So I saw an Activision-themed roller derby poster and left my compliments to the league. I sent him 5 bucks, and he sent me the poster, 3 other ones & some stickers. Pioneer Valley Roller Derby has some good graphic artists.
Here’s the one that caught my eye. A nice homage to Pitfall!
Here’s Super Mario Brothers, with a sex change.
This one’s kind of like Destroy All Humans. It makes the connection well.
They didn’t forget you, Madaracs. They went all out on this one.
Nice kitch, no?
The shot you see above, is from my recently modded Game Boy… model DMG-01. For those of you who don’t know, the modding community refers to their Game Boy machines not as a “Game Boy” but rather a “DMG.” I guess it’s sorta like calling your Atari Computer an “A8” or only referring to your Atari 2600 as a “VCS.” In any case, DMG stands for Dot Matrix Game. All original Game Boy machines were black and white dot matrix graphics–no fancy back-lighting, just good solid games on a portable platform.
I purchased my kit from Nonfinite Electronics for less than $15. I chose green because I thought it would make the black DMG look a little more retro.
The screens consist of 4 parts:
The reflective sticker allows natural light to penetrate the glass and reflect back the dot matrix graphics. It’s effective in well lit rooms but a little disappointing in the dark. 😉
After removing the back of the unit with a tri-wing screwdriver and a dozen or more internal screws of the Phillips-head variety, de-soldering, soldering and hot-gluing, I came up with the beautifully bright screen you see in the photo. By the by, don’t bother asking for a tri-wing screwdriver at your local hardware store… they’re kinda dense when it’s not a philips or a flat head.
I used the following turorials:
For a few more details about my mod, you can follow this link to my flickr set.
Total time to mod: 3.5-4 hours — This was by far my most complicated modification to any electronic device to date. It requires a lot of patience your first time out. I would say that now that I’ve performed the procedure and learned what NOT to do, with 10-15 minutes of prep time–I could probably accomplish the same mod in about an hour. It is a real treat to rediscover the Game Boy after this modification.
This is a test entry. I’ve created a button in the HTML editor that will allow you to center pretty much anything. If you’re creating a new entry with a video in it, highlight all of the code and click the “center” button. It will add a div class to the entry: div class="ctrany".
The video will then be centered as seen below:
I’m still working on a way to produce a button in the wysiwyg/tinymce/visual editor but that appears to be very difficult. In my research I’ve also discovered there are many native buttons that are not displayed by default in the visual editor. I’ve considered turning them on. There is also a pretty cool plugin called WP Super Edit that allows for more control too… Though I’m not sure about how it will work over time when they update tinymce in wordpress… Let me know what you think…
P.S. Switching between editors does not strip this code out so you can switch freely between editors as you wish.
I didn’t realize that there was a thriving demo scene for the Atari 2600 as well. The music in this one is downright impressive.
September 21st 2009, when the guys were over at my place we played some arcade games. Gaplus on the Namco Arcade Remix collection for the Wii was our first outing. That game is hard to begin with but then add a DLP television and the classic controller and it get’s even harder. None of us were able to break the low score of 50K. We tried a couple of other games on the collection as well: Pac and Pals and Super Pac-Man. You really need a joystick to play those games properly as well.
As the music blared from the jukebox and we sat around imbibing, I decided to have a hand at my Tron arcade machine once more. I don’t normally play unless friends are around. I enjoy playing more when I’ve got company to play with. My friend Rob joined me in what was to be another attempt to break 50K–a feat that I had only done one other time in public–a feat that our casual gaming crew considers to be… exceptional.
I dropped the token into the machine and it clanked against the pile of coins already resting in the coin-box.
At first glance, you might not think Tron a difficult game. After all, it’s a game based on a Disney franchise–a franchise that has taken some thirty years to climb from cult-status to scraping the bottom of the popularity barrel that overflows with other franchises like Star Trek & Star Wars. Regardless of franchise popularity, the game is quite difficult and requires precise timing and pattern memorization. For many years I’ve played this game socially and enjoyed average scores between 35K and 50+K. My last recorded high score was 50,132. I accomplished that the evening of June 26th, 2008 right after I modded the machine with a new battery kit to save high scores. Last spring I scored even higher: 54K+ in front of a live audience at the Spring Retro Video Gaming Party sponsored by GridCycle and its members. However, it was just a couple of weeks ago–on the night I mentioned above–that I was thrilled to score a whopping 55,647!
Bam! I was on the SNOBOL stage! The tanks were now Recognizers! They were big and red and scary and I was on top of the world! And then I died. After the local cheers and general euphoria died down–and the song “You’re the best!” stopped playing in my head [yet again]… I documented my score and sat down to enjoy the rest of the evening–ego intact.
I had remembered visiting the Twin Galaxies site 3-4 years ago and thinking that the scores were a bit higher than mine. I decided to check them out again:
Alas, my score was more than deflated. How do these guys do it? How!? Well, for one thing they probably practice a helluva lot more than I do. Here’s an article about David Cruz’ winning run and what it takes to “master Tron”: “Yep, this guy’s a player.”
I don’t think I’ll be flying to New Hampshire to set any records. As I said, I only casually enjoy Tron when I have my buddies over. It’s a good solid game and I’m happy to be as good at the game as I am. It won’t stop me from trying to beat my own score… but I don’t ever expect to spend 13 hours playing a video game to take the world record. I tip my hat to those that can stick it out and have the wherewithal and patience to master the game. For now, I’m content to hold the high score amongst my friends.
~Madaracs
