tech demo Astrocade released.

(A disturbing take on pinball or something;) )

"While I was browsing around for new Saturn tools and documents, I happened upon a gentleman's resume who had worked for Sega during the time of the Saturn release. The resume mentioned a technical demo titled Astrocade. I asked about the title, and SegaFreak_NL happened to find the demo release in it's entirety (including source and documentation) on the Saturn DTS Toolkit disc. The files contained and already compiled version of the demo game and VBT was able to help create a playable BIN/CUE of the game (THANKS VBT!)."

Source: http://segaxtreme.net/community/topic/17020-sega-saturn-tech-demo-astrocade/page__p__157005__hl__astrocade__fromsearch__1&#entry157005
Download: http://www.sendspace.com/file/u3tdx2

Ben Century finds a awesome modified C128D.

"Somebody took this machine and put it into a PC-style case. But that's not all they did. They also jammed in a 1571 floppy drive, a 1581 floppy drive, a Modem, a home-made internal cartridge bay which includes a Fast Load cartridge, The REU expansion, and the Super 81 utilities. The Jiffy DOS upgrade has also been added, and it seems the ROM has been customized since the guy's name, address, and phone number are displayed whenever the computer is turned on in 128 mode."

I wish I could find awesome shit like this! , check out the rest of the pics: http://www.classicalgasemissions.com/2011/02/found-heavily-modified-commodore-128d.html

A short hacker story.

My friend has posted a little hacker ordeal here:
http://daifukkat.su/2011/03/the-dedicated-hacker/
fun reading.

Hmm Japan uses both 50hz and 60hz.

Saw them discuss this on NHK in relation to the current power loss in Japan and it seems west uses 60hz and the east uses 50hz , weird!.

"In Japan, the western part of the country (Kyoto and west) uses 60 Hz and the eastern part (Tokyo and east) uses 50 Hz. This originates in the first purchases of generators from AEG in 1895, installed for Tokyo, and General Electric in 1896, installed in Osaka. The boundary between the two regions contains four back-to-back HVDC substations which convert the frequency; these are Shin Shinano, Sakuma Dam, Minami-Fukumitsu, and the Higashi-Shimizu Frequency Converter."

But Japan sticks to 100 volt while some other countries go all the way from 100v50hz to 240v60hz.

Stay up to date on the happenings in Japan.

Live English translated stream of Japanese news:
http://yokosonews.com/live
NHK English:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv
Japanese news stream in the middle of this page:
http://www.youtube.com/tbsnewsi

Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 6 V1.2 dumped for N64.

Jikkyou_Powerful_Pro_Yakyuu_6_V1.2_JPN_N64-WARIO

"TITLE : Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 6 V1.2
SYSTEM : Nintendo 64
PUBLISHER : Konami
DEVELOPER : Konami Osaka
RELEASE.DATE : 1999
COUNTRY : JPN
FORMAT : Z64 (Big Endian)
SOURCE : Game cart, doh!
DUMPER : Yeca
PAK ID : NUS-NP6J-JPN
DUMPED.DATE : 03.09.2011
FILENAME : w-jppy6b
SIZE : 128 mbit"

Grab it at the usual place --> http://www.64scener.com/

Mick West writes about coding Skeleton Warriors on the Sega Saturn 1995.

"This is a document I wrote in 1995, while working on Neversoft’s first game: Skeleton Warriors. It was the first game I’d worked on where I did not use 68K Assembly.

The photo shows me at work around that time. The Saturn dev kit (the “Small Box” and the ICE) is on the right.

The following document briefly describes the state of the code for Skeleton Warriors on the Sega Saturn, and also points at some of the many things still to be done…..

The primary purpose of this document is to effectively bring Dan, Ken and James up to speed with the current code, explaining what each module does, and how they interact. It will also give Mick an overview of the sad and sorry state of his code, hopefully prompting him to pull his socks up."

Read the whole shebang here: http://cowboyprogramming.com/2010/06/03/1995-programming-on-the-sega-saturn/

VP8 Codec ported to Dreamcast by Multimedia Mike.

Multimedia Mike has ported the "youtube codec" VP8 over to the Dreamcast!.

"So, can the Dreamcast decode VP8 video in realtime? Sure! Well, I really need to qualify. In the test depicted in the picture, it seems to be realtime (though I wasn’t enforcing proper frame timings, just decoding and displaying as quickly as possible)."

Source: http://multimedia.cx/eggs/decoding-vp8-on-a-sega-dreamcast/

Maybe somebody can implement that into one of the browsers so we can watch youtube on our Dreamcasts ^_-.

Rockman 8 beta released for Psx.

The good folks over at Rockman Corner has released a Rockman 8 beta, grab it here: http://protodudesrockmancorner.blogspot.com/2011/03/rockman-8-beta-released.html

ANCIENT backup unit for Famicom on HK ebay.

Crazy old backup unit that connects to a Apple 2 and uses 5.25 floppies, wild!.

Source: http://cgi.ebay.com.hk/NINTENDO-CARTRIDGE-STYLE-DOCTOR-THE-FIRST-ONE-DOCTOR-/190505555219?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_201&hash=item2c5b041513#ht_911wt_905%20