A.I. program taught to play NES games.

Now this is impressive! This gentleman (Tom Murphy) has created a program that actually learns how to play classic Nintendo games.

The video itself is pretty amazing and well worth watching all the way through to get an understanding of how the program works. However, if you just want to jump right in to see the results, fast forward to around the 6:10 mark.

Are we seeing the beginning of Skynet? First it learns how to play Space Invaders and then think’s ‘woo, I wonder if I can get a higher score shooting humans?’……..and so it begins

SNES arcade stick

I spotted this on eBay and thought, damn that’s ugly…yet so intriguing I thought might place a bid.

It’s like some sort of joystick case is trying to eat a SNES gamepad.

My Gaming Week #8

Last weekend I was shifting, sorting and dusting down a few older computers, consoles and  games and had started to amass a collection tapes, discs and cartridges on my ‘to play’ pile. Here’s a few that’s been fun to play this week.

First up, is a Megadrive conversion of an arcade game that was a sequel to a huge favourite of mine -phew!

Rolling Thunder 2 – Sega Megadrive (1991).

RT2 Japanese cover as my European cover is just. quite frankly, awful!

The first time I played  Rolling Thunder 2 (and Rolling Thunder 3 on the MD) I thought, meh…it’s not a patch on the original and it wasn’t long before it was shelved. Playing it again this week and after a few sessions on the original courtesy of Mame and am starting to warm to it a little more. It’s still an average run and gun type game, but it does look very nice and still contains elements of the original game mechanics like the make or break jump from lower to upper platform (or vice versa), the limited gun ammo, the high difficulty and those frantic moments were you just make it out alive.

The Megadrive version adds a few extra anime style cut scenes and a few extra levels compared to the arcade version. It certainly is a nicely polished game.

So, it appears that the Geldra organisation is up to no good again and decided to take out earth’s orbiting satellites. As agent Albatross (or additional agent Liela is you wish) of Special Task Force – Rolling Thunder, it’s up to you to track him down and give him what for. To Miami Airport it is then!

The original Rolling Thunder arcade game was said to have been set around the 1960′s but it appears that the sequel is quite a few years into the future judging by some of the visuals.

Forget the mission, I want to drive this truck!

I’ve been running, jumping and shooting my way through this game all week but I can still only reach  level 3. Thankfully there’s a handy password system so at least  I don’t have to restart from the beginning again, and with any luck will make it to the end of the game soon wipe the smile off his greenish himself.

Now for something less challenging!

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Contra (or Gryzor over here…or Probotector) – NES (1988)

Less challenging? Contra is certainly not.   I’ve always wanted to  get into  Contra but could never really got very far past the first level. Being an essential NES game I was eager  to seek out this for my  collection many moons ago, but on playing it,it was quickly boxed and has rarely comes out these days.

However, this week I was feeling lucky…..how did it do? Well, I’ve seen this screen so many times and nothing much past it

So, I was about to shelve it again when I thought….what the heck, lets cheat to buggery and you know what, with the Konami code entered to give you a  whopping 30 lives, it really make gives you chance to try different things out and learn a few attack patterns, . It’s still hard as nails and even with this many lives you still have a hefty challenge on yout hands but one that is almost reachable….who am I kidding, I suck at Contra

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Hunchback – Commodore 64 – (1983)

Hunchback, a real classic on any platform, be it the C64, BBC Micro, Amstrad, Speccy or even Oric-1, it’s a great game and thirty years on I’m still playing it.

Move over Pitfall Harry, it’s Quazzy’s turn. Run from left to right  jumping  and swinging your way to the bells and on to rescuing said damsel in distress (alleged). Don’t hang about for too long though as there’s a Knight on your tail who after the side order of hunch rump…..ew!

One of the fifteen odd screens you’ll encounter. This one is an easy one , jump over the guards at the right moment or  feel the pointy end up your tights. Later on this level is repeated often but adds flaming cannon balls and arrows to the mix.  

Get your timing right and swing to the other side, get it wrong and it’s down to your doom. Top tip, I find that if you jump when the rope is around about the 7 0′clock position, you should make it o.k.  If not, there’s always the Konami code

…and if you want something a little more modern, how about this remake? Are those guards from an Asterix game?

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This next one isn’t a game of sorts but bags of fun for Lego fans, old and new.

Lego Digital Designer - http://ldd.lego.com/

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the software (Mac/Windows/PowerPC) you can then use the simple editor to build virtual Lego models just like you used to do as a kid. There’s 100′s of bricks to choose from  in all manner of o colours and sizes  including many from the classic  Lego era.

But that’s not half the fun, having spent a few minutes browsing around the forums, it appears that there’s a whole community based around recreating many of the classic Lego models. I found many old favourites that you can import into the application or build using digital scans from the original model instructions.

 It was my birthday yesterday and quite fitting to find the model below, which was a birthday gift from a late aunt I received so many many years ago.

6681 – Police Van

I remember this model being so cool for many reasons. Firstly, all Police sets were cool, secondly, it had many moving doors including a hinged cockpit roof. Thirdly, this was one of the first models to have those uber-cool Police walkie talkies and finally, look at those large off road tyres…you can imaging how many other vehicles I created used these.

..and here’s the virtual model…just trying to figure out the correct tyres.

You can also place a model in a 3D environment allowing you to pan and zoom around at leisure. Here’s another of the vintage space sets that I had back in the day.

918 – Space Transport

It’s missing a few details but oh does this bring back memories! It’s not as impressive as it’s bigger brother with the opening cargo bay/lunar buggy but believe me, this Space Transport did some mileage. The hinge tool can be used to manipulate the two hinge bricks, so for example on this model, I can raise the cockpit roof..Good job, the pilot had his helmet on.

What model I’d love to find (or digitally build myself) is the best Lego Space set I ever owned.

6970 – Beta 1 Command Base.

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Back to gaming and this weeks lunch time gaming has been an online version of a classic…with an unexpected twist.

Final Fight – Web/Flash - http://toork.com/classicgames/final-fight/play2

You only get to play as Guy, but who cares, it’s Final Fight and you get to smack Mad Gear and his gang around online.

Right here we g….wait a minute, you lot aren’t familiar, are you new recruits?

I was expecting the odd metal pipe or sword to use as a weapon but look what I found!…this is embarrassing, I’m a hardened Street Fighter!

Aha, the golden doors, time to fight Thrasher…..wait one gawdamn minute, what’s going on here? What are you doing here Ken…oh you do do you, well bring it on then.

Hmm, this is not a part of Metro City that I know…someone forgot to mow everything? Eek, mini raptor and I’m pretty sure that not Roxy or Two-P that’s sneaking up on me.

Driving around in a Cadillac is so much better than the dingy tube.  Woo, what’s the gun for?’

Eek!

It’s a strange game all right, cool, but bizarre. They should call it Final Street Fight Cadillacs and Dungeons.

Happy Gaming….and and btw, Albatross is one cool name.

My gaming Week #5

Another retro gaming week flies by. Here’s what I’ve been up to.

Gyruss – Atari 2600 (1980)

Usually, my go to system for a spot of Gyruss (other than the original/Mame version) is the conversion written for the Commodore C64, but this week, thanks to a bundle of eBay VCS carts (The Harmony cartridge is great, but I do love my retro box art!) , I’ve be enjoying the simple delights of the Parker Brothers Atari 2600 release. Basic it might look, but for a 2600 game it’s surprisingly nippy and has one of the best musical scores I’ve ever heard on the VCS.

In Gryuss, you move your ship through 360 degrees around the perimeter of the screen and blast away at the enemy ships fanning out from either the centre of the screen or from the left or right – Think Galaxians wrapped around a tube.

I think that grey blob is me…honestly it looks better when it’s in motion

Intense tube blasting calls for an intense soundtrack and compared to other conversions, Parker Brother have cranked up the tempo on the 2600 with Bach’s signature tune.

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I’ve also been checking out the Gyruss on another system too and it’s a version I’ve not actually played until this week.

Gryuss – Nintendo NES (1988)

Compared to the Atari 2600 this one certainly looks a stunner with its colourful and chunky Konami threads. The NES version also adds a few new elements not found in the arcade original including boss attack rounds, a new super weapon and a remix of the original soundtrack. It’s a cracking version of Gryuss all right, even if somewhat on the easy side. However, I’ve only scratched the first few planets so lets see if it has the same lasting appeal of the original.

 

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Another early game from Jeff Minters and one you’d usually see playing on my Vic-20 or C64 but this time around, I found the crisp visuals on the ZX Spectrum version simply too good to miss.

Voidrunner – ZX Spectrum (1987)

I found this version of Voidrunner purely by accident really as I was messing around with iXpectrum, the ZX Spectrum emulator on my iPad and needing an example game to play around. Because I’d been dipping in and out of Jeff Minters Llamasoft website recently (I’m keeping an eye out for more news on the soon to be released follow up to Goat Up) I found myself at the software library area where Jeff has many of his early games available as free downloads.

 

Voidrunner is a arcade shooter that shares similarities with Gridrunner and Matrix (which itself take influence from the the arcade game Centipede). The game contains a centipede like trail that makes its way down from the top of the screen towards you at the bottom. As you fire on it, the centipede breaksinto smaller pieces which travel in different direction making the whole task of destroying it ever more difficult. To make life even more difficult, there’s a horizontal laser beam that cuts down from the top of the screen to destroys you if your ship happens to cross it’s path.

It’s been fun to play on my iPad but I’ll be digging out one of my Speccys soon as this one deserves a proper joystick.

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Lunch break gaming this week has been so absorbing at times with this next game that I’ve actually forgot to stop and eat my lunch.

Zombotron – PC/web

http://armorgames.com/play/12000/zombotron

Guns, Zombies, Robots, ragdoll physics and unscripted moments of sheer awesomeness, you can’t help but have fun with this one.

‘Welcome to the planet «Zombotron», inhabited by human-mutants or just stupid zombies. Nobody knows where they come from and what they eat. But we know one thing – they are ready to destroy everything that moves.’

You control our hero via W,A,S,D with mouse for aim and mouse button for shooting, plus the E key for inventory. I’m still a Q,A,O,P type of chap but as I play more and more of these web games I’m getting kinda used to them bit by bit…I just wished more web games would have redefinable keys!

 

The aim of the game is simple to survive the ten levels and get from the start to the finish. Along the way you’ll need to solve a handful of puzzles as well as take out a fair share of squishy zombies and not so squishy robotic defense systems. Kills and opening treasure chests will reward with gold coins which can be used to purchase weapons, ammo, medkits and armour.

You start off with a puny pistol, but it’s not long before your packing shotgun, assault rifle, grenade launcher and rail gun. Ammo might seem a bit stingy at first but once you reach some of the later levels ammo conservation doesn’t become such a problem. Besides, although it’s fun to simply blast everything in sight, each level is littered with items that you can use (or not) as make shift weapon or trap. For example, push a crate from above on to the heads of an unsuspecting zombie, roll an explosive filled barrel down a slope mowing everything down in its path or shoot it in mid path at the right moment to cause maximum, and gory, damage. Alternatively sit back and watch zombie vs robot duke it leaving you to pick off any survivors.

There are also bonus missions to complete too – although not necessary to complete a level, including collecting certain things or doing certain actions. For example complete a level using minimal gun ammo.

I’ve had (and still am) having so much fun with Zombotron and now that i’ve completed it i’m hungry for more….woo, sequels!

Here’s the trailer.

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I round this week up with a pocket collection of classic Atari arcade games that have been given a new paint job.

Atari Classic Collection – Nintendo DS

This DS cart comprises of some pretty accurate arcade ports -

Centipede

Lunar Lander

Gravitar

Pong

Breakout

Missile Command

Warlords

Asteroids

Dragster

Tempest

Each game has also been made to take advantage of the DS touchscreen and stylus control which apart from Missile Command/Breakout pretty much sucks – Tempest with a stylus is just plain awful! However, you an still use the D-Pad and physical buttons which work perfectly (apart from Missile Command) and having a pocket version of Gravitar, Lunar Lander and Asteroids is why I brought the cart and much better than say Mame on my iPhone.

But thats not all. The thing I like most about this collection compared to other Atari compilations is the remixed graphic mode for each game.

Asteroids

Gravitar

Breakout…oh wait, that looks the same.

Happy gaming!

My Gaming Week #2

Heavy Snow has been causing so much chaos on the road this week especially during the commute to and from work – nearly two and a hours stuck on the M1 one day So with free time a little on the short side, so has my game time for week #2.

One game that I have started to re-re-re-re-visit (yup, everyone has played this one) is Super Mario World on the SNES.

SMW is pure fun whether you’ve got five hours or just five minutes to kill and has been the perfect game companion this week. I was spurred on to take another look at this beginning of the week  after finding a free web based SNES emulator on the Google Chrome Web Store – thinking it would save me time getting my Snes out of storage and setting it up. Hmm, I can’t seem to locate the URL any more so i guessing Nintendo’s lawyers had a word? Any-ho, there was a whole collection of Mario based games but to be quite honest the emulator sucked and ran so slowly that SMW was practically unplayable.

So, my SNES came out after all  and I’ve been dipping in and out of it all week.

I was doing great and racking up quite a collection of lives on the the early stages. but things have started to heat up in the Vanilla Dome. Dome 3 and 4 has really took some beating and am currently fighting with my controller on Lemmy’s castle.

No doubt SMW will see we well into next week and beyond. I’ve only ever completed it once and compared to say SMB3 it’s not as tough…..still, I must be rusty as it’s certainly giving we a whippin this time around.

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Lunch break gaming has been well catered for this week with this a rather simple yet most excellent Flash based, dual stick shooter – Retro Assault - http://www.kongregate.com/games/Zyzic/retro-assault

Controls – check, know thy enemy – check, got my ‘bits’ wallet ready – check. Lets begin.

It all starts off reasonably slow until Wave four when those pesky blue arrow shaped thingiess hone in on your position. Run, shoot and survive until the orange timer bar at the bottom of the screen is depleted.

Level over, time to spend those ‘bits’ on upgrade’s you’ll need em!

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During the week, my mate Max released a beta demo of Cosmic Ark for the Commodore 64. It’s a conversation of the Atari 2600 game by Imagic and is coming along quite nicely and is just as addictive as the original.

There’s still a few bugs to be ironed out but if you fancy a go, you can download the release at CSDB.

http://csdb.dk/release/?id=114953

 

 

Pilot your drone ship and rescue the inhabitants with your tractor beam. Don’t stray into the path of the defence towers on the left and right as your mission will be very short lived.

 

 

Return to the mothership and repel those planet destroying asteroids.

 

Cosmic Ark, might look a little basic, but at it core is damn fine arcade game. Being a  friend of the author makes it that little bit more special and I’m sure that high score competitions will be played out at many RCM gaming days to come.

Just for fun I created a mock cartridge for Cosmic Ark for Max in Photoshop using a picture of my C64 Simons Basic cartridge and the box art from the Atari 2600 game. I’ve colour matched the box art to the cart , embossed the layer and merged using blur, clone, smudge tools. Pretty crap I know but was fun to do all the same.

Hopefully, more game time next week!

Retro controller for Android phone.

It looks kinda ugly, but what a great idea for a retro controller for playing emu’s on your phone.

There’s plenty of project photo’s on Instructables including a looksee inside the case.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Game-Boy-Android-Gamepad/

RCM Members gaming weekend.

Just got back from another damn fine weekend of retro gaming goodness at the Retro Computer Museum.

Despite a nip in the air, +40 classic computers, consoles, one projector and a collection of eager gamers was all that was needed to raise the temps and to get everyone enjoying themselves. There was a couple of new faces this time around which is always nice to see as well as the ‘usual suspects’ for guaranteed laughs and fun.

I’ve not taken a great deal of photos this time around as I was rather enjoying quite a bit of gaming on the Saturday including copious amounts of Soul Caliber on the Dreamcast. Here’s a handful of the quick snaps I made in between bouts.

This weekend was a chance to take a good look at some of RCM’s new toys like this Memotech MTX 512 complete with Rememorizer addon board which provides additional VGA output, SD card storage and 512k of extra RAM. With this much tech, I’m pretty sure our MTX 512 can now recreate our own Kelly LeBrock

The ZXpand on the ZX81 still continues to impress and at one point we had one of the old ’81′s running at 20mhz! The game ‘Mayhem’ still continues to be an event favourite and high score sessions to beat Stu’s 72 points where attempted. I think Soph came closest with 60 odd points.

JT was happy to test fit one of his SwinSID C64 SID chip replacements into one of RCM’s breadbins and take it for a test drive. Big thanks for letting me have one of these puppies myself. It’s currently sat in my C64 next to me playing a bumper crop of High Score Ballads from CSDB . More on the SwinSID later on.

I also managed to pick up another homemade SD2IEC for my Commodores as my own has developed a bit of a fault. Hopefully the chip will be of use to you JT?

Mike brought along his Android based MK808 mini computer which is so small it makes the Raspberry Pi look huge…and to think, something that small can run pretty much all console emulators (even PSX) full screen in hi def! XBMC runs beutifully on it as well as PC games like GTA3. Add to that all those lovely Google apps and for around £45, i’m highly tempted to get one of these myself. I’ll be researching a bit more on the Mk808 these coming days as its a real tinker’ers tech toy!

What was also impressive was Sophie’s new Atari Mega STE. Some of the demo’s running on this boxy monster were veeeery impressive. This was the first time I’ve seen a Mega STE before and despite it looking a bit ugly, was quite an impressive piece of kit it was. Soph was telling me it’s one of those rare items that pop up from time to time and she’d managed to locate this faulty unit on eBay in Germany which was being sold for next to nothing as it was faulty. Having won the item, said fault turned out to be very was minor and is all in working condition again. Top marks Soph!

Sunday was all about relaxed, chillin and having a natter and I spent a while trying out a someones Android tablet – one of those very impressive – now it’s a netbook, now it’s a tablet Asus Transformers thingymebobs. We wanted to see if we could get Mame and other emulators working with my iCade. After detecting via Bluetooth and pairing successfully we tried a few emulators but couldn’t get it to work . Even mame4droid, with native icade support wouldn’t work. In the end, we downloaded a simple joystick app, mapped the controls of the iCade as keyboard inputs and used this configuration to set the control type for each emulator. This time it worked, and really well too. In fact, just as well as on the iPad with no lag or connection issues after that initial hiccup. With Christmas coming, and if you’re an Android owning retro gamer. Maybe think about adding one to your list to Santa?

Messing around with the iCade, messing around with the MSX.

Amongst the games played this weekend, there was a couple that seemed to stand out for me so i’ve added them to my list further exploration.

More digital pinball courtesy of ‘Ruiner’ on the Atari Jag. I’m still tempted to get a Jag now, even if it’s just for this one game.

Moon Cresta on the Dragon 64 (via multicart). Suprisingly a very faithful port of the arcade original…on a Dragon!

Strider II – Sega Master – I’ve not played this one before and was instantly hooked. Will be tracking down my own copy of this fun little run and gun sequel.

Soviet Strike – Playstation. I haven’t really played any of the ‘Strike’ games since Desert Strike on the Sega Megadrive but this 3d-ish incarnation on the Playstation was actually rather fun.

More Soul Caliber but not before resting ones aching wrists. Thanks to Levs for bringing the arcade sticks in, much better than standard controllers. Am now on a mission to find myself one!

Even better connected to the projector and the lights off.

All in all a rather splendid weekend of gaming with friends new and old. That pretty much wraps it up for gaming events this year and it was nice to have the last of 2012 finished off at home at the retro computer museum.

Here’s to more next year.

Rise of the Robot, a hidden gem?

Surely not? Rise of the Robots on any platform was a monumental of bag of rusty scanners and if you parted cash for it back in the day, then like myself, its probably something you’d like to keep quiet about…and certainly not to admit it to the intern….dammit!

Today, the only thing that Rise of the Robots is any use for is as a booby prize for game competition s (still enjoying your copy Mike?) and it’s still interesting to look back at the classic gaming magazines of the day and reread some of the hyperbole that seemed to go on for ages and ages until the darn thing was finally released.

C&VG online periodically look back at classic issues of their own printed C&VG magazine and it was their latest article that prompted further investigation as it seems that the Nintendo SNES version of ‘Super Rusty Spanners’ received a whopping 91% when reviewed.

Hidden gaming gem or bribe?

You can find the article here

Incidentally, this issue also has a feature about the proposed 32X-like addon for the SNES, which of course never materialised,and a look at some of the games released around this time. Check out some of the prices for early SNES/Megadrive cartridges…where did we ever find the money!

Back to Rise of the Robots, I’m curious about this SNES version and as i’ve never played it before thought i’d at least check it out (with one hand on the power switch as we don’t want to go through all of that trauma again).

Yep, it’s bad…very bad…in fact, I don’t want to talk about it

Retro Gaming Weekend at Derby – Saturday

Phew, a very looooong day today but one that has seen many, many laughs and a whole bunch of retro gaming goodness with friends old and new.

A cold, dark, wet and very  early start for the RCM admins as we needed to meet up at HQ early enough to pack up around 30 computers/consoles, associated games, attachments and monitors, transport them all to the event in Derbyshire and have anything set up  before the doors opened at 10am.

We must be getting good at this after all these years as we soon had everything organised, loaded up and ready to roll within record time. Who says bloke’s aren’t organised!….o.k, I got slightly lost on the way to the venue because I’d forgotten the postcode

We were met on arrival by our hosts Chris Snowden & Shaun Bebbington and got stuck into to setting up the three rooms with everyone’s favourite gaming gear.

Yet another TV for the pile Jim.

 

In this room we had the MB Vectrex, C64, ZX81, Atari 2600, PC Engine, Amiga 1200, Commodore 64GS, Atari 800, Nintendo Gamecube…

…and not forgetting the VIC-20

Into one of the areas linking the next room we had the BBC Master, Nintendo N64 and a Sega Megadrive/Sega CD setup and Karls Everdrive SD cart playing a rather funky looking port of Angry Birds…on a Megadrive!

I didn’t get chance to take a good look at this today but will certainly be giving it a try when I’m back there tomorrow.

The next room housed an Xbox 360, Nintendo Virtual Boy (was being a bit stubborn at the beginning due to a loose mains cable but we managed to get it going in the end), various  hand held electronic games, SNES, NES, Sony PSX, Atari Jaguar and Chris’ iCade with Mame and various emus.

Finally, we had one of the smaller rooms housing a Sega Dreamcast, PS2 with twin steering wheel setup (I rather enjoyed a spot of 2-up rally action with Jim this afternoon), Amstrad CPC 664 and a Sega Master System.

There was also, various Commodore C16/Plus 4 hardware set up from Chris  humongous collection. All in all i think that there was something here for everyone and so with the doors opened and a few eager retro gamers ready to get going, we had a coffee and got cracking.

As the event was being held on the outskirts of Derby City centre and only a stones throw away from where Core Design had their   office, I thought ‘When in Rome’, I’d re-play some of the games they produced including Lara Croft – Tomb Raider, Chuck Rock and the AGA-Tastic Banshee. The latter is  a game I didn’t really play a great deal when it first came out but had since rediscovered it a few years again. It’s certainly one of the finest looking Schmups on the Amiga.

 

A good start to the day

I don’t stand a chance of getting anywhere remotely close to the type of scores that Jackie was racking up on Drop Zone on the Atari.  A real pro in action! Note the cartridge in the the C64GS…it’s a  port of the classic C16 version of Kickstart.

Max was kind enough to show me his (wip) port of Cosmic Ark to the C64. Damn well addictive, can’t wait to see the finished results.

Well, my score on Mayhem on the ZX81 is improving, but my 51 is no match for Stu’s 65. The challenge has been set for tomorrow

After lunch and getting to know a few other folk that arrived this morning and then the now obligatory Soul Caliber tournament  on the Sega Dreamcast. I was also looking at some of the emulators running on the DC, and noted the how well they ran from CD and in particular with VGA box, how crisp they looked. Mental note to investigate further on my own setup.

Checking out some homebrew games for sale. Mmm Commodore games!

Andy sampling a bit of Commodore Plus/4 homebrew gaming with Adventures In Time

Impressive (but unfortunately not complete) this next game plays and looks very similar to Amalyte on the C64 and has an amazing  soundtrack thanks to the use of the SID chip addon cart that Chris has for his Plus/4. I forget the name of the game (X3no, Xe3o?) so I’ll take another look tomorrow and capture some footage.

One system that I don’t really play a lot on is the Atari Jaguar. Apart from the odd game of Tempest, I rarely sit down to explore some of it’s other titles and RCM has got quite a few so I thought I’d take a look at some of them this afternoon. I was certainly impressed by Power Drive Rally, Cybermorph and the conversion of Syndicate so that’s another note to take a closer look into the Jag.

More homebrew and I spotted a few new cartridges for the C64/C64GS including one of my favourites, the truly bonkers –  Quod Init Exit. <see previos blog post - http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/c64-homebrew-quod-init-exit/

That pretty much wraps it up for day one. As always, bags of fun when the RCM chaps get together and nice to meet and chat with a  few new people. Bring on day two!

Oh and one last thing..Beam Rider on the ZX81 – That little black box continues to surprise.

Awesome-ness!

Nintendo ‘Pinball’ fans

Following on from my brief look at Pinball on the NES, I came across these fun, fan based images I wanted to share.

Here’s artist Jordan Baugher recreation of what Nintendo’s Pinball might have looked if created as a proper pinball table.

http://peachycomics.com/graphicdesign.html

This next image is rather cool and appears to a recreation of Nintendo Pinball using Visual Pinball/PinMame.

Now that really would be cool to play around with, especially with descent pinball physics. Sadly I can find no working link to a download this table so maybe you’ll have better luck?

Want a new case for your loose NES Pinball cartridge? How about treating it to a funky archive box?

http://www.retrogamecases.com/shop/nintendo/pinball/

…or I guess, Photoshop and create your own

Pinball – Nintendo NES

I’ve been playing quite a lot of modern digital Pinball just lately either via Visual Pinball/PinMame on my PC, or Pinball Arcade on my iPad (both Blackhole and Bride of Pinbot tables are getting plenty of game time this past week!) but I thought I’d go right back and take a look at a classic pinball cart for the NES.

Simply called ‘Pinball’, it’s one of those early NES 1983/5 launch titles that feature Nintendo’s signature pixel art covers on both the box and cartridge – although from the looks of it you’d probably be confused into thinking that this was some sort of Mario platformer or Breakout clone.

There is only one table in Pinball which is split into two sections and the screen flips between the two depending on where your ball is. Both sections have flippers but loosing the ball in the top half of the table means that it travels down to the bottom half of the table rather than being lost. Obviously, loosing the ball in the bottom half is not good so keep those flipper fingers poised.

You control the left flipper with the d-pad and the right flipper with button A. You’d think that this layout might sound a bit weird but it works really well having both flipper controls mapped to the outermost controls on the NES controller.

Here’s a look at the the top half of the table -

There’s plenty to aim for here and its fun to discover all of the bonuses as you play. For example, having the ball bounce repeatedly on the barrier above the three penguins will activate a temporary stop plug that will prevent the ball from being lost between the flippers.

For a top score, try to aim for the 1000 point lane at the very top of the table.

Here’s the lower half of the table.

Again, plenty to shoot for including the targets on the left that will open a portal on the right (giving access to the top table again), flipping over the five playing cards or access to the Mario bonus area by hitting the red target on the right.

Bonus stage.

Yup, Mario was bound to make an appearance somewhere as he always does in these early games. In Pinball, you move our favourite plumber left and right and bounce the ball off the girder he is carrying. Aim for the tiles at the top of the screen to free our heroine from Donkey Kong…Pauline. Once she’s free and drops down, aim to catch her on top of your girder (nice soft landing!) and guide her to the exit to receive a mega bonus.

Ball physics isn’t exactly realistic in Pinball and in mode ‘A’ (slow) the pinball moves almost as if it’s full of hot air than metal. I recommend game mode ‘B’ to speed it up a bit!

There’s also a 2-up mode as well, in the even you fancy a mini compo with a friend. My high score at the moment is 48,450.

Pinball looks kinda basic even for a game as old as this one, but its lone table is a rich with a variety of features and shooting bonuses that sets it apart from many others pinball games of the era. Today its a very enjoyable game of pinball and being an early title, a cart that surely must belong in your NES collection.

Handheld Raspberry Pi console projects.

Two veeeery nice Raspberry Pi handheld console projects. Inspiring stuff indeed!

Raspberry Pi – Atari Lynx

Raspberry Pi – Nintendo Gameboy

I thought about doing something like myself with an old Gameboy case I have. Nothing as exciting or technical as this though, I was just going to use it to house an external 2.5″ harddrive.

 

 

 

Nintendo Gameboy cart art.

Hehe, checkout these fun Gameboy cartridge labels on the designer blog 3liter

Can you image how cool these would be if they was real? Gimme Nintendo Soundcloud!

Donkey Kong retrospective.

Games TM online have produced a fantastic two part feature which looks back at all of the Donkey Kong games throughout the past 30 years.

Part 1

http://www.gamestm.co.uk/features/a-retro-guide-to-donkey-kong-part-i/

Part 2

http://www.gamestm.co.uk/features/a-retro-guide-to-donkey-kong-part-ii/

Slightly off track here but this is why I love my iPad so much for reading articles like this. Click on the URL above and you get something like this -

It’s Ok, but it’s full of distracting advertisement screen junk. If I was viewing this on a desktop PC, I’d have an Adblock browser plugin filter out all of the clutter.

With one click of the handy ‘reader’ function on the iPad, the page is instantly turned into this -

Super Mario Bros. Crossover 2.0

During lunchtime I happened to come across this brilliant Flash/browser based game called Super Mario Bros. Crossover 2.0.

Super Mario Crossover is a fan made game that reproduces the levels of classic Super Mario Bros. with a new twist that gives you the options of playing the game with different characters (and respective special abilities) from a whole host of other classic Nintendo games.

How about blasting away those Goombas with Shamus/Metroid or that bloke from Contra? Maybe showing them the pointy end of Links sword or a power blast them in the face using Megaman’s cannon?

The game has many options to change the level graphics to mimic those from from the NES, Gameboy, Gameboy colour and SNES and you can also randomise pretty much everything so that graphics and your character changes per level.

It really is superb stuff indeed and a new twist on our familiar classic platformer. Let’s hope Nintendo doesn’t take offence.

http://www.explodingrabbit.com/games/super-mario-bros-crossover