Game enhancement

November 25th, 2009

After I had my NES for a while, I got a decent selection of games that I had played to death. Most of them I traded in for other games at my local resale shop, but a few, like Super Mario Bros. I kept, even though I didn’t play them much.

A while later, I got wind of an add-on device that promised to ‘breathe new life’ into my old games, the Game Genie.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Game Genie is a piece of hardware that gets inserted in between your NES and the game you’re wanting to play. You put in some codes (either from the manual or you could just randomly poke around on the code entry screen). Depending on what codes you put in, you’d get varying effects. Stuff like: infinite lives, late-game powerups early on, ludicrous rewards for defeating a foe, that kind of thing. How it worked is a little beyond the scope of this article, but the gist is that it effectively replaced bits of code in the game with its own, resulting in a change.

So I put in in, played a few games with it, and after a few weeks, started to get bored with it. Why? Mostly because the games I’d played were games that I already played until my fingers were numb and I knew them inside and out. Twiddling with the gravity in Super Mario Bros. was kind of neat for a few minutes of goofing around and flying around a few of the levels, but ultimately not that satisfying.

But that didn’t stop me from getting the Game Genie for the Game Boy a while later, and then for the Super NES a while after that. They were gimmicky novelties that I just had to have.

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Injuries

November 24th, 2009

Given all the physical activities I do while playing games (*snerk*) it might come as a surprise that I haven’t injured myself more than I have. In fact, I can only remember one time where I sustained any kind of injury, and it was many years before Wii Remotes were flying through televisions.

Flash back to the year 1994, December 31st. I had gone to a friend’s house to spend the night and ring in the new year. To pass the time we rented a copy of WWF Raw for the Super NES, which, you might suspect, is a wrestling game.

One of the mechanics of a wrestling game (and especially this one) is that when you and your opponent lock horns, you both have to press the buttons on the controller as fast as you can. Whoever presses the buttons fastest gets to do a signature move and deplete the stamina of his opponent.

So we played the game all night, all told, about seven hours. Then, once midnight struck, we rang in the new year by parading around the front yard, banging soup pots with wooden spoons. Then back to the game for another couple of hours. Then, around 2:00, it was time for bed. No problem. We bed down for the night and I drift off to Slumberland.

For about an hour.

After that I woke up to an intense ache that stretched from the base of my thumb all the way to by elbow, on both arms. And, since there were no painkillers in the house, my only source of relief was to fill the sink with cold water and soak my forearms until they numbed up enough to allow me to get about an hour of sleep, and then I had to start the process over again.

Amazingly, the next morning, the pain had gone. Although I didn’t tempt it by playing any more button-mashers for several days, and I’ve learned, more or less, where my limits are when playing a marathon like that. But I know I can’t be the only person that’s suffered a game-related injury, anyone else care to share?

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Capturing video

November 23rd, 2009

Over at Pro Tip of the Day I occasionally have to capture video to illustrate whatever tip I’m going over that day. But what hardware do I use to make that happen?

Good question!

Initially, I used a Hauppauge WinTV-PCI, which was cheap, and produced decent-quality video. See exhibit A.

But times change, hardware ages, operating systems change, and consoles evolve. So I migrated to the Pinnacle Video Transfer, which proudly proclaims that you can use it to capture video from your favorite video game console. But there are two main problems I had with it: 1. There’s no video output, so it’s kind of tough to see what you’re doing and 2. consoles manufactured earlier than about 1999 won’t work with the thing, which means no SNES, NES, Genesis, or anything else of that vintage.

So, I settled on the Diamond One Touch Video Capture, which allows me to capture footage from just about any source, and has the added benefit of attaching to my computer via USB. And all that really means is that I can use it on a laptop and take it to my game console instead of installing it into my PC and taking my game console to it. Also, it was relatively inexpensive, which was right in line with what I wanted to spend on it. Plus, it captures some decent footage (exhibit B).

So, which one should you use? I dunno. But this is what works for me.

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Traveling Through Time

November 22nd, 2009

I’ve played a lot of games in my day, and I like to think that I have the brain-power to follow just about any plot out there. Except for one:

The ‘Time Loop‘.

A time loop is a plot device where some sequence of events happens, then something happens, usually catastrophic, that sends the universe back in time by some set amount, where it all happens again.

In the games, at least, your job is to be the guy (or team of guys) that has to break the loop somehow. But the problem is that most of the characters don’t know that they’re in the loop to start with.

Confused yet?

So, what’s the problem?

Well, mostly it’s that large parts of the story are left ambiguous, probably on purpose. The thing is, though, that the implications are typically so vague that I either miss them or am just left scratching my head.

And, I’m typically not the kind of person that needs to have everything explained to me, I like to think that I’m reasonably good at understanding convoluted plotlines… except when it comes to time travel plots more complicated than Back to the Future. For some reason, I just can’t wrap my head around them.

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DexDrive

November 22nd, 2009

Since we’re talking about crappy peripherals, we might as well devote a few inches to the DexDrive.

“What’s a DexDrive?”, I hear you say.

A DexDrive is a squarish device that plugs into your PC, and you jam memory cards from your favorite game system into it. Now, that’s not to say that a single DexDrive will read every memory card for every system, no, that would make far too few dollars for its developer. You have to buy a different drive for each system.

But what’s it do?

Well, at the time (the middle 1990’s) memory cards were the de facto way to store your game saves, but the problem was that memory cards were pretty expensive. So, for about the price of two cards, you got a device that let you transfer the saves to/from your computer, where storage space was comparatively huge.

Which sounds great, right?

But, you have a huge problem immediately: to use the device you have to format your card so that the drive can use it. Which means that you have to erase everything on your card in order to use it. Which meant that in order to use mine, I’d either have to buy a new memory card or delete the stuff on the one I already had on it. Which meant dozens upon dozens of hours down the toilet (if I ever wanted to go back to those games, that is).

Oh, and there was the time it corrupted the card that I actually tried it out on, that kind of sucked, too.

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Gimmicky failures

November 20th, 2009

It’s been pretty well established that I like gimmicky video game accessories. So it would follow that I’d have a pretty large selection of the things. But, not all of them can be awesome, can they?

Uh, well, no. No they can’t.

Like the Super Controller. It was little more than a plastic shell that went over the NES controller, and you could stick a tiny joystick into the hole on the crosspad.

Yeah, it didn’t work very well, made the controller way too thick, and I had a really hard time trying to hold onto the tiny joystick with my left thumb and forefinger while holding the controller aloft with the other hand. Besides, it just looked silly.

Or the Nakitek Game Saver+. It’s a clunky monstrosity that took batteries and / or A/C power. The idea was that you could play whatever game you wanted, press some magic button combination on your controller, and the game would be suspended in the thing’s RAM for as long as the thing had power. You could then take a break and come back to your position later, or you could take it out (game still mounted in it) take it to another SNES and resume from where you left off. Sounds great, right?

Yeah, maybe, if it worked. I fished mine from the bottom of a bargain bin for a couple of bucks, so I didn’t really have high hopes for the thing, which turned out to be a Good Thing(tm). Either my controller was broken or my Game Saver was, but I couldn’t get the magic key combination to work at all, which meant that I spent five of my best dollars on an ugly piece of plastic.

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Mobile gaming

November 19th, 2009

Since I’ve become a *gasp* productive member of society (at least somewhat), I have less time to devote to my chosen hobby than I’d like. That is, I’m away from my game consoles more often than I’d like. But to fill the gap, there’s always portable gaming, right?

You betcha!

But it’s not just the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP. Most of us have some kind of cell phone at our disposal, and most of those are just right for playing quick ‘pick-up-and-play’ games in the odd moment of downtime. Which sounds great, but after playing a few of them I’ve made a sad discovery:

Most games available for your cell phone suck.

It’s not the phone’s fault, exactly. Most of them appear that they were designed to be phones first, with the ability to play games just kind of tacked on (there are exceptions, of course). The screen’s too small, the phone interface just isn’t designed to do more than input numbers, or maybe letters, and so on. Playing action games is just an exercise in frustration. Which means that you’ll have to find something that takes less-precise input, and means that you’re left with puzzlers. Slow puzzlers.

Which is what I’ll have to take, so I will.

Oh, and I’m fully aware that this is going to open up the floodgates for people to start telling me how great their cell phones are for playing. But I’m ready for it.

Posted in articles, opinion | Comments Closed

Better controller storage

November 18th, 2009

If you’re like me, and I have a suspicion that most of you are not, you’ll end up with a collection of video game consoles, and since wireless is pretty recent innovation, lots of those consoles will have controllers that have long wires.

So what happens when you finally need to put some of them into long-term storage?

We’ll take a look at the humble GameCube controller for starters.

You might be tempted to just wrap the cord around the controller and be done with it, like in this kinda blurry picture

But, that puts quite a bit of stress on the cable, right where it goes into the controller, which is kind of like hanging a small weight on the end of your controller’s cable, and letting it dangle.

Which isn’t recommended.

Better is to roll up the cable in a loose coil and secure it that way.

Depending on how long you want to store it will dictate what you might use. A strip of Velcro for short-term storage, and possibly zip-ties for longer-term. I’d stay away from tape or anything with adhesive, since it turns gummy and gross after a while.

Posted in articles, storage | Comments Closed

A sea of mediocrity

November 17th, 2009

If you do a search for the words “video game blog” on Google, you’ll get around 253,000,000 results.

That’s a lot.

But, more importantly, that means that if you want to get any kind of following that you’re going to have a tough road ahead of you. When I started this site way back in 2001, the barrier to entry was already ridiculously low (if you had a little bit of technical expertise), but now with services like Blogger and WordPress (and dozens of others), the barrier to entry is so low that it’s virtually nonexistent.

Which is a good thing, for the most part. Anyone (and I do mean anyone) can throw up a website and start talking about essentially anything they want. No fact-checking required.

Which is still great. Until…

People just kind of peter out. Sometimes only after a few days, sometimes months or years later when they come to the realization that:

Most people will never make enough money blogging to earn a living.

Once they figure that out, their pet projects turn into labors of love, which get neglected, and eventually stagnate to the point where they’re just kind of sitting there. Which is why I’ve tried to do a little something different with this site. I try to put stuff up here that’s interesting to more than just me, and that’ll (I hope) be interesting over time. That way, if I ever do move on to something else full time, the stuff I have up here will be an interesting read for someone else down the road.

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Game Mastery

November 16th, 2009

I’ve mentioned that I occasionally kind of get fixated on whatever game is the flavor of the month. But whenever the luster wears off the game, of I finish the main story, well, that’s it. I typically shelve the game, and move on to the next. Even when games were simpler, I played them off and on for a while, and since there was no ending, I just kind of gave up after a few days or weeks, depending on what they had at the game rental stores, and what was in the local arcades. Since I knew that the games were essentially endless, I kind of gave up trying to master them. (Can you truly master a game that’s supposed to be endless?)

I suppose that makes me some kind of Gaming Locust, which is rather unappealing, but unfortunately, kind of accurate.

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