Articles tagged with: nintendo

Clash at Demonhead

Pixelcade on Friday, 12 August 2011. Posted in Retro Game of the Week

January 1990. Listen up, soldier. This is a message from S.A.B.R.E. (Special Assault Brigade for Real Emergencies). We have an urgent need to spread the word about a great open-ended platform game for the Nintendo Entertainment System known as Clash at Demonhead. Your R and R is now over. Report to your game cave, and let's get to work.

What the heck am I talking about? Well, if you had the game you'd still be saying the exact same thing. This game is one of the craziest fun platformers to come out of the late generation of the NES. Clash at Demonhead stars you as Sergeant Bang! The intro stills show you resting on the beach with your girlfriend when a message interrupts: A new bomb has been created that will -- of course -- destroy the world.

News Roundup: July 10 - August 4

mossy_11 on Friday, 05 August 2011. Posted in News

Apple has released the next major update to its Mac operating system. Mac OS X Lion, which is currently available only through the Mac App Store, serves as a great indication of Apple's future direction, and not just because it integrates the most successful aspects of iOS. There are changes afoot in the world of personal computing; Lion may well be both a beginning and an end. Check out John Siracusa's incredible 19-page review on Ars Technica for a complete breakdown

As always with major system upgrades, due caution is advised -- backup your system, research app compatibility, and be prepared for problems. Many older emulators will likely no longer work, as Lion drops PowerPC support altogether. Richard Bannister notes that all current releases of his emulators and other programs are "believed to be compatible," with the sole exception of audio editor Cacophony. Many others, as you'll see, have put out updates to address Lion compatibility.

Keep reading for more emulator updates.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

seanstar on Sunday, 24 July 2011. Posted in Retro Game of the Week

First, thanks where thanks are due. This article would not have happened were it not for the Commonwealth-Edison electric company of greater Chicago leaving me 56 uninterrupted hours to enjoy no games requiring more power than a pack of AA batteries. Way to go.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the game. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening has aged REMARKABLY WELL. Released in 1993, it is the first "out-of-canon" Zelda game in the series. Rather than focusing on gathering eight pieces of save-the-princess/defeat-Ganon hardware, Link finds himself on a mysterious island collecting musical instruments in order to awaken a mythical entity called the Wind Fish ("The Wind Fish in name only, for it is neither...") from within a giant egg on top of a mountain. Along his way, he encounters a cast of unusual characters -- some eerily reminiscent of people he knows from the outside world, some making cameos from other contemporary games, and many simply unique.

News Roundup: June 5 - July 9

mossy_11 on Saturday, 09 July 2011. Posted in News

After a year of frequent incremental updates (around 2500), Nintendo Wii and Gamecube emulator Dolphin has been bumped up to version 3.0. If you haven't been paying attention since the 2.0 release, Dolphin has ditched the plugin interface in favour of a integrated architecture, in addition to reaching near-perfect audio emulation and much improved levels of performance and accuracy. See the Release Announcement for a more detailed rundown of the changes. You can get a pre-compiled build of version 3.0, as well as the more recent source changes, from the Dolphin download page.

Keep reading for more emulator updates.

Blaster Master

seanstar on Friday, 13 May 2011. Posted in Retro Game of the Week

Chou Wakusei Senki - Metafight was published by SunSoft in Japan in 1988. It was a traditional modern Japanese tale of a blue-haired transforming vehicle combat driver saving the land from an invading robot army, with the help of a cute female sidekick who was also the vehicle's engineer. For reasons which remain ambiguous, the story was ever so slightly reworked for American audiences, and the result was Blaster Master -- a touching tale about a boy and his frog, a big hole in the ground, radioactive mutation, and underground aliens (which are at least still set on taking over the world).

News Roundup: February 7 - March 4

Niemann on Friday, 04 March 2011. Posted in News

apple-logoApple has released new MacBook Pros, with the new Sandy Bridge processors and Thunderbolt connectivity. Early reports indicate that they are much faster than the previous generation machines -- to the point where the new baseline 13" model matches or betters the old 17" model on many speed and performance tests.


overview_missioncontrol20110127It has been revealed that Mac OS X Lion will drop Rosetta, a software abstraction layer which provides support for PowerPC binaries on Intel machines. This is an interesting move that some are labelling premature, as, on the one hand, it forces developers to get their code up to modern standards, but, on the other, it breaks compatibility with some professional software still actively in use. Some of the other features slated for Lion are looking promising, though.


iPad2At a media event on Wednesday, Apple announced a second-generation iPad, complete with a processor upgrade (the iPad 2 sports a 1GHz dual-core A5 processor), front- and rear-facing cameras, Smart Covers, and an option to get it in white colour. The new iPad models will be available in the US from March 11, and in other countries over the following weeks. In the meantime, you can pick up the first-generation iPad at a discount.


Also announced at the event was iOS 4.3, which features some useful enhancements to AirPlay, allows iTunes Home Sharing, improves performance in Safari, and offers the long-demanded iPad side-switch preference (rotation lock or mute). It will be available from March 11, and is compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 GSM, 3rd-gen iPod Touch, 4th-gen iPod Touch, iPad, and iPad 2 (I guess that means iPhone 3 and 2nd-gen iPod Touch owners should upgrade now).


We've had a quiet month in Mac emulation news, but there were notable updates to VICE, Dapplegrey, and gbpablog, amongst others. Hit the jump for details on these and other minor emulator updates, as well as a couple of Mac gaming tidbits.

Final Fantasy I

Pixelcade on Saturday, 26 February 2011. Posted in Retro Game of the Week

Editor's Note: I'm sure everyone here is familiar with this game -- by name and reputation if nothing else. It kicked off a franchise that's still going strong today, with sequels, spin-offs, collectibles, films, concerts, and many other products all being released under the Final Fantasy brand. Pixelcade shares his memories of the game that started it all. -mossy_11


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The Final Fantasy…or was it? Hello fellow gamers! This RGotW is brought to you by the year 1987 and the system Nintendo, sponsored in part by the company Square. With a helpful grant from MacScene and Pixelcade. Rather than my usual choice of some obscure game or movie or random event no one has heard of, this week I am doing a mainstream game.

So, 1987: Where were you what were you doing? US President Ronald Reagan was undergoing prostate surgery, La Bamba moved everyone's hips in dance clubs world wide, and PBS was hacked in Chicago by a man wearing a Max Headroom mask, babbling about who knows what -- it sure wasn't New Coke. Also at this time a video game that would go on to shape every single RPG to date in one way or another was developed by a little company going out of business -- Square.

News Round-up: December 6 - January 4

mossy_11 on Tuesday, 04 January 2011. Posted in News

apple-logoHighlights in Apple news this past month include the announcement that the Mac App Store will open on January 6 and the passing of a new milestone in market capitalisation. Apple’s market cap now stands at over $300 billion, which is still some $70 billion behind Exxon Mobil -- the largest US company. This marks a great year in stock for the company, which passed $200 billion back in March and rose to become the second biggest US company in May (leapfrogging Microsoft).


virtualboxOpen-source x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualisation tool VirtualBox received a major update shortly before Christmas. Version 4.0 provides a major reworking of the GUI, adds support for new virtual hardware, removes the 1.5/2 GB guest RAM limitation on 32-bit hosts, and more. See the changelog for a full run-down and the official site for a download.


boxerIn news we missed last month, MS-DOS emulator Boxer has entered public beta for version 1.0. New builds were released throughout December, with the biggest changes being that games can be imported “painlessly” from CDs or folders, there is a dedicated games folder automatically created, and the program launches with a welcome panel. Check out the official Boxer website for more details.


MAME and SDLMAME were updated three times over the past month. The latest version (0.141) adds support for the games Heavy Unit, Poizone, Silver Game, and Jack Potten’s Poker, in addition to providing a long list of improvements and bug fixes. Check out the MAME website for full details, and grab the latest SDLMAME build from here.

More updates after the break.