Retro gaming

[Fallen Kell]

My SNES does not since it had c-sync as well. I am not sure about the N64. I know it uses the THS7314 amp and simply restores the RGB to the multi-out (can't remember about c-sync).

 

[CZroe]

My SNES does not since it had c-sync as well. I am not sure about the N64. I know it uses the THS7314 amp and simply restores the RGB to the multi-out (can't remember about c-sync).

Huh? Your SNES "does not" what? I'm saying that GameTechUS recently RGB modded an N64 for someone and put the video on YouTube. I was wondering if that was your N64 he modded. So: Who modded your N64?

 

[Fallen Kell]

Oh, I thought you were asking if my SNES was modded using that PCB board that he showcased just a few months back (September 2014) that he didn't design. It might use his custom PCB (the one that didn't quite fit, but he needed to drill out the holes some to make it fit), but I don't know for certain.

As for the N64, I don't know. It might use one of those new PCBs.


Edit: I just opened up the SNES-mini and it does not appear to use one of those custom PCBs. It might use a small standard PCB for a resistor matrix, however, it is covered in a layer of electrical tape with the wires very neatly tucked under the motherboard with a few dabs of hot glue to keep everything together (nothing overboard, just two or three spots), and since it also has a power LED mod (so you can see when it is turned on), I didn't want to really fool with the underside of the board (it has about 4-5 inches of line for the LED, but I just didn't feel like being that careful and needing to retape/hot glue things back to see for certain what it used). But all in all, a very clean install. Only 1 wire on the top of the board which he then ran through a nearby hole to the other underside (he gave 1 dollop of hot glue on top of where the wire connected to the pin/pad he soldered from for some added strength).

 

[byteman99]

I recently got into retro gaming again and im loving it. I mean I love all gaming but there's something about the old stuff that is missing from the newer games. Recently bought an xrgb mini, and a sega genesis/ cd with a couple of games and a scart cable. I just gotta say that I dont remember games looking this beautiful. I got an rgb moded SNES coming soon as well. I guess I will take screen shots later but i still cant get over how nice these old games look.

 

[Ichinisan]

Oh, I thought you were asking if my SNES was modded using that PCB board that he showcased just a few months back (September 2014) that he didn't design. It might use his custom PCB (the one that didn't quite fit, but he needed to drill out the holes some to make it fit), but I don't know for certain.

As for the N64, I don't know. It might use one of those new PCBs.


Edit: I just opened up the SNES-mini and it does not appear to use one of those custom PCBs. It might use a small standard PCB for a resistor matrix, however, it is covered in a layer of electrical tape with the wires very neatly tucked under the motherboard with a few dabs of hot glue to keep everything together (nothing overboard, just two or three spots), and since it also has a power LED mod (so you can see when it is turned on), I didn't want to really fool with the underside of the board (it has about 4-5 inches of line for the LED, but I just didn't feel like being that careful and needing to retape/hot glue things back to see for certain what it used). But all in all, a very clean install. Only 1 wire on the top of the board which he then ran through a nearby hole to the other underside (he gave 1 dollop of hot glue on top of where the wire connected to the pin/pad he soldered from for some added strength).

OK. So I guess you're saying that GameTechUS did not do the RGB mod on your N64.

 

[Ichinisan]

Do any of you try S-Video before doing an RGB mod? Yeah, S-video is not RGB, but it's waaay better than composite and every thrift store has good CRTs for < $10 that have an S-Video input connector.

Looks great. It's the right balance of quality and authenticity for me.

Model 2 SNES doesn't work with the official S-Video cable, but I use a standard SNES.

I also use a model 1 NES with composite because that's already better than the RF output that 97% of NES owners used.

 

[Ichinisan]

This is a lot of what I mean about janky mechanics - Im not an arcade, why am I being limited by the number of "lives" I have? Why do I have to constantly repeat levels or start back at the beginning? Why is the game SO hard that it's as if the developers didn't actually intend on you finishing it?

Take a look at a game like super meat boy - basic mechanics, and super difficult. But you have no limit on the number of times you can retry and the levels are short. Despite being more demanding than many retro games, it's not frustrating at all because those artificial barriers than pad length are entirely removed.

Then compare it to a game like castlevania 1 - god forbid you make a mistake or you haven't memorized the level and you get thrown so far back. It was aggravating back then, and even more so now when I've become accustomed to not having to deal with that bullshit.

I've found that it wasn't until the modern age of emulators with savestates that I've been able to complete and enjoy the entirety of many of my favorite games from my childhood. This of course doesn't apply to JRPGs, but it's one of the ways many classic games dont quite hold up and remain better memories than games. My time is too precious nowadays as an adult.

My brother is very close to completing the first Castlevania on a real NES. He has been playing it for an hour or so, every other month, for 8 months or so.

Neither of us played it back in the day.

 

[Ichinisan]

You are nostalgic for games you played during your childhood, same as everyone.

I never had an NES, SNES, or Genesis growing up. I did have a Game Boy, but my first console system was a GameCube I got in college. All my gaming was done on computers. So I have no nostalgia for old console games. Although I do sometimes long for the days when space sims were cool. Sunk plenty of hours into X-Wing and TIE Fighter.

Basically my point is I don't agree that modern games are "worse" than retro ones, or that games that you liked when you were between 8 and 16 years old were the pinnacle of gaming. People say the same thing about music; regardless of how old they are, music they remember listening to when they were a child or a teenager is "better" than modern stuff.

Watch the South Park episode "You're Getting Old."

Since your post in 2011, they've put out an even more relevant episode of South Park.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Do any of you try S-Video before doing an RGB mod? Yeah, S-video is not RGB, but it's waaay better than composite and every thrift store has good CRTs for < $10 that have an S-Video input connector.

Looks great. It's the right balance of quality and authenticity for me.

Model 2 SNES doesn't work with the official S-Video cable, but I use a standard SNES.

I also use a model 1 NES with composite because that's already better than the RF output that 97% of NES owners used.

I tried some of the S-video. It was "ok", but not good enough to use to hook up to a HDTV. It was why I picked up a mini framemeister and RGB mods. With as much time as I still like to put into my old systems, it was well worth it for me to be able to play them on modern TV's and have better image quality out of them then I ever did in the past.

As for my NES, I always used the composite out from the model 1. The NES-101 really was a much worse system in every way except for the cartridge slot (no composite, poor design on the board for the video path causing jitter, jailbars, and other interference...). That said, I am on the pre-order list for the Analog NT, which should be out any week now (they were pushing for February).

 

[Ichinisan]

I tried some of the S-video. It was "ok", but not good enough to use to hook up to a HDTV. It was why I picked up a mini framemeister and RGB mods. With as much time as I still like to put into my old systems, it was well worth it for me to be able to play them on modern TV's and have better image quality out of them then I ever did in the past.

As for my NES, I always used the composite out from the model 1. The NES-101 really was a much worse system in every way except for the cartridge slot (no composite, poor design on the board for the video path causing jitter, jailbars, and other interference...). That said, I am on the pre-order list for the Analog NT, which should be out any week now (they were pushing for February).

I wish the top loader had an eject mechanism like the SNES or Famicom. It pretty much takes two hands to remove a game cartridge because one hand must hold the system down. You have to be careful to avoid wear on the game Pak labels when grabbing the cart to remove.

My "holy grail" is the USA top loader with multi-out connector...but I'd still play on my front-loader primarily.

 

[CZroe]

I tried some of the S-video. It was "ok", but not good enough to use to hook up to a HDTV. It was why I picked up a mini framemeister and RGB mods. With as much time as I still like to put into my old systems, it was well worth it for me to be able to play them on modern TV's and have better image quality out of them then I ever did in the past.

As for my NES, I always used the composite out from the model 1. The NES-101 really was a much worse system in every way except for the cartridge slot (no composite, poor design on the board for the video path causing jitter, jailbars, and other interference...). That said, I am on the pre-order list for the Analog NT, which should be out any week now (they were pushing for February).

What is Analog NT? I was waiting on Kevtris and GameTech's HDMI NES kit.

 

[CZroe]

I wish the top loader had an eject mechanism like the SNES or Famicom. It pretty much takes two hands to remove a game cartridge because one hand must hold the system down. You have to be careful to avoid wear on the game Pak labels when grabbing the cart to remove.

My "holy grail" is the USA top loader with multi-out connector...but I'd still play on my front-loader primarily.

I've always wanted to make a replacement shell with multi-out, built-in NES Satellite, controller storage, and deeper cart slot so the cart doesn't stick out so tall.

 

[Ichinisan]

What is Analog NT? I was waiting on Kevtris and GameTech's HDMI NES kit.

Looked it up. In many ways, it's inferior to what Kevtris is doing.

 

[CZroe]

Looked it up. In many ways, it's inferior to what Kevtris is doing.

Reminds me of the Super 8. I wonder if this is LowBudget's handiwork.

 

[Ichinisan]

Sigh.... I'm thinking about trying my hand at NES dev.

Soon as it clicked how CHR-ROM, name tables, and attribute tables work, I've already devised a way in my head to get parallax scrolling on NES with overlapped layers (not breaking at scanlines).

For BG tiles you have 8 versions of each tile each simply shifted 1 pixel column. When you create the name table for the frame, offset the choice of background tile base on scroll ammount mod 8. Really just using tile animation for select tiles to achieve the illusion of parallax,as NES doesn't have layers.

The background layer tiles would be limited to very simple repeating patterns since just 4 tiles x 8 versions = 32 of your tiles out of 256 at a time, and after all that its limited to one direction only. Any non square boundary tile or silhouette object which shows BG though would also need 8-16 versions withall the shifted BG pixels.

After further reading it doesn't look like there is enough time during vblank to update more than 1 row or column of tile indices in the name table. I'm guess the games that do what I described must use a mapper with CHR-RAM instead of ROM, have enough CHR-RAM for two pattern tables, and double buffer them, re-uploading the tiles themselves to animate them, and then swapping the pattern table address on vblank. Seems to be the only plausible way given that the name tables themselves are stored internally to the PPU and cannot be manipulated in such a manner.

The hoverbike stages in Battletiads pulled off a good parallax trick. The layers don't overlap, but it looks cool.

You realize no one has any idea wtf you're talking about, right?

 

[Ichinisan]

So, I just went a little apeshit in spending money. Retro gaming can be expensive. I could've just hooked up everything via composite, but nah.

-Just bought an SNES Jr... rgb modded. Could've done this myself, but I'm lazy, and I know I'd take forever to get around to it. ~$70

-Then, because I don't really have the space for a CRT, I'll be hooking it up to an LCD via VGA with the SLG-in-a-box. It's no xrgb, but it's also half the price. ~$240

-Got a couple of games, since I have none. Picked up the US FF3, but the label isn't so great. Gonna swap the cart with a SFC FF6 cart (love how SFC games are dirt cheap) and also picked up the SFC Super Metroid. Has the option to be in english, cheaper, and the cart looks better. ~$65 for all that, including shipping.

-THEN... not convinced I spent enough money yet, I started browsing some repro sites. Basically they're all games that are hacks and translations flashed onto donor carts. Found a site that sold them for $50 each (www.ocdreproductions.com if anyone is interested), and ALMOST bought some. I realized this was an expensive proposition, so I didn't. So I did something even more stupid. I bought an SD2SNES. The top of the line flashcart available for the SNES right now with the best compatibility. Yea. ~$215

So yea, that's a lot of money. Good thing I just got a ~$500 bonus, because that's where all the money went.

And now, I just realized I still need to buy a SCART cable.

The ROM data is identical between the Japanese and US release of Super Metroid. Not many games like that. Mario Paint is another.

 

[Ichinisan]

$20 for everything but the blue N64.
$10 for the Ice Blue N64 with first party memory expansion pak.
$9 for NES gold Zelda, gold Zelda II, and Final Fantasy bare carts (not in pic)


And an undiscovered gem to me... a game I never played. Probably the cutting edge of 8 bit chip tunes. So I have it looping on my real NES right now on the Klipsch 2.1.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPkhhLC1tf8'

As I understand it vibrato was extremely difficult on the NES because changing the frequency register restarted the sound channel and threw it out of phase or something, so there is a hack to do it without restarting the sound channel.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fHEgzRtKC5o

 

[CZroe]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fHEgzRtKC5o

http://youtu.be/Nhy2aNEPshw

 

[byteman99]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fHEgzRtKC5o

Now thats a bargain! Especially considering how much some of those games fetch nowadays. And Ducktales NES is truly one of the best games for that system.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Yeah, Ducktales NES was and is a classic in every sense. Very good level design, crisp controls, and excellent replayability.

As for the HDMI NES mod, I am also looking forward to seeing it in action. I would probably spend the money on getting it done to a top loader, along with a power supply mod to a more standard (modern and efficient) switching power supply.

 

[Ichinisan]

My brother and I are selling some of our collection on eBay now.

Prototype Xexyz (NES) cartridge (one of only 2 known to exist).

All these are brand new, sealed:

[N64]
- Zelda Ocarina of Time
- Conker's Bad Fur Day
- Castlevania (64)
- Transformers Beast Wars Transmetals *

[DS]
- Gold Triforce DS Lite bundle w/ Zelda Phantom Hourglass
- Dragon Quest Heroes Rocket Slime
- Advance Wars Dual Strike
- Metroid Prime Pinball w/ Rumble Pak

[Wii U]
- Pikmin 3

*Transformers Beast Wars Transmetals is an exception to "new, sealed." As with all copies of this game, it was a Blockbuster Video exclusive and rental copies were eventually re-boxed and sold. Mine was shrink-wrapped by the Blockbuster Video store and sold with other pre-rented games.

Right now, it seems like the sealed Conker's BFD is getting the most interest.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Yeah, Conker's is probably the most popular N64 game in existence in terms of current game playability and lack of existence anywhere else. All the other popular N64 games have been either re-released or available in newer/better form.

Both Zelda games are available on Gamecube/Wii/WiiU.
Smash Bros and Mario Kart64 have newer versions out that are most definitely better in every way.
Super Mario 64 has been re-released on DS and virtual console.
Goldeneye hasn't aged very well and is only really fun as a local group game but due to there being millions of them out there, it isn't really expensive.
Perfect Dark was re-made/re-released on Xbox360 with upgraded graphics/engine.
Donkey Kong 64 is on virtual console.
Banjo Kazooie and Tooie were both re-released on Xbox360.
Paper Mario is on virtual console.
Star Fox 64 is on virtual console.
Killer Instinct Gold (KI2) is on Xbox360 as part of Killer Instinct 2013 DLC/bonuses.

After that it is pretty slim pickings for good games on the N64 (aside from ones that were multi-platform releases like Resident Evil 2, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Star Wars: Shadows of an Empire, Mortal Kombat, etc)

 

[CZroe]

Yeah, Conker's is probably the most popular N64 game in existence in terms of current game playability and lack of existence anywhere else. All the other popular N64 games have been either re-released or available in newer/better form.

Both Zelda games are available on Gamecube/Wii/WiiU.
Smash Bros and Mario Kart64 have newer versions out that are most definitely better in every way.
Super Mario 64 has been re-released on DS and virtual console.
Goldeneye hasn't aged very well and is only really fun as a local group game but due to there being millions of them out there, it isn't really expensive.
Perfect Dark was re-made/re-released on Xbox360 with upgraded graphics/engine.
Donkey Kong 64 is on virtual console.
Banjo Kazooie and Tooie were both re-released on Xbox360.
Paper Mario is on virtual console.
Star Fox 64 is on virtual console.
Killer Instinct Gold (KI2) is on Xbox360 as part of Killer Instinct 2013 DLC/bonuses.

After that it is pretty slim pickings for good games on the N64 (aside from ones that were multi-platform releases like Resident Evil 2, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Star Wars: Shadows of an Empire, Mortal Kombat, etc)

Actually, Conker's BFD was updated and re-released as "Conker: Live and Reloaded" on the original XBOX. Rogue Squadron and Shadows of the Empire were exclusives unless you count the PC ports.

I showed my roommate what I was getting for my sealed Conker and now he wants me to sell his, though his is a bit more rough. I actually bought it for him for $10 as a gift long ago. If I knew he wasn't going to open it then I would have just kept it myself, so this whole thing feels a little weird. I'm going to wait until mine finishes before Inlist his so that I don't step on my own toes with it.

 

[Ichinisan]

We dun gud:


N64

• Transformers Beast Wars Transmetals - boxed
  $260.45
  
• Conker's BFD - new, sealed
  $238.85
  
• Zelda: OoT - new, sealed
  $162.49
  
• Castlevania 64 - new, sealed
  $78.77

The Zelda 64 buyer has 0 feedback and hasn't paid yet. I might have to relist that one. Received payment for everything else and shipped those.


NES

• Xexyz (NES) - PROTOTYPE
  $260.55

NDS

• Gold Triforce DS + Zelda bundle (NDS) - new, sealed
  $338.00
  
• Advance Wars Dual Strike (NDS) - new, sealed
  $48.33
  
• Metroid Prime Pinball (NDS) - new, sealed
  $41.00
  
• Dragon Quest Heroes Rocket Slime (NDS) - new, sealed
  $31.13

Wii U

• Pikmin 3 - new, sealed
  $79.76 - sold outright, not an auction

 

[Fallen Kell]

Wow on the Pikmin 3... why in the world did they stop making disks anyway? That game has only been out a year and a half at most.