Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Handhelds Hardware

SNES Portable 182

Posted by Hemos from the makin'-it-pretty-small dept.
Tha_Zanthrax writes "This guy is really good: the same dude that built a portable PSX a while ago and has also made some really old Atari 2600 portable has did it again. This time he 'compressed' a Super Nintendo System. The comicbook-like intro is nice to."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

SNES Portable More

SNES Portable

Comments Filter:
  • I'm not as impressed this time. A PSX was a major achievement, but a SNES? Nah. And anyway, his portable PSX made a nice weapon with that CD spinning in the open on the back ;-)

    What is impressive, however, is the way he's made it look like a comic strip this time around. That's nice stuff.

    As an aside.. 'has did it again'? Nice to see literary standards are on the up with Slashdot contributors.

    • Re:Meh. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm sure he'll be devistated when he hears of your lack of interest...
    • Hey, it's impressive nonetheless. Being able to play a full complement of great games while riding on the bus, train, car is quite nifty. I know I'd sure like one of 'em, so many good SNES games...
    • Too bad a major gaming company -- oh, I don't know, let's say Nintendo -- hasn't come up with a portable 32-bit system capable of easily handling SNES-style graphics and gameplay, along with ultra-small battery consumption.

      Wait a minute...

  • I´m waiting til someone builds a compressed... (Score:4, Funny)

    by uncl_bob ( 529354 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @03:25PM (#2694707) Journal
    ..gameboy.
  • One of the good things about the dot come failures is that there are now many more geeks out there with enough spare time to come up with these cool ideas. One of the downsides is it also gives them the time to come up with odd presentations of their cool ideas.

    • One of the good things about the dot come failures is that there are now many more geeks out there with enough spare time to come up with these cool ideas. One of the downsides is it also gives them the time to come up with odd presentations of their cool ideas.

      It's not polite to bitch about the individual's presentation choices.

      In addition, what makes you think this guy ever worked for a dotcom? He appears to have actual electronics and design skills, unlike the geniuses who worked for dotcoms. I assume he has a real job, which pays him well enough and gives him enough time to pursue his hobby. That has nothing to do with the late mass hysteria which resulted in thousands of clueless, unskilled individuals getting paper-rich off the ignorance and greed of even more clueless investors. HTH.
    • Yeah. But, it must be tough competing in the job market with all those other electrical and industrial engineers who used to work for dot-coms.
    • One of the downsides is it also gives them the time to come up with odd presentations of their cool ideas.

      What is so wrong with this? It amazes me how when someone has a unique idea and gets up off their butt and does it, people say that the person has "too much time on their hands." Yet a person can play Quake or sit in front of the TV watching Channel Zero for hours and nobody will ever accuse them of having "too much time on their hands."

  • Downloadable ROMS? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sketerpot ( 454020 ) <sketerpotNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @03:33PM (#2694756)
    An ability that would be really nice is being able to store ROMS on a memory stick or something. That way you could download obscure games and play them on this thing. It works great for computers with SNES9X and ZSNES; why can't it work for this?
    • Orginally the devices that were used for copying games were also used to play the copied images on the system.

      One of the most popular of these devices for the SNES was the Mutli Game Doctor. Try a search for it.
      • Blah smack me, you'll want to search for Multi Game Doctor [google.com].

        Even if you do preview you still have to read. :P

      • Game Doctor (Score:2, Interesting)

        by The_dev0 ( 520916 )
        I have one of these for my SNES. It is awesome, i have probably about 200 games for it. you just dump the cartridge onto 1 or 2 floppy disks and thats it! Im currently mucking around trying to get rid of the floppy and instead use a HDD but that project died in the arse when I saw the Doctor V64. Hmmmm... N64 cartridge backups? tasty!!
    • I know there are flash-disks, and flashing utilities, for GB and GBA. A friend of mine had about 50 games for the GBA before he even got his GBA. It is sweeeet. I think you can put something like 15 games on the GB card, and 3 or 4 on the GBA card.

      He got these from someone who imports them from Hong Kong. ROMs via the net.

  • Portable XT (Score:4, Funny)

    by wackybrit ( 321117 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @03:35PM (#2694762) Homepage Journal
    I just thought of what he could make next..

    A portable 286.

    Think about it.. you could run all the old favourites. Windows 286. GEM. DOS 2!

    • Re:Portable XT (Score:2, Interesting)

      by pi radians ( 170660 )
      Or a portable Apple ][.

      Hey, I have an old Mac Plus sitting around in my basement. I should convert that to a portable system and play Police Quest on my way to work (no, I won't be driving too)

      Seriously, I would be interested in making a portable Dreamcast though. Now that the price has dropped it may be a fun and not-too-expensive project.

    • Re:Portable XT (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Step 1.

      Purchase Compaq iPAQ or Casio Cassiopeia handheld PDA.

      Step 2.

      Reflash PDA with linux. (Remember to write to Compaq or whoever informing them that that's what you've done - they care about such statistics!)

      Step 3.

      Compile bochs for arm-linux.

      Step 4.

      Install bochs on your PDA with a HD image containing Windows 3.1 or DOS or whatever.

      Step 5.

      Marvel at ancient PC applications running very slowly on your PDA...
    • I believe that's called a LAPTOP.

      This guy probably makes portable consoles because you can't just go buy one off the shelf somewhere. Take a peek at Ebay or elsewhere and you'll find plenty of portable 286's.
    • They got 'em already... they even compressed the keypad and added an antenna for ya already. Check it out here [uesonline.com]. DOS is being discontinued soon though.
    • I always thought that an ultra portable 386 could be a great machine. tons of apps, emulation for a few decent systems, and I'm sure with current tech we could get it into a wallet sized package. :)

      Why not? I'd love a portable nes, gameboy, sega, c64, trs-80, COCO(3), and whatever else I could get my hands on in one little package.

    • PDP-11? (Score:2, Funny)

      by davidhan ( 539718 )
      ...or whatever Spacewar originally ran on.

  • Yay! Secret of Mana in the Car! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eAndroid ( 71215 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @03:39PM (#2694786) Homepage
    Really, isn't the Gameboy Advance as powerful as a Super Nintendo? I'm happy to see some great SNES games coming to Gameboy Advance, like Breath of Fire and Mario Cart.

    But the continued akwardness between Nintendo and Square will probably keep classics like Final Fantasy II & III and Secret of Mana from the Gameboy Advance. What a pitty!

    Maybe this project is just the thing to take these great games on the road.
    • Actually the GBA is more powerful than the SNES. And it seems that most of the worth while (and some of the less than worth while) games are being re-released for it.

      Of course hacks for hacks sake are just cool.

      (Now if the GBA could just be hooked up to a TV, stereo and had a better controller.)
      • (Now if the GBA could just be hooked up to a TV, stereo and had a better controller.)

        VisualBoy Advance [emuhq.com] or Boycott Advance [emuunlim.com], a PSX to USB controller adapter (or any USB gamepad), and Morpheus to download ROMS. I don't even play my GBA anymore, as I can actually see Castlevania now.

        • VisualBoy Advance or Boycott Advance

          I recommend VisualBoy Advance, as it focuses on compatibility über alles.

          a PSX to USB controller adapter (or any USB gamepad)

          The official GBA development system uses a Super NES controller. Play the exact game the developers made with an easily-soldered parallel port adapter. Read More in this journal entry [slashdot.org].

          Morpheus to download ROMS

          Why? With Morpheus or WinMX, 1. it's illegal, and 2. you can never be sure you have a good dump. Better to buy the cartridge and use a Flash Advance linker to dump it. Follow the links at gbadev.org [gbadev.org] (I don't work for gbadev.org) to see where to buy a linker. Plus, with a linker and a flash cartridge, you too can make GBA games.

  • neat, but... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Vis ( 125597 )
    We can play games on our cell phones now.. and have been able to for some time. With games on our PDA's, GameBoy Color... Why would someone want this? I guess if SNES is more addictive for you than heroin, maybe this'd be up your alley.

    Now, PS2, XBox, those are at least current. I wouldn't mind seeing one of THEM in a portable model.

    • Re:neat, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thesolo ( 131008 ) <slap@fighttheriaa.org> on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @03:57PM (#2694887) Homepage
      Why would someone want this? I guess if SNES is more addictive for you than heroin, maybe this'd be up your alley.

      I don't know about you, but even though I own some newer systems, the ones I play the most are NES, Atari, and SNES. Who cares if they aren't current, they are FUN.

      Also, the games on SNES are a hell of a lot more entertaining than the games on Cellphones. If I wanted to play "Snake", I would load up QBasic on my 486.

      The fact of the matter is that many gamers love playing older games. New games can be fun, but I often find myself longing for the days of 2D, side-scrollers. Myself and those like me would love to have portable NES & SNES systems.

      Besides, a system like this is GREAT for buying old games at Flea Markets, etc. You can test to make sure the games work right then & there! That's enough right there to justify having one of these.

      • The fact of the matter is that many gamers love playing older games. New games can be fun, but I often find myself longing for the days of 2D, side-scrollers.

        Not that I want to revive the old games vs new games rant...but I can't help it...I TOTALLY agree with this, most older games were a truckload more fun than most new games (with few exceptions).

        Space Taxi,Archon or Zaxxon anyone?

        Or even Ghost n' Goblins or Moon Patrol :)

    • Re:neat, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LMCBoy ( 185365 )
      Maybe you missed it, maybe you're trolling. The guy isn't hawking a product here, he's showing off something cool and interesting that he did. So, yes, no one would want one of these; that's not the point. The point is, as you say, that it's neat.

      I for one think it's really cool, and the comic-book style presentation was hilarious.

      Thanks portable video game guy!

  • Wisconsin... (Score:5, Funny)

    by yunfat ( 200898 ) <<moc.cam> <ta> <narat>> on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @03:44PM (#2694817)
    After reading this article there is no way in hell I will ever move to Wisconsin. Clearly, there is nothing to do there.

  • This guy kicks ass (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @03:45PM (#2694822)
    Not only is he a sick designer/engineer, but a funny bastard as well.

    My favorite line:

    Like Timmy T, I had to give it one more try

    What an amazing obscure reference. Anyone remeber that old joint from about 10 years ago?

    One more try,
    Let me show how much
    I love you.
    One more try,
    Let me put my arms
    Around you.
    Livin all these lonely nights
    Without you.
    Oh baby, can we give it
    One more try?
    • I'd gone for about 8 years without hearing or thinking of that highschool-mixer, slow-dance ass-grab song. That and anything by C&C Music Factory, or Another Bad Creation, or Martika.

      Blasts from the past they ain't.
    • I loved the look of this case too. Very stylish. If one of these projects to make a Linux based console wanted to hire somebody with some experience and a groovy sense of style this guy would be the guy. I only wish he could mass produce these and sell them.
    • I thought only guidos and the clinically obtuse would catch the Timmy T reference. Then again you might be either or both.

      (were the hell is that damn TKA album)
    • This guy deserves some sort of award for entertaining us!

      /. Awards! Categories will be obvious - I nominate this guy for

      'cool but wierd' 2001
  • In my experience, portable gaming machines wouldn't be very helpful. Especially having to build one. I'm not so much of a gamer that I'd have to sneak game-time between hours at work, or during lunch, but I have a laptop just in case. It works fine for my portable gaming machine. Even does SNES, Neo Geo, NES, Genesis, and various arcade games!
    • Yeah, but there's nothing like the real thing. Can't exactly whip out the laptop when you're waiting in line at South Station (BOS-MA) to buy a T-pass (www.mbta.com).

  • Schematics? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by atyr ( 531369 )
    The comic styling of this guy is quite hilarious, but the lighting on that isnt done very well. Is there anywhere with a parts listing and instructions on how to do this. I wouldnt mind doing something like this. It would free up room for newer consoles on my wishlist ;D and im sure more than just I wishes to attempt this obviously dangerous feat of heroism. Now im off to find a somewhat dusty Atari to prevent any further alarming !

  • iPAQ gaming (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now that there is the Snap-n-type keyboard and snap on game controller are out, the HHLinux iPAQ really starts to shine as a gaming device.

    xmame, snes9x, 2600, C64, etc. games all run, from pretty good to damn slick. The snes9x port was running over a year ago.

    You can get a *TON* of ROMs on a 1GB udrive, too.

    The new Sharp Linux handheld should rock too, once somebody gets an X server running on it.

    Cpt_Kirks
  • If he's going to have all of these systems, he needs some kind of a belt that he can use to carry all of his portable systems on. That, and portable controllers, batarangs, and webshooters.

    I think we should call him "PVGSman" (portable video game systems).

  • how many times? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Suppafly ( 179830 ) <slashdot@s[ ]afly.net ['upp' in gap]> on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @04:09PM (#2694951)
    How many times are we as a community going to /. this guys site. I bet he dreads putting up new articles, because within a week of him doing so /. finds out and sends a million hits his way making his bandwidth bills go through the roof.
  • ...a commercially produced portable PlayStation. In fact, a buddy of mine bought one. So what's special about this?
    • Well, what is special is that this guy built it himself. Not with the help of a team of engineers and a fabrication plant. But in his garage with the full sized console and components that could be found at radio shack. What fun is buying a portable unit when you could build one yourself. That man is true to the origional hack philosophy, reverse engineering something for the sake of fun and knowledge.

    • Re:I seem to remember... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LMCBoy ( 185365 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @04:23PM (#2695055) Homepage Journal
      I know of a guy who built his own helicopter in his garage. Thing's got a VW engine and a big rubber belt to drive the tail rotor. He actually flies around in the thing.

      Gotta tell you, when I heard about that, my first reaction was not "So what? You've been able to buy helicopters for decades now!"

      • Re:I seem to remember... (Score:4, Funny)

        by Omerna ( 241397 ) <clbrewer@gmail.com> on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @05:30PM (#2695468) Homepage
        When I read that my first reaction was:

        Don't you mean he FLEW around in the thing? Until he stopped in a firey ball of death?

        That's crazy than that Rocket Guy! At least he can parachute down if he doesn't die in the explostion, a helicopter would give you just enough time to think, "Oh shit, I knew I should have used a stronger rubber belt to-"
        • yeah, apparently he inspects that belt veeeery carefully before each flight. heh.

        • That's crazy than that Rocket Guy! At least he can parachute down if he doesn't die in the explostion, a helicopter would give you just enough time to think, "Oh shit, I knew I should have used a stronger rubber belt to-"


          Actually, with commercial helicopters (and I'm assuming that his home built helicopter's design won't vary that much from commercial designs), the helicopters are built with an auto-rotation design. I.E. if the engine ever stops, the helicopter blades will just automatically rotate to give a slow decent to the ground below. If the belt ever gives out, all the guy needs to do is shut down the engine and just wait it out as the helicopter decends on it's own. You'll probably get a little dizzy as the body of the helicopter will most likely want to counter-rotate and you won't have any direction control (then again you wouldn't have any direction control without the belt, either), but at least you won't come hurtling down, gaining speed at a rate of 9.8m/(s*s), eventually crashing and burning in the horrible flaming wreckage.


          On a slightly related note, a friend of my dad's built his own airplane, powered by a small block Chevy V-8. There's no instrumentation and only very rudimentary controls, but it's as safe as any other airplane, and I'm sure he enjoys it a lot more knowing that he built it himself. He painted it John Deere green and calls it his John Deere airplane. :-)

          • Well... I don't really knokw a whole lot about about helicopters, but my old boss has his pilots licence.

            My understanding was that in the event of an engine failure you had to dive pretty much immediately in order to keep the rotors spinning fast enough to give you enough lift to slow down right before you plow into the ground.

            I don't think 'turning off the engine and letting it land itself' is a very good idea at all.

            hummer

            • Hmm... I apologize. It appears that my understanding of autorotation was somewhat inaccurate. In effect, you take that sharp dive in order to achieve the autorotative effects. Previously, when I read about helicopter control mechanics, it was worded such that it seemed that the autorotation process was automatic. Here's a link about autorotation:


              http://www.helicoptersonly.com/Helicopter_Traini ng /Autorotation/autorotation.html

    • Yeah, and why bother with edible oranges, when we already have edible apples?

      Heh... like comparing apples to.. heh... oh.

    • The "commercially produced portable PlayStation" is the PSOne, and it's sort of awkward. It's basically a console with an optional screen attached. You still need to hook up the controllers externally, it needs a constant power connection to run, etc. It's only barely portable, whereas his PlayStation Portable is a complete unit that fits in your hand and can run either on batteries or a wall connection.
  • These devices are awesome. Some games are novels to me like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. So having these portable units around would be cool for those 15 min breaks and lunch periods.
  • The whole metal-gear getting into the shop thing was by far the most amusing read I've come across all week.

    It's been a slow week.
  • If only Sega would make a portable genesis.
    I know, they could call it a nomad or something...
    oh wait, never mind!

  • Emulators! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zmokhtar ( 539671 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @04:40PM (#2695162) Homepage
    It depends on what you mean by portable. If a laptop is "portable", then you can run SNES, old dos games, NES, gameboy, SEGA, PS2, etc. emulators on your laptop.

    If you mean a gameboy is portable, it's only a few more iterations until we get there. Right now, I run PocketNes [retrogames.com] and it works great! Genesis and Lynx emulators [pocketemulator.com] also exist. I haven't tried Lynx but the Genesis one is still too slow. If you are willing to run Linux on your iPaq, you can run SNES [wpi.edu]. As for people who want XT, there is even an 80186 emulator [xt-ce.com]! That means you can run DOS on top of WinCE! They even have screenshots of Windows 3.0 [xt-ce.com] running on a PocketPC.

    In short, I am amazed at my iPaq. These things are actually powerful enough to be classified as PC's. These 200Mhz handhelds are what sat on desktops in 1997. Check out Gateway's homepage as of 1/1/1997 [archive.org], they are selling P166's.

  • Simply put.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by merauder ( 518514 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @04:52PM (#2695246)
    Besides the 'geek factor', this guy has once again done somthing ingenious. He obviously knows what he's doing, and even routes out his own cases, and they look professional, i think the latest SNESp (his word) is very well done.. I think a console company should hire this guy to help design the next portable..
  • An emulator on a laptop, I swear that will be the top reason for eventually buying a laptop.
  • Is it just me, or did anyone else think this guy is a spitting image of Conan O'Brien?

  • You gotta read this guy's... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The_Pey ( 532136 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @06:00PM (#2695632)

    ...alt tags.

    I swear the comic is funny enough, but get read the alt tags for a bigger laugh... Montezuma's Revenge... Hehe

  • If any of you here are British, (or just inordinately fond of the ZX-Spectrum, or Timex-Sinclair whatever-it-was-released-as-in-the-USA), you may be interested in looking at http://foon.pocketheaven.com [pocketheaven.com].

    You need a GBA flash cart (available from a number of vendors), and a GameBoy advance. Hey presto - portable Speccy!
  • is suffering from TMTOHH syndrome (Too Much Time On His Hands).

    Seriously though, it makes me eye my old portable TV with an evil grin... makes my wife worry.

    -jhon
  • I looked in the artical but I couldn't seem to find out where he got his mini monitors from??(besides the fact that he always seems to have one lying around incase he gets inspired) But really though did he get them from radio shack just like the tube things.
    • He uses Active Matrix screens from 2.5" RCA portable TVs, which run about $150 each. Basically, he just takes the thing out of the case, replaces the tube with LEDs, and then pops the thing in his custom portable case and hooks the composite connection on the console to the composite connection on the screen. Surprisingly simple, but still sort of pricy.
  • For what it's worth, there have been a few original nintendo (8 bit) handheld systems, here's one example of a famicom version http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/pirate/topguy.html
    I think these are even cooler than the snes version...Zelda anyone? :)
  • For europeans, "cold-cathode" simply means "neon" [signweb.com].
    • No, it doesn't. CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent) Lamps are glass tubes filled with mercury vapor and an additional inert gas (commonly Argon) to create a plasma when a sufficiently high voltage is applied to the electrodes. The tube is coated with a phosphor on the inside which 'converts' the UV radiated by the plasma to visible light. Are you saying Europeans are stupid?

  • Ben and His Projects (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hyyx ( 447405 ) <cky@nOSPam.snpp.com> on Wednesday December 12, 2001 @10:32PM (#2697010) Homepage
    I was going to post a story on Ben Heckendorn's SNES portable, but I decided to wait until he is finished with something far more interesting.

    The Gamecube is already a very much portable unit, considering it's external and internal size [segatech.com], carrying handle [nintendo.com], and detachable screen [ign.com]. This is Ben's next un/confirmed project over at his site. I found his comment on this in the forums [classicgaming.com]. While the portable aspect of the Gamecube is nifty, Ben focuses on making consoles into handheld units (so yes it is portable already, but not handheld). The SNES is interesting, but I'm waiting to see how this turns out.

Slashdot Top Deals

Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein

Close