Hackszine.com: Retro Gaming Archives

Archive: Retro Gaming

Page 2 of 2 << 1 2

October 9, 2007

NES on the Pocket PC and Smartphone

Paul McGuinness sent us a few more Blackjack hacks today, some of which are particular to the device, and some that apply to Smartphones and Pocket PCs in general. My favorite, though, is getting an NES emulator running on the device.

I've played with the PocketNester NES emulator on my PPC quite a bit. You just download the PPC ARM installer from the SourceForge site, run the installer when you are connected to ActiveSync, and copy some ROMs over to play. It's painless on the PPC, but it won't install on the Smartphone.

I haven't been able to test them, but there are a number of alternative PocketNester ports floating around, including PocketNesterPlus which is said to run correctly on the landscape/widescreen Smartphones. I've linked to what I could find. Hopefully one of them will get you up and running on your particular device.

While you're checking this out, you're going to need to find some ROMs to play. Instead of just downloading a bunch of old Nintendo ROMs, I always get a kick out of trying homebrew NES apps. The game pictured above is called Grave Digger, and it's an addictive (maybe twisted) take on the old computer science "game of life" cellular automaton. The goal is to dig up all the zombies, but every time you dig, the adjacent graves will toggle between exhumed or filled.

The reason I mention Grave Digger is that it was written in 2004 as part of Bob Rost's game development class at Carnegie Mellon. If you start to get into playing retro Nintendo games, it might be worth taking the next step and taking a swing at writing one. The CMU lectures, tests, and a nice collection of NES homebrew resources are available on Bob Rost's site (as well as a few cool game ROMs). It's definately worth checking out.

References:

Original PocketNester (PPC portrait @ sourceforge - I've tested this one) - Link
PocketNester (for qvga SP @ surrealnetworks) - Link
PocketNesterPlus (for landscape SP @ surrealnetworks) - Link
PocketNesterPlus @ modaco forums (most recent? download appears to be corrupt right now) - Link
Samsung Blackjack Hacks Wiki - [via] Link
Game Development for the 8-bit NES - Link

October 7, 2007

Lord British Has a Sputnik

Like many people who grew up in the glory days of home computing, I spent a lot of my high school and college years playing the Ultima series of games. The series stood out in a lot of ways, but one of the most memorable things about it was that the creator of the series, Richard Garriott, projected himself into the game as "Lord British", the wise (generally--I'm recalling that one time he got stuck in the underworld) and (always) benevolent ruler of Sosaria, and eventually, Britannia. When we heard news that Lord British was in possession of the backup Sputnik, some of us briefly entertained the idea of "borrowing" the Sputnik while in Austin for Maker Faire, but then we remembered that Lord British has a bunch of powerful guards (see the above video if you don't believe me), and plus, WWtAD (What Would the Avatar Do)?

Texas Man Linked to Past and Future of Space Exploration by Sputnik and Soyuz - Link

Related

Retro Gaming Hacks - Link
Maker Faire Austin - Link
Mac OS X version of Ultima III (pictured above, with the Apple ][ tileset) - Link
Ultima IV remake for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X - Link

September 7, 2007

NES.app - Nintendo emulator for the iPhone

NES.app is a full blown Nintendo emulator for the iPhone. It supports the device's multitouch interface, so you can use the virtual on-screen game pad with your thumbs, just like the Nintendo gods intended.

NES.app uses a heavily modified version of the InfoNES emulation core to mimic the 6502 processor in a Nintendo Entertainment System, allowing you to play ROM dumps of games designed for the NES console.
NES.app started as a fork of iPhoneNES v0.01, but has been completely rewritten to run very fast, and with many additional features including sound, multitouch support, full-screen, landscape mode, game genie codes, saved games and much more.

It's supposed to run pretty well, but if you're using game genie codes or a more graphically demanding title, there's a frame-drop feature... It'll still play realtime, but just a bit choppier.

What I'm really excited about, though, is the state saving ability, which allows you to stop a game mid-play and then start it again from that point at a later time. I could never beat Contra even after resorting to some "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, b, a, select, start" business, and my Super Mario skills have always been wanting, so maybe this is my chance to regain some 1980s self respect.

NES.app: The Nintendo Emulator for iPhone - Link

August 15, 2007

Make your own Atari 2600 labels

An image I saw in Phil Dangler's photostream clued me into this awesome application:

This Atari 2600 Label Maker produces authentic looking Atari 2600 "Picture Labels" using your own image and title.

The "Picture Label" is the most common Atari 2600 label and features a large image on a black background. The game title is always in upper case but varies in color.

(Pictured is the artwork from the Brain Machine article in Make 10). Atari 2600 Label Maker - Link

August 12, 2007

Picking an NES console--clones and originals

racketboy has a great roundup of NES console options. These include Nintendo Entertainment System work-alikes. You should be able to plug most of your old 8-bit game cartridges right into one of these and be up and running right away:

I received a friendly email the other day asking what NES clone I would recommend. While I have talked about all of the major players in the past, I haven't actually owned any myself, nor had I done enough research to give a reliable answer. Also, I thought it would be nice if I produced a detailed article to present to him and share with future shoppers instead of a quick response. Below, you will find the results of my research of both NES clones and Nintendo's two official console releases. I've tried to summarize all my findings in an easy to digest manner and everything is pulled from a variety of reviews and conversations about each machine. If you would like to add your own experiences, feel free to use the comments section below.

Finding The Best NES Clone or Official Console For You - Link

Related:

Retro Gaming Hacks - Link

August 6, 2007

id puts a bunch of older games on Steam

Geek.com reports that id Software has put its entire backlist, including some of their more retro titles, on Steam. Steam is the online game distribution system that is used for Half-Life 2, but has grown to include a lot of other games. Included in this collection are Commander Keen ($5), Wolfenstein 3D ($5), and more Doom and Quake than you can shake a stick at. Link

Related

Play MS-DOS Games on Vista - Link
Retro Gaming Hacks - Link

March 21, 2007

Please Insert CD1 to Continue... I Think Not

Every now and then, I dust off one of the many classic games I never finished and give it another go. This time it's Baldur's Gate II. Every time I do this, I have to deal with the "Insert Your Play Disc" hassle. I don't mind this when it's my desktop computer, but on my notebook, I don't want to get all worked up for a big battle only to find that the disc I need is sitting on a shelf back at home.

The usual solution to this is to find a "NoCD" crack for the game, but this means I'm downloading an executable from an unknown source. If it has a trojan or some other kind of malware in it, I won't find out until too late.

So when I searched for the Baldur's Gate II NoCD crack, I got a little more aggressive and looked for a patch I could apply myself. In this case, it was pretty easy, thanks to a simple patch based on Softbeard's work, and published by Shea Kauffman:

File: BGMAIN.EXE
Change bytes (all numbers in hex):
  Find  0F84DA08
after these numbers should be
  00006a006a008b
Change them to
  0000e9ee030000

To apply this patch, I used ICY Hexplorer (pictured above) to patch the file. (You should always back up the file you're patching first, just in case you mess something up.) And be sure to verify that the patch applies to the exact version of the game that you have (patch 26498 in my case).

If you can't find a manual patch like this one, you can at least use ICY Hexplorer to take a peek at what modifications have been made to the altered version of the game you want to run. Open both .exe files in ICY and choose File->Export->Ascii Hex, then compare the output using a command-line utility like diff or fc. You probably won't understand the change, but if the magnitude of the change is pretty small, then you can at least be confident that there isn't some kind of massive payload lurking in the crack:

C:\Documents and Settings\bjepson\Desktop>fc before.txt after.txt
Comparing files before and AFTER.TXT
***** before.txt
B7 00 FF 92 94 00 00 00 8B 85 B8 FE FF FF 83 B8
3C 01 00 00 00 0F 84 DA 08 00 00 6A 00 6A 00 8B
0D CC 73 B7 00 E8 65 59 CA FF 25 FF 00 00 00 85
***** AFTER.TXT
B7 00 FF 92 94 00 00 00 8B 85 B8 FE FF FF 83 B8
3C 01 00 00 00 0F 84 DA 08 00 00 E9 EE 03 00 00
0D CC 73 B7 00 E8 65 59 CA FF 25 FF 00 00 00 85
*****

I wish I didn't have to do this; I think it would be reasonable to expect game makers to release a patch late in the game's life cycle that eliminates the CD check. I can excuse it for the first few months of a game's life, but after that, how much does it help? IIRC, some of the first-person shooters I've played in recent years have eliminated the CD check by the second or third patch. I think that's a better way to go.

Related:

Retro Gaming Hacks - Link
Gaming Hacks - Link
ICY Hexplorer - Link

March 2, 2007

DOSBox 0.70 Released

The DOSBox crew has released version 0.70, which includes a whole mess of improvements:

Speed up the dynamic cpu core (certain games get much faster).
Add a dynamic fpu on x86 hosts.
Improve the cycle guessing code (and make it default).
Better and more configurable joystick support.
Improve the image and fat drives.
Add nullmodem emulation.
Various win 3.x enhanchments (video/audio/ems/win32s).
Improve CDROM detection and support.
Speed up the screen drawing code.
Add support for different keyboard layouts.
Various fixes to the (C/E/V)GA emulation.
Extend and improve all types of emulated memory. (umb/ems/xms)
Dynamic core should work on Intel Macs.
Various timer related fixes.
Added a few more graphic scalers.

Grab version 0.70 from the DOSBox web site. - [via] Link

Related

Llamatron for DOS (pictured) - Link
Classic DOS Games - Link
Retro Gaming Hacks - Link

February 23, 2007

Play Atari 2600 Games on Your Pocket PC or Smartphone

Stella for Windows CE recently added support for some of the newer Windows Mobile smartphones, including QVGA devices like the T-Mobile Dash. This screencast shows how to set it up. - Link to video download.

Related:

Stella: "A multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator" - Link
Buy the Rainbow Invaders Cartridge - Link
Rainbow Invaders - Link
Retro Gaming Hacks - Link

February 17, 2007

Multiple Dreamcast Games On A Single CD-R

racketboy has posted a tutorial that shows you how to cram more than one Dreamcast game onto a CD:

I've been cleaning up the files on my PC, including a number of useful text files. Among these files is a tutorial that I picked up a while back that let people put multiple Dreamcast games on a single CD-R. This can be pretty helpful if you want to put a few of your favorite games on one disc to reduce disc swapping. Of course, to be fully legal, you should own the original copies of the games in question, but this makes a handy backup solution.

I haven't tried this myself, but it looks very useful for preserving your collection of games. Link

Related:

Retro Gaming Hacks - Link
Rulemaking on Exemptions from Prohibition on Circumvention of Technological Measures that Control Access to Copyrighted Works (see section 2) - Link

January 8, 2007

Play MS-DOS Games on Vista

Error Message

If you try to run an old DOS game on Vista, you'll probably get an error "This system does not support fullscreen mode." Fortunately, this isn't a dead end. Download a copy of DOSBox, the greatest MS-DOS emulator for any platform (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and more), and try running your game under DOSBox. Not only will you get support for old-school graphics like CGA and EGA, you can even run it in a window!

DOSBox on Vista
Sopwith on Vista
Related