CDNerd.com

Remember Scorched Earth? The Shareware tank game with pixel graphics from 15 years ago has been rebuilt by someone in the UK. The controls take a few attempts to get efficient. After that hurdle is tripped over and the camera wrestled, it is actually quite fun. There are usually lots of other players online also.

Since Scorched Earth and One Must Fall have been rebuilt, all that remains is to remake the brilliant Return Fire. And while you are at rebuilding the best games ever, give Lost Vikings a boost!

Popsy Gaming

IF you have any desire to play a NERD simulator (be the fastest one to click all your pencil leads out), or maybe fly a penguin to shoot the aliens? Paper rock scissors? Emulation is the key. The MAME project is very near completion! Yay! The monitor is mounted and sticks out the back so far that I cannot get the rear cover on. Sigh. I measured without calculating how far the screen is recessed in there. Here is the input controller fully wired:

So many times I shout “check this out” and “oh yeah! I remember this game”. The family is weary from it. How did I ever encounter so many of these arcades growing up?

I ended up using most of the Jamma connectors so that it will be easy to quick-disconnect the control panel. I kept reading about cherry switches, turns out the brand of switch is cherry. It is printed right on the side. These Happ buttons are indestructible! I can leave the rugrats and not worry one iota.

A large problem arises when installing the emulation software. It turns out that of the 6000 or so games, one percent of them are adult content! Yikes. It took nearly four days of solid filtering and favorite making to go through them. Never thought I would be sick of playing arcade games.

Another astonishing discovery is the amount of scrolling shooters. I think about 100 or so that I really enjoy. Many are period Japanese with textures and Kanji scrolls. Radiant Silvergun is as beautiful as I had suspected.

Daphne (emulator) is not much help for me. I had a secret longing to play Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace enough times to be able to eventually beat them. They are harder than I remember!

Popsy Gaming

The 6000 games are finally played, and sorted into categories. This is the start of a list of what I consider gems that must be played. It will grow as I have time.

1000 Miglia	There is something really fun about racing those old cars. Drifting olde school.
Action Hollywood	Simple but well done tile flipper. Choose the movie scene.
Asterix	Side Scroll and Viking smosh.
B.C. Story	Mini Caveman games. Blow up the dino like a balloon!
Biomechanical Toy	Cute platformer. Toys all gone wrong. Simple and smooth controls.
Black Tiger	RPG hack and slash platformer, a little hard, but the weapons are sweet for its time.
Blasteroids	Balance your ship between armor, speed, and firepower. Try to play this at least to a boss.
Boogie Wings	Old-time planes that can hook and carry stuff! This one is really fun. Carry around a Santa or an Elephant.
Brave Blade	Top-down shooter with plenty of style. I like the change from jet to mech.
Cotton	Side scrolling shooters. Very well drawn! Ride your broom, make a ball and capture baddies.
Crayon Shinchan	Minigames. I really like the cartoon style and the goofy voices of the mom and kid.
Cyvern	Top down shooter. Any dragon simulator is a good game in my book.
Dimahoo	Nice Top-down mixture of fantasy and technology. Dragons with guns!
Dragon Blaze	Top Down dragon flyer. Destroy those dragon bugs.
ESP Ra.De.	Top Down shooter, ESP gone right, or wrong? Not sure.
Exvania	Castle Bomberman spinoff! Dragon bosses and treasures.
Go Go Mile Smile	Simply the best anteater sim. Cute.
Grand Cross	A pinball top-down shooter? Try it. See how high you can get.
Gunbarich	The best pinball/break-out Arkanoidish game of all time!
Guwange	A new favorite topdown. This one is classic Japanese scrolling style. Wow.
Hyper Pacman	Pac-Man really needed armor and lasers and X-ray vision. Now he’s got it.
I’m Sorry	I’m sorry for putting this in. Just look at the Jackson and Executives in leather.
Jumping Pop	For the anime Backgrounds, not the game.
Maru Chan De Goo	Flatten the dough, might be neat if I could beat the first challenge.
Mosaic	Pictures (nice) change and you must order them properly.
Outfoxies	Two Players attack in the same level. Whatever it takes to bring the other down.
Pacmania	Pac-Man with Nike Jumping shoes and 3d!
Prehistoric Isle 2	Side scroll dino shooter. I enjoy getting the people to hang below the copter!
Photo Y2K	Find the differences. Mosaic is prettier.
Princess Clara Daisakusen	Cute diagonal platformer.
PuLiRuLa	Um, cartoon RPG? What happened to the world. No clue.
Radiant Silvergun	Ikaruga’s beautiful 3d little bro. Which of the tons of weapon styles to choose?
Ray Storm	3d Scrolling shooter. Nice future lock-on.
Ribbit	Frogger done exactly right! Still die in the water though.
Scud Hammer	Paper rock smash the over-animated people? Over-everything!
Search Eye	These picturehunts have neat artwork. Never quite matches the shape.
Sel Feena	Bombermanish, catch baddies in the box and bash them open.
Super Bishi Bashi	This is the perfect nerd simulator! Empty the click pencil.
Shippu Mahou Daisakusen	Top scrolling racing fighter? Grab your monkey or fairy and love it.
Sokonuke Taisen	Minigames. Lots of neat button pounding to balance stuff.
Sotsugyo Shousho	Minigames. Bouncing fun, watch for the Kanji ones though.
Space Invaders 95	Exactly what you would expect the Japanese to do to Space Invaders.
Tetris Plus 2	These are so cute! Tetris with a nice plot and cute upgrade.
Tondemo Crisis	Loser simulator. Can you stay alive through each calamity?
Trog	Flatformer. Really cute caveman humor in this one.
Vasara	Both of these are really well drawn top downs. I love the scrolls and faces of the stronger baddies.
Wild West COW Boys	Side Scroller with a western twist. Nice humor and cute.

This list will grow. ^__^

Popsy Gaming

I have completely lost count of how many of these things I have been through. This is slimline number two. It needed power connector repair. After opening the belly of this cutie, I expected to find such tiny little workings that I would be unable to effect repairs.

While many of the workings are tiny, the power connector (at the purple arrow) is wonderfully open acres! There was already an eighth of an inch of solder, and clearly cracked from all of the drops to the floor.

This is a masterpiece of simplicity and layout on the little guy. Nice heat sinks. Six main screws hold the cover, and one holds the mainboard together around the controllers. A quick upgrade to a nice bald mound of silver solder and the connection is made! ^__^ Now back to testing DDR.

Popsy Gaming

I had this crazy notion to attempt to build an arcade emulation machine. Ebay here we come, after much shop-happy searching and lots of unrelated purchasing, I found an arcade shell in horrible shape.

The guts of the thing need to be completely replaced. I used my power-washer to strip off the layers of black Krylon and found this amazing bit of information:
The machine was originally Spiderman!

After much debate over what kind of computer and display system to go with, I am settling on a newegg combo special ASUS A8N mainboard, 2400 AMD, 1 gig low latency memory, and a thermaltake Golden Orb to keep everything quiet. I have a sweet used 21 inch monitor that fits nice and snug. So far the total cost is around 350 smackers. I can’t factor in the cost SATA raid with two 150gig WD RaptorX drives. That would set me back some dough units. Maybe I can justify them by saying they are used by all the computers in the house for storage? (well, not Erica’s computer of course. Hers is the best of the best – with honors) Is this doomed to be one of those uncompleted more expensive than anticipated projects? Time will tell.

p.s. Building a SATA raid makes an astonishing performance improvement in a computer. Must be the page file speed. Wow. Note to self: The clear windows on the hard drives is less than a good idea. It sounded killer at the time, but the drives are caved away in the dark. The plastic window parts look flimsy, and the heads move so fast the naked eye cannot see the action.

Popsy Gaming

There is no game that shouts out “JAPAN” more than Okami. The brush-stroke methods are wonderful! The whole adventure game is basically a stylistic moving rice-paper painting. I feel like I can make basic Kanji moves in some tiny make-believe way.

As I have been upgrading my moral code, I have found more and more of my actions to be lacking in Godliness. One of these is gaming. I already knew about most of the Japanese gods, Amaterasu and such. All of the characters in Okami are related to the (mostly Shinto) Japanese god mythos. Even the name “Kami” means god.

Does the fact that I am aware of the elevated status of these game sprites somehow entangle me in something I should not be involved in? If I take that argument I would not be able to transfer money as I know what Egyptian gods are embedded in our bills. That is something to ponder while dodging baboon baddies wielding Shakuhachi and and Koto.

Now, where is the order form for Okami II? Sign me up for a PS3 if they make two.

Popsy Gaming

I have been put off and disappointed by Sony lately. The last few products I have purchased have not reflected any manner of quality. If you follow this site you will know how many PS2s I have gone through. Years ago I moved to other brands for TV and other electronics. Now I go to Lik-Sang to find a mochi-maker machine, and to my dismay Sony has shut them down. This is a sad day. All of those neat little inter-system adaptors and game enhancement products are no more. In spite of this fatal blow, Lik-Sang manages to still treat their customers with fine support and is closing out any open orders favorably. After being less than impressed with the PS3, I am moving into the Anti-Sony camp. Farewell old friend. R.I.P. Lik-Sang.

Update: I have made some great gaming purchases at Dealextreme.com. I have purchased lasers, PS2 parts, games and other stuff you would get from China anyways. Be advised sometimes things go wrong in shipping or quality control. Risk can be fun.

Popsy Gaming

Sakura Pachinko has to be one of the prettiest objects on the planet.

The fever to collect more and more is very contagious. It has hit me on the nose several times. I really want to add a “Hyper Passion” next to the Sakura. Then after that I really need an old vintage model for the play value. Of course a novel concept would be playing with the toys I already have.

Next I need to record a video of the Sakura machine during play. The sounds and light shows all correspond so well. The LCD just glues your eyes. Typical Japanese blasting each of your senses into pudding. Read the full story for more pics.

POPSY – REPAIR THIS USING WAYBACK MACHINE!

Popsy Gaming

This Tetris comedy clip is one of the funnier things I have seen. On Tv, in Japan.

Popsy Gaming, Pointless

Remember sitting with your Atari 2600 and your best friend playing all those wonderful tank games? It was almost unheard of for a game to be only one player. Worst case you could take turns and each player pick up where they left (or died) off. Arcades knew about multiplayer. Gauntlet, Rampage, Blasteroids… so many games that ate my quarters with syrup. Even with the really bad lag of PS2 titles, two player gaming is not completely dead. Titles that run on the beautiful Snowblind Studios engine:

• Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance – Rat stomping beholder fun!


• Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance 2 – This one is gravy.


• Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel – Rough in more than three ways. Didn’t like.


• Champions of Norrath: Realms of Everquest – Smooth icing on chocolate.


• Champions of Norrath: Return to Arms – The same ising on the same chokolate.


• The Bards Tale – SINGLE player, just put here for completeness of the snowblind list. Nice Cary Elwes on vocals.


• Combat Elite: WWII Paratroopers – Development fell apart somewhere. Bad controls.

Cooperative Non-snowblind but two player just the same:

• Lego Star Wars – Simple and fun 2 Player! Almost every franchise character is playable.


• Gauntlet: Dark Legacy – Over and over and over just works somehow.


• Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows – Way too short, a good rental.


• LOTR: Return of the Kings – I could not get comfortable with the view angle or controls. Most people like it.


• X-Men Legends – RPG Crawling with a pleasant change of pace, powers, and setting.


• X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse – Have to finish the first one before I get this.

POPSY FIX PLEASE Full Story Missing

Popsy Gaming