Tuesday, July 27, 2010

TRON Legacy

So Disney is making a sequel to TRON.

Looks awesome right?
Something came to mind after I found out about this and I've been thinking about it a lot. If you live in California like I do and go Disneyland every so often you'll notice that they are always changing the attractions, especially to coincide with new movies.
Disneyland used to have an arcade called the Starcade. It was two stories and crammed full of classic arcade games from the 1980's and 1990's with pinball games and air hockey upstairs. I mean lots of games. It was a great arcade and one of my favorites. The first place I saw Street Fighter Alpha was upstairs at the Starcade.
 Now I can't find any pictures of what the Starcade used to look like for some reason.....but i can tell you what it looks like now...a bunch of overpriced, crappy, gigantic deluxe games...and a bunch of UFO catchers that don't even have Disney prizes in them. I don't know who is running the "arcade" now but it really is a travesty. It's also only on the first floor....and where are the pinball games?

Ugh that's absolutely pathetic. The only good part of this arcade is the Neo-Geo cabaret machine that is sitting right by the entrance..see it? Notice how there is not a person to be seen? That's because NO ONE WANTS TO SPEND A DOLLAR TO PLAY SOME CRAPPY, UGLY DELUXE GAME.

Ok that's the end of my rant.  So to coincide with the Tron Legacy movie, Disney is doing something to the starcade, but no one is quite sure what yet. Disneyland is in the unique position of having the capital and resources to make the best arcade in California, I don't know why they don't do it. If they remodeled that whole area to look like an actual vintage arcade, but on a giant scale like it used to be....most people haven't seen an arcade in a decade or more. Some kids have NEVER seen a real arcade. I think it would be really popular. If they would only do it right.

Look at this recreation of Flynn's Arcade at ComicCon 2009



See how many happy folks there are? Don't tell me classic arcades aren't popular, that was LAST YEAR. Now for contrast...

I think I hear crickets.....

In conclusion...The TRON Legacy movie is going to be awesome and Daft Punk is even doing the music.
I hope they rebuild that arcade, I have the feeling they are going to put some kind of TRON lightcycle ride upstairs, but they aren't going to be able to pull that off with that ridiculous nightmare of an "arcade" downstairs.
So here's to a new Starcade in 2010!

 in other news....
I figured out how to play games on MAME with analog dial controls, like Ikari Warriors, TRON, etc.
Press TAB. go to player controls (this game) go down to where it says dial analog, select it with enter and press Esc to turn it off. Assign dial inc and dial dec to whatever keys you want to use. From the main menu go into analog controls and adjust dial digital speed to a managable level.
Presto!


in OTHER other news......
Capcom announced yet another Street Fighter game:
Street Fighter X Tekken. I guess Capcom is making one version and Namco is making one version. Like they did with Capcom Vs. SNK.
While I'm a big fan of Capcom fighting games, I wasn't very impressed with Street Fighter 4. I like their games all hand drawn and spritey. I can't stand this move to 3D/Realism.
We'll see how it turns out.

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Monday, July 5, 2010

R.I.P. Tamagotchi!

Oh such a bad parent I am! I forgot to pause my Tamagotchi when I left for Independence Day celebrations. I came home 9 or so hours later and it was dead! So sad! I'll try again. I do feel slightly heartbroken, I was just starting to really love that little pile of virtual liquid crystals! I guess it's alien god loved it so much it wanted it to come home.
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Saturday, July 3, 2010

Tamagotchi!

Anybody remember Tamagotchi? I found a Tamagotchi emulator (thanks unclechicken) and I've been playing around with it today...it's pretty silly. It looks neat though and has a bunch of different skins, but it seems to run a little fast maybe.
I think the modern version of Tamagotchi is a smartphone that you "have" to check every couple of minutes to read your email.
I didn't know that when Tamagotchi evolves or grows up or whatever that there are different characters you can get. One of them is Bill Clinton?!
Here's a character guide.
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Friday, July 2, 2010

Kega Fusion Emulator

Hi everyone. I just wanted to write a SHORT tutorial on Sega Master System emulation for a friend of mine who really wants to play Akai Koudan Zillion.

He has this great story about how when he was a kid he was really into that game and he used to carry around the instruction manual until one day he lost it. Back in those days there was a toll number you could call and get hints on Sega games, and it wasn't a recording, you could talk to a real person. He called and asked them if they would send him a new manual and they said yes! For free even! So later he gets a huge package in the mail and they sent him a map of the game. He was stoked on this, but they sent him a hand photocopied stack of papers that was like the instruction manual for some golf game or something....It's funnier when he tells it.

I always thought thought the Sega Master System was cooler looking in every way than the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was black and red instead of boring grey. It had cooler looking controllers, a cooler looking light gun, and the boxes were plastic instead of cardboard. Plus I knew alot of people with the NES, (myself included) but only like two people with Master Systems so they seemed rare...which also made them cool.
Anyways I never really got into Zillion, although I did like the way it looked. I was more of an Alex Kidd in Miracle World fan.

 Anyways, let's see if we can't play some Zillion on our PC's! (Again this is for Windows.)

We are going to Use the Kega Fusion Emulator version 3.63 today.
So go download it HERE.
The Fusion emulator isn't just a Sega Master System emulator though, it's also a Genesis, 32X, GameGear, and SegaCD emulator, but we are just going to worry about the Master System right now.

When it asks you to save or open the file, save it. The file will be called fusion363.zip

This is a compressed file and will need to be extracted...if you don't know how to extract a .zip file we might as well go over it right now once and for all because it's really something everyone should know how to do.
If you have Windows7 you should be able to right click your compressed zip file and extract it to its own folder where you can get at the contents. If not, you need to download a third-party program to extract your files like Winrar.
I know this probably isn't very helpful but I have a hard time describing how to do this. If you can't figure this part out, message me and I'll try to help you more.

Alright. So now you have your compressed folder all back to it's original size. Inside is a folder called Video Codec and three files; Fusion.exe History.txt and Readme.txt


In order to play a game you are going to need some ROMs once again, you can find them from your usual sources. They don't have to be in a special folder like MAME because when you go to load a rom it will ask you where they are everytime.


So go grab yourself that Zillion rom HERE.
(I am not sure what the difference is between all the different versions of the MS games I tried the [h1] version and it worked fine.)
This is going to be a zip file, you dont need to extract it, just remember where you put it!


Now go ahead and run the Fusion.exe executable.
Click on File, and Load Master System Rom.
Navigate to where your zillion rom is and select it.






And there it is.... you should be able to hear the super-chill music. There will be some little numbers in the bottom left corner, this is your frames per second. You can stop it from displaying this by going to Options and unchecking Show FPS.
To set up your keyboard or controller input, go to Options and Select Config......Select the controllers tab

Go down to where it says master system, click on define and follow the direction to define your keys.
Then hit ok and you should be all ready to play.



A few things...If you want to save your game you can use the save state, under File - Save state.
I don't know there's really not much else to it. This particular emulator does a whole bunch of cool stuff like letting you record the sound from your games into a high quality .wav file, record your games into an .avi file, and a bunch of other junk, so have fun playing around with it!

I hope that all made sense let me know if you have troubles.

Oh one more thing..
Here is your manual.
Here is your map.

If you want to take a screenshot it saves it in some random .tga file format. Get yerself Ifranview  to view .tga  files and convert them to other formats.

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Welcome!

Hello! This blog was originally going to be about me building my very first MAME cabinet, but it's taking me quite a bit longer than I anticipated gathering the funds to do this. So in the meantime please enjoy some other random video game related nonsense.