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tapedeck

By tapedeck
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Happenstance
Happenstance

Ok then fine, as none of you were kind enough to take my bait and worry for me I'll post the real photos now that I'm home!

Hero-of-Time
Hero-of-Time

This arrived this morning. Sorry for the shoddy pics (I really need a better phone  ) but I figured it gives you a good idea about the contents. I've been after it f

S.C.G
S.C.G

I messaged Adam a couple of weeks ago, around the time of his birthday, though I haven't had a reply yet as I don't think he has been on at all since the end of April. @Julius was asking after hi

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Happenstance Contributor

Happenstance

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Quite happy with how my collection is starting to fill out now. Getting quite a few of the important games on my list.

This weekend I've won:

NBA Jam
Mortal Kombat II
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
TMNT Turtles in Time

Last one I'm bidding on for this weekend is Donkey Kong Country. I think after that I may take a break until January at least. We'll see if anything big comes up or not though.

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Hero-of-Time

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On December 8, 2018 at 9:47 AM, Happenstance said:

I used to do stuff like that. Buy a shit load of games, play about 15 minutes of each, feel overwhelmed and then never go back to any of them. Hope you do a better job!

 

16 minutes ago, Happenstance said:

Quite happy with how my collection is starting to fill out now. Getting quite a few of the important games on my list.

This weekend I've won:

NBA Jam
Mortal Kombat II
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
TMNT Turtles in Time

Last one I'm bidding on for this weekend is Donkey Kong Country. I think after that I may take a break until January at least. We'll see if anything big comes up or not though.

Good luck playing them all! :D 

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S.C.G Explorer

S.C.G

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I just wanted to say that, while clearing out stuff I found a boxed SNES which had a pack in game taped across the front of the box that I'd had for years and not played.

That game is called Vortex... and it turns out that it's an Argonaut developed game in association with Electro Brain and Sony Electronic Publishing.

It came out in 1994, inbetween Star Fox and Stunt Race FX... I wouldn't say it's the best game from a gameplay perspective, but on a technical level... wow.

It uses the Super FX chip and it has Dolby Pro Logic on the cart... I mean, just the title music playing on my Super NT through my surround sound blew me away.

Very ambitious for its time, you control a transforming robot mech effectively, so you can have an upright mech, rover type vehicle or a jet, all at the press of a button.

It's just really impressive for what it is and I'm glad that I have it there for if I choose to play it some more at some point despite its fiddly controls and difficulty.

Anyway, you can get it for around £10 - £15 boxed... at the moment, if you see it for that price or cheaper, I would advise picking it up if only for it being a technical marvel.

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Hero-of-Time

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@S.C.G I use that SNES game a lot at work. When I first started the job ( 6 years ago now ) I was tasked with finding an interesting PCB that we could X-Ray and use as a show piece. I wanted to use a game cart and ended up buying Vortex off eBay, mainly because it had the Super FX chip on the board and I thought it would be interesting. To this day we still use it when we get schools visiting the lab. Lots of the kids find it fascinating that the PCB I show them ( it's stripped away from the cart ) is in fact an old Nintendo game.

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S.C.G

Posted
Posted
31 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

@S.C.G I use that SNES game a lot at work. When I first started the job ( 6 years ago now ) I was tasked with finding an interesting PCB that we could X-Ray and use as a show piece. I wanted to use a game cart and ended up buying Vortex off eBay, mainly because it had the Super FX chip on the board and I thought it would be interesting. To this day we still use it when we get schools visiting the lab. Lots of the kids find it fascinating that the PCB I show them ( it's stripped away from the cart ) is in fact an old Nintendo game.

That's pretty cool, I had no idea. :D

I'm glad to hear that the game lives on at least in terms of what it achieved technically, I just did a quick search for the PCB and it's definitely impressive. :)

It is pretty amazing to think that just on Nintendo platforms, we've gone from big cartridges (NES,SNES,N64) to various optical media (GC,Wii,WiiU) and now we're onto game cards really from DS, to 3DS and now the Switch being the natural evolution of that, the card size may be limited but I think the compression techniques used especially by Nintendo is the new feat of technical wizardry (even though it has been around for years and just refined) equivelant of all the special chips that we used to get inside these cartridges.

I definitely think it's important to keep knowledge of all these things alive, so it's great to hear that you're showing some of the kids how games used to be. :peace:

Often if I find the subject turning to games in conversation at work, I find myself saying "I miss the old days when you'd just get a game on a cartridge and it just worked" :grin:

For all the advancements, at least in the retro scene, it feels like everything is coming almost full circle with the FPGA technology used in the Super NT and upcoming Mega SG.

It's a great time to be a gamer. :smile:

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Dcubed Enthusiast

Dcubed

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Posted (edited)
6 hours ago, S.C.G said:

I just wanted to say that, while clearing out stuff I found a boxed SNES which had a pack in game taped across the front of the box that I'd had for years and not played.

That game is called Vortex... and it turns out that it's an Argonaut developed game in association with Electro Brain and Sony Electronic Publishing.

It came out in 1994, inbetween Star Fox and Stunt Race FX... I wouldn't say it's the best game from a gameplay perspective, but on a technical level... wow.

It uses the Super FX chip and it has Dolby Pro Logic on the cart... I mean, just the title music playing on my Super NT through my surround sound blew me away.

Very ambitious for its time, you control a transforming robot mech effectively, so you can have an upright mech, rover type vehicle or a jet, all at the press of a button.

It's just really impressive for what it is and I'm glad that I have it there for if I choose to play it some more at some point despite its fiddly controls and difficulty.

Anyway, you can get it for around £10 - £15 boxed... at the moment, if you see it for that price or cheaper, I would advise picking it up if only for it being a technical marvel.

Vortex is a really interesting little game.  You can clearly see how a lot of the tech would eventually find its way into Starfox 2 (especially with the transforming mech/Arwing!).. Even more interesting when you consider that Starfox 2's engine would end up becoming the basis for both Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time (and of course every subsequent Nintendo EAD/EPD release from there).

 

BTW, I still need to get myself a Super NT and a Mega SG... And the N64 version of RE2! Always wanted to try it! It's such a bonkers mad port!

 

6 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

@S.C.G I use that SNES game a lot at work. When I first started the job ( 6 years ago now ) I was tasked with finding an interesting PCB that we could X-Ray and use as a show piece. I wanted to use a game cart and ended up buying Vortex off eBay, mainly because it had the Super FX chip on the board and I thought it would be interesting. To this day we still use it when we get schools visiting the lab. Lots of the kids find it fascinating that the PCB I show them ( it's stripped away from the cart ) is in fact an old Nintendo game.

That's super cool! Do you guys have any stripped down game consoles by any chance? I bet that the kids would love to see a stripped down Game Boy, or a stripped down Sega Saturn with its monstrous architecture and board layout! :D 

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Hero-of-Time

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2 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

 

That's super cool! Do you guys have any stripped down game consoles by any chance? I bet that the kids would love to see a stripped down Game Boy, or a stripped down Sega Saturn with its monstrous architecture and board layout! :D 

Nah. However, last year we had a high magnification X-Ray machine in the lab that was originally used for inspecting PCBs. I wanted to get a GameCube off of eBay and stick it in to see if I could find the hidden Dolphin logo. Sadly, I never got around to doinh it and the machine was no longer any use to us, so we sent it back. 

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7 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Vortex is a really interesting little game.  You can clearly see how a lot of the tech would eventually find its way into Starfox 2 (especially with the transforming mech/Arwing!).. Even more interesting when you consider that Starfox 2's engine would end up becoming the basis for both Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time (and of course every subsequent Nintendo EAD/EPD release from there).

BTW, I still need to get myself a Super NT and a Mega SG... And the N64 version of RE2! Always wanted to try it! It's such a bonkers mad port!

It's such a standout technically impressive title isn't it? I can't believe that I didn't even try the game cartridge until now but in a way I'm glad I waited as it's great on my current setup. :)

Have you played the game much at all? I found it a bit tricky to get to grips with the controls but I could see how the game could be fun once you get used to how it plays.

Yes, It certainly sounds like it helped to leave quite the lasting legacy, especially bridging the gap between SNES 3D and N64 3D graphics.

I can say that the Analogue Super NT is one of the best purchases I've made this year and I don't regret putting down a pre-order for the Mega SG at the same time.

Though largely thanks to that, those two consoles and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate are my last purchases of the year and I'll be cutting back on the game purchases now.

Heck, I only lucked into getting Resident Evil 2 when I did thanks to my brother getting the game cheap and then offering it to me for a trade which was more than fair.

I can definitely say that I have most of the games that I want now, so it's about time that I put in the effort and played some of them while I can. :peace:

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Dcubed

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54 minutes ago, S.C.G said:

It's such a standout technically impressive title isn't it? I can't believe that I didn't even try the game cartridge until now but in a way I'm glad I waited as it's great on my current setup. :)

Have you played the game much at all? I found it a bit tricky to get to grips with the controls but I could see how the game could be fun once you get used to how it plays.

Nah, I've never played it, or owned it.  I just know a little about it.

 

Though if I do get a Super NT... that would probably change! Haven't bothered buying cartridges for years because playing original SNES consoles on a modern display isn't really a great experience (and I've been spoiled by the Virtual Console with its myriad of extra features and goodies too!)

 

In the absence of an ongoing VC service though, and the introduction of the Super NT? Original carts have become a much more interesting prospect now for those games that never got VC releases! (and I'd love to try out some of the randomiser stuff and the cool mods with a flash cart like the SD2SNES!)

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S.C.G

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Another fascinating video from Jon over at Game Hut.

It's crazy to think that this is just a brief overview of one aspect from the Saturn's DSP chip, it really is a small miracle that we got as many games as we did for the system.

I mean, it's very capable for what it is but it must have been very difficult to program for indeed, I know this has been stated before but I'm only really starting to appreciate that now.

I've got nothing but respect for anyone who can program for such a machine, let alone explain it all so that it's just about understandable to a point.

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Dcubed Enthusiast

Dcubed

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1 hour ago, S.C.G said:

Another fascinating video from Jon over at Game Hut.

It's crazy to think that this is just a brief overview of one aspect from the Saturn's DSP chip, it really is a small miracle that we got as many games as we did for the system.

I mean, it's very capable for what it is but it must have been very difficult to program for indeed, I know this has been stated before but I'm only really starting to appreciate that now.

I've got nothing but respect for anyone who can program for such a machine, let alone explain it all so that it's just about understandable to a point.

I was waiting for this video!! Having done a tiny bit of assembly programming for the NES myself (nothing major, just messing around with a few basic tutorials really), the sheer complexity of trying to manually manage memory for all of those threads and chips in parallel simultaneously, with perfect timing, just makes my head hurt to even begin thinking about it!

 

It really is like building a skyscraper brick by brick! The sheer ingenuity and work that went into coding that game for the Saturn is just mindboggling! Nothing but the deepest respect! :bowdown:

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Happenstance

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I can’t afford it at the moment otherwise I’d be bidding myself but if anyone else is interested, there is a Sega Nomad on eBay at the moment, finishing in about an hour. It’s only at £74 currently and I’ve seen Nomads go for a couple of hundred.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F372527458452

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S.C.G

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1 hour ago, Happenstance said:

I can’t afford it at the moment otherwise I’d be bidding myself but if anyone else is interested, there is a Sega Nomad on eBay at the moment, finishing in about an hour. It’s only at £74 currently and I’ve seen Nomads go for a couple of hundred.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F372527458452

It looks like it's going to go for around £180 probably (£156 currently with 12 mins to go) so I guess that's around market value now.

Crazy to think that I got one unboxed with a boxed spare battery pack for £60 from a friend of my brothers a few years back.

It is a great little system, but I will say that it's only really good for playing certain games on and it is a bit hit and miss at times.

However, it is a portable MegaDrive and it has S-video out plus a second controller port... but yeah, prices have just gone crazy.

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Happenstance

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10 minutes ago, S.C.G said:

It looks like it's going to go for around £180 probably (£156 currently with 12 mins to go) so I guess that's around market value now.

Crazy to think that I got one unboxed with a boxed spare battery pack for £60 from a friend of my brothers a few years back.

It is a great little system, but I will say that it's only really good for playing certain games on and it is a bit hit and miss at times.

However, it is a portable MegaDrive and it has S-video out plus a second controller port... but yeah, prices have just gone crazy.

It went for £215.09

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