NES PC 425
Malicious sent us to a little tutorial about transforming that old
Nintendo into a PC. This guide will even make your controllers work, although it seems to me that a nintendo that has survived this long might be a cherished heirloom tho. Does anyone else think that Super Mario 3 might have been the best game ever? Course very few people make good sidescroller/jumpers in the era of the 3D console.
Next up... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Next up... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Next up... (Score:3, Informative)
The latest several versions of NesterDC [dyndns.org] do not suffer this problem. It plays games flawlessly as far as I can tell (I'm sure it's not falwless, but nearly so). It also supports state saving and other goodies (turbo controller emulation, game genie, etc.). My NesterDC disc is by far my favorite dreamcast game; it is a fantastic emulator.
See DCEmulation [dcemulation.com] for more emulators for DC.
SMB3? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:SMB3? (Score:2)
Re:SMB3? (Score:2)
Best Game (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Best Game (Score:2)
Overall though, It was a great game, and it played surprisingly well. All of the matches were very well balanced and were tweaked nicely. I wouldn't have expected a game of that era to perfect so many "mini-games" and toss them into one package.
Re:Best Game (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Best Game (Score:3, Informative)
Seanbaby has an amusing write-up of the best NES peripherals, including that one, BTW
Re:Best Game (Score:2)
the nintendo never had a force detecting controller
But most games did sample the controllers at 60 Hz, allowing them to read up to 30 Hz (Nyquist rate) of button presses from the controller. The "turbo" controllers would toggle a button at 25 Hz.
hitting it hard or really fast but slow made zero difference.
However, to survive in some games such as Track and Field for NES, Metal Geal Solid for PlayStation 1, and the Mario Party series for Nintendo 64, you do have to hit a single button at around 15 Hz.
Re:Best Game (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Best Game (Score:2)
Re:Best Game (Score:3, Funny)
Of course, nothing compares to the best-ever-controller, the Intellivision!
(How's THAT for an unpopular statement?
--DM
Re:Best Game (Score:2)
Re:Best Game (Score:4, Informative)
THE most durable, intuitive, and easiest to use joystick use ever. The weight and size was perfect for almost all hands of all sizes.
Forget the max, I want a joystick, not a pad.
Random Mods (Score:3, Interesting)
Dude (Score:3, Funny)
Dude! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Dude, you're getting a cell (Score:2)
You forgot the obligatory link to the story. [thesmokinggun.com]
Get the whistle! (Score:3, Informative)
There is a resurgence of 2D games, sort of. Contra for PS2 is a good example.
Re:Get the whistle! (Score:5, Interesting)
Curious, I put a quarter in and got my 300 seconds of playtime. I selected 'SMB3' and was rewarded with the home play version (not the later choice ten version where you could select the level) of 'Super Mario Bros. 3'.
"This has to be a hack of some kind," I said, "Like that stupid Skater Brothers rip of Super Mario".
Mind you, this was more than four months before 'Wizard' had hit theaters and about six before you could actually buy SMB3 in stores. They weren't even advertisting SMB3 in Nintendo Power. Of course, back then, video games didn't quite have the 3 years of hype before release they tend to now. The only thing that I can figure is that the owner of the arcade machine managed to get a beta copy of the game or had a friend in Nintendo USA who 'fixed' his Choice-10 roms for him with the new game.
To my surprise, however, SMB3 was not a hack or a copy of an existing game. It was its own game, and a surprisingly good one at that. I came the next day with my allowance-- $10 in quarters. 12000 seconds... a little more than 3 hours of game play. As a matter of fact, I spent the next three saturdays like that. I must have blown $80 just on that one stupid Choice Ten machine.
By the time 'Wizard' was released in theaters, SMB3 was old hat to me. 'Wizard' was merely confirmation that I had somehow gained access to the real deal.
After 'Wizard', summer was approaching, so I could start to mow lawns for money. On the day of release, I called Wal-mart (35 minutes away on bike) every 15 minutes. When the truck finally came in and they had release copies, I got the electronics manager to promise to hold a copy for me. I biked up, only to find that he had sold all the copies he had (35, I think) to a dealer. Of course SMB2 had been fetching insane prices at Christmas a few years previously, so it was seen as a good invenstment to buy all the copies of an popular videogame you could and resell them.
I finally managed to get a copy the next week, which I promptly brought home and played after carefully re-reading the manual for about an hour at a local Wendy's. My brother, the bastard, ratted me out for spending my lawn-mowing money on a video game (A big no-no in my house, especially since my grades were starting to slip). My mom took the game away and hid it. Luckily for me, she didn't destroy it.
SMB3 was and still is a hell of a game. I still play it from time to time.
Re:Get the whistle! (Score:2)
Re:Get the whistle! (Score:3, Interesting)
Super Mario World introduced Yoshi, expanded the branching overworld, had more secrets, managed to keep all of the classic gameplay, all the while bringing Mario into a more colorful world with richer sounds, fuller music, and larger enemies.
Super Mario World (and to a lesser extent SMW2:Yoshi's Island) are still what I consider to be the greatest moment's in Mario.
This doesn't mean SBM3 isn't a classic by which most standards should be compared against, because it really is one of the greatest games of all times. And if you're going to only consider the NES Platform, the SMB3 is matched only by the largely different but equally impressive Metroid.
Re:Crazy Luck (Score:4, Interesting)
There were a few exploits like that, simply because SMB was probably the hugest game ever created at that point, with the possible exception of the Zelda games. I have roms for all the Mario and Zelda games, so I'll compare them and see. I suspect that SMB3 is larger than even quite a few snes games.
Some of the exploits were left in on purpose or purposefully included in the first place as 'easter eggs'. Some of them were obvious coding errors.
The reset items trick was something that a few players did after beating the game to start over with all the inventory intact. If you timed your reset to hit just before the game credits stopped, you could usually do this.
Another was the keypad combination that would let you reenter any non-moving area, even destroyed castles. Since hammer brothers dissapeared after you killed them and airships took you to the next level, this would obviously not work.
If you won an airship level while wearing the Frog, Tanuki, or Hammer suit, the king would greet you with a non-standard text string.
Many places in the game, there are 'infinite lives' locations. The first one that comes to mind is the mushroom sprouting pipe in 1-2, I think. If you had a leaf, (and a racoon tail), you could float down. If you timed it right, you could float down just slow enough to land on a mushroom, kill him, jump off, and float down again on top of the next one. If you had your timing down, you could run out the level timer doing this, racking up massive extra lives... to a total of 99, I think. Unlike the 'Eternal Turtle' exploit in SMB1 (In 3-1 and 7-1... doesn't seem to work in 'Allstars'), the life counter in SMB3 did not roll over at 128, so you could get as many lives as you wanted this way. Another location was in the desert world. You could throw a turtle shell into the space between two pipes and then watch mushrooms walk into it. Each mushroom would eventually be worth an extra life.
The one that strikes me as the most obvious coding error was in the end-of-game encounter with Bowser/King Koopa. For those in the know, depending on which route you took through his castle, Bowser had a different difficulty. There were either three or four layers of blocks for him to punch through, depending on how you reached him. In reality, however, there were two Bowsers in the game, one for each location. Here's the trick, though. The two areas they fought in (one with three layers of blocks and one with four layers of blocks) were connected. If you could fly, you could travel back and forth between the two, and have both alive at the same time. If both of them were alive, neither one could shoot fire!
Ah, them were the days, when you were intent on finding *all* the secrets of a game and had months on end to do so.
Re:Get the whistle! (Score:5, Funny)
For your records: The Wizard [imdb.com]
Metroid (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Metroid (Score:2)
Only 8 bits? Obviously you never played Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple ][.
Re:Metroid (Score:2)
Re:Metroid (Score:3, Funny)
Not architecture, graphics. But you're turning a joke about a good game with poor graphics into a techie pissing contest.
-Comic book guy voice-"Ahh but see I have an Apple ][e, that's enhanced, for those of you who don't know. I also have an 80 column card, and a googly graphics card, plus, an add-on sound board in Slot 5. Mind you, I pity those who don't have a decent sound system for playing those classic games."
Re:Metroid (Score:2)
That game rocked. It scared the piss out of me! I also loved Olympic Decathlon for the Apple ][, which sounds like it was the precursor for the Track and Field game that was noted earlier.
Trivia: Does anybody remember who made Olympic Decathlon?
Re:Metroid (Score:2)
Of course, I played those on a friend's computer. I only had a TI99/4A at the time. Munch Man, Alpiner, and Parsec were my favorinte games.
Does anybody remember who made Olympic Decathlon? (Score:4, Funny)
I don't remember any blue screens back then, but you had to change your keyboard every other month. They obviously had a deal with keyboard makers.
Re:Metroid (Score:2)
Re:Metroid (Score:2)
Re:Metroid (Score:2)
I was a bit surprised at how much I remembered from the original Metroid. I picked up a lot of the items in Brinstar, and within 15 mninutes or so I was in Norfair again. The nostalgia reminded me of when I played it 15 years ago. I'd always get up early to play it before catching the school bus.
more infos (Score:4, Informative)
I always knew this needed to be done... (Score:5, Interesting)
Mirror? (Score:2)
Best Game Ever (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Best Game Ever (Score:2)
Re:Best Game Ever (Score:2)
Sports Game [intellivisionlives.com].
Ever.
How about Kirby's Adventure? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about Kirby's Adventure? (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't Do It Guys! (Score:5, Funny)
I like Mario 2 better (Score:3, Interesting)
I also played the original Japanese game it was based on Doki-Doki Panic. Ahhh fun times...
Nintendo PC? (Score:5, Insightful)
It appears (Score:2, Funny)
super mario 3 rules... I think (Score:5, Interesting)
My friends had the consoles though and I would play them when I went over to their houses.
As a result, I liked games that I could pick up quickly and not die immediately without lots of experience (Zelda was bad for that, Excitebike was GOOD!!).
I never really got good at any of the games since I wouldn't get much time to play (none of my friends wanted to watch me play, but they were fine with me watching them
Then the summer of '99 after I graduated college, I had a month to kill before I started my job - so I spent it at my dad's girlfriend's house sleeping and then playing her son's Super Nintendo. He had some special game pack that had all of the Super Mario games on there.
I played so much that I had some sort of injury to my right hand - specifically thumb blisters.
I finally got to beat each of the series but I kept going back to one to play it over and over - loved it - I *think* it was SM3 - not sure though. Whichever one first introduced Yoshi the dinosaur - I loved it (although the one just before that was pretty cool too).
I've played variants since then and never liked them that much.
Now I have a PS2 and suck at pretty much all of the games to the point where I get too frustrated to play for more than 10 minutes - except at the Tiger Woods golf game - I rule at that.
What were the traits of SM3? I'm not sure if that is the one that I really loved - I think so, but I don't recall the names of all of them and which did which in the series.
Re:super mario 3 rules... I think (Score:2, Informative)
Re:super mario 3 rules... I think (Score:3, Informative)
Correct: the launch title for the SNES. And a most excellent game it is too.
and the special game pack you're talking about was "Super Mario All Stars", which had SMB 1, 2, 3, SMW, and the "Lost Levels"
Technically not true. Super Mario All-Stars had SMB 1, 2 and 3 and Lost Levels, not SMW. However, later SNES bundles had a cartridge including Super Mario World as well - making it undoubtedly the greatest single cartridge ever manufactured.
As for the character of the various games: SMB 1 was a simple left-to-right affair consisting of eight worlds of four levels each, in which Mario and Luigi were identical and the only special power was the ability to throw fireballs. Lost Levels was almost identical technically, except that it was much harder; they also made Luigi jump higher, but move about more slowly. SMB 2 was an oddball game in which you picked up monsters and threw them at each other, or picked up vegetables and threw them, in which you played Mario, Luigi, the Princess or Toad, each with distinct abilities - it has now been released on GBA as Super Mario Advance. SMB 3 introduced the map screen, the ability to fly (using a raccoon tail - why? why? why?), the various weird costumes (frog, Tanooki, hammer brother), and a whole lot of odd stuff. It's been ten years and I'm still discovering new things in this game. SMW brought in Yoshi, overhauled the flight mechanism (it's a very different technique using the cape) and had millions on a futile wild-goose chase for the legendary 97th exit hidden in the sunken ghost ship. Argh.
About that Tanuki suit... (Score:4, Interesting)
It goes something like that, at least.
Re:super mario 3 rules... I think (Score:5, Funny)
Which reminds me of this little Japanese ditty:
TanTanTanuki no kintama wa, kaze mo nai no ni burabura
Translation:
Even when there's no wind, the balls of a raccoon swing to and fro.
You night not think very much of it, that is until you actually see how big a tanuki's nads are.
The Mario series (Score:5, Informative)
assembly programming NES style (Score:3, Funny)
shr...shr...mov...jmp! jmp!
(system crashes)
damn register boss!
Re:assembly programming NES style (Score:3, Interesting)
Encore (Score:2, Funny)
sidescrollers/jumpers (Score:4, Insightful)
I've also heard of a Castlevania project in the works by Konami as well - let's hope this one is a 2D sidescroller along the lines of Symphony of the Night
Slashdotted already (Score:2, Funny)
Finally, a use for all these things... (Score:2, Informative)
Turning them into a NESticle machine is their only salvation -- though the only problem is getting TV out, which the article does not cover.
TV Out problem (Score:2)
Don't use NESticle (Score:2, Informative)
Turning them into a NESticle machine is their only salvation
NESticle is a disgustingly inaccurate emulator [everything2.com]. FCE Ultra [sourceforge.net] is much more accurate.
Re:Finally, a use for all these things... (Score:4, Informative)
Its also a good idea to clean your Carts. Wipe down the pins with a q-tip and some rubbing alcohol. It works great.
Right now Ive got almost all of the NES games I want. I still need to pick up metal gear and contra.
Nothing Like playing metroid, zelda, and the megaman games on an old NES. Mmmmm nostagic.
Re:Finally, a use for all these things... (Score:3, Informative)
My favorite NES quick-fix was breathing slowly onto the card connector. I swear just about everyone I showed it to thought I was clinically insane but were dumbfounded after the game worked on the very first try. I assume that condensation from one's own breath is just enough to overcome the accumulation of oxide and crud.
That was completely untrue and NOT informative. (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, the easiest and most successful thing to do would be to replace the cartridge connector. These are all pretty cheap on eBay, right around $10, just search for "NES 72".
Secondly, the blinking red light problem is a result of the NES not finding the on-game security chip. Really annoying when the game title screen pops up just for a second over and over again. There's an easy workaround: Disable the NES security chip. Basicly, you'll break pin 4 of the CIC chip, and that's it. http://nintendope.iodized.net/thisoldnes/lock.txt
Best game? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Best game? (Score:2)
WHORE! (Score:2, Informative)
Don't mod this up, because it's reallt not /.ed. The Eds would never do that to us... ;)
My working NES (Score:5, Insightful)
I would NEVER, EVER mod it to do this. The NES as it is STILL provides me with hours of entertainment, something most PC games these days can't do. Turning it into something like a webserver would totally ruin it for me.
Re:My working NES (Score:2)
It's a great game that uses the light gun, along with side scrolling fighting action, and jeep driving. It was a great game.
And I'd have to agree, turning a NES into a computer is rather dumb. The article wasn't even about porting linix to run on it or anything like that, it said how to gut the box to make a novelty case, waste of a good nintendo.
mini ITX (Score:5, Informative)
Re:mini ITX (Score:2, Funny)
"We fit powerful solutions into tight little spaces"
Now there's a foreign concept to
next on /. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:next on /. (Score:4, Funny)
Interesting Ideas...... (Score:3, Funny)
*pulls out old Atari 7600*
*opens case*
*stuffs in components to Dell P4 Ultra-GHz*
*removes heat sink*
*closes case*
*installs WinXP*
*watches the fireworks*
My intrests lie elsewhere, with the real NES. :) (Score:2)
As far as this article, any monkey with a stick can figure out how to slap a PC together in any type of chassis they want, be it NES, fishbowl, beerkeg, whatever..... I'm not impressed.
See also some stuff from last summer... (Score:2)
Silly idea... (Score:3, Funny)
Seen this before a few times (Score:3, Informative)
There was a even a company selling converted NES-to-PCs or kits or something. Ah! Here's the link [retrosystem.com].
They also do Atari 2600s and Amiga 1000s (I would never defile my A1000!).
best game on NES? (Score:2, Funny)
Man, someone should make a MMORPG from River City Ransom. Everyone gets their own gang, and when they die, they say BAAAAAAAAARFF!
Side scrollers for Playstation (Score:2)
They can be a little hard to find, even on eBay, but they are totally worth it. Tomba! is definetly in my top 20 on the Playstation.
blowing the nes (Score:3, Funny)
Well... (Score:3, Informative)
Join The L.O.S.E.R Project [sf.net]!
(Note: we're not dead, we're just in coma. Any new development would be enough to wake up the project. It's still on my TODO list, but I have to scratch a few other things off before I get back to it. Please contact the mailinglist if you're interested
Mirror, mirror on the wall (Score:5, Informative)
I have mirrored the site here [128.220.194.92], inside AT&T's network block.
When the traffic normalizes, I'll remove the mirror.
SMB3 (Score:2)
Quite possibly. Though it's a pity battery backups on the cartriges werent common back then. It was a real pain having to replay the game every time you wanted to get further in it. Naturally I never had that much time to spare at once, so I never got very far.
*sniff*
I'm sure there was a lot of fun in that game that I missed.
Zelda? (Score:2)
Kinda cool though, get a emulator to run on this thing and you can play all your old games too.
---
intake.net [intake.net]
How about Metroid??? (Score:2)
It changed everything.
SMB3? (Score:2)
IMHO, SMB2 was a big letdown. SMB3 was superior to SMB2, but it was a bit too complex for being the best side-scroller. They were almost leaning in towards the rpg side of the side-scroller world with the complexity. I still think the original Super Mario Brothers was the best side-scroller ever. Simple, and done just right.
A very good sidescroller/jumpers in this era... (Score:3, Insightful)
Another NESPC project... (Score:2)
Course very few people make good sidescroller/jumpers in the era of the 3D console.
Did anyone else play Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project [dukenukemmp.com]? Full-on 3D, but gameplay was a good, old-fashioned side-scroller.... Duke even jumped the same way as the original Duke Nukem!
Favorite SMB3 Trick (Score:4, Informative)
You could then explore all sorts of stuff that would have been impossible before... lots of hidden things to find, etc. What a blast!
For a while my friends and I would start an SMB3 session by winning the game (we got it down to a 30 minute process using both warp whistles) and then we'd go to some of the more difficult worlds with our p-wing collection and have a ball.
Damn those were good times... I don't think there's any game out there that's been more fun, or had more replay value for my dollar.
Cheers!
Re:Thats it, people. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Thats it, people. (Score:5, Insightful)
it's about replacing the guts of a nes with normal pc parts, and does not mention running linux at all
Re:Thats it, people. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thats it, people. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thats it, people. (Score:2)
Re:Thats it, people. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thats it, people. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, the amusing thing about this is that you're right. Linux really does run Linux [sourceforge.net] now...
Re:Super Mario Bros. 3 (Score:2)