Played through Strike Gunner STG [Super Famicom].
The most endearing part of this game (which was released in 1992) is that it’s set in the ‘distant’ year of 2008. The developers thought that, by then, we’d be fighting aliens on the moon with our high-tech spacecraft, instead of fighting each other on the internet with our high tech cell-phones.
Even on easy mode with 9 lives per credit, this game still smoked me over and over again until I found the best loadout for each stage. That’s
Played through Tekkaman Blade [Super Famicom].
I love a good shoot-em-up / platformer hybrid (Wonder Boy III, Xexyz, Robocco Wars), but Tekkaman Blade is the first shoot-em-up / fighting game hybrid that I've ever played. And in spite of my general distaste for the 1-on-1 fighter genre, I had a lot of fun with this title. I liked the consistency in stage partitioning, where progression felt predictable with just enough small variations to keep things interesting and imply that you're advanc
Played through Pop'N Twinbee [Super Famicom].
As usual, I played on easy mode. I still had to make a couple of attempts to clear it, but the game didn't give me too much grief aside from the final boss. And I had to switch to a control pad instead of my arcade panel because the button-configuration was cramping my hands.
The visuals here are some of the best I've yet encountered in the 'cute-em-up' sphere, surpassing the likes of Parodius and Cotton, and contending with my personal fav
Played Phoenix [Atari 2600] this week.
This is probably my favorite traditional fixed-shooter, even above classics like Galaga and Space Invaders. I just love how distinct the phases are, culminating in a mothership battle at the end of each loop. And the mechanics are perfectly simple - just shoot and dodge (along with a temporary shield that absorbs enemy fire, but can end up trapping you because it locks you in place while activated).
That's not to say I'm any good at this game - I
Played through Cotton 100% [Super Famicom].
It's rare that I find a classic game too lenient in its beginner settings, but Cotton 100% actually made me feel like some kind of gaming-prodigy when I played it on easy-mode with extra lives/continues. I was able to credit-feed my way to the end in a single attempt, but at the expense of really learning the enemy patterns or mastering the mechanics.
Cutesy scrolling shoot-em-ups like this are always charming (if surprisingly lewd at times), an
Played through Super Bomberman 2 [Super Famicom].
I usually prefer action-puzzlers to be heavier on the puzzles, lighter on the action - but Bomberman games are the exception. This was a fantastic title, and I really enjoyed the boss battles, enemy designs, and stage themes.
My only complaints were the frequency of new stage gimmicks (by the time I got fully accustomed to one new element, it was swapped for another) and the final boss battle. I couldn't damage the big one-eyed alien guy,
So I decided to cancel my Odyssey 2 doodle and instead work on the Game Boy game that inspired it. I decided instead of it saving your progress, to make it have passwords instead. Now it will be easier to publish when/if it gets finished because it doesn't need a battery.
As a kid I wondered why every game didn't just save your progress because it was possible on some. Now I know why: To keep costs down. I tried to make the password minimal. It's 8 button presses on a special password scree
Game: Williams Corvette Pinball Symptoms: DMD display characters was a little blotchy Troubleshooting Steps:
Looking at the display, I could see that it didn't look like, it almost looks like the characters were blotchy and distorted. You could see dots around the characters, it was super visible in person as well.
The first thing that I did was checked was the voltages that the DMD was getting. One thing that I noticed was that the -125V line was rather out of spec, I was measuring -
The purpose of this is to put logs that I don't think need a proper writeup. It should be updated periodically.
Date: November 26th, 2021
Game: Williams Earthshaker
Symptoms: Left flippers not working, fuse F6 popping after holding down left flipper button
Solution: End of stroke switch for upper flipper was not aligned and disabling one of the windings on the flipper coil. Adjusting it fixed the issue.
Date: June 12th, 2023
Game: Demolition Man
Symptoms: garbage on lower half o
This entry is meant for simple fixes that aren't worth going in-depth about the repair. It will be updated periodically to add new entries. I only have one to start but should have more later.
Date: June 12th, 2023
Game: VS Super Mario Bros
Symptoms: Low scratchy sound on sub side
Solution: replaced bad LM3900 at 3N
Date: September 4th, 2023
Game: VS Super Mario Bros
Symptoms: monitor (20ez) experiencing weird issues, small screen and low/unadjustable B+.
Solution: replaced bad
Here is a link to a YouTube video of my latest Odyssey 2 "doodle".
My, that is quite large. Too bad there's no way to shrink that.
Anyway, today's work was adding a level intro. The umpire needs to collect the umbrellas while avoiding the jet planes (which are not present in the video.) The next time I work on this, I will attempt to make a second enemy for level 2. I will try to make a maximum of 5 jet planes zooming around the screen randomly.
An interesting thing happ
Introduction
I mentioned in a previous blog that I might make a blog about the Pac-Man World series. Like many, I've played a lot of Pac-Man games over the years in Arcades, on consoles, handhelds, PC, etc. But as great as traditional Pac-Man games are, there's one series of Pac-Man games that I've always appreciated because they both have traditional Pac-Man gameplay and successfully brought the character into 3D: the Pac-Man World series, consisting of three main entries, a racing g
(this interview took place over 6+ months) What brought you to VGS/NA
I don't remember the exact context, but I was looking for Discord servers with other NES and SNES homebrewers. I joined the NA one at the same time as the dedicated actual NES Homebrew one, and ended up spending more time in NA's Brewery channel than I did the more focused discord. The latter has way more activity, and is incredibly good when you are actually working actively on a project and need people to share your
Monitor: Vision Pro MTG-2901
Symptoms: Completely dead, clicking when powered on
Troubleshooting steps:
Like with any monitor, the first thing I do is make a capacitor kit and replace all the capacitors on the chassis. Arcade monitors work long hours and have exceeded their life in many cases. This is especially important with these Happ and Vision Pro monitors, of which have terrible capacitors. Replacing the capacitors in this instance had no real effect on the issue.
Upon
Symptom: Lower left drop targets not resetting when all three are knocked down. Troubleshooting Steps:
The first thing that I do whenever I deal with a non-functional coil is I check the coil itself. On a pinball machine, it is super easy to do this typically. The first thing you would do is remove the lock bar and playfield glass. Next, be sure to remove the balls themselves. This is an important step, as when you are lifting up the playfield, they can free themselves from the trough, potenti
A Homebrew Draws Near!
A blog series by @Scrobins
Episode 33: Sam’s Journey
Introduction:
So much of homebrew derives from people making and playing the games they loved as kids, but some of the creators from those nostalgic days are returning to embrace the love fans have for the older stuff. Whether it’s the Oliver Twins dusting off unreleased games decades later or Yuzo Koshiro working on something new, the rising popularity of new games for old consoles is bringing a
Symptoms
Random reset, sometimes resetting rapidly Solution Steps
Looking at the schematics, reset is controlled using a Power On Reset (POR) IC. Basically how it works is that it sends a reset pulse to the CPU whenever a threshold voltage is reached, somewhere in the 4V range. With that knowledge, I had to monitor the reset line.
In this image, the reset line is yellow and the +5V rail is in blue. What I wanted to do was see if there was maybe a short or if there was excessive noise g
I made a website for my fly swatting game. I'm renaming it "Fruit Fly Fun." Hopefully it's more fun swatting fruit flies than it is guiding them to melons. I want to work on the game, but I think it's finished. So what do I do?
In other news, my Lynx came in the mail today. I already had two Lynx games from the last time I owned a Lynx: Shanghai and Zarlor Mercenary. It took a while to figure out that my AC adapter does not work, but the Lynx works. I have ordered a second ac adapter, this
I got a pretty interesting board on the bench this time: Head On N, released by Nintendo, Licensed (Or stolen) from Sega. This is an interesting boardset, as this is for the most part a clone of Sega Vic Dual hardware, except they spread it across two boards and included the sound board on the CPU board. I had already done a deal of work deconverting the board, unfortunately this thing was missing a lot of parts and was modded to play an unknown game (the roms weren't included).
On to the i
Here is a list of members of The United Nintendo Federation Council:
Cranky Kong (chancellor)
Security
Wrinkly Kong (chairwoman)
Ted Dibiase, Sr. (vice-chairman, chaplain and treasurer)
Jerome “Doc” Louis
Delia Ketchem
Toadsworth
Impa
Good Guy
Lubba
Doug Dozer
Mayor Squaresly
Lady Lima
Paluntena
Alis
Sir Ebrum
Mumbo Jumbo
Mumba Wamba
Coralcola Island Shaman
Mand
Introduction
I grew up playing the NES and have no nostalgia or memories of Sega's 8-bit console, the Master System. In fact, I hadn't even heard of the Master System in the '90s. I always assumed Sega's first console was the Genesis/Mega Drive, and that they had only made Arcade games prior to the release of that console.
In 2001/2002, I came across an NES site called NES Player (mentioned in my previous blog about gaming sites I used to visit). They had several shrines (pa
They look so simple in the sky. But I seem to have been having a ton of problems when programming them. First it was that 2k Atari 2600 game. Now it's my Intellivision game I started back working on called "Hamburgers En Route To Switzerland." The problem was with scrolling.
When it was lower to the ground it didn't flicker, but when I moved it up more it flickered a whole bunch. I don't know why. I kept on working trying to not make this happen. I spent about 5 hours today alone working on
