NES Classic Edition/NES Mini - Nintendo's Official Emulation Box

North American Packaging

On July 14, Nintendo announced that it would be releasing a "new" console, the NES Classic Edition.  For Europe, it is called the Nintendo Classic Mini.  It will be released on November 11, 2016 and will cost $59.99.  The console is an emulation box will include 30 built-in NES games.

The NES Mini will have an HDMI port for audio and video.  It supports two controllers, which look identical to the standard NES controller except for the Wii connector plug.  One will come with the system.  A second controller will cost $9.99 and will be available for purchase separately.  The NES Mini will be powered by a USB port.  The North American version will come with an AC adapter, but the European version will not (presumably because of the different shapes of the power sockets across Europe).  New games cannot be added to the console and it cannot connect to the Internet.  That dust cover flap is not real and the device cannot work with cartridges.  The USB port is for power only.

The NES Classic will be a small console, it can fit within the palm of an adult hand, but the controllers will be full-size like the original 7-pin controllers.  The cables are rather short compared to the originals, they look to be about 3' long instead of the 6' we enjoy with the 7-pin plug.  The Power and Reset buttons work like the originals (spring/latch and spring).

Nosferatu and the Public Domain

I.  Rights in Nosferatu

Abraham "Bram" Stoker died on April 20, 1912.  When he died, his estate consisted mainly of his literary work.  To support his wife Florence Stoker, the only work with any continuing market value was his most famous novel, Dracula.  Unfortunately, that revenue was not particularly impressive at the time.

In 1921, Albin Grau had co-founded a studio called Prana Films and decided to make a loose adaptation of Dracula.  This film was finished in late 1921 and released in 1922 and called Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens.  It has become a classic film of the German Silent Expressionist movement.  It has widely been considered to be in the public domain, but as I will show here, that may not necessarily be the case.

Video Potpourri

I am going to discuss a pair of video topics in this post which do not by themselves merit full blog entries on their own.  Each discussion will have a link to a Youtube video demonstrating the topic discussed.

I.  Hercules Graphics Tidbits

Someone remarked on the VOGONS forum that certain 16-color LucasArts SCUMM games, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Adventure Game and LOOM, do not support Hercules Graphics.  Earlier SCUMM games, Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders support Hercules Graphics in both their original and Enhanced releases.  The Secret of Monkey Island, which came immediately after LOOM, also supports Hercules Graphics in its original 16-color release.

Memories of Ultima Online

In September of 1997, I considered myself a very lucky person.  I was in my freshman year in college and I quickly fell in love with the high speed internet access available to colleges and universities.  I was looking for a new game to play and Ultima Online was the game I had to play.  I had ordered it and it shipped to my home address, but my mother drove an hour to deliver it to me at college so I would not have to drive home in the middle of the school week to take possession of it.

Starting the Ultima Online Demo on The Second Age CD

In those days, you had to pay full price for the game ($64.95) and an additional monthly subscription fee ($9.95).  I did not buy the Charter Edition (which came with 3 months free), I bought the regular retail edition.  That edition came with the cloth map, the UO pin and rather sparse documentation.  I was puzzled because there was little more than a pair of quick reference cards to tell you how to play this massive game.  Nonetheless, I installed the game on my computer, registered an account, gave my credit card information and began my journey by logging in.  

60 Game Boy Color Games Worth Playing

The Game Boy Color is often seen as something of a stop-gap.  Released in late 1989, the original monochrome Game Boy was already nine years old when the GBC was released in 1998.  Color had already come to handhelds with the Sega Game Gear and the Atari Jaguar, but the Game Boy had firmly established its dominance over those competing systems and every other competitor.

The GB had several advantages over its rivals, lower price, Tetris and a much higher battery life.  Nintendo was designing a true 16-bit successor to the GB, but it would take time.  By 1997, the GB's lifespan was already unprecedented in terms of a console generation, and sales and games were slowing.  So in order to extend the life of the basic 8-bit design, Nintendo decided to add color capability.  Instead of four gray shades, you could have up to 56 colors chosen from a 32,768 color palette.  CPU speed was doubled, CPU RAM quadrupled, Video RAM doubled.  A higher speed Game Link connection and an optional infrared port was now available.  Sound capabilities and input remained the same.

Famicom Homebrew : So Close, Yet So Far

NES homebrew has been around for a very, very long time.  Chris Covell's Solar Wars, which is the first complete NES game developed independently, came out in October, 1999.  This was a mere four years after the NES was officially discontinued in 1995.  In those days, the Nesticle was the emulator of choice for playing NES games, but was very inaccurate at emulating the hardware.  Nonetheless, Solar Wars established an important precedent by working on real Nintendo hardware.

Unfortunately, if you wanted to play Solar Wars back in 1999, you had to modify an existing NES cartridge. Fortunately it uses a common PCB, but not everyone had access to an EPROM programmer and soldering and desoldering tools.  The next step was the release of the first homebrew cartridge the Garage Cart, was released by Joey Parsell (Memblers) in 2005.  It cost $42.00 and included Solar Wars and two other small games.  While it still used a donor board, it was significant in that you could purchase one and play it on your real NES without any programming or soldering hassles.  

Recovering 240p from Video Capture Devices and Putting it Online

Video capture devices are often used to backup NTSC video sources like VHS cassettes and DVDs.  Many consumer level devices on the market have this purpose in mind.  You can use these devices to backup old video recordings, unprotected commercial video tapes and DVDs.  Your retro consoles and some computers also output an NTSC signal, but there is a substantial difference between the two.

Your standard NTSC-M video source uses a 480i resolution.  The picture is constructed from two fields, each containing half the data of a frame.  These fields are interlaced so that the odd lines of the frame are displayed first, then the even lines of the frame.  The eye usually cannot notice the interlacing effect when viewing a CRT TV screen at a reasonable distance.   In NTSC, there are 59.94 fields displayed in each second, half odd, half even.  This gives an actual frame rate of 29.97 frames per second.

All consoles from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo 64 typically output 240p video.  Many computers, including virtually all the 8-bit home computers from Apple, Commodore, Atari, Texas Instruments, Timex Sinclair, Mattel and Coleco output 240p.  Some more advanced home computers, like the IBM PC with CGA, the IBM PCjr and Tandy 1000, the Atari ST, Apple //gs and Commodore Amiga also can output a 240p signal.  All these hardware devices output 240p do this by tricking the screen.  Instead of sending the proper signal for an odd and an even field, they send the signal for two odd fields.  The resolution is reduced to no more than 240 lines, and often there are fewer visible lines drawn and the rest of the lines are filled with a background color, often black.  On the positive side, the images are drawn twice as frequently, 60 times per second.  Because the screen is not evenly covered, scanlines are more visible in 240p than 480i.  This was not part of the NSTC-M standard, but works on every NTSC CRT TV and monitor ever made and most LCD monitors and TVs that could accept a composite input until recently.

DRAM Addressing Capacity

Dynamic RAM is typically used in computers because it is cheaper than Static RAM.

Dynamic RAM must be periodically refreshed by an access to RAM or the data contained within the RAM cell decays.  Static RAM does not need refreshing, all it needs is a steady supply of power.  Computers typically had a method of refreshing the RAM, often tied to the video controller, which refreshes the screen fifty or sixty times per second.  Steve Wozniak for example used a unified memory architecture where the video controller circuitry would access the RAM 50-60 times per second, which was sufficiently reliable to keep the RAM contents from degrading.

Virtually all vintage home computers used discrete DRAM chips.  However, if you look at the printed circuit board of any old computer, you will see memory chips in columns of eight (or nine) chips.  Why is that?  This is because a DRAM chip typically holds one bit of data for each memory cell.  So you need eight chips to hold a byte.  By contrast, you only need one SRAM chip to hold a byte.  Despite the need for a refresh circuit and the extra space and complexity required to interface eight DRAM chips compared to one SRAM chip, DRAM was still so much cheaper that it was almost always used.

Vintage consoles more often used SRAM because it made their boards cheaper to manufacture, an important concern when you intend to sell millions of systems based on the same board design.  The Atari 2600 used 128 bytes of SRAM, but it was embedded within the RIOT chip.  The Atari 5200 used 16KB of DRAM chips, but it was based on the design of the Atari 8-bit computers.  The Colecovision uses 1KB of DRAM chips for CPU memory but also a 16KB SRAM chip for the video memory.  The NES uses 2KB SRAMs for CPU and PPU memory, but its sprite RAM uses embedded DRAM on the CPU.  The SNES uses DRAM throughout, which tends to cause the white stripe issue with its video due to the refresh signal.

In a system with a sixteen bit data bus, you need sixteen chips.  In this system, the CPU deals in two bytes (a word) at a time.  So the first eight chips hold one byte and the second eight chips hold the next byte.  An earlier IBM PC AT system has two banks of eighteen chips each (see parity below).  When fully populated, you will have a whopping 512KB of RAM.  Each socket uses a pair of 64Kb chips, one piggybacked on top of the other, for 128Kb.  So each row of chips provides 128KB.  The CPU sees a pair of rows in a 128Kx16bit configuration, but in real purposes you have 256x8bits.

IBM systems, except for the PCjr., use parity memory.  Parity memory uses a ninth DRAM chip for each eight DRAM chips.  The extra chip is not usable memory, it instead alerts the system to a memory error.

By the mid eighties, some companies were using four bit DRAMs.  Four bit DRAMs hold four times the bit capacity as a one bit DRAM.  So when you used to need eight chips to form a bank of eight bit DRAM, now you only need two chips.

One bit DRAMs typically have a marking on them like 4116 or 4164, denoting 16Kb and 64Kb parts, respectively.  (In this article, a "B" as in KB means byte and a "b" as in Kb means bit).  Four bit DRAMs have markings like 4416 and 4464 for the same respective parts.    They are also commonly shown as 16Kx1 and 16Kx4.

You can find 1Kb, 4Kb, 16Kb, 64Kb, 256Kb and even 1Mb DRAM chips.  You will not find 2Kb, 8Kb, 32Kb, 128Kb or 512Kb chips.  Why is that?  This is because of the way DRAM is addressed.  DRAM is addressed more in a matrix-fashion than a true linear fashion.  DRAM uses address lines just like SRAM and ROM chips, but fewer than you would expect.

SRAM can be had in virtually any power of two capacity.  1KB, 2KB, 4KB, 8KB, 16KB, 32KB, 64KB, 128KB, 512KB and 1MB SRAM chips exist.  Many chips of the lower capacities can be found in NES and SNES cartridges.

A 64KB SRAM chip has sixteen address lines, but a 64Kb DRAM chip only has eight.  We all know that 2^16 = 64KB, right?  In order to get to 64Kb in a DRAM chip, you need the Row Access Strobe (RAS) and the Column Access Strobe (CAS) signals.  So, first you send a read or write via the address lines and RAS signal, then you send the read or write via the address lines and the CAS signal.  Since you are using eight bits twice to get to the correct memory cell, you get your sixteen address bits.  If you add a ninth address line to your chip, you will get eighteen bit addressing, which gives you 256Kb.  This is why there is no such thing as a 128Kb DRAM chip.

More HDMI-ifying your Consoles, the UperGrafx for the NEC Turbo/PC Engine Systems

Today I found out about an upcoming Japanese product called the UperGrafx. The UperGrafx, as its name suggests, is intended to be used with a NEC PC Engine. What it does is it upscales the native PC Engine graphics (typically 256, 320 or 512 horizontal pixels by 224 or 239 lines) to the 720p resolution (1280x720). It plugs into the back of the PC Engine, Core Grafx or Core Grafx II, where there is a 69-pin expansion connector. It has also been confirmed to work with the US TurboGrafx-16 expansion connector. It won't work with a PC Engine Shuttle or any of the handhelds, Duos or the SuperGrafx.

Although the Expansion Connector supplies the analog RGB signals, it also supplies a lot more video information. The UperGrafx takes this information and builds a digital picture, then upscales it for the 720p resolution. The UperGrafx works similarly to the NESRGB and HiDef NES Mod.  

The PC Engine has sixteen sixteen color palette entries available for backgrounds and sixteen sixteen color palette entries for sprites. The first color entry of all background palettes is set to the universal background color and the first color entry of all sprite palettes is set to transparency. This gives a maximum of 482 colors on the screen at once. The Expansion Connector is constantly outputting these palette indexes on a separate video data bus that usually goes to the Color Encoder chip. Unlike the NES it also has a special signal to distinguish sprite palette indexes from background palette indexes, so you can still view the native video signal. The PC Engine displays 9-bit RGB for 512 colors maximum. The UperGrafx must be able to snoop on the color values stored for each palette index like the NES mods. The full CPU address and data bus is available on the Expansion Connector, so the color values for the palettes have been available. The result, when combined with the dot clock and sync signals, can give a truly digital representation of the screen image. Even better than the NES is the fact that there is no need to guestimate a composite to RGB palette.

There is a minijack next to the DVI port, which would suggest that audio is passed through from the Expansion Connector. The Expansion Connector supports stereo audio. The audio is output through the DVI connector, which is something of a pseudo-standard. Essentially the audio must be converted from analog to digital inside the UperGrafx.

Finally, the unit acts similarly to a Hudson Tennokoe 2 Backup Unit or a NEC Backup Booster. It allows you to save games to battery backed RAM instead of using passwords for those games that supported it. Unlike the original devices, there will be a USB port which you can use to transfer saves to and from the UperGrafx. The original devices came with 2KB of RAM, I do not know how much RAM will be available for the UperGrafx, but it is likely to have more RAM than the old devices.

The greatest benefit to the UperGrafx is that you are getting a pure digital video signal. There is no analog to digital conversion or degradation. There is nothing like jailbars induced by analog noise. When I had an RGB-modded PC Engine Duo last year, I could observe alternating bands of light and dark areas in the green background of Bonk's Adventure through RGB but not through composite. This cannot happen on the UperGrafx.

The second greatest benefit to the UperGrafx is that you do not need to mod your system to get perfect quality video out of it. The original PC Engine and TurboGrafx 16 only support RF output and the Core Grafx only handle composite video. No NEC console handles RGB without a mod, and there are more than one school of thought about what the perfect RGB mod should be. The unit I was using last year had a mod from doujindance, who has an excellent reputation for modding within the PC Engine/Turbo community. However, given the banding in his RGB mod, there is room for improvement.

There are some downsides. First, there is no passthrough for the expansion connector, so you cannot connect a CD-ROM unit. Second, you need a DVI to HDMI cable if your TV or monitor does not have a DVI input, but they are pretty cheap ($5-10). Third, it only upscales to 720p, not the more common 1080p of higher end displays. Fourth, it attaches to the back of the console like an "L", sticking straight up into the air, and there is nothing but friction keeping it attached to the console (not unlike attachments for the ZX Spectrum). Finally, it always displays "UperGrafx" in the borders of the frame, which some people may not appreciate.

So, for the suggested retail price of ¥40,000/$368, why should anyone buy this unit over a Framemeister? The Framemeister costs just as much and can work with almost any system. Also, if you buy this modern version of the Turbo Booster http://db-electronics.ca/product/dbgrafx-booster-ttp/ for $65, you can get the highest quality analog signals (RGB + CSync, S-Video and Composite) at a fraction of the cost.

You can see Jason of game-tech.us test the device and give his initial thoughts here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4baUgr0Ym0

A pure video of the DVI output for the device is available here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN3L1mLRWhs

Here is more information and pictures about the device, translated from Japanese : https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.gdm.or.jp/crew/2016/0423/159899&prev=search

The guy who supplied Jason with the device says that the lag on the device is between 0 and 1 frame. By comparison, kevtris' Hi-Def NES gives lag in the 2-4ms range. One frame is 16ms. The Framemeister gives lag in the 16-24ms range, depending on the settings used. But both the Hi-Def NES and the Framemeister support 1080p. The UperGrafx and the AVS only support 720p. What processing speed advantage given by the pure digital signal may be taken away by the upscaling done by non-true 720p displays (I am not even sure if there is a such thing as a true 1280x720p display). Lag comes from many sources and is quite insidious. Given the large number of shmups for the Turbo/PC Engine where timing is critical, maintaining a latency of well under one frame per second is essential if you want to buy this device over a Framemeister.

Working with ST-506 Interface MFM Hard Drives

If you have an IBM PC, XT or compatible of similar vintage, historically accurate options for mass storage can be a bit tricky to work with.  No XT-IDE, compact flash or Disk on Modules were available during the first decade after the release of the IBM PC.  Drives were huge but storage capacity was small by today's standards.  Still, if you want to go 100% Oldskool PC, you should use a vintage drive.  Even a vintage hard drive is far superior to being relegated to floppies.

The first hard drive interface in the PC compatible world came with the IBM PC/XT.  The XT included a "fixed disk drive" controller designed by Xebec.  The controller used an interface called the ST-506 after Seagate ST-506 hard drive.  The ST-506 was a 5MB drive and used a two-cable interface.  The IBM original controller only officially supported one type of hard drive in its first two iterations, the ST-412.  The ST-412 functioned like the ST-506 but had a 10MB capacity.

Later, Seagate released the ST-225, a 20MB hard drive that could be found in late model XTs and perhaps the IBM PC XT/286.  IBM released a final revision of its fixed disk controller to support this drive.

MFM drives can take up a full-height 5.25" drive bay.  These bays are seldom found outside the original IBM PC, XT and XT/286.  The ST-412 is a full-height drive, the ST-225 is a half-height drive.

The RetroUSB AVS - A Potentially Worthy FPGA NES HDMI-Output Clone

This year, bunnyboy (Brian Parker) of retroUSB.com is going to release his long-awaited (if you are a NintendoAge forum member) AVS.  The AVS is a clone of the NES done within the programmable logic of an FPGA.  It comes in a NES-front loader influenced case, has a front loading 72-pin connector (no push down tray) and a top loading 60-pin connector for NES and Famicom games, respectively.  It only outputs HDMI at a 720p resolution.

The FPGA is a hardware recreation of the internals of the NES, namely the 2A03 CPU and the 2C02 PPU, the RAM and the glue logic required for a functioning NES.  An FPGA is a large, programmable surface mounted chip which allows the programmer to define the logic elements on the chip.  In this case, the programmer is attempting to model the CPU and PPU chips to perform an identical function to the logic contained in the discrete, through-hole chips Nintendo used.  Fortunately, these chips have been decapsulated and their dies have been imaged at very high resolution.  How they work on the hardware level is reasonably well-known, although there are some minor variations between the various revisions of each chip.

IBM's CGA Hardware Explained

The IBM Color/Graphics Card has been widely seen as a poor attempt at a video adapter.  Released with the IBM PC back in 1981, it was not particularly impressive by the standards of its day. Limited colors and no sprites did not make it very attractive for games.  However, when you look at the hardware and what it could do, it becomes more impressive.  Even though the card is a full length card, it was built from off the shelf logic chips, memory and video controller.  Looking at the hardware also helps one understand the limitations of the device.

The BIOS Modes

Mode 00h - 40x25 B&W
Mode 01h - 40x25 Color
Mode 02h - 80x25 B&W
Mode 03h - 80x25 Color
Mode 04h - 320x200 Color
Mode 05h - 320x200 B&W
Mode 06h - 640x200 B&W

On an RGBI monitor, the identical Color/B&W modes have no distinction except in Modes 04 and 05.  On a color composite monitor or TV set, color modes enable the color burst and b&w modes disable the color burst.  The IBM PC defaults to the 40x25 or 80x25 B&W modes depending on how you set a dipswitch.  Text, especially 80-column text, is much more difficult to read on a composite color display.

The CGA card has 16KB of RAM.  A full screen of 40-column text required 2KB of memory, allowing for 8 separate pages.  A full screen of 80 column memory required 4KB of memory, allowing for 4 separate pages.  Graphics modes took up all the 16KB of memory.  In order to really put the CGA card to work, one has to go deeper and look beyond the BIOS and what could be done by accessing its registers directly.

Metro ED500 DataVac - A Verse Review

The Metro ED500 DataVac 500-Watt 120 volt 0.75-HP Electric Blower Duster :

It will blow quite strong,
It will blow rather long,
Enjoy someday the money you will save,
No cans burying you into an early grave,
With nifty attachments to spare,
Away will fly the dust and hair,
Computers and gadgets clean up swell,
But it heats up like hell, and "burnt rubber" fairly conveys its smell.

Worth the Loading Times? - Famicom Disk System to Cartridge Conversions Worth Playing

The Famicom Disk System may offer games that saved to disk and enhanced music and sound effects, but it came at a cost.  The disks can fail, the drives' belts can snap and the disk system introduced loading times to the Famicom platform.  With devices like the FDSStick, the first two issues have been eliminated but the last issue remains.  Here I am going to list all Famicom disk system games with a later port to NES or Famicom cartridge and determine whether the extra features (if any) are worth the drawback of putting up with loading times.

First, here is the list of games :

FDS Title / NES Tile (if Different)	What Is Saved?	FDS Audio Sound Effects	FDS Audio Music	Disk Sides
Akumajō Dracula / Castlevania	3 Games	N	N	2
Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa (Unreleased for NES)	Does not Save	N	Y	2
Bubble Bobble	Highest Level	N	N	2
Dr. Chaos	3 Games	N	N	2
Dracula II: Noroi no Fūin / Castlevania II: Simon's Quest	3 Games	N	Y	2
Exciting Basketball / Double Dribble	Does not Save	Y	Y	2
Final Command: Akai Yōsai / Jackal	Does not Save	N	N	2
Green Beret / Rush 'n Attack	Does not Save	N	N	2
Gun.Smoke	Does not Save	N	N	2
Gyruss	Does not Save	N	Y	2
Hao-kun no Fushigi na Tabi / Mystery Quest	3 Games	Y	Y	2
Hikari Shinwa: Palthena no Kagami / Kid Icarus	3 Games	Y	Y	2
Ice Hockey	Does not Save	N	N	1
Karate Champ	Does not Save	N	N	2
Konami Ice Hockey / Blades of Steel	Does not Save	N	N	2
Zelda no Densetsu / The Legend of Zelda	3 Games	Y	Y	2
Metroid	3 Games	Y	Y	2
Moero Twinbee: Cinnamon Hakase wo Sukue! / Stinger	Does not Save	N	N	2
Nazo no Kabe: Block Kuzushi / Crackout	3 Games	N	N	2
Pro Wrestling: Famicom Wrestling Association	Does not Save	N	N	1
Roger Rabbit / The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle	Does not Save	N	N	2
Section Z	3 Games	N	N	2
The Legend of Zelda 2: Link no Bōken / Zelda II: The Adventure of Link	3 Games	Y	Y	2
Tobidase Daisakusen / 3-D Battles of the World Runner	Does not Save	N	Y	2
Volleyball	Does not Save	N	N	1
Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic / Super Mario Bros. 2	Worlds Beaten by Each Character	Y	Y	2
Zanac	Does not Save	N	N	1

Bold means that there is in-game Famicom Disk System Expansion Audio music, which is rare.  

Recommendations for Two Player Simultaneous Non-sport NES Games

The NES has quite a few good two player games.  When you have a friend over and want to play the NES, it would be nice to have a good game or two ready.  However, two player alternating games are not much fun when you are watching the other person play all the time.  Not all two-player simultaneous games are great either.  Here I am going to give my recommendations for good two player simultaneous NES games.  Since I am not a big sports fan, I am excluding those games.

Archon

Archon is like Battle Chess without the strict chess rules.  It is a port of the Atari 8-bit game.  Each player gets a nearly mirror image set of "pieces" to use, one side representing the Light and the other side representing the Dark.  When a piece enters the square of an opposing piece, the players control the pieces in an arena and fight to the death.  You can win the game by controlling all five squares or by killing the enemy wizard/sorceress.  The various pieces have different strengths and weaknesses.  Some pieces have a melee attack, some have a ranged attack and some have a touch attack.  The color of the board and some of the squares shifts between light and dark, giving the favored side an advantage.  The wizard and sorceror have some one-time use magical spells.  As a one player game, the AI is exploitable and cheap, but two players can have a lot of fun with this game.  The game is easy to pick up and play and there is plenty of strategy to be employed.

Balloon Fight

Balloon Fight is essentially Nintendo's clone of Joust.  The object of the game is to break your opponents' balloons by landing above them.  Then you have to kick them off the platform, otherwise they will inflate another balloon.  You have to dodge lightning sparks and the computer enemies.  Be careful, you can break your friend's balloons just as easily as you can an enemy's.  It's pretty simple, but the late Satoru Iwata's classic really captures the spirit of Joust.  The control is easy to grasp yet hard to master, like all good Joust ports.  Its even better than the official Joust NES port.

Sierra's Short-Lived Tandy Color Computer Support

In 1980 Radio Shack released its budget line of computers with the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer.  Originally priced for $399.00 for the base model, it came with a 6809 CPU running at .894MHz, 4K of RAM and could display only upper case characters.  It could be expanded to 16KB, then 32KB and finally 64KB.  It had a built-in BASIC, a cartridge slot, two joysticks and a 53-key keyboard.  Its most often used graphics mode was a 256x192 artifact mode capable of four primary colors (black, white, blue and orange). It used single sided, double density 5.25" drives that held 156,672 bytes per side for user data using Radio Shack DOS.  Its sound hardware was a 6-bit DAC and it had a serial port and a cassette port.  The Color Computer 2 was essentially the same machine with a better keyboard and more easily expandable RAM.  Later CoCo 2s supported lower case text characters, unofficially.  Both of these early CoCos were essentially limited to 64KB of RAM.

In many ways, the CoCo 1 and 2 reminds one of the Apple II+.  Both machines really had a widespread maximum of 64KB of RAM.  They used 8-bit processors running at speeds close to each other.  Both machines can produce low resolution direct colors but really show detailed color images with NTSC composite artifact colors. If you subtract the purple/green combination from the Apple II, the graphics of a CoCo and an Apple can look very, very similar.  Both machines had somewhat limited (pre-IBM layout) keyboards and did not support lowercase characters officially.  Both came with ports for analog joysticks and cassette storage.  The sound hardware for each machine was rather crude and neglected.  Disk storage was only slightly better on the CoCo.

The CoCo 3 was a much more significant upgrade.  It came with double the CPU speed, 128KB of RAM and could be officially expanded to 512KB of RAM.  There were four extra keys on the keyboard.  It had new RGB-based graphics modes which could support 16 out of 64 pure colors and supported several higher resolutions in 2 colors (640x192), 4 colors (320x192 and 640x192) and 16 colors (320x192).

Nuby Game Light - Best Contemporary Light Source for the Game Boy

The Nuby Light alongside the Game Boy

The Game Boy was better than its competitors in many ways, more compact, longer battery life, better sound (against Game Gear), more buttons (against Game Gear), higher resolution (against Lynx), lower price, first to market, superior pack-in game.  Otherwise, the screen was its achilles heel : poor contrast, four color monochrome, difficulty in displaying fast moving objects and non back-lit.

Today we have mods that can fix most of the Game Boy's screen problems.  Backlight kits can be installed and the contrast issues can be dramatically improved with a bivert mod.  However, these innovations were not available during the monochrome Game Boy's official lifespan (1989-2003).  You had to put up with the screen, and the best you could do was either buy a light peripheral or play your games on the non-portable Super Game Boy.

Early PC Game Miscellaneous Notablility

IBM's First PC Game Releases

IBM released games for the PC and PCjr. from 1981 to 1985.  However, IBM did not always develop the games.  These games came in a gray plastic over cardboard folder or folio without artwork on the covers.  The game and manual would fit into plastic sleeves on the inside of the folder. The disk label was originally gray, but turned to red for Casino Games.

These were the among the first commercially sold games released for the PC.

Adventure in Serenia - Sierra
Casino Games - IBM
Microsoft Adventure - Microsoft
Microsoft Decathalon - Microsoft
Arithemitic Games Set 1 - Science Research Associates, Inc.
Arithemitic Games Set 2 - Science Research Associates, Inc.
One Hundred and One Monochrome Mazes - IBM
Strategy Games - IBM

Microsoft Adventure was the first commercial PC game ever released, it was available at the PC's launch, August 12, 1981.  The first actual PC game was the Donkey game included with PC-DOS 1.0 and run in BASIC.

One Hundred and One Monochrome Mazes is the first non-text game released exclusively for the Monochrome and Printer Display Adapter, and only works with that display hardware or compatible hardware.  It does not work with the PCjr.  It also uses a black folio instead of a gray folio.

Microsoft Decathalon does not work with the PCjr.  Adventure in Serenia relies on CGA Composite Color and will show incorrect colors with the PCjr.  You can run Microsoft Adventure on the PCjr. but cannot set the foreground and background colors.  Adventure in Serenia will not show correct composite colors with a PCjr.

Quick Look - Outrun PC Versions

One of DSI/USI's more competent porting jobs from the late 1980s, Outrun received a decent port to the PC.  It was released three times in English-speaking markets.  All versions properly support CGA, EGA, VGA and Tandy and a Joystick.  I have sample screenshots of the 16-color graphics as displayed on EGA, VGA or Tandy, the 4 color graphics of CGA or Tandy and the monochrome Hercules graphics.  I also have attached speech and sound effect sample recordings that played on startup.

Winnie the Pooh Tandy/PCjr. Graphics Recolorization

Recently, I learned that Winnie the Pooh had support for Tandy/PCjr. graphics and 3-voice sound.  However, whoever was responsible for the colorization either must have had cloudy memories of the Pooh cartoons or problems with perceiving colors.  I took a screenshot for each character and tried to make them closer to their colors from the Disney films.  I made sure to only use the 16 RGBI colors available to the Tandy/PCjr. and not to do violence to the backgrounds.

The real graphics are on the left side, my retouched graphics are on the right side.

The Pooh Bear doll only needed to turn the shirt from light magenta to light red.