guitarzombie

3 hours ago, Wandering Tellurian said:

We'll never know for sure - but there so many little details that kept surfacing that even at the time I thought it was a ploy.  I do know that it generated massive amounts of interest (and increased sales).  

How did the beatles in the late 60s need any more interest?  By 6 they were do damn popular that they STOPPED TOURING because of all the problems it was causing.  John Lennon wasn't too far off when he said they were more popular than Jesus.

EDIT.  I wanted to add the "I buried Paul" thing is John saying Cranberry Sauce and was totally obvious when the Anthology came out.  If they were planting it, they said "What sounds like "I buried Paul" to confuse people?" or if they did why not say "I buried Paul" to begin with if it was gonna be so buried in the mix.  Only to be outsed 30 years later?

9 hours ago, Wandering Tellurian said:

I will say that their hoax/gag/whatever you want to call it with the whole Paul is dead thing was a pretty brilliant markteting trick.  I still remember loading up an old reel to reel so play things backward so I could hear "Turn me on dead man."

I dont think it was a marketing trick at all.  I do love it too though.  I really enjoy conspiracy theories, even though I dont believe any one of them.

If you really want to hear what the Beatles are about, Let it Be, Hey Jude, Love Me Do are NOT good examples.  These are real winners: If I Fell, In My Life, Something, Here There and Everywhere, A Day in the Life, The Long and Winding Road and Blackbird.  These are just all masterclasses on incredibly smart and catchy song writing.  

Ill even throw in George's original demo version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps which to me is just so much better than the album version.  The demo is so gentle, while the album version is too rocked up and to me, loses the power of the song.

Kinda controversial but to me, this is their absolute best song.  It uses all the songwriting tricks in this and is so harmonically adventurous as a pop song, i'd say this is Johns magnum opus.  

21 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I know I never traded my game out nor replaced it, which is why I'm calling bullshit on the date code theory.

OR you can be wrong, because those date codes are 100% standard in IC chips.  The PRG and CHR date codes are for when THOSE chips we're actually printed.  

https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-read-date-codes-on-ICschips/

Everyone, start opening up for 5 screw SMB carts!

This is easily the weakest part of the MM2.  Just so silly that you have just enough for the fight if you have full Crash Bomb.  When i first played it, I just destroyed everything I needed to and killed the wall things.  I think for the top one I used item 1 or just some tricky jumping.

Doom 2 counts as a win.  After killing the Icon of Sin, run into the explosions and you'll die.  Then you get the end screen.

The chips usually have 3 markings on them.  The item code (NES-gamecode-PRG for Program, CHR for Graphics chip), the manufacturer and part number of the chip and date code.  And in rare instances certain companies have their own date code style, instead of the year/week number.

Cool!

1 minute ago, austin532 said:

There is no proof. I'm just saying I wouldn't be surprised if someone has made a fake SMB/DH just because people are least likely to check it. I am aware that some people believe the epoxy blob versions are fake but to throw everyone away? Why?

He was an idiot, thats why.  Theres no money it in because theres a billion SMB/DH and they're cheap to begin with.  To make fake ones would cost so much time and effort for no gain.  Which is why you see them for expensive games.  The chinese GBA bootleg games are usually for pokemon/first party titles, and even those dont make any sense because some of those mario games are really cheap to begin with.  The cost for them to manufacture a ton of pcbs is much smaller though.  

If you wanted to, you could absolutely make an exact Stadium Events replica.  The only things really unique about it are the label and chips.  If you can get a factory to make chips for you and have them stamp the correct codes on it, you'll never know.  But to start that up is so expensive it might not even be worth it.  Those factories print in bulk, not one offs.  Thats why china pumps them out because they're designing the pcs and printing them out themselves, instead of outsourcing to a company.  And when they do it, its in poor quality, making them easy to spot.  The harder to spot ones are usually one offs that someone made.

7 hours ago, NES CONNOISSEUR said:

I disagree with this statement ,especially with all the fakes of rare carts out there ..

Again, where's the proof?  The only people who get fooled are usually fools not knowing what they're buying, or people who are hedging their bet because the deal was too good to be true.  Like a Samson inside a lot of 30 games with hardly any pics.   

Always use your brain and if you're unsure ask questions.  If its still shady, dont move forward.  How hard is that?

On 12/14/2019 at 10:08 PM, austin532 said:

The same people who would fake a SMB/Duck Hunt or Top Gun because they have nothing better to do.

Wheres the proof on this?

I don't get how people are so anal that they're so afraid of bootlegs and fake copies.  Its so easy to spot one.  I knew a genius of a guy that threw out every game that had an epoxy blob like the Chinese fakes.  Yeah thats all well and good but since its a much more efficient way of building the PCBs instead of burning chips, almost ALL the high volume pack in games were epoxy.  So he was throwing out SMB/DHs and who knows what else.  And no matter how much info I gave him, he doubled down. 

He eventually went out of business.  

Yeah, if there were any game differences.  Werent the background graphics slightly different?  I gotta look online now.

13 hours ago, austin532 said:

What's the earliest known chip production date with SMB? That will give us the answer. If it's like 8537 then yeah, it was a launch title.

We'd have to open up and find out.  On boogod the earliest date is Sept of 86 which can not be true.  Its just the earliest they had.  

Everyone open up those SMB carts and hopefully its not a blob PCB!\

EDIT - FWIW I looked at the famicom SMB and their chip codes are 8538 so the game at least existed but the product code is HVC (which means famicom).  Im fuzzy but is there a difference between the Japanese and American games?  If there isn't (like with most of those early black box titles) Id bet that the launch title SMBs probably have HVC chips and not NES ones.

Its all about visibility.  The more people know about it AND its a good game, the more people clamor for it.  For a game to be super expensive it needs three things, Rarity, Quality and Visibility all of them add up to Desirability.  Visibility being the most important for the price spike.  How many people know about it?  Thats why I always say to do your own research and you can bypass all of this and not get bit in the butt when its too late.

ok

3 hours ago, RH said:

The Beatles were good, but have been historically overrated.  Were they an important band? Certainly! Should they still be considered the greatest rock band of all time? Nope.

5/10.

Please explain.  The Beatles are not even arguably, the most influential band of all time.  Between songwriting, lyrics, arrangement, music videos, album concepts, recording techniques.  

They're a 10.  You dont have to like em (which for some songs, I can understand.  Some horrible throw aways and terrible songs) but anyone that dismisses their historical impact is incredibly ignorant especially within music.  The countless music and artists they inspired is insane.  I also say they were the first prog band (listen to a song from 1963, then 1967) and see how much they changed.  Also 17 number one hits in only 6 years in the US?  C'mon.  Stop foolin yourselves.  As someone that takes music seriously, its almost insulting.  

If you took a little out of their song writing and put it into musicianship (better guitar, vocals etc) you'd get Queen.

This thread makes my head hurt.  Play the games how ever you want and cheating only applies to contests.

I remember when his 'older' videos were new.  My friends and I loved them because it was refreshing to hear someone yell at these things that we all were familiar with.  It was incredibly satisfying and entertaining.  Of course it was blown out of proportion but there was nothing like it.  "Yeah that Dam level DID suck!".  I dont know if its 'revisionist' history but I will always prefer his older stuff because it was more passionate and relate-able to people my age.  Still really dig the new stuff but I love the vitriol of the older stuff, especially since there was so much to go on.  Now its harder to find that kind of stuff.

I work at an electronics store and MY GOD the amount of corrosive batteries I see in Wii controllers drive me nuts.  Whats odd though is that if they're not corrosive and get power, they almost are never bad.  Game Gear is pretty bad too.  And Xbox 360... ugh.

I miss all the fun stuff.

Im too lazy to check if I responded already but its very fitting for today.  

I have no idea why people made a big stink over that kid winning the title.  The whole idea was it was a handicap match.  IIRC the kid didn't even do anything.  It was supposed to be a huge face move.  Then of course they'd have to take it off of him cuz he wasn't a real wrestler or something.  It was all to stick it to who ever forced Braun to pick a partner.  I think I got that right.

I must be the only one but I could not CARE LESS about what happens.  I think its funny but I can't get wrapped up in this nonsense.  Im glad this is here and thats that.

15 hours ago, Sumez said:

I've made a list of all major European releases and research about how timing was changed for each of them, which is a handy reference. Maybe worthy of another thread in the future.

I would like to see this!

Ok I'm not an expert with the details but this is why PAL games don't always work for US/NTSC systems, even past the lockout chip.  I think this is pretty accurate unless someone with a bit more knowledge can clean this up.

Because PAL, or other countries use different voltages and frequencies for their power grids.  We use 120V / 60hz.  Europe uses 220V / 50hz.  I think because of this the TVs refresh rates are different (Slower than the US) as well as the actual display resolution for the TV.  256x240 for US and 256x226 for PAL.   Had to look those up.

Now because of these differences, the actual CPU and GPU chips on PAL NES' are DIFFERENT and are intended for those issues.  The PAL versions have a slower clock rate (or speed) than the NES versions.  This is why when you use a PAL game on a US system, it runs too fast, as well as the sound, because the sound comes from the CPU.  Some games the graphics are off because the PAL NES systems had a different color palette to suit European TVs.  Some PAL NES games (I dont know how) I think can detect if the system its being used on is PAL or NTSC and can modify its speed in order to run properly.  I think Rodland and Hammerin Harry do this.  Otherwise the games for PAL systems were programmed FOR those systems, so certain ways they used the code when they expect the screen to refresh, doesn't work the same way, hence graphical glitches/random crashing.  Also IIRC PAL is easier to use because everything is more symmetrical, like the metric system, where as in the US its a pain because things aren't perfectly even.

Also, other countries like Japan and Chile use NTSC for whatever reason.  This is why games work well and a lot of the rare US NES games went over to Chile.  Had they went to, lets say, France they wouldn't work.  Handhelds are also region free because they don't rely on AC adapters (usually) but by DC current like batteries.  I think if they are region locked is usually physically or programmed into the system.  

Finally, PAL A and B were only used to differentiate locations.  PAL A - UK, Italy and Australia (I think) PAL B - Everywhere else in Europe (I think)?  Like Germany, France, Sweden.  

TL:DR version:  PAL NES games were programmed for European electrical grids & systems. They dont always work in the US because we use a different grid.