The things people will actually put up for sale! I think I remember hearing about this thing a long time ago, but I’ve never seen one before. Essentially a all-in-one system with 15 actual cartridges built right in, the FamicomBox was used in hotel rooms and arcades. It’s got a bunch of the classic games for the system, although I can’t read all of their titles. It’s got Mega Man and Ghosts & Goblins, which is more game than anybody in the world can handle, though, so there’s no risk of beating everything on it. → Read More
The year was 1986. The Nintendo Entertainment System had been out for about a year and absolutely every kid in the entire universe had one except for me. I’d resorted to casually inviting myself over to the houses of friends, non-friends, enemies, and strangers, just so I could play Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, and RBI Baseball. I wasn’t proud of it, but it had to be done. I was hooked. → Read More
I saw one of these things at PAX. It’s a great idea; after all, the actual hardware involved has become extremely small. You can fit an NES into a cartridge if you want to. So it makes sense to stick all the circuitry in a box, add some cartridge interfaces, make some ambiguous controllers, and sell it as a super-console. The one I saw was NES and Genesis, like this one, but there’s a new one that will include SNES as well. The regular is about $40 and the other one I’m guessing would be $60-70. The bad news is that the hardware isn’t original Famicom and Sega stuff; I was told by the Pink Godzilla people (or else read on the box, I don’t remember) that it doesn’t support all mappers. To the layperson, mappers are sort of the ground level of a game, governing how sprites move about, how game objects in general interact, and so on. Final Fantasy would run on a different mapper than 3-D Worldrunner, for instance, and tempting as the SG/FC is, I wouldn’t want a console that can play one but not the other. → Read More
Great piece over on OMG Nintendo about the top ten all-time best Nintendo levels. The staples are there like 8-4 from Super Mario Brothers, the Dark World (above video) from Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Rainbow Road from Mario Kart. Oh, and let’s not forget Giant Land in SMB 3 – that was unreal at the time. What would you add? I’d probably add the final level from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, the first level from Super Contra, and River City High in River City Ransom, to name a few. [via Digg] → Read More
The weekend is fast approaching so here’s another little project for you. Take an old NES console, gut it, and add a couple hinges. Poof! NES lunchbox. The step-by-step can be found over on Instructables.com, but here’s the short version. Again, take an old NES console, gut it, and add a couple hinges. The trickiest part seems to be removing all the little plastic posts inside – the ones that hold the motherboard and all that good stuff in place. They can be removed with a rotary tool and cutting wheels, though. The main missing element for this lunchbox is that there’s no handle. That’s up to you to figure out, I guess. [via DVICE] → Read More
Yes! This is awesome. Of course, anything related to modding an NES is awesome. Personally, I don’t watch DVDs that much — or if I did, the player’s guts wouldn’t fit into a Nintendo. Still, this is a cool mod and if you have a non-working NES sitting around (that you don’t feel like fixing), it won’t run you more than $40 or $50. Now if I were modding an NES I’d see what I could do about mounting a hard drive onto a cartridge interface and see if I could pass ROM information through — every NES game ever, on one cartridge! Sadly I’m not quite crafty enough for that. Still, a man has to have a dream. [via MAKE:blog] → Read More
Ah nostalgia. An enterprising individual over at the BenHeck forums has “basically cannibalized a OneStation” into an old NES cartridge that runs on three N-cell batteries (commonly found in certain scientific calculators). The innards of the cartridge house a 99-in-1 chip which should provide nearly endless hours of entertainment and contain most of your favorite NES games. The batteries fit in the bottom of the cartridge and the Select and Start buttons are found on either side of the bottom notched portion. Looks pretty cool and the modder says, “Building it is actually pretty simple, nothing complicated just moving around components to make room.” Why not get started on your own, huh? via Geekologie → Read More
If that old NES of yours has died, odds are the culprit is a 72-pin connector. Luckily, it’s easily fixed, as this video from Wired shows. And how’s this for an embarrassing admission: I never knew the pleasure of having an NES because of my parents’ strict “video games will rot your brain/no son of mine…” mentality. Once the SNES came out, though, all bets were off. My dad would stay up late into the night playing Super Mario World, beating levels for me that I couldn’t. → Read More
http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1812127&fullscreen=1 See more funny videos at CollegeHumor I actually don’t recall many ultra-violent games for the NES. Am I misremembering? → Read More
Here’s something I didn’t cover in my Emulation Orientation a few weeks back, though I did mention NESticle. A couple guys have decided the most noble job for a venerable 486 is to run the venerable NES emulator full time, complete with controller ports. Find out how they did it here (good luck with doing it yourself). Of course, there are much, much easier ways to go about this. Every console capable of being hacked has an NES emulator; it’s kind of a rite of passage for the homebrew developers. And if NESticle can run on a damn 486, you can imagine it’ll run just fine on your 360. In fact, you could keep every NES game ever made on the hard drive (it’s less than 150MB) and have the benefits not only of savestates and a cool graphical browser, but also enjoy graphical filters, cycle-exact emulation so every game works exactly right, and so on. Still, the 486 thing is pretty cool. [via MAKE: Blog] → Read More
Yama hama. For my friends and family out there who have complained that I’m impossible to shop for, the above video contains an example of the type of gift that I’d really, truly enjoy. All you’d have to do is craft a giant NES controller out of medium density fiberboard (MDF) and wire the corresponding buttons up as they’re connected inside a standard controller. Is that so much to ask? Kyle Downs did it. And it only took him a couple months. Nice work, Kyle. via Gizmodo → Read More
This is a cool looking lamp, yes? What’s even cooler is that the girl who put this together made that Duck Hunt cartridge out of cardboard because a standard Nintendo cartridge didn’t provide enough stability. "A regular cartridge was too small a base, so I measured one and made a 1.5 scale replica out of cardboard, and screwed the gun to it. I weighted it with stones, and then tackled the shade. I picked up a $2 shade at the re-store, a pack of fun foam, and voila! After hours and hours of cutting pixellated shapes, I was done! A little dab of glue to secure the shade, and… ta dah!" That shade’s pretty phenomenal. Nice work, young lady. Nice work indeed. via NWFB → Read More
Meet the FC Mobile, a really interesting looking cloned NES console that’s perfectly portable. But unlike most NES clones, this one takes old school NES cartridges, so you can dust off the ones in the back of your closet, blow into the slot, and play Zelda just like you used to. We haven’t tried one out ourselves, but it’s really hard to muck up a decent emulator. My main concern would be the battery life — it probably takes AAs — and screen brightness. Do you have one? Seen one? You can get them on eBay for a little under $60 shipped, it seems. I might have to partake. → Read More
http://www.gamevideos.com//swf/gamevideos11.swf?embedded=1&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&src=http://www.gamevideos.com/video/videoListXML%3Fid%3D18565%26ordinal%3D%26adPlay%3Dfalse I think I’ll let the bionic arms do the talkin’ here. This highly-anticipated XBLA game is looking to be an unbelievable bargain: the full single-player remake of Bionic Commando from the NES, plus a crazy 4-player deathmatch mode that looks like a barrel of fun. I’m going to make Matt buy it. Don’t forget to confirm your age for the player app! (wtf?) → Read More
This is one of the most fun casemods I’ve ever seen. Someone — apparently a Frenchman — was able to cram all the guts of an NES clone into a Super Mario Brothers cartridge shell. It’s got a slot on the top for actual game cartridges, two NES controller ports, and external power button and LED. It even has standard AV outs so you don’t need to use that pesky cable RF converter. Nintendo should just start selling stuff like this. → Read More
Ah, one of my most favorite Nintendo games of all time, “River City Ransom,” hit the Wii Virtual Console this morning. So long, five dollars! Have a safe trip. You’ll recall that brothers Ryan and Alex must fight their way across River City to save Ryan’s ladyfriend Cyndi from the evil cross-town rival, Slick. Good stuff. Along the way, you can buy power-ups like (remember these?) Acro Circus, Stone Hands, and Dragon Feet. Ha! Man, what a great game. Oh, also Phantasy Star III was made available this morning as well, for $8 (it’s a Genesis game — I’ve never played it personally but the Phantasy Star series is a phat phranchise with lots of phervent phans). via Kotaku → Read More
[photopress:dhts.jpg,full,center] Normally, if I were to meet a girl with a tattoo from an NES game, I’d likely fall in love. But man, this is just mean: The Duck Hunt dog laughing. If you see this in real life, you can only assume you’re doing it wrong, because that’s what this snickering canine has come to symbolize. via Geek Stir → Read More
