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Nerdly Pleasures
17  mars     19h40
FPGBC - The Budget FPGA Handheld
   Portable or handheld devices which play retro video games are very common these days. Companies like Anbernic and Powkiddy make multiple consoles which can emulate some very advanced video game consoles. The Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch can also emulate or run retro video games. These things...
14  février     17h23
Nintendo’s Console Accessory Cheapness
   Nintendo ;s consoles have, for the most part, been somewhat high priced over the years. The company likes to keep it that way, you will not see a Nintendo console in a bargain bin or heavily discounted, even toward the end of its lifespan. The maintenance of price contributes to its...
17  janvier     05h40
King’s Quest IV - The First True PC Compatible Game
   KQ Box, courtesy of MobyGamesWhen we think of PC Compatible games, thoughts of freedom may pop into one ;s mind. Intel, nVidia, AMD, gamers generally have a choice of which hardware to use in their systems. PC games have been, generally speaking, not tied to any particular manufacturer ;s...
09  décembre     21h17
The Mockingboard 4c - Adding Sound Card Functionality to the Apple IIc
   Among the Apple II models, the IIc is undoubtedly the restricted of the bunch. The system integrated just about every necessity for mid s computing, a built in disk drive, serial ports for printing and telecommunications, an external drive and a joystick mouse port. The Apple II line has been...
20  novembre     23h54
Dai Yakyuu - The 8-bit Explosion of Japanese Baseball Video Games
   Baseball amp; Famista ; Baseball Yakyuu has had a long history in Japan. Imported from the United States before World War II, Japan built leagues and fielded players that have maintained the popularity of the sport more or less ever since. When video games became accessible to the Japanese...
18  novembre     01h19
Doctor Who DVD and Blu-ray Frame Rate & Resolution Issues
   Doctor Who has had a very lengthy history on optical media. From the first release of The Five Doctors in to Series Specials, many, many discs have been stamped of Doctor Who related content. Not all discs have been error free, and some errors have come down to more subtle issues than...
12  novembre     21h31
TMNT and Other Strangeness - Revival of the Mutant Animal RPG
   On October of this year Palladium Books announced a Kickstarter for a new edition of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles based role playing game quot;Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness quot;. The Kickstarter campaign was well timed and shrewdly presented, tapping on a vein...
29  octobre     03h02
The Unofficial Enhanced NESs - Continuing On where Nintendo Left Off
   As we all know, Nintendo introduced the Famicom in , ported it to the west as the Nintendo Entertainment System in and after the last licensed games were released in Nintendo retired the system. But that does not mean that the hardware underlying the system was dead, the hardware...
25  octobre     01h51
PCE 2.4g vs. PC Engine Mini Controller - Battle of the New PC Engine Controllers
   The PC Engine has had something of a reemergence in the past few years. In Konami announced the PC Engine Mini and TurboGrafx Mini consoles and miraculously released it in . Also in bitdo released their PCE . g Wireless Gamepads and Analogue announced the availability of the...
13  octobre     19h31
Is that a Cricket I Hear? - Contemporary Sound Options for the Apple IIc
   The quot;c quot; in the Apple IIc stood for compact. The Apple IIc was designed to be the epitome of the Apple II series, providing the options most people used in a realistically portable form factor but sacrificing the internal expansion slots which made the predecessor models in the Apple II...
09  septembre     01h49
Attack of the PETSCII Robots - Review of a New Action Strategy DOS Game
   Attack of the PETSCII Robots MS DOS Version Cover Partial, Courtesy of bit Guy Back in , David Murray, better known as The Bit Guy on YouTube, released a newly developed game for the DOS compatible PC called Planet X . I eventually bought a copy and reviewed it. In more recent years he has...
03  septembre     15h36
NuXT 2.0 Motherboard - A New 8088 Motherboard for your DIY PC Clone
   In the recent past I have discussed the Book and the Hand , which are newly made vintage computing systems. I concluded that those products, although not uninteresting were rather flawed. The Book was by far the more disappointing of the two devices. I have also been made aware of a...
28  août     06h31
The Avengers Series 4-6 Blu-ray Upgrade
   In a recent blog post, I discussed quot;upgrading quot; the videotaped half of The Avengers from Region DVDs to Region DVDs. The TLDR version of that entry was that the upgrade was worth it. Now I have obtained the Region B Blu rays of Series , I intend to offer my thoughts on them versus...
26  août     17h17
Would you Like a Book 8088? Or How About a Hand 386?
   Fairly recently May, there has been made available for sale a retro themed laptop called the Book . The Book is a real PC running a fair amount of vintage hardware and was made in China by a company called DZT. Additionally this company has also made a portable PC called the Hand...
27  juillet     02h01
The Avengers Seasons 1-3 DVD Upgrade
   Being an American fan of the quintessential British TV show The Avengers has not always been easy. The Avengers, that s crime drama spy series with British secret agent John Steed and a host of assistants tends to be overshadowed by a certain superhero group sharing the same name. Getting the...
20  juillet     06h07
Apple IIc - Epitome of the Apple II Experience?
   In Apple Computer released the fourth computer to its Apple II line, the Apple IIc, A M . The Apple IIc was a quot;compact quot; version of the Apple IIe with many expansions built in. It was released alongside the Macintosh and despite the hype the market did not respond in the way...
17  juillet     21h44
Saving a Simon
   Simon was one of the first popular electronic games. Invented by Ralph Baer and put on the market by Milton Bradley in , Simon sold well for year after year. Its simple gameplay of remember the randomized sequence of colors not only challenged the short term memory of its players but their...
09  juillet     18h48
Tandy Video vs. EGA - Battle of the 16-colors Graphic Adapters
   When the PC was first released in , IBM designed the Color Graphics Adapter CGA card, a card that could display colors on a special high quality RGBI monitor through a digital output. While CGA could only display all those colors on the screen at the same time in text modes absent...
    02h50
Variations of Mouse Trap
   And Now for Something Completely Different, for the th published entry on this blog, I am going beyond the typical fare of video game and vintage computer content to focus on another type of gaming, board games. And in this blog entry, I am going to talk about the evolution of the mechanics of...
04  juillet     19h15
Tandy 1000 Chip Replacements
   The Tandy s, especially the older ones, are rather reliable as non IBM manufactured PCs go. They tend to continue working year after year. But inevitably they will fail, and something they cannot be easily fixed because a chip went bad. Tandy was good enough to socket major chips in most of...
    18h30
Official and Unofficial Variants of the Atari 2600 VCS
   The Atari went through many variations over its long lifespan. Officially Atari authorized a dozen or so variations of the console, and tolerated several more when the mattered. Most only differ cosmetically, but the sheer number of quot;official variants quot; for an early console is...
28  juin     17h46
Rethinking the Video Game Generations and Handheld Video Games
   Generations of video games have been defined in reference to home video game consoles which were released over time and their capabilities. While I have some views on that subject, in today ;s blog I wish to talk about generations of handheld video games. Handheld video games have always...
24  juin     22h42
Turbo EverDrive Pro EDFX - A Match Made in Heaven?
   Courtesy of Krikzz and WikipediaOne of Krikzz ; earliest flash carts was the Turbo EverDrive for the Turbo Grafx and PC Engine. His Turbo EverDrive v and v only supported HuCards. Eventually competition came in the form of TerraOnion and their Super SD System and later Super HD System ...
17  juin     20h53
The Kneale Watcher, Reader & Listener
   Nigel Kneale was a British Manx author whose influence on science fiction, supernatural fiction and television drama cannot be understated. Kneale wrote many scripts, screenplays and stories that would have a formative influence in English drama. While Kneale is best known for his...
09  juin     15h12
Tandy 1000 EX and Tandy 1000 HX - The All-in-One Tandys
   The Tandy EX was released in mid and the Tandy HX released in mid . They were Tandy ;s quot;entry level quot; PC compatible models, containing everything you need to run PC and MS DOS software in a fully self contained unit by means of the built in keyboard. ...