25 years ago, Nintendo entered the home video game system arena with the release of the Family Computer (Famicom) in Japan. You may know the console as the Nintendo Entertainment System, which sold 61.9 million units worldwide in its various forms.

In honor of its anniversary, I took apart an original Famicom and its accessories (including an original Famicom Disk System) while documenting the process on my trusty workbench. You can see the result as a slideshow on PC World.

I had this piece ready to go before July 15th (the actual anniversary date), but it got pre-empted by E3 coverage. I hope you enjoy it, even if it is a tad late.

(If you liked this slideshow, you might also like my previous PC World teardowns of the IBM Model M Keyboard, Apple IIc, and the TRS-80 Model 100.)

Before we go any further, I must clarify that I am not making this up.

I recently received an interesting message on Myspace from one Cory Holtz, a male actor and model. His question dealt with Legendary Wings. Specifically, he’s looking for someone to hack the game for him:

Hello Vintage,

I am so happy to see that hacking is at it’s best with you guy. I am looking to hire someone for a freelance gig to hack and edit one of my favorite childhood NES games “Legendary Wings”. It’s a vertical shooting game and should be fairly easy to program. I’m just a pro at the game and would love a more difficult version, more guns, and extra levels. Please let me know if you would be interested with this freelance gig.

Can’t wait to hear from you!
Best,
Cory Holtz

[ Continue reading Fashion Model Seeks Freelance ROM Hacker » ]

And I mean epic. Last week, I crossed the country to attend Game Developers Conference 2008 in San Francisco, California. Below, you’ll find a detailed report on my travels, replete with in-depth photos, each accompanied by both honest and sometimes facetious commentary. But be warned: it’s going to be a long trip. If there be any lilly-livered scallywags amongst ye who fear the voyage, turn back now, or forever will ye be scarred by me words.

[ Continue reading Benj’s Epic GDC 2008 Adventure Slideshow » ]

It’s 1987. Your ravenous love for Nintendo’s new console leads you to rent every new game released for the system, craving the joy of each new experience. One day, a stranger walks up to you on the street and offers you a device that lets you play nearly all the NES games ever released (or ever will be released) around the world on a single magic cartridge. What do you say?

Twenty years ago, such a contraption would have seemed laughably impossible. But that same mind-blowing scenario (minus the mysterious stranger) has become a reality in 2007 with RetroZone’s PowerPak NES flash cartridge. Brian Parker, the man behind RetroZone and the PowerPak, put forth a monumental effort to bring this technically challenging dream product to market.

The PowerPak retains the familiar form factor of classic licensed NES cartridges, albeit rendered in a translucent orange plastic. Cut from top edge of each PowerPak is a notch through which a standard compact flash (CF) card may be conveniently inserted or removed. Turn on a NES with the PowerPak cart inside, and you’ll see an on-screen menu that lists all the games on the CF card. Pick one from the list, you’ll be playing the game as if you had the game’s original cartridge in the console.

With a flash “multicart” like the PowerPak, NES users no longer need to switch cartridges between games, except for the few games that the PowerPak doesn’t support (see below). Legal vagaries be damned: as an owner of over 250 NES cartridges, I find the convenience of this feature worth the price of the PowerPak alone.

[ Continue reading [ VC&G Review ] PowerPak NES Flash Cartridge » ]

For a Nintendo Entertainment System fan, it’s a once-impossible dream finally come true: a thousand games at your fingertips in a real NES console. RetroZone has done it first with the PowerPak, a new NES flash cartridge. With the PowerPak, you can fit every NES game ever made, around the world, onto one cartridge. Dumped ROM images of the games are copied to a compact flash card, which slides into the PowerPak unit itself. Turn on the NES with the PowerPak cart inserted, and you’ll see an on-screen menu that lists all the games on the cart. Pick one from the list, you’ll be playing the game as if you had the game’s original cartridge in the console. With a flash multicart like the PowerPak, NES users no longer need to switch cartridges between games. As an owner of over 250 NES games, I personally have been looking for a product like this for a long time.

Perhaps even more exciting is the PowerPak’s potential to jumpstart homebrew development in the NES community. Unlike the Atari 2600, Nintendo’s most famous console is woefully lacking amateur home-programmed software. RetroZone is out to change that with their new PowerPak products, which significantly lower the barriers to entry in developing games for play on a real NES unit.

[ Continue reading The PowerPak NES Flash Cartridge » ]