If you want high quality input from classic consoles to a modern flat screen TV, you need to use an HDMI converter like the X-RGB Mini Framemeister. This converter will take high quality RGB or Component video signals and convert them to HDMI-compatible 720p or 1080p with excellent results and minimal lag. I played with a Framemeister some months ago, and wrote up my impressions of the device here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/05/fun-with-framemeister.html Unfortunately, some classic consoles have difficulty displaying high quality video signals due to their lack of high quality video outputs. Some enterprising individuals have made mod boards that will directly convert the video to HDMI with less lag than a Framemeister, more features and more reliable results. Here are the projects that, as of the date of this writing, actually have been released in some form to the public.
NES - HiDef NES Mod & the AVS
The NES is one of the most important of the post-crash consoles and one of the few without a native RGB solution. There has been a NESRGB mod board released for two years now, which works wonders with a Framemeister. Before that people harvested 2C03 chips from Playchoice-10 PCBs and made do with the differences in the color palette, compatibility issues with color emphasis and sometimes video jailbars.
Kevtris' HiDefNES mod has already been mentioned in this blog, and it adds a whole host of features over the NESRGB + Framemeister solution. I lay them out in detail here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/07/analogue-nt-nes-as-luxury-retro-console.html
It is the board found in the Analogue Nt HDMI version and has been sold in pre-modded systems on ebay and on the http://www.game-tech.us/ website. The kit will be available for purchase so you can attempt to mod it yourself. However, it requires desoldering both the CPU and PPU without destroying either chip or the PCB, so it is not a beginner mod. Virtually all the compatibility issues with the HiDefNES mod and certain MMC5 games and the EverDrive N8 have been eliminated through a firmware update, so now is the time to consider taking the plunge.
The only obvious issue is that its FDS audio emulation is less than perfect. The mod will not work in an original Famicom, a Famicom Twin or an AV Famicom with laser-marked CPU and PPU chips.
The basic principle of how the HiDefNES obtains the color values of each background and sprite pixel is the same as used in the NESRGB. See here for my explanation : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/06/nes-hardware-explained.html
There is now a 2600RGB board for the Atari 2600. The 2600RGB board uses similar principles to discover the colors of 2600 pixels as the NESRGB board does for NES pixels. Theoretically, it is quite possible for someone to develop an HDMI mod for the 2600.
bunnyboy, who runs the RetroUSB site, has displayed his AVS replica console at the 2015 Portland Retro Gaming Expo. His AVS has a 72-pin and a 60-pin connector for NES and Famicom games, and is designed as a front loader for the former and a top loader for the latter. It uses a completely new board and an FPGA chip to provide hardware emulation for the NES. It only outputs HDMI video and has separate power and reset buttons in the shape of NES front loader buttons. It has built in four NES controller ports that can be set to function as a NES Four Score or Famicom 4-player adapter. It also has a 15-pin Famicom expansion port for Famicom peripherals.
Because the console only supports HDMI output, it will not work with any Zapper or compatible Light Gun device and it will not work with the Famicom 3-D Glasses. The FPGA inside the console does not emulate any cartridge hardware or expansion audio. Expansion audio from Famicom cartridges is digitized and then mixed with the internal audio. However, because the AVS uses an FPGA, it can load updated firmware to fix any compatibility issues. Reports from the Portland Retro Gaming Expo were very positive, one person said the system ran Micro Machines correctly, which is a hard game to get right. bunnyboy is also designing wireless RF controller without lag to go with the console via an controller port adapter.
The console can only be powered through its USB port. The console has a scoreboard reporting function via the USB port, it will save high scores for certain known games and report them to NintendoAge. The idea is that you play a supported game, the high score is saved and then you plug in the system to your PC and it send the score to NintendoAge. The AVS only supports 720p while the HiDefNES can do either 720p or 1080p. The AVS is not for sale at the moment, but bunnyboy is aiming for a just under $200 price point. The best place for updates seems to be here : http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=92557
N64 - Ultra HDMI
No N64 natively outputs RGB, but some early consoles can be modded with a simple amplifier board. Most consoles, however, have a video encoder chip that only outputs composite and s-video. These consoles require the N64RGB board. This board acts like a custom DAC, taking the digital signals from the N64 and turning them into analog RGB video. This will make it truly Framemeister worthy, although the s-video output from the N64 is pretty good compared to composite video. PAL N64s need a special cable to boost the S-Video signal from the console, NTSC N64s can use standard Nintendo or 3rd Party cables.
Today, if you want to bypass the Framemeister option, you can have an UltraHDMI board installed in your system. It works with NTSC and PAL framerates (up to 1080p for both) and not unlike the HiDefNES it comes with filters. The Ultra HDMI filters can simulate a CRT TV. Without the filters the lag is truly negligible, with them there is about a frame of lag. It supports all standard digital SD and HD resolutions, as shown here : http://ultrahdmi.retroactive.be/
The mod is very involved because you have to solder a flexible mylar-like ribbon cable to the finely spaced pins of the surface mounted graphics chip, the Reality Co-Processor (RCP). The RCP sends out 7-bit digital RGB values along with sync information. This allows for direct digital to digital conversion to the 8-bit RGB values HDMI supports without quality loss. The kit uses a mini-HDMI cable and only needs a small hole cut into the back of the N64. Because the mod is very tricky and not for the beginner, the board and kit is being sold only experienced mod kit installers. If you want your N64 modded with the Ultra HDMI, you need to send it to someone. This site is authorized to perform the mod : http://www.badassconsoles.com/ultrahdmi/
Game Boy - hdmyboy
In one sense, it is not too difficult to obtain a good quality HDMI image from a Gameboy. You use a Super Gameboy or a Super Gameboy 2 (for accurate speed) on a SNES that supports RGB and send the video and audio through a Framemeister. Alternatively, you can use a Game Boy Player and a Gamecube with the component video cables through the Framemeister, but that requires running custom software to make the Game Boy Player output at a true 240p speed.
Some time ago, there was a Kickstarter for a product called the hdmyboy. The campaign is archived here : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507669971/hdmyboy-a-full-hd-power-up-for-your-game-boy-class
This is a fully assembled kit that you insert between the two halves of a DMG-01 Game Boy. It adds half an inch or so to the height of the console when laid flat. It has an HDMI cable port and can support 720p or (preferred) 1080p.
Unlike the NES and N64 mods, this mod is easy to install. It requires no soldering. All you have to do is unscrew the shell, remove the ribbon cable that attaches the LCD PCB to the CPU PCB and insert that ribbon cable into the hdmyboy. The hdmyboy comes with a NES controller attached internally so you can control your Game Boy. It essentially becomes a consolized Game Boy at this point.
The Game Boy's LCD can only support four shades of one color, its video signal is fundamentally 2-bit digital monochrome signal with sync information. This information, along with mono audio, is available through the ribbon cable. The hdmyboy converts the digital video and the analog audio and sends it through the HDMI cable to the TV. The hdmyboy only supports mono audio because only a mono audio signal is necessary for the single speaker connected to the LCD PCB.
Unfortunately the Kickstarter campaign was not successful. However, the hdmyboy team still has some prototypes left here : http://www.hdmyboy.com/play/. They are very expensive however, (a bit too expensive for what it does) but should represent the best solution to obtain true Game Boy output without using an emulator. If they try another Kickstarter campaign again, then hopefully more people would be willing to contribute and get the price of this fine idea down.
Given a 1080p display, the hdmyboy can by default do 7x nearest neighbor scaling to give razor sharp graphics at the Game Boy's original aspect ratio. It can also do 12:7 scaling to give razor sharp widescreen graphics and occupy almost the whole screen if you prefer. Like the Super Game Boy it has 32 color palettes available to colorize the graphics. While the Game Boy's sprite and background tiles have 10 valid palette selections to choose from, the Super Game Boy (unless the game is enhanced) and hdmyboy only apply colors based on the actual color value of the outputted pixel.
Showing posts with label NES. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NES. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Weapons in Mega Man 1, 2 & 3
The classic Mega Man games have always had a non-linear progression as a hallmark of the series. Instead of following a set path from beginning to end, you begin the game by choosing which level you will tackle in any order. Some levels may be easier than others. Each level has a Robot Master at the end which you must fight and defeat to beat the stage. When you beat a Robot Master, you will acquire his weapon for use in other stages. Each Robot Master weapon has its own energy meter and its own attack. One or more of the other Robot Masters will be weak to that attack.
Prior to Mega Man 4 (and Mega Man III for the Game Boy), which added the Mega Buster charged shot to the series, the weapons were very important in the Mega Man series. However, not all were created equal. In this blog entry, I would like to give my impressions of the weapons in each of the first three Mega Man games for the NES and discuss the Robot Master weaknesses. Let's delve into the central design mechanic of the Mega Man series from the beginning :
The designers of Mega Man intended the Robot Masters to each be weak against a specific weapon taken from another Robot Master and stronger or invulnerable to others. This rock-paper-scissors design would remain throughout the series. Mega Man and each Robot Master has 28 units of life energy. A weak attack may only take one unit, but a strong attack could take four or ten or fourteen. Mega Man's Arm Cannon would always take at least one unit for a successful hit, regardless of enemy.
In the original Mega Man, each weakness had an easy to understand rationale.
Cut Man is weak against Guts Man's weapon*
Rationale : Rock blunts scissors
Guts Man is weak against Bomb Man's weapon
Rationale : Bomb blasts rock
Bomb Man is weak against Fire Man's weapon
Rationale : Fire detonates explosives
Fire Man is weak against Ice Man's weapon
Rationale : Ice/water extinguishes fire
Ice Man is weak against Elec Man's weapon
Rationale : Ice/water conducts electricity
Elec Man is weak against Cut Man's weapon
Rationale : Electricity cannot flow once its circuit is cut
* - Unlike every other canonical Mega Man game, the Robot Masters weapons are not named in the game or manual. The manual also refers to the Robot Masters as one word, "Cutman", and identifies their and Mega Man's creator as "Dr. Wright." In the sequel it was firmly established as Dr. Light. Sometimes, the games refers to "Dr. Wiley" or "DR. WILeY", but the accepted spelling of the villain's last name is "Dr. Wily."
Not all of these weapons are equally useful. Guts Man's weapon only works when there are rocks around to pick up. Bomb Man's weapon does not travel far and does not deal damage instantly, so it is usually limited in its application. Is it any wonder that these two weapons are nowhere to be found in the Gameboy game? Ice Man's weapon usually only freezes enemies and is useless against most Robot Masters. Fire Man, Cut Man and Elec Man's weapons are much more general purpose weapons. The latter two can cause even more damage to a boss by the select/pause button exploit.
Some Robot Masters were made easier to defeat with the Arm Cannon than others, after all, the player had to find a way to break into this weakness loop. Most players usually start with Bomb Man or Cut Man. The Arm Cannon takes two units from Bomb Man and three from Cut Man, but Cut Man has to be fought in closer quarters and is more aggressive of the two Robot Masters. Guts Man and Fire Man can also be beaten with a little practice and a full health meter. Ice Man is more difficult because you have to follow his pattern very precisely and his projectile attack hits for a lot of damage. Elec Man is by far the hardest of the Robot Masters to defeat because he is aggressive and so fast that his patterns are harder to memorize.
There is a special item you can obtain in this game called the Magnet Beam. It allows you to construct temporary platforms which you can use to walk or ascend the screen. It is behind three moveable blocks in Elec Man's stage. It is necessary in Dr. Wily's stages and extremely useful in Ice Man's stage. It is also very useful in Guts Man's stage, but you need Guts Man's weapon to move the blocks. Alternatively, you can defeat Elec Man and go back to his stage to retrieve the Magnet Beam using Elec Man's weapon to destroy the blocks. Mega Man allows you to revisit stages, but Mega Man 2 and 3 do not.
Now let us turn to Mega Man 2. Mega Man 2 introduced the standard eight basic Robot Masters. However, they no longer are as grounded in basic concepts like their predecessors.
Metal Man is weak against Quick Boomerang
Wood Man is weak against Atomic Fire
Bubble Man is weak against Metal Blade
Air Man is weak against Leaf Shield
Crash Man is weak against Air Shooter
Heat Man is weak against Bubble Lead
Flash Man is weak against Metal Blade
Quick Man is weak against Time Stopper
The following assumes you are playing on the "Difficult" difficulty level, which is the only difficulty level in the original Japanese version. In addition to the above, Metal Man is even weaker to his own weapon than to anything else. The Time Stopper will only take half of Quick Man's life and thereafter the Crash Bomber is the weapon that will damage him the most. As you may have noticed, Flash Man and Bubble Man share the same weakness. The Atomic Fire weapon can damage many of the Robot Masters more than the other weapons, but the fully charged shot takes half of its energy meter. You can only defeat Wood Man using the Atomic Fire weapon alone.
Some of these pairings make some sense. Time Stopper is a natural assumption to use against Quick Man. Bubble Lead, a water-type attack, makes sense against Heat Man. Moreover, Heat Man's attack pattern practically invites you to use Bubble Lead whereas Crash Man's pattern does not. Fire burns wood, so Wood Man's weakness makes sense. If you want to go out on a limb, I suppose you could say that the Leaf Shield can block the air intake of Air Man, who has a big fan in his chest. The Metal Blades can cut through the swim gear of Bubble Man. But why should Metal Man be weak against the Quick Boomerangs? Why should Crash Man be so weak to the Air Shooter? I don't really see the particular connection between Flash Man and the Metal Blades.
You may note some similarities between some of the weapons in Mega Man and Mega Man II. The Quick Boomerang has an attack pattern nearly identical to Cut Man's weapon. Fire Man and Atomic Fire have similar weapon properties, as do Bubble Lead and Ice Man's weapon. Crash Man's bombs serve a similar function to Guts Man and Elec Man's weapons.
Weapons are more unbalanced in Mega Man 2 than in Mega Man. The Metal Blade is easily the best weapon in the game, its fast, can shoot in eight directions, damage most enemies and takes quite a while to run out of energy. The Quick Boomerang can be useful and lasts a while, but its range is short. The Bubble Lead weapon has occasional uses. The Time Stopper runs down its energy quickly and is best suited to Quick Man's stage and Quick Man itself. Crash Bomber is best used for destroying barriers and is the only weapon that will work against the boss in Dr. Wily's castle, stage 4. Heat Man's weapon is slow to fire and a fully charged shot takes half the energy meter, so it is usually reserved for Wood Man and Dr. Wily's first form. Air Man's weapon is usually useless except against Crash Man and drains quickly. Wood Man's weapon is almost certainly the most useless in the game, when does a skilled player need its protection and it is a pretty weak attack. Even Air Man may go down faster to the Arm Cannon than to the Leaf Shield because his air jets can block the shield.
There are three acquirable Items in this game. You acquire an Item by beating one of the Robot Masters. Item-1 creates up to three temporary platforms which hover upwards for a short distance. Item-2 allows you to travel across the screen in a flying platform. Item-3 allows you to climb walls. All three are necessary for Dr. Wily's Castle. Items 1 and 2 are especially useful in Heat Man's stage to pass the areas with the disappearing blocks easily.
Although I do not find the original Mega Man to be overly difficult (anymore), Mega Man 2 added a password system and you could collect up to four disposable Energy Tanks that could refill your health meter at any time. These two additions made the game much more forgiving. For non-Japanese audiences, a Normal mode was added to make the game much easier to beat. In Normal mode, everything takes twice as much damage from your weapons and the enemies give better item drops. Mega Man 2's Difficult mode is the only mode in the Japanese version.
Finally, I will talk about Mega Man 3. Mega Man 3 built on Mega Man 2's success and is a great game in its own right. Nothing has changed on the weapons front. Its weapons, however, leave even more to be desired.
Top Man is weak against Hard Knuckle
Shadow Man is weak against Top Spin
Gemini Man is weak against Search Snake
Needle Man is weak against Gemini Laser
Snake Man is weak against Needle Cannon
Spark Man is weak against Shadow Blade
Magnet Man is weak against Spark Shock
Hard Man is weak against Magnet Missile
Magnet Man is equally weak against Shadow Blade. Shadow Man is also very weak against his own weapon. Except for Hard Man and Spark Man, the logic of the weaknesses of the Robot Masters here is beyond me.
The best weapon in the game is the Shadow Blade. It can fire in five directions, has good speed, decent range and comes back to you. Essentially it is a more balanced version of the Metal Blade. Needle Cannon is also pretty good, it fires fast and lasts a while. Spark Shock is also fast and travels far. Search Snake is pretty limited in its usefulness and often really weak, the Gemini Laser is slow to travel, you can only have one shot out at a time and it takes several ricochets off walls for each shot to expire. Note that Search Snake has a slightly improved attack pattern over Bubble Lead. The Magnet Missiles exhaust themselves too quickly to be of much use. Hard Knuckle is so slow that it is really only useful to break down barriers and in boss fights, like Crash Bomber.
Top Spin takes the prize here as the worst weapon in the first three Mega Man games. It is worse than the Leaf Shield, the Air Cannon, Bomb Man and Guts Man's weapons. There are three issues with the Top Spin. First, you have to be right next to the enemy to register a hit, leaving you prone to being hit in return. Second, the amount of damage it does is very variable. Third, it drains really quickly. You can spin against Shadow Man until Top Spin's energy is depleted and still not defeat it. The second time around, you will almost certainly use another weapon against Shadow Man. While there is one boss in Dr. Wily's castle that is vulnerable to the Top Spin, it is also vulnerable to another weapon, fortunately.
Mega Man's companion/helper Rush is introduced in this game. Rush is a robot dog who can perform three abilities. The first ability is the Rush Coil and is present when you begin the game. It acts like a spring to allow you to jump high. The second is the Rush Marine and the third is the Rush Jet. The Rush Marine allows you to travel freely in water and is useful in Gemini Man's stage. The Rush Jet allows you to travel freely in the air and makes Magnet Man's stage a piece of cake as well as any other area with a lot of pits.
Mega Man 3 allows you to collect up to nine Energy Tanks. There are some levels where you can get more than one Energy Tank or get one early in the level so you can collect them quickly. Additionally, the slide move makes its first appearance. With it, you can usually slide under any Robot Master who jumps and get away from them quickly. This makes using a Robot Master weapon a little less necessary in many instances.
The Game Boy game is something like a remake or adaptation of the original game with elements of the sequel thrown in. The original Mega Man had six stages and four smaller parts to Dr. Wily's stage. For the small screen, some cuts had to be made. Gone are Bomb Man and Guts Man and their stages. Dr. Wily's Castle and Space Ship are longer than any Robot Master's stage. The game is six stages long, but the last two stages are quite difficult. The health and energy meters were decreased from 28 to 19 units.
Cut Man, Fire Man, Ice Man and Elec Man are the Robot Masters you can choose from in this game. Fire Man's attack has been simplified. Elec Man has become much less aggressive and his attacks do far less damage, making him the usual Robot Master to start out with. Their weakness have not changed from the NES game, but the best weapon to use against Cut Man is Fire Storm. Their weapons are essentially the same as in the NES game.
When you get to the end of Dr. Wily's Castle, you will see teleporters you can take in any order to fight Bubble Man, Heat Man, Flash Man and Quick Man from Mega Man 2. Their weaknesses have not changed, but the Metal Blade does not exist in this game, so you are intended use Atomic Fire against Flash Man. They really are not particularly weak to any of the weapons from the first set of Robot Masters. The only major change is that Heat Man's weapon does not take up as much energy for a charged shot. It can also destroy the barriers on Dr. Wily's Space Ship.
Once you defeat the second four Robot Masters, you must fight Enker, who only is affected by the Arm Cannon. Enker gives up the Mirror Buster, which reflects enemy shots. Unfortunately, once you obtain their weapons, you have only one stage to use them. The final password only allows you to continue before Dr. Wily's Castle, so if you want to try to beat the game again you have to fight the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters again.
There is one item that can be acquired in this game, the Carry item. You obtain it after you defeat the final Robot Master of the initial four. It creates a platform to the side or underneath you for a short period of time. Only one can be active at a time, but you can use it to save yourself from a deadly fall or spikes or to reach areas where you cannot jump to unaided. You cannot change to a weapon while it is active, but you can conserve its energy by leaving the screen it is on.
Capcom used Arabic numerals to designate the NES games and Roman numerals (and the subtitle above) to designate Game Boy games on their respective boxes in order to tell them apart. I will do the same for this article.
Mega Man II gives the other half of the Robot Master contingent from Mega Man 2: Air Man, Crash Man, Metal Man and Wood Man. After you get to the end of Dr. Wily's Castle, you will be able to go through teleporters for new stages for half of the contingent of Mega Man 3: Needle Man, Top Man, Magnet Man and Hard Man. After you beat them and acquire their powers, you will fight Quint and obtain his power, the Sakugarne, which is a pogo-stick. Then it is onto the final stage, Dr. Wily's Space Ship. Other than actual stages instead of arenas for the second set of Robot Masters, not much has changed from its predecessor.
Rush, Energy Tanks and the slide move make their Game Boy introduction. Rush transforms into the Coil, Jet and Marine. You can obtain up to four Energy Tanks in Mega Man II.
I should talk about Robot Master weaknesses in this game, but this game is so poorly done that you can beat them all with the Arm Cannon. The Robot Master's attacks and patterns are fairly simplistic and do not usually do much damage. Quint is a joke and Dr. Wily's final forms won't cause you grief, unlike the previous game. The music stinks as well. Considering that the engine from the previous game was quite robust, the lack of inspiration in this game is appalling.
Okay, so in this game, Metal Man is now vulnerable to Crash Bomber. On the other hand, Crash Man is not nearly as vulnerable to the Air Shooter, but it remains the best weapon to use against it. Neither Shadow Man nor Spark Man are present, so Magnet Man is now vulnerable to Needle Cannon. Similarly, Gemini Man is not present, so Needle Man is now vulnerable to Top Spin.
Prior to Mega Man 4 (and Mega Man III for the Game Boy), which added the Mega Buster charged shot to the series, the weapons were very important in the Mega Man series. However, not all were created equal. In this blog entry, I would like to give my impressions of the weapons in each of the first three Mega Man games for the NES and discuss the Robot Master weaknesses. Let's delve into the central design mechanic of the Mega Man series from the beginning :
The designers of Mega Man intended the Robot Masters to each be weak against a specific weapon taken from another Robot Master and stronger or invulnerable to others. This rock-paper-scissors design would remain throughout the series. Mega Man and each Robot Master has 28 units of life energy. A weak attack may only take one unit, but a strong attack could take four or ten or fourteen. Mega Man's Arm Cannon would always take at least one unit for a successful hit, regardless of enemy.
In the original Mega Man, each weakness had an easy to understand rationale.
Cut Man is weak against Guts Man's weapon*
Rationale : Rock blunts scissors
Guts Man is weak against Bomb Man's weapon
Rationale : Bomb blasts rock
Bomb Man is weak against Fire Man's weapon
Rationale : Fire detonates explosives
Fire Man is weak against Ice Man's weapon
Rationale : Ice/water extinguishes fire
Ice Man is weak against Elec Man's weapon
Rationale : Ice/water conducts electricity
Elec Man is weak against Cut Man's weapon
Rationale : Electricity cannot flow once its circuit is cut
* - Unlike every other canonical Mega Man game, the Robot Masters weapons are not named in the game or manual. The manual also refers to the Robot Masters as one word, "Cutman", and identifies their and Mega Man's creator as "Dr. Wright." In the sequel it was firmly established as Dr. Light. Sometimes, the games refers to "Dr. Wiley" or "DR. WILeY", but the accepted spelling of the villain's last name is "Dr. Wily."
Not all of these weapons are equally useful. Guts Man's weapon only works when there are rocks around to pick up. Bomb Man's weapon does not travel far and does not deal damage instantly, so it is usually limited in its application. Is it any wonder that these two weapons are nowhere to be found in the Gameboy game? Ice Man's weapon usually only freezes enemies and is useless against most Robot Masters. Fire Man, Cut Man and Elec Man's weapons are much more general purpose weapons. The latter two can cause even more damage to a boss by the select/pause button exploit.
Some Robot Masters were made easier to defeat with the Arm Cannon than others, after all, the player had to find a way to break into this weakness loop. Most players usually start with Bomb Man or Cut Man. The Arm Cannon takes two units from Bomb Man and three from Cut Man, but Cut Man has to be fought in closer quarters and is more aggressive of the two Robot Masters. Guts Man and Fire Man can also be beaten with a little practice and a full health meter. Ice Man is more difficult because you have to follow his pattern very precisely and his projectile attack hits for a lot of damage. Elec Man is by far the hardest of the Robot Masters to defeat because he is aggressive and so fast that his patterns are harder to memorize.
There is a special item you can obtain in this game called the Magnet Beam. It allows you to construct temporary platforms which you can use to walk or ascend the screen. It is behind three moveable blocks in Elec Man's stage. It is necessary in Dr. Wily's stages and extremely useful in Ice Man's stage. It is also very useful in Guts Man's stage, but you need Guts Man's weapon to move the blocks. Alternatively, you can defeat Elec Man and go back to his stage to retrieve the Magnet Beam using Elec Man's weapon to destroy the blocks. Mega Man allows you to revisit stages, but Mega Man 2 and 3 do not.
Now let us turn to Mega Man 2. Mega Man 2 introduced the standard eight basic Robot Masters. However, they no longer are as grounded in basic concepts like their predecessors.
Metal Man is weak against Quick Boomerang
Wood Man is weak against Atomic Fire
Bubble Man is weak against Metal Blade
Air Man is weak against Leaf Shield
Crash Man is weak against Air Shooter
Heat Man is weak against Bubble Lead
Flash Man is weak against Metal Blade
Quick Man is weak against Time Stopper
The following assumes you are playing on the "Difficult" difficulty level, which is the only difficulty level in the original Japanese version. In addition to the above, Metal Man is even weaker to his own weapon than to anything else. The Time Stopper will only take half of Quick Man's life and thereafter the Crash Bomber is the weapon that will damage him the most. As you may have noticed, Flash Man and Bubble Man share the same weakness. The Atomic Fire weapon can damage many of the Robot Masters more than the other weapons, but the fully charged shot takes half of its energy meter. You can only defeat Wood Man using the Atomic Fire weapon alone.
Some of these pairings make some sense. Time Stopper is a natural assumption to use against Quick Man. Bubble Lead, a water-type attack, makes sense against Heat Man. Moreover, Heat Man's attack pattern practically invites you to use Bubble Lead whereas Crash Man's pattern does not. Fire burns wood, so Wood Man's weakness makes sense. If you want to go out on a limb, I suppose you could say that the Leaf Shield can block the air intake of Air Man, who has a big fan in his chest. The Metal Blades can cut through the swim gear of Bubble Man. But why should Metal Man be weak against the Quick Boomerangs? Why should Crash Man be so weak to the Air Shooter? I don't really see the particular connection between Flash Man and the Metal Blades.
You may note some similarities between some of the weapons in Mega Man and Mega Man II. The Quick Boomerang has an attack pattern nearly identical to Cut Man's weapon. Fire Man and Atomic Fire have similar weapon properties, as do Bubble Lead and Ice Man's weapon. Crash Man's bombs serve a similar function to Guts Man and Elec Man's weapons.
Weapons are more unbalanced in Mega Man 2 than in Mega Man. The Metal Blade is easily the best weapon in the game, its fast, can shoot in eight directions, damage most enemies and takes quite a while to run out of energy. The Quick Boomerang can be useful and lasts a while, but its range is short. The Bubble Lead weapon has occasional uses. The Time Stopper runs down its energy quickly and is best suited to Quick Man's stage and Quick Man itself. Crash Bomber is best used for destroying barriers and is the only weapon that will work against the boss in Dr. Wily's castle, stage 4. Heat Man's weapon is slow to fire and a fully charged shot takes half the energy meter, so it is usually reserved for Wood Man and Dr. Wily's first form. Air Man's weapon is usually useless except against Crash Man and drains quickly. Wood Man's weapon is almost certainly the most useless in the game, when does a skilled player need its protection and it is a pretty weak attack. Even Air Man may go down faster to the Arm Cannon than to the Leaf Shield because his air jets can block the shield.
There are three acquirable Items in this game. You acquire an Item by beating one of the Robot Masters. Item-1 creates up to three temporary platforms which hover upwards for a short distance. Item-2 allows you to travel across the screen in a flying platform. Item-3 allows you to climb walls. All three are necessary for Dr. Wily's Castle. Items 1 and 2 are especially useful in Heat Man's stage to pass the areas with the disappearing blocks easily.
Although I do not find the original Mega Man to be overly difficult (anymore), Mega Man 2 added a password system and you could collect up to four disposable Energy Tanks that could refill your health meter at any time. These two additions made the game much more forgiving. For non-Japanese audiences, a Normal mode was added to make the game much easier to beat. In Normal mode, everything takes twice as much damage from your weapons and the enemies give better item drops. Mega Man 2's Difficult mode is the only mode in the Japanese version.
Finally, I will talk about Mega Man 3. Mega Man 3 built on Mega Man 2's success and is a great game in its own right. Nothing has changed on the weapons front. Its weapons, however, leave even more to be desired.
Top Man is weak against Hard Knuckle
Shadow Man is weak against Top Spin
Gemini Man is weak against Search Snake
Needle Man is weak against Gemini Laser
Snake Man is weak against Needle Cannon
Spark Man is weak against Shadow Blade
Magnet Man is weak against Spark Shock
Hard Man is weak against Magnet Missile
Magnet Man is equally weak against Shadow Blade. Shadow Man is also very weak against his own weapon. Except for Hard Man and Spark Man, the logic of the weaknesses of the Robot Masters here is beyond me.
The best weapon in the game is the Shadow Blade. It can fire in five directions, has good speed, decent range and comes back to you. Essentially it is a more balanced version of the Metal Blade. Needle Cannon is also pretty good, it fires fast and lasts a while. Spark Shock is also fast and travels far. Search Snake is pretty limited in its usefulness and often really weak, the Gemini Laser is slow to travel, you can only have one shot out at a time and it takes several ricochets off walls for each shot to expire. Note that Search Snake has a slightly improved attack pattern over Bubble Lead. The Magnet Missiles exhaust themselves too quickly to be of much use. Hard Knuckle is so slow that it is really only useful to break down barriers and in boss fights, like Crash Bomber.
Top Spin takes the prize here as the worst weapon in the first three Mega Man games. It is worse than the Leaf Shield, the Air Cannon, Bomb Man and Guts Man's weapons. There are three issues with the Top Spin. First, you have to be right next to the enemy to register a hit, leaving you prone to being hit in return. Second, the amount of damage it does is very variable. Third, it drains really quickly. You can spin against Shadow Man until Top Spin's energy is depleted and still not defeat it. The second time around, you will almost certainly use another weapon against Shadow Man. While there is one boss in Dr. Wily's castle that is vulnerable to the Top Spin, it is also vulnerable to another weapon, fortunately.
Mega Man's companion/helper Rush is introduced in this game. Rush is a robot dog who can perform three abilities. The first ability is the Rush Coil and is present when you begin the game. It acts like a spring to allow you to jump high. The second is the Rush Marine and the third is the Rush Jet. The Rush Marine allows you to travel freely in water and is useful in Gemini Man's stage. The Rush Jet allows you to travel freely in the air and makes Magnet Man's stage a piece of cake as well as any other area with a lot of pits.
Mega Man 3 allows you to collect up to nine Energy Tanks. There are some levels where you can get more than one Energy Tank or get one early in the level so you can collect them quickly. Additionally, the slide move makes its first appearance. With it, you can usually slide under any Robot Master who jumps and get away from them quickly. This makes using a Robot Master weapon a little less necessary in many instances.
Dr. Wily's Revenge
Cut Man, Fire Man, Ice Man and Elec Man are the Robot Masters you can choose from in this game. Fire Man's attack has been simplified. Elec Man has become much less aggressive and his attacks do far less damage, making him the usual Robot Master to start out with. Their weakness have not changed from the NES game, but the best weapon to use against Cut Man is Fire Storm. Their weapons are essentially the same as in the NES game.
When you get to the end of Dr. Wily's Castle, you will see teleporters you can take in any order to fight Bubble Man, Heat Man, Flash Man and Quick Man from Mega Man 2. Their weaknesses have not changed, but the Metal Blade does not exist in this game, so you are intended use Atomic Fire against Flash Man. They really are not particularly weak to any of the weapons from the first set of Robot Masters. The only major change is that Heat Man's weapon does not take up as much energy for a charged shot. It can also destroy the barriers on Dr. Wily's Space Ship.
Once you defeat the second four Robot Masters, you must fight Enker, who only is affected by the Arm Cannon. Enker gives up the Mirror Buster, which reflects enemy shots. Unfortunately, once you obtain their weapons, you have only one stage to use them. The final password only allows you to continue before Dr. Wily's Castle, so if you want to try to beat the game again you have to fight the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters again.
There is one item that can be acquired in this game, the Carry item. You obtain it after you defeat the final Robot Master of the initial four. It creates a platform to the side or underneath you for a short period of time. Only one can be active at a time, but you can use it to save yourself from a deadly fall or spikes or to reach areas where you cannot jump to unaided. You cannot change to a weapon while it is active, but you can conserve its energy by leaving the screen it is on.
Capcom used Arabic numerals to designate the NES games and Roman numerals (and the subtitle above) to designate Game Boy games on their respective boxes in order to tell them apart. I will do the same for this article.
Mega Man II gives the other half of the Robot Master contingent from Mega Man 2: Air Man, Crash Man, Metal Man and Wood Man. After you get to the end of Dr. Wily's Castle, you will be able to go through teleporters for new stages for half of the contingent of Mega Man 3: Needle Man, Top Man, Magnet Man and Hard Man. After you beat them and acquire their powers, you will fight Quint and obtain his power, the Sakugarne, which is a pogo-stick. Then it is onto the final stage, Dr. Wily's Space Ship. Other than actual stages instead of arenas for the second set of Robot Masters, not much has changed from its predecessor.
Rush, Energy Tanks and the slide move make their Game Boy introduction. Rush transforms into the Coil, Jet and Marine. You can obtain up to four Energy Tanks in Mega Man II.
I should talk about Robot Master weaknesses in this game, but this game is so poorly done that you can beat them all with the Arm Cannon. The Robot Master's attacks and patterns are fairly simplistic and do not usually do much damage. Quint is a joke and Dr. Wily's final forms won't cause you grief, unlike the previous game. The music stinks as well. Considering that the engine from the previous game was quite robust, the lack of inspiration in this game is appalling.
Okay, so in this game, Metal Man is now vulnerable to Crash Bomber. On the other hand, Crash Man is not nearly as vulnerable to the Air Shooter, but it remains the best weapon to use against it. Neither Shadow Man nor Spark Man are present, so Magnet Man is now vulnerable to Needle Cannon. Similarly, Gemini Man is not present, so Needle Man is now vulnerable to Top Spin.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Seize the Advantage, the NES Advantage
The NES Advantage was the first arcade-style controller for the NES, but it would not be the last. It is, however, the best of the bunch. In this post I would like to explain why it is the best and what kind of games for which it is best suited.
Design
The NES Advantage appears to have been designed in-house by Nintendo. While it is similar to products from ASCIIWARE, it is of a very high build quality.
There were other arcade-style joysticks. Camerica brought over the Freedom Stick and the TurboTronic, the latter has the same button layout as the ASCII Turbo Jr Stick for the Famicom. Beeshu marketed the Jammer and Ultimate Superstick, but the only thing ultimate about it was the terrible build quality. The Quickshot Arcade was another arcade-style stick. The Ultimate Superstick and the Freedom Stick are wireless infrared sticks.
The NES Advantage uses a light gray color for its plastic like the NES front loader. It comes with crevices cut into the plastic to give it some style. These crevices are hard to clean if they get really filthy and I always thought they were a bit over the top. The red lettering on the top can also get worn down by sunlight and abuse.
The bottom of the NES Advantage has a metal base and four rubber feet. This gives it some heft. To open the advantage, you need to remove the bottom feet (which are attached to the base by an adhesive) and the turbo knobs, because they screw into the top plastic with hex nuts on the potentiometers.
Features
The NES Advantage has three spring latched switches for the Turbo B, Turbo A and Slow buttons. It has a sliding switch for the 1/2 Player button. The four directionals and four regular buttons use rubber domes to make contact, just like a regular NES controller except these are larger. Most arcade sticks of the day came in two varieties, leaf switches and micro switches. Leaf switches are quiet but may be less precise, while micro switches are noisy but clicky. Each button or directional has a separate pad, making replacement somewhat easier. The stick has a knob that can be unscrewed and has a metal coil inside it to recenter it like a spring.
The Turbo control knobs allow for a very finely tuned turbo selection for each button independently. This is very important because some games work better with a lower Turbo setting and other games work better with a higher Turbo setting. An adjustable Turbo setting may simulate pressing the button one time per second, fifteen times per second or thirty times per second. Some games do not respond to the Turbo at all, as in one shot at a time games like Galaga.
The LEDs above the buttons flash with the button presses. As you turn the dial up on the Turbo knows, you will see the LED light up faster and faster until it turns a solid red. At that point your eyes can no longer track the discrete turning on and off of the LED. Because there are switches on the Turbo to turn it on and off, you never need to bother with it if you don't want to.
For many sidescrolling games, the A button is used to jump. Turbo is not usually helpful in this instance. The NES Advantage is often used where only the B button has any Turbo on it. Nor is it useful in shooter games to activate a secondary weapon with a limited supply of ammo or select a weapons option.
The Slow button is essentially a Turbo Start button. This means that you will often hear the annoying sound assigned to a press of the Start button. Also, not every game allows you to pause, making this useless when it is pressed. Other games will bring up a menu or subscreen, which is very distracting. Pressing the Start button can cause you to lose other button presses, making this feature really something of a novelty.
The cable for the NES Advantage has two connectors on the end. The end connectors are separated for the last four inches of the cable length and one of the connectors has a white stripe. This allows you and a friend to use your own NES Advantages. The connector with the white stripe always goes into Controller Port 1 and the connector without the white stripe always goes into Controller Port 2. You also need to make sure that the Player 1/2 switch is set appropriately.
You can use four NES Advantages with a NES Four Score or NES Satellite. The NES Advantage plugged into Controller Port 3 should have its switch set to Player 1 and the NES Advantage plugged into Controller Port 4 should have its switch set to Player 2.
If you are playing a two-player alternating game, you can share the NES Advantage between you and your friend. In this case, you must flip the switch when you pass the NES Advantage back and forth. This is useful even when you are playing alone for practice because you can play two games at once.
Overall, the NES Advantage is very durable and very responsive. One complaint about the internals is that the buttons can get stuck. I have read that this usually happens when the carbon pads underneath the A and B buttons get worn out or are not properly underneath the button. You should test the buttons before you buy one if possible.
When Nintendo releases a first-party product for the NES with a Turbo and Slow features, is it really cheating to use them? You may recall that Nintendo released the NES Satellite, which also had Turbo support, in the NES Sports Set. Sega also put out a Genesis controller with Turbo and NEC's Turbo Grafx-16 came with a Turbo-supporting controller. Under these circumstances, it is really hard to say that Turbo is cheating. After all, Turbo is only simulating the rapid pressing of a button.
If one takes the argument further, then what about the Game Genie? Nintendo never licensed the device, which came out for the NES, SNES and Game Boy. However, Sega did license the Genesis and Game Gear versions.
Best Games
Many of Nintendo's early releases were based off arcade games. Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3, Popeye and Mario Bros. are direct ports. Balloon Fight is a clone of Joust and Mach Rider is a clone of Hang-On. Galaga, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Defender, Joust, Elevator Action, the list can go on and on. The NES Advantage offers a somewhat more authentic arcade style experience when playing these games.
The NES Advantage has its place elsewhere. The classic Konami games like Contra, Jackal, Super C, Gradius and Life Force can all take advantage of the NES Advantage's Turbo. Compile's top-down shooters, Zanac, The Guardian Legend and Gun-Nac are also good games for the Advantage. Fester's Quest becomes much more playable with the Turbo function of the Advantage. The few fighting games for the NES like TMNT Tournament Fighters could benefit from the smooth motion of the stick.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
NES Satellite : Pinnacle of Early Wireless Controller Solutions
Ever since the Nintendo WaveBird controller was released for the Gamecube, wireless controllers have finally entered their own. Using high frequency RF technology in the 900MHz and later 2.4GHz bands, it combined long distance wirelessness without a significant;y bulky design. Later controllers for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii, Wii U, PS3 and PS4
Before the advent of the Nintendo Wavebird, previous wireless controllers, with one important exception, used infrared technology. Infrared technology is typically used in TV remotes and is a cheap, low powered way to communicate signals without a wired connection. In the 1980s it was fairly compact and did not add a great deal of bulk to a controller.
The NES was the first console which wireless controllers were fairly common. Examples include the Camerica Freedom Stick, Supersonic Joystick and Freedom Connection (the latter is an adapter only) and the Acclaim Double Player Wireless Head-to-Head System and Wireless-Infrared Remote Controller. There was even a wireless Light Gun, the Playco Toys Video Shooter (which looks like a Sega Light Phaser).
The trouble with infrared technology is that the technology requires a line of sight between the controller and the console. This is why TV remotes tend to work only within a "sweet spot" and the NES wireless controllers were no different. But while you can typically hold a TV remote in a fixed position, even if channel surfing, the same cannot be true for a wireless video game controller. Excited gamers will move their controller all over the place, confusing the infrared controller and causing lag and missing hits.
The other option at the time was the rf technology used in the Atari CX-42 Wireless Joysticks. These sticks came with a large receiver with an antenna. Each stick required a 9V battery and had an extremely large base compared to the regular CX-40 joystick. The sticks had an antenna sticking out the side. In addition to the bulk of the sticks and the ugly receiver box, the sticks did not have a very long range.
Enter the NES Satellite. Nintendo understood the problem that gamers would not keep their controllers in a straight line with the infrared receiver, so it designed an adapter that was not designed to move. The Satellite can easily add eight feet of distance to the sev
en and a half foot controller cords Nintendo used with its NES controllers. This is especially useful if you have AV Famicom controllers, which plug into NES controller ports but have very short cable lengths at less than three feet long.
The Satellite may not look particularly heavy, but it uses six C-cell batteries, adding a bit of heft to the unit. However, with the slack in the controller cable, a gamer is free to move his controller about without disturbing the infrared connection. It is unlikely that someone will yank it away.
Why large, bulky C-cell batteries? The NES Satellite is a four player adapter and the infrared unit, the adapter circuitry and the turbo circuitry all need power. Also, the Satellite has to provide power for four controllers. The Satellite is rated for 9VDC, 150mA. Six C-Cell betteries connected in series provide 9VDC and have a maximum 8000mA-H capacity. Fresh batteries should give at least 20 hours of usage out of the Satellite. Unfortunately, Nintendo did not provide an AC adapter or plug for the device, but if you can find a 9V brick of sufficient amperage, you should not have a problem with powering the device by soldering the split wire to the battery terminal connectors.
The Satellite has a power button to avoid draining the batteries when the NES is not in use. It has separate turbo buttons for A and B. The turbo buttons work, but the turbo cannot be adjusted, so it is not as great as the adjustable turbo of an NES Advantage. When the Satellite is communicating with its receiver, you will see a LED on the receiver light up.
It works with the NES Advantage. The NES Advantage has an adjustable turbo feature and a slow feature, so it may drain the batteries a bit more quickly than a standard controller when the turbo is active. It also works with the Zapper, but only in Controller Port 2. Also, the Ctlr/Gun switch must be in the Gun position. Finally, you will need to turn the power off and back on again (if the switch was in the Ctlr position) before the device will register the trigger function of the Zapper. It should work with other Controller Port 2 peripherals like the Arkanoid VAUS paddle controller or the NES Power Pad.
The Satellite's only other disadvantage, other than its battery consumption, is that it must maintain a line of sight with the receiver plugged into the NES controller ports. Moreover, that line of sight should be dead-on straight and not at anything more than a slight angle, either horizontally or vertically. If you feel like the game is not responding appropriately, adjust the Satellite unit and turn the power off and back on.
The Satellite, when properly focused on the receiver, does not offer any appreciable lag to your gameplay. I have tested it with games like Contra, Battletoads and Duck Hunt. I could observe no appreciable decrease in my performance and no obvious time where button presses and game response seemed out of sync. Modern RF-based controllers cannot make this claim. They will add lag compared to a wired controller. Some people state they notice it, others do not. This is typically important for systems with a wired and a wireless option like the Gamecube and Xbox 360. For systems that more or less exclusively use wireless controllers, the programmers should have factored in the lag from the controller.
There were not too many four player games released for the NES. Here is the list of licensed NES games that support the NES Satellite adapter and its wired version, the NES Four-Score :
Bomberman II
Championship Bowling
Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat
Gauntlet II
Greg Norman's Golf Power
Harlem Globetrotters
Kings of the Beach
Magic Johnson's Fast Break
Monster Truck Rally
M.U.L.E.
NES Play Action Football
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Nintendo World Cup
R.C. Pro-Am II
Rackets & Rivals
Roundball: 2 on 2 Challenge
Spot: The Video Game
Smash TV
Super Off Road
Super Jeopardy!
Super Spike V'Ball
Swords and Serpents
Top Players' Tennis
Of all those games, Bomberman II, M.U.L.E. and Smash TV are the best games in my opinion. Bomberman II allows for four-player simultaneous fun. M.U.L.E. has a change to the town area in its NES version that makes purists scoff, but outside that change to the town, the game offers a lot of four player fun and strategy. Its usually much easier to find a NES and a four player adapter than an Atari 400 or 800 home computer.
Smash TV is very clever, the game only supports two players at maximum. However, with a four player adapter, each player can use the D-pads of two standard controllers to mimic the arcade controls much more precisely than by using one D-pad for each player.
Gauntlet II allows for four player simultaneous action, but while that port appears to be pretty faithful to the arcade game, it feels a little bland and has no in-game music (like the arcade). I'm not a huge sports game fan, even on the NES. Some people like Pat the NES Punk extol the virtues of Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat, but I am not a big fan of Super Sprint-style games on the NES. R.C. Pro-Am II is a good single player game, but is not good for multiplayer. I personally have a fondness for Swords and Serpents, but I cannot imagine four people coming together to play this game (the first player controls the movement).
Before the advent of the Nintendo Wavebird, previous wireless controllers, with one important exception, used infrared technology. Infrared technology is typically used in TV remotes and is a cheap, low powered way to communicate signals without a wired connection. In the 1980s it was fairly compact and did not add a great deal of bulk to a controller.
The NES was the first console which wireless controllers were fairly common. Examples include the Camerica Freedom Stick, Supersonic Joystick and Freedom Connection (the latter is an adapter only) and the Acclaim Double Player Wireless Head-to-Head System and Wireless-Infrared Remote Controller. There was even a wireless Light Gun, the Playco Toys Video Shooter (which looks like a Sega Light Phaser).
The trouble with infrared technology is that the technology requires a line of sight between the controller and the console. This is why TV remotes tend to work only within a "sweet spot" and the NES wireless controllers were no different. But while you can typically hold a TV remote in a fixed position, even if channel surfing, the same cannot be true for a wireless video game controller. Excited gamers will move their controller all over the place, confusing the infrared controller and causing lag and missing hits.
The other option at the time was the rf technology used in the Atari CX-42 Wireless Joysticks. These sticks came with a large receiver with an antenna. Each stick required a 9V battery and had an extremely large base compared to the regular CX-40 joystick. The sticks had an antenna sticking out the side. In addition to the bulk of the sticks and the ugly receiver box, the sticks did not have a very long range.
Enter the NES Satellite. Nintendo understood the problem that gamers would not keep their controllers in a straight line with the infrared receiver, so it designed an adapter that was not designed to move. The Satellite can easily add eight feet of distance to the sev
en and a half foot controller cords Nintendo used with its NES controllers. This is especially useful if you have AV Famicom controllers, which plug into NES controller ports but have very short cable lengths at less than three feet long.
The Satellite may not look particularly heavy, but it uses six C-cell batteries, adding a bit of heft to the unit. However, with the slack in the controller cable, a gamer is free to move his controller about without disturbing the infrared connection. It is unlikely that someone will yank it away.
Why large, bulky C-cell batteries? The NES Satellite is a four player adapter and the infrared unit, the adapter circuitry and the turbo circuitry all need power. Also, the Satellite has to provide power for four controllers. The Satellite is rated for 9VDC, 150mA. Six C-Cell betteries connected in series provide 9VDC and have a maximum 8000mA-H capacity. Fresh batteries should give at least 20 hours of usage out of the Satellite. Unfortunately, Nintendo did not provide an AC adapter or plug for the device, but if you can find a 9V brick of sufficient amperage, you should not have a problem with powering the device by soldering the split wire to the battery terminal connectors.
The Satellite has a power button to avoid draining the batteries when the NES is not in use. It has separate turbo buttons for A and B. The turbo buttons work, but the turbo cannot be adjusted, so it is not as great as the adjustable turbo of an NES Advantage. When the Satellite is communicating with its receiver, you will see a LED on the receiver light up.
It works with the NES Advantage. The NES Advantage has an adjustable turbo feature and a slow feature, so it may drain the batteries a bit more quickly than a standard controller when the turbo is active. It also works with the Zapper, but only in Controller Port 2. Also, the Ctlr/Gun switch must be in the Gun position. Finally, you will need to turn the power off and back on again (if the switch was in the Ctlr position) before the device will register the trigger function of the Zapper. It should work with other Controller Port 2 peripherals like the Arkanoid VAUS paddle controller or the NES Power Pad.
The Satellite's only other disadvantage, other than its battery consumption, is that it must maintain a line of sight with the receiver plugged into the NES controller ports. Moreover, that line of sight should be dead-on straight and not at anything more than a slight angle, either horizontally or vertically. If you feel like the game is not responding appropriately, adjust the Satellite unit and turn the power off and back on.
The Satellite, when properly focused on the receiver, does not offer any appreciable lag to your gameplay. I have tested it with games like Contra, Battletoads and Duck Hunt. I could observe no appreciable decrease in my performance and no obvious time where button presses and game response seemed out of sync. Modern RF-based controllers cannot make this claim. They will add lag compared to a wired controller. Some people state they notice it, others do not. This is typically important for systems with a wired and a wireless option like the Gamecube and Xbox 360. For systems that more or less exclusively use wireless controllers, the programmers should have factored in the lag from the controller.
There were not too many four player games released for the NES. Here is the list of licensed NES games that support the NES Satellite adapter and its wired version, the NES Four-Score :
Bomberman II
Championship Bowling
Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat
Gauntlet II
Greg Norman's Golf Power
Harlem Globetrotters
Kings of the Beach
Magic Johnson's Fast Break
Monster Truck Rally
M.U.L.E.
NES Play Action Football
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Nintendo World Cup
R.C. Pro-Am II
Rackets & Rivals
Roundball: 2 on 2 Challenge
Spot: The Video Game
Smash TV
Super Off Road
Super Jeopardy!
Super Spike V'Ball
Swords and Serpents
Top Players' Tennis
Of all those games, Bomberman II, M.U.L.E. and Smash TV are the best games in my opinion. Bomberman II allows for four-player simultaneous fun. M.U.L.E. has a change to the town area in its NES version that makes purists scoff, but outside that change to the town, the game offers a lot of four player fun and strategy. Its usually much easier to find a NES and a four player adapter than an Atari 400 or 800 home computer.
Smash TV is very clever, the game only supports two players at maximum. However, with a four player adapter, each player can use the D-pads of two standard controllers to mimic the arcade controls much more precisely than by using one D-pad for each player.
Gauntlet II allows for four player simultaneous action, but while that port appears to be pretty faithful to the arcade game, it feels a little bland and has no in-game music (like the arcade). I'm not a huge sports game fan, even on the NES. Some people like Pat the NES Punk extol the virtues of Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat, but I am not a big fan of Super Sprint-style games on the NES. R.C. Pro-Am II is a good single player game, but is not good for multiplayer. I personally have a fondness for Swords and Serpents, but I cannot imagine four people coming together to play this game (the first player controls the movement).
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
The NES Zapper - How it Works, What it Works With and What is Worth Playing
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| NES Zapper - Original Gray Version |
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| NES Zapper - Later Orange Version |
In the United States, Nintendo redesigned the Zapper to have the look of a futuristic laser gun and bundled it with the initial launch NESes, then the Deluxe Set, the Action Set and finally the Power Set. It was also sold in a standalone package for those people who only bought a Control Deck.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
What about R.O.B.? - The NES's First Mascot
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| R.O.B. with all Gyromite Accessories (missing Cartridge) |
The first game for it, released alongside the Robot itself, was called Robot Block and retailed for 4,800 Yen. This game came with five different Colored Blocks (white, red, yellow, green and blue), five Block Trays for the Blocks to be stacked onto and a pair of Block Hands for the Robot with rubber ends. Robot Block directs the Robot to move and stack the Colored Blocks onto the various stands while the player usually hops around. It relies on the honor system. Interestingly, it is one of the few Nintendo games from the pre-Disk System and "black box" eras that reproduces something like recognizable human speech.
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| Robot Block Box |
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| Robot Gyro Box |
R.O.B. was available for purchase separately, as was Gyromite with a large box that came with its accessories. Both are rare to find today. Gyromite was the same exact game as Robot Gyro. Stack-Up was the same exact game as Robot Block and was available to purchase at the initial launch. In fact, Nintendo did not even bother to change the title screens for these games, because the Gyromite and Stack-Up cartridges boot up as Robot Gyro and Robot Block, respectively. Also, some Gyromite and all Stack-Up cartridges use Famicom PCBs and a converter that converts the 60 pins of a Famicom connector to the 72 pins of a NES connector. This extra converter board also adds the lockout chip for the NES. While not the only games that have these converters, they are often sought after for them.
Stack-Up was never bundled with a console and could only be purchased separately. On account of this, it is far rarer than Robot Block. More Japanese consumers bought Robot Block because it was cheaper than Robot Gyro. Of course, Nintendo bundled R.O.B. with Gyromite with each Deluxe Set sold, and the Deluxe Set probably sold at least a million units, so Gyromite and its parts are far more common than Robot Gyro or anything else.
Physically and functionally, the parts for Robot Block and Stack-Up are identical. Cosmetically, the Block Hands for Robot Block are red and the Block Hands for Stack-Up are dark gray. The Block Trays are off-white for Robot Block and light gray for Stack-Up. Many times on auctions for Stack-Up you will see white Block Trays and red Block Hands, and they came from Robot Block.
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| Stack-Up Box |
R.O.B. works similarly to a Zapper light gun in that it receives information from the TV screen. The TV screen will strobe green light when it wants to issue a command to R.O.B. The photo-receptors inside R.O.B.'s head will receive the light stream and send it to a microcontroller for processing. R.O.B. can accept six commands : Move Torso Up, Move Torso Down, Rotate Shaft Left, Rotate Shaft Right, Open Arms and Close Arms. The microcontroller sends electricity to motors in R.O.B's Torso and Base which control the movement via gears and grooved tracks.
R.O.B. moves his Torso Up and Down in a shorter distance for Stack-Up than Gyromite because of the way the blocks stack. Stack-Up allows you to stack blocks up to five blocks high, so R.O.B. will move five times up or down the shaft from his head to his base. Gyromite will only allow you to move three times up or down the shaft, and you really only need to move him up or down one position. He has five positions to move left or right and his arms either are fully open or fully closed. He has five numbered slots to insert the accessories for each game which correspond to the positions he can move.
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| Family Computer Robot box, hands not included |
R.O.B.'s communicates with the robot via a pattern of alternating green and black screens. When the game issues a command to R.O.B., it always turns the screen black for three frames. Then comes a green frame followed by a black frame and followed by a green frame. For every command, this sequence is the same. Then the sequence of green and black screens alternates in a different pattern for seven frames. Here is how the commands are encoded :
| Up (Short) | Down (Short) | Left | Right | Open | Close | Up (Long) | Down (Long) |
| b | b | b | b | b | b | b | b |
| b | b | b | b | b | b | b | b |
| b | b | b | b | b | b | b | b |
| g | g | g | g | g | g | g | g |
| b | b | b | b | b | b | b | b |
| g | g | g | g | g | g | g | g |
| g | b | b | g | g | b | b | g |
| g | g | g | g | g | g | g | g |
| g | b | g | b | b | g | g | g |
| g | g | g | g | g | g | g | g |
| b | g | b | b | g | g | b | b |
| g | g | g | g | g | g | g | g |
| b | b | b | b | b | b | g | g |
b = black screen, g = green screen.
The last two frames seem to indicate only whether an up or down movement by R.O.B. is a short (Stack-Up) or a long (Gyromite) movement. The test feature for both Gyromite and Stack-Up continuously alternates black and green screens in a 1:1 ratio after the first three black frames. Given that the code is at least five bits (32 possibilities), there could be up to 24 other commands that R.O.B. could recognize by timing the screen flashing appropriately.
R.O.B. takes 4 x AA batteries. The LED on top of its head lights up to tell the user that it is functioning. It is not on all the time. It will turn on when you use the Test mode correctly in either game. It also turns on when R.O.B. is not moving, indicating that R.O.B. can accept a command. R.O.B. should be situated as directly in front of a TV screen as possible. The manual indicates that he should be no further than 45 degrees from the center of the screen and works best within 3 feet of the screen. More than 6 feet is not recommended.
The gyro spinner additionally takes 1 x D battery. The spinner is not active until a gyro or other object depresses the black piece. R.O.B. should keep his hands on the gryo when in the spinner to avoid slowing down the spinning speed. When you turn on R.O.B., you should notice one thing immediately, he is loud. The next thing you will notice is that he is slow. The spinner makes noise as well. Playing either game as intended is a real challenge because you have to think several moves ahead so R.O.B. can catch up with you. Once the novelty wore off, and it usually did pretty quickly, then R.O.B. typically got put back in the box or on the shelf. Children would often ask their parents why they did not get them Super Mario Bros. instead.
The bundling of R.O.B. signaled a shift in Nintendo's strategy. Nintendo's first attempt at bringing the Famicom to western markets, the Advanced Video System, failed to excite buyers when it was previewed at the 1984 Consumer Electronics Shows. The AVS included the hardware of the Famicom with a built in keyboard, essentially the Family Computer Keyboard merged with the Famicom. It also came with a westernized version of Family BASIC built in or bundled with it. It also had a resdesigned version of the Family Computer Data Recorder and wireless gamepads, zapper and joystick.
Considering the video game crash taking place, Nintendo initially had a good thought to "computerize" its console. However, the market for cheap home computers was dominated by the $300 Commodore 64. Retailers were not impressed, perhaps because the Nintendo AVS had a few too many features in common with other failed home computers like the Coleco Adam and TI/99 4A. (Cassette-based storage was seen as cheap in 1984). Fortunately, the video game crash had eviscerated the home console market in North America, leading to opportunity in the lower end of the market. Nintendo took a dual approach. It went to lengths to distinguish its system from other systems by designing it to look like a Hi-Fi "Entertainment System." However, it also marketed its product as a toy to toy stores. Of course, it had to include a toy to make the pitch plausible, so R.O.B. was the "face" of Nintendo at first.
Ultimately, while video game histories may point to Nintendo's marketing of the NES as a toy rather than a video game console, I doubt any consumer was fooled into thinking that the NES was substantially different than the Atari and other systems. The system used cartridges and hand-held controllers like its predecessors. The Famicom looked more like a toy than the NES, the NES looked like a electronic entertainment device. Nintendo avoided using previous terms like console and cartridge and joystick, using Control Deck and Game Pak and Controller respectively. Ultimately, it was the overall quality of the games that sold kids and their parents on the system, it was too expensive for a novelty toy.
Does R.O.B. have character? Nintendo thought so, because it included him as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS and Wii U and gave him many cameo appearances before then. Both color variations now have Amibos. R.O.B. was released a year before a robot with a similar design appeared in in the film Short Circuit and twenty-three years before another similar robot was introduced in WALL-E. These design successors demonstrate that R.O.B. does have character in and of himself. He represents a 1980s version of an electronic toy, sleek lines and minimalist function. Unlike earlier toys, he relies on micro computing technology instead of pure electro-mechanical functioning. However, despite his empty, soulless eyes. he has a humanoid shape and makes natural noises. Moreover, he does not suffer from the uncanny valley effect like another 1980s popular toy, Teddy Ruxpin. So yes, I would conclude that R.O.B. has a good deal of character and deserved more games than he got. If nothing else, he is always a conversation piece.
R.O.B. takes 4 x AA batteries. The LED on top of its head lights up to tell the user that it is functioning. It is not on all the time. It will turn on when you use the Test mode correctly in either game. It also turns on when R.O.B. is not moving, indicating that R.O.B. can accept a command. R.O.B. should be situated as directly in front of a TV screen as possible. The manual indicates that he should be no further than 45 degrees from the center of the screen and works best within 3 feet of the screen. More than 6 feet is not recommended.
The gyro spinner additionally takes 1 x D battery. The spinner is not active until a gyro or other object depresses the black piece. R.O.B. should keep his hands on the gryo when in the spinner to avoid slowing down the spinning speed. When you turn on R.O.B., you should notice one thing immediately, he is loud. The next thing you will notice is that he is slow. The spinner makes noise as well. Playing either game as intended is a real challenge because you have to think several moves ahead so R.O.B. can catch up with you. Once the novelty wore off, and it usually did pretty quickly, then R.O.B. typically got put back in the box or on the shelf. Children would often ask their parents why they did not get them Super Mario Bros. instead.
The bundling of R.O.B. signaled a shift in Nintendo's strategy. Nintendo's first attempt at bringing the Famicom to western markets, the Advanced Video System, failed to excite buyers when it was previewed at the 1984 Consumer Electronics Shows. The AVS included the hardware of the Famicom with a built in keyboard, essentially the Family Computer Keyboard merged with the Famicom. It also came with a westernized version of Family BASIC built in or bundled with it. It also had a resdesigned version of the Family Computer Data Recorder and wireless gamepads, zapper and joystick.
Considering the video game crash taking place, Nintendo initially had a good thought to "computerize" its console. However, the market for cheap home computers was dominated by the $300 Commodore 64. Retailers were not impressed, perhaps because the Nintendo AVS had a few too many features in common with other failed home computers like the Coleco Adam and TI/99 4A. (Cassette-based storage was seen as cheap in 1984). Fortunately, the video game crash had eviscerated the home console market in North America, leading to opportunity in the lower end of the market. Nintendo took a dual approach. It went to lengths to distinguish its system from other systems by designing it to look like a Hi-Fi "Entertainment System." However, it also marketed its product as a toy to toy stores. Of course, it had to include a toy to make the pitch plausible, so R.O.B. was the "face" of Nintendo at first.
Ultimately, while video game histories may point to Nintendo's marketing of the NES as a toy rather than a video game console, I doubt any consumer was fooled into thinking that the NES was substantially different than the Atari and other systems. The system used cartridges and hand-held controllers like its predecessors. The Famicom looked more like a toy than the NES, the NES looked like a electronic entertainment device. Nintendo avoided using previous terms like console and cartridge and joystick, using Control Deck and Game Pak and Controller respectively. Ultimately, it was the overall quality of the games that sold kids and their parents on the system, it was too expensive for a novelty toy.
Does R.O.B. have character? Nintendo thought so, because it included him as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS and Wii U and gave him many cameo appearances before then. Both color variations now have Amibos. R.O.B. was released a year before a robot with a similar design appeared in in the film Short Circuit and twenty-three years before another similar robot was introduced in WALL-E. These design successors demonstrate that R.O.B. does have character in and of himself. He represents a 1980s version of an electronic toy, sleek lines and minimalist function. Unlike earlier toys, he relies on micro computing technology instead of pure electro-mechanical functioning. However, despite his empty, soulless eyes. he has a humanoid shape and makes natural noises. Moreover, he does not suffer from the uncanny valley effect like another 1980s popular toy, Teddy Ruxpin. So yes, I would conclude that R.O.B. has a good deal of character and deserved more games than he got. If nothing else, he is always a conversation piece.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Famicom Expansion Audio Carts - Best Examples
During the Famicom's lifespan, 26 cartridge games were known to support expansion audio. The Famicom directed its audio to cartridge port and games that did not use expansion audio would simply loop it back to the RF modulator. The expansion audio that these 26 games would generate would intercept the internal audio and mix it with the expansion audio and send the combined signal to the RF modulator. In addition, 75 Famicom Disk System games (4 of them unlicensed) are also known to use expansion audio generated in the FDS RAM Adapter.
Here is a list of all Famicom games known to use Expansion Audio : http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/List_of_games_with_expansion_audio
In this post, I identify the most accessible games for English speakers using each expansion audio chip and describe what needs to be done to play it.
Sunsoft 5B
Gimmick! - The original cart alone can go for $200 easily, however, there is at least one other more common Famicom cart (Gremlins 2) with a Sunsoft 5B chip, but obtaining one is something of the luck of the draw. Additionally, one can make a donor NES cart with a Batman Return of the Joker and an AY-3-891x chip, or you can get a INL-ROM NES reproduction board with an AY chip on it.
Konami VRC-VII
Lagrange Point - This is the only game that uses the expansion sound capabilities found in this chip, which is exclusive to this game and Tiny Toons 2 Japanese version. Tiny Toons 2 does not have an SRAM chip, battery or any of the passive components to mix the audio, so it would be a large undertaking to get it to work in a NES cart. I am not sure whether the Largange Point board plus a pin converter would fit inside a NES cartridge shell because the game's board is very tall. You may need an external pin converter. Interest in this game has also increased substantially because of a full translation patch.
Nintendo MMC5
Just Breed - This is a large strategy RGB from Enix and one of the three games that use the expansion audio of the MMC5. Because of its translation patch, it is by far the most accessible of those games. The original cartridge can have its ROM replaced with a translated ROM burned onto an EPROM, some minor reworking will be required. Because it uses Nintendo's MMC5 board, this can work with a reproduction cart in a NES. The most suitable NES cart is Gemfire, but I suspect that any of the battery backed MMC5 boards will work with some minor reworking. Castlevania III and Laser Invasion will require the addition of an SRAM chip and a battery, not a beginner mod.
Konami VRC-VI
Akumajou Densetsu - This is the Japanese version of Castlevania III, and does not have so much Japanese text that it requires a ROM swap to enjoy it. The Famicom board is small enough to fit inside a NES cartridge shell with a converter without difficulty. Madara and Esper Dream 2, the other games that use the chip, do have translation patches.
Namcot 109/163
Rolling Thunder - Most Namcot 109/163 games with expansion sound are not very English friendly. This game is basically the NES Tengen version with better sound. Additionally, Namcot almost always used epoxy-bonded ROMs on their boards because they were cheap. Unfortunately, this makes replacing these ROMs with translated ROMs on EPROMs very, very difficult.
NEC µPD7755C/µPD7756C & Mitsubishi M50805
The NEC ADPCM Speech chip was found in Jaleco's Japanese baseball games, virtually all of which were ported to the NES in the Bases Loaded series. The chip stored and could play back voice samples on command. Grab any one of them, games like Moero!! Pro Yakyuu are as common as they get in Japan, but realize its only a novelty. Of course, the speech samples are in Japanese for the Famicom cartridge and English for Bases Loaded. The NES versions had more PRG-ROM space to store the samples in ROM instead of on a special chip and used the NES's internal PCM channel to play them. The Mitsubishi chip was found in Family Trainer 3: Aerobics Studio, which was similarly ported to the NES as Aerobics Studio. Roll out your Power Pad for that one.
Famicom Disk System
FDS RAM Adapter + FDSStick
Read my review of this product for reasons why you should get one : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-fdsstick-compact-solution-to-your.html
See also my list here of games for the Famicom Disk System where I give instructions how to clean the saves, all are easily accessible to English speakers : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/06/cleaning-saved-information-from-famicom.html
Finally, I have generated a list of all Famicom and Famicom Disk System games that use expansion audio and were ported to the cartridge format :
Here is a list of all Famicom games known to use Expansion Audio : http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/List_of_games_with_expansion_audio
In this post, I identify the most accessible games for English speakers using each expansion audio chip and describe what needs to be done to play it.
Sunsoft 5B
Gimmick! - The original cart alone can go for $200 easily, however, there is at least one other more common Famicom cart (Gremlins 2) with a Sunsoft 5B chip, but obtaining one is something of the luck of the draw. Additionally, one can make a donor NES cart with a Batman Return of the Joker and an AY-3-891x chip, or you can get a INL-ROM NES reproduction board with an AY chip on it.
Konami VRC-VII
Lagrange Point - This is the only game that uses the expansion sound capabilities found in this chip, which is exclusive to this game and Tiny Toons 2 Japanese version. Tiny Toons 2 does not have an SRAM chip, battery or any of the passive components to mix the audio, so it would be a large undertaking to get it to work in a NES cart. I am not sure whether the Largange Point board plus a pin converter would fit inside a NES cartridge shell because the game's board is very tall. You may need an external pin converter. Interest in this game has also increased substantially because of a full translation patch.
Nintendo MMC5
Just Breed - This is a large strategy RGB from Enix and one of the three games that use the expansion audio of the MMC5. Because of its translation patch, it is by far the most accessible of those games. The original cartridge can have its ROM replaced with a translated ROM burned onto an EPROM, some minor reworking will be required. Because it uses Nintendo's MMC5 board, this can work with a reproduction cart in a NES. The most suitable NES cart is Gemfire, but I suspect that any of the battery backed MMC5 boards will work with some minor reworking. Castlevania III and Laser Invasion will require the addition of an SRAM chip and a battery, not a beginner mod.
Konami VRC-VI
Akumajou Densetsu - This is the Japanese version of Castlevania III, and does not have so much Japanese text that it requires a ROM swap to enjoy it. The Famicom board is small enough to fit inside a NES cartridge shell with a converter without difficulty. Madara and Esper Dream 2, the other games that use the chip, do have translation patches.
Namcot 109/163
Rolling Thunder - Most Namcot 109/163 games with expansion sound are not very English friendly. This game is basically the NES Tengen version with better sound. Additionally, Namcot almost always used epoxy-bonded ROMs on their boards because they were cheap. Unfortunately, this makes replacing these ROMs with translated ROMs on EPROMs very, very difficult.
NEC µPD7755C/µPD7756C & Mitsubishi M50805
The NEC ADPCM Speech chip was found in Jaleco's Japanese baseball games, virtually all of which were ported to the NES in the Bases Loaded series. The chip stored and could play back voice samples on command. Grab any one of them, games like Moero!! Pro Yakyuu are as common as they get in Japan, but realize its only a novelty. Of course, the speech samples are in Japanese for the Famicom cartridge and English for Bases Loaded. The NES versions had more PRG-ROM space to store the samples in ROM instead of on a special chip and used the NES's internal PCM channel to play them. The Mitsubishi chip was found in Family Trainer 3: Aerobics Studio, which was similarly ported to the NES as Aerobics Studio. Roll out your Power Pad for that one.
Famicom Disk System
FDS RAM Adapter + FDSStick
Read my review of this product for reasons why you should get one : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-fdsstick-compact-solution-to-your.html
See also my list here of games for the Famicom Disk System where I give instructions how to clean the saves, all are easily accessible to English speakers : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/06/cleaning-saved-information-from-famicom.html
Finally, I have generated a list of all Famicom and Famicom Disk System games that use expansion audio and were ported to the cartridge format :
| Japanese Name | Expansion Sound Type | US Name |
| Gimmick! | Sunsoft 5B | Mr. Gimmick! (Europe/Scandanavia Release, US Proto) |
| Moe Pro! '90: Kandou-hen | D7756 | Bases Loaded 3, Ryne Sandberg Plays |
| Moe Pro!: Saikyou-hen | D7756 | Bases Loaded 4 |
| Moero!! Pro Tennis | D7756 | Rad Racket |
| Moero!! Pro Yakyuu | D7756 | Bases Loaded |
| Moero!! Pro Yakyuu '88: Kettei Ban | D7756 | Bases Loaded 2: The Second Season |
| Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa | Famicom Disk System | None (Japan Cartridge Release Only) |
| Doki Doki Panic | Famicom Disk System | Super Mario Bros. 2 (also Japan) |
| Dracula 2 - Noroi no Fuuin | Famicom Disk System | Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest |
| Egger Land | Famicom Disk System | The Adventures of Lolo (different levels) |
| Exciting Baseball | Famicom Disk System | Double Dribble |
| Famicom Golf - Japan Course | Famicom Disk System | Golf (different courses) |
| Famicom Golf - Japan Course Prize Card | Famicom Disk System | NES Open Tournament Golf |
| Famicom Golf - US Course | Famicom Disk System | Golf (different courses) |
| Famicom Golf - US Course Prize Card | Famicom Disk System | NES Open Tournament Golf |
| Gyruss | Famicom Disk System | Gyruss |
| Hao-kun no Fushigi na Tabi | Famicom Disk System | Mystery Quest |
| Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami | Famicom Disk System | Kid Icarus |
| Kaettekita Mario Bros. | Famicom Disk System | Mario Bros. |
| Link no Bouken: The Legend of Zelda 2 | Famicom Disk System | Zelda II: The Adventure of Link |
| Metroid | Famicom Disk System | Metroid |
| Tobidase Daisakusen | Famicom Disk System | The 3-D Battles of the Worldrunner |
| Vs. Excitebike | Famicom Disk System | Excitebike |
| Zelda no Densetsu (Zelda) | Famicom Disk System | The Legend of Zelda (also Japan) |
| Family Trainer 3: Aerobics Studio | M50805 | Dance Aerobics |
| Rolling Thunder | Namco 163 | Rolling Thunder (Unlicensed Tengen Release) |
| Akumajou Densetsu | Konami VRC6 | Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse |
Friday, August 7, 2015
Slipped by the NES Censor
Nintendo had a reputation of being a tough censor in the days of the NES and SNES before the establishment of ratings boards. In these eras, the big-N implemented a modern day version of the Hays Code. Who needed a video games rating system when every game has been vigorously inspected and cleansed to make it appropriate for children? Nintendo controlled all licensed cartridge production, and if it did not approve a game then it would not be produced. (It is a myth that Nintendo manufactured all cartridges, there are PCBs and chips in licensed US cartridges made by Konami, Sunsoft, Namco, Acclaim and Virgin Games).
Maniac Mansion is the best example of how Nintendo would control the approval process. It required developers to send a prototype cartridge and a text dump. Any objectionable content would be noted and sent to the company to fix. Often, developers and publishers would engage in self-censorship to speed the approval process along.
References to sexual activity and nudity were not allowed. Graphic, life-like violence was also forbidden. Language was to avoid words like "hell", "damn", "crap" and no stronger expletives were allowed. Over time, Nintendo became more strict about what it would allow on its system. Most of these examples given below were from the earlier years of the NES's development.
Nintendo of Europe was even more strict on violence. Germany has long video games on its List of Media Harmful to Young People, the BPjM. River Raid for the Atari 2600 was the first game on that list and it stayed there until 2002, so Nintendo games had to be very circumspect when it came to depicting any kind of realistic violence. Thus games like Contra were given a sprite overhaul, replacing all human-like characters with robots and released a Probotector in Europe. Unfortunately, because of the German standards, all of Europe suffered from this type of lowest common demonimator censorship.
Eventually, Nintendo's strict censorship began to work against it. When Mortal Kombat for the Sega Genesis, which had the blood and graphic fatalities unlockable with a code, drastically outsold the SNES version, Nintendo began to realize the value of the ratings system. Both companies and their eventual competitors submitted to the ESRB. The sales for Mortal Kombat II, which was not censored, were better than the Genesis version.
Bionic Commando
At the end of the game, you must destroy the helicopter of the main villain of the game, "Master-D". Master D's portrait had a death animation that was very graphic for the time.
Also, Master D's facial features obviously resemble Adolf Hitler's. This is intentional because the original Japanese game, title : Hitler no Fukkatsu: Top Secret, made explicit that Hitler was the main villain. While Capcom removed visual and textual references to the Nazi Party in the U.S. version, they kept Hitler's portrait unaltered. Years later, when Wolfenstein 3D was ported to the SNES, not only were all Nazi references removed, but the posters found on the walls of Hitler were adjusted to reduce the resemblance to the Fürher.
Master-D also calls the hero a "damn fool" for challenging him, and "damn" is a Bad Word which shouldn't have made it into the U.S. release, but it did.
Castlevania
Level 3 of Castlevania features nude statutes in the background. They may have been harder to notice on small TVs back running the NES video through an RF input back in the day, but the graphics were not changed. By the time Konami ported Castlevania III to the U.S., the nude statute graphics were changed, but there were more examples of nudity in that game.
Eventually Nintendo would get around to removing crosses in the SNES era, but in the NES era, crosses were not particularly objectionable. All three Castlevania NES games have them, as does Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
We have the use of "Hell" in this game, right in the introductory text that scrolls if you do not press start at the title screen.
Golgo 13
The censor must have been asleep when this game was approved! On at least two occasions during the game, Golgo 13 sleeps with female operatives he meets during the game. He goes up to their hotel rooms after making prior arrangements, suggestive words are spoken, an animation shows the two coming together from their window, the lights go black and all your health is regained. The voyeuristic view of the latter portion of the sequence only highlights the inappropriateness of this sequence by Nintendo's guidelines. The Japanese version shows the ladies actually take their clothes off, showing toplessness.
In addition, this game is rather graphic when killing enemies in a first-person view. When you shoot enemies, blood spurts from their heads. This happens in the sniping sequences and the maze sequences. At one point, you smoke a cigarette to regain health. What kind of message did that send to the kids?
The enemy organization in the US version is called DREK, but in the Japanese original they are clearly identified as Nazis. The file you obtain in the Greece Maze has a Swastika in the Japanese version and the true enemy is a cyborg version of Adolf Hitler, not "Smirk". The US version keeps Hitler's likeness for "Smirk".
The sequel The Mafat Conspiracy: Golgo 13, is much more tame but does feature Golgo 13 smoking in the cutscenes and plenty of violence with Ninja Gaiden like cutscenes.
Kid Icarus
The statutes in world 4-1 are topless, as is the illustration of the Syren enemy in the game's manual.
The Legend of Zelda
The third Dungeon in the first quest is called "Manji" and the rooms are in the shape of a swastika. This followed the Buddhist usage and faces counter-clockwise, not the Nazi usage which is usually clockwise and angled at 45 degrees. The swastika had been in use in Japan for over one thousand years before Hitler appropriated it.
However, the counter clockwise version of the swastika was used by the Nazis, perhaps most notably as part of the standard for the 1st SS-Panzer Division Leibstandarte [bodyguard] SS Adolf Hitler after the fall of France. No one complained about the use of the symbol at the time The Legend of Zelda was released apparently. A decade later, parents did complain when the symbol was found on Pokemon cards and Nintendo announced that it would no longer use the symbol on Pokemon cards it released to the United States (and probably Europe) because of the negative cultural connotations.
Magic of Scherezade
The boss of the second world, Curly, has obvious breasts. "Curly" should really have been "Kali", the Hindu goddess of death, who is typically depicted topless and with six arms, which Curly's second form has.
Maniac Mansion
Although this game was heavily censored to remove objectionable content, Razor or Sid can explode Weird Ed's hamster by putting it in the microwave in the U.S. version. Nintendo got wise to this and this act of animal cruelty was no longer possible when the game was later released in Europe.
Here is the original article "The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion", which describes what was left out and what was later removed from the game :
http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/maniac.html
Metal Gear
In Metal Gear, cigarettes as a usable item, helpful when trying to beat the timed sequence at the end of the game where you must escape the building after beating the final boss before a bomb blows it up. Smoking is bad, but in the NES era it was not high on the censor's priorities. This would eventually changed as demonstrated by the cigarette item being changed to "fogger" in Metal Gear Solid for the Game Boy Color. The item still looks like a cigarette.
Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos
Similar to Ninja Gaiden, Jaquio has a pentagram (instead of a hexagram, maybe he lost a point because he died) on his chest. This was altered for the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy. When you defeat Jaquio, his blood touches the Dark Sword of Chaos, transforming him into a demon. The blood was turned from red to green in the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy.
Rambo
At the beginning of the game, Colonel Trautman tells Rambo : "You've got 36 hours to get in, complete your assignment, and get the hell out." H-E-Double hockey sticks was a big no-no thereafter.
Ring King
Ring King has become particularly infamous for its in-between round animation of the corner men. When looking at the animation, it is hard to find a non-obscene explanation. The animation is not quite as suggestive in the arcade original.
I was too lazy to make an animated GIF, but there are no intervening frames.
River City Ransom
River City Ransom has a spa area where your character can recover his stamina. The game shows you showering in Pop's Health Club, and among the graphics is a shot of your character toweling off his bare backside. They show a dimpled butt.
Sqoon
Sqoon has a topless mermaid enemy, which appears on the title screen and later in the game. This would not have gone unnoticed during a later period.
Taboo: The Sixth Sense
Taboo was practically unique in the NES library because it advertised on the box that it is not intended for children under fourteen. Taboo is a tarot card reading simulator. You input your name, date of birth and your gender, ask a question and the game will deal ten tarot cards and give you its interpretation of them. Among the cards that can be revealed are The Lovers, which shows rear male nudity and nearly-nude female nudity. After it reads the cards, it will give you some "Lucky Numbers", asking you to select your state of residence. The name/birthdate/gender screen has a cross and a pentagram.
This is a RareWare game, and I would suggest that only Rare's close relationship with Nintendo allowed them to publish this simulator. Divination, occultism and fortune telling is offensive to Biblical Christianity.
Maniac Mansion is the best example of how Nintendo would control the approval process. It required developers to send a prototype cartridge and a text dump. Any objectionable content would be noted and sent to the company to fix. Often, developers and publishers would engage in self-censorship to speed the approval process along.
References to sexual activity and nudity were not allowed. Graphic, life-like violence was also forbidden. Language was to avoid words like "hell", "damn", "crap" and no stronger expletives were allowed. Over time, Nintendo became more strict about what it would allow on its system. Most of these examples given below were from the earlier years of the NES's development.
Nintendo of Europe was even more strict on violence. Germany has long video games on its List of Media Harmful to Young People, the BPjM. River Raid for the Atari 2600 was the first game on that list and it stayed there until 2002, so Nintendo games had to be very circumspect when it came to depicting any kind of realistic violence. Thus games like Contra were given a sprite overhaul, replacing all human-like characters with robots and released a Probotector in Europe. Unfortunately, because of the German standards, all of Europe suffered from this type of lowest common demonimator censorship.
Eventually, Nintendo's strict censorship began to work against it. When Mortal Kombat for the Sega Genesis, which had the blood and graphic fatalities unlockable with a code, drastically outsold the SNES version, Nintendo began to realize the value of the ratings system. Both companies and their eventual competitors submitted to the ESRB. The sales for Mortal Kombat II, which was not censored, were better than the Genesis version.
Bionic Commando
At the end of the game, you must destroy the helicopter of the main villain of the game, "Master-D". Master D's portrait had a death animation that was very graphic for the time.
Also, Master D's facial features obviously resemble Adolf Hitler's. This is intentional because the original Japanese game, title : Hitler no Fukkatsu: Top Secret, made explicit that Hitler was the main villain. While Capcom removed visual and textual references to the Nazi Party in the U.S. version, they kept Hitler's portrait unaltered. Years later, when Wolfenstein 3D was ported to the SNES, not only were all Nazi references removed, but the posters found on the walls of Hitler were adjusted to reduce the resemblance to the Fürher.
Master-D also calls the hero a "damn fool" for challenging him, and "damn" is a Bad Word which shouldn't have made it into the U.S. release, but it did.
Castlevania
Level 3 of Castlevania features nude statutes in the background. They may have been harder to notice on small TVs back running the NES video through an RF input back in the day, but the graphics were not changed. By the time Konami ported Castlevania III to the U.S., the nude statute graphics were changed, but there were more examples of nudity in that game.
Eventually Nintendo would get around to removing crosses in the SNES era, but in the NES era, crosses were not particularly objectionable. All three Castlevania NES games have them, as does Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
We have the use of "Hell" in this game, right in the introductory text that scrolls if you do not press start at the title screen.
Golgo 13
The censor must have been asleep when this game was approved! On at least two occasions during the game, Golgo 13 sleeps with female operatives he meets during the game. He goes up to their hotel rooms after making prior arrangements, suggestive words are spoken, an animation shows the two coming together from their window, the lights go black and all your health is regained. The voyeuristic view of the latter portion of the sequence only highlights the inappropriateness of this sequence by Nintendo's guidelines. The Japanese version shows the ladies actually take their clothes off, showing toplessness.
In addition, this game is rather graphic when killing enemies in a first-person view. When you shoot enemies, blood spurts from their heads. This happens in the sniping sequences and the maze sequences. At one point, you smoke a cigarette to regain health. What kind of message did that send to the kids?
The enemy organization in the US version is called DREK, but in the Japanese original they are clearly identified as Nazis. The file you obtain in the Greece Maze has a Swastika in the Japanese version and the true enemy is a cyborg version of Adolf Hitler, not "Smirk". The US version keeps Hitler's likeness for "Smirk".
The sequel The Mafat Conspiracy: Golgo 13, is much more tame but does feature Golgo 13 smoking in the cutscenes and plenty of violence with Ninja Gaiden like cutscenes.
Kid Icarus
The statutes in world 4-1 are topless, as is the illustration of the Syren enemy in the game's manual.
The Legend of Zelda
The third Dungeon in the first quest is called "Manji" and the rooms are in the shape of a swastika. This followed the Buddhist usage and faces counter-clockwise, not the Nazi usage which is usually clockwise and angled at 45 degrees. The swastika had been in use in Japan for over one thousand years before Hitler appropriated it.
However, the counter clockwise version of the swastika was used by the Nazis, perhaps most notably as part of the standard for the 1st SS-Panzer Division Leibstandarte [bodyguard] SS Adolf Hitler after the fall of France. No one complained about the use of the symbol at the time The Legend of Zelda was released apparently. A decade later, parents did complain when the symbol was found on Pokemon cards and Nintendo announced that it would no longer use the symbol on Pokemon cards it released to the United States (and probably Europe) because of the negative cultural connotations.
Also, Link's shield and the Darknut shields have crosses on them. Nintendo let religious symbols like crosses by in the early days.
Magic of Scherezade
The boss of the second world, Curly, has obvious breasts. "Curly" should really have been "Kali", the Hindu goddess of death, who is typically depicted topless and with six arms, which Curly's second form has.
Maniac Mansion
Although this game was heavily censored to remove objectionable content, Razor or Sid can explode Weird Ed's hamster by putting it in the microwave in the U.S. version. Nintendo got wise to this and this act of animal cruelty was no longer possible when the game was later released in Europe.
Here is the original article "The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion", which describes what was left out and what was later removed from the game :
http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/maniac.html
Metal Gear
In Metal Gear, cigarettes as a usable item, helpful when trying to beat the timed sequence at the end of the game where you must escape the building after beating the final boss before a bomb blows it up. Smoking is bad, but in the NES era it was not high on the censor's priorities. This would eventually changed as demonstrated by the cigarette item being changed to "fogger" in Metal Gear Solid for the Game Boy Color. The item still looks like a cigarette.
Ninja Gaiden
Ninja Gaiden has a rare use of the verb "to kill" when Foster is discussing the death of Dr. Smith. Use of the verb "to kill" or any of its conjugations was strongly discouraged in the NES era. In RPGs, a character is never "killed", usually they "died", were "slain" or "perished". A party may be "annihilated". This went to goofy levels when Final Fantasy II/IV's U.S. SNES release used the word "swooned".
Also, in Jaquio's lair and on his chest you can see six-sided stars, better recognized as a Star of David. During the NES and SNES era, Stars of David were frequently removed from RPGs like Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II/IV, where they alluded to mystical abilities. These were altered or removed for the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy release.
Ninja Gaiden has a rare use of the verb "to kill" when Foster is discussing the death of Dr. Smith. Use of the verb "to kill" or any of its conjugations was strongly discouraged in the NES era. In RPGs, a character is never "killed", usually they "died", were "slain" or "perished". A party may be "annihilated". This went to goofy levels when Final Fantasy II/IV's U.S. SNES release used the word "swooned".
Also, in Jaquio's lair and on his chest you can see six-sided stars, better recognized as a Star of David. During the NES and SNES era, Stars of David were frequently removed from RPGs like Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II/IV, where they alluded to mystical abilities. These were altered or removed for the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy release.
Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos
Similar to Ninja Gaiden, Jaquio has a pentagram (instead of a hexagram, maybe he lost a point because he died) on his chest. This was altered for the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy. When you defeat Jaquio, his blood touches the Dark Sword of Chaos, transforming him into a demon. The blood was turned from red to green in the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy.
Rambo
At the beginning of the game, Colonel Trautman tells Rambo : "You've got 36 hours to get in, complete your assignment, and get the hell out." H-E-Double hockey sticks was a big no-no thereafter.
Ring King
Ring King has become particularly infamous for its in-between round animation of the corner men. When looking at the animation, it is hard to find a non-obscene explanation. The animation is not quite as suggestive in the arcade original.
I was too lazy to make an animated GIF, but there are no intervening frames.
River City Ransom
River City Ransom has a spa area where your character can recover his stamina. The game shows you showering in Pop's Health Club, and among the graphics is a shot of your character toweling off his bare backside. They show a dimpled butt.
Sqoon
Sqoon has a topless mermaid enemy, which appears on the title screen and later in the game. This would not have gone unnoticed during a later period.
Taboo: The Sixth Sense
Taboo was practically unique in the NES library because it advertised on the box that it is not intended for children under fourteen. Taboo is a tarot card reading simulator. You input your name, date of birth and your gender, ask a question and the game will deal ten tarot cards and give you its interpretation of them. Among the cards that can be revealed are The Lovers, which shows rear male nudity and nearly-nude female nudity. After it reads the cards, it will give you some "Lucky Numbers", asking you to select your state of residence. The name/birthdate/gender screen has a cross and a pentagram.
This is a RareWare game, and I would suggest that only Rare's close relationship with Nintendo allowed them to publish this simulator. Divination, occultism and fortune telling is offensive to Biblical Christianity.
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