One of the most popular games I remember playing was Mike Tyson’s Punchout. Seeing my older step-brother, my dad, and others play this game made me want to give it a shot.
I wouldn’t get the chance until well after the NES’s popularity started to dwindle in favor of newer consoles.
In either event, Tyson himself was on the cover, and was even featured at the end of the game. As the final boss, he was aggravating, especially in the first round.
I remember growing up with the NES. It was the predominant gaming console of the late 1980’s. That’s why it could be found in Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.
Though I didn’t own one, I’ve also played the Sega Genesis and found it to be fascinating. This 16-bit console hit North America before the SNES, making it among the first of the 16-bit systems.
Sonic, Mortal Kombat, and other games that had more of adult elements (in some cases, via cheat codes) were possible under the Genesis. However, friendly games like Ecco the Dolphin were also available for enjoyment.
Sporting a Motorola 68000 CPU, this console ran off the same architecture as old school Apple computers. Though it never really took off, the company eventually released add-ons to increase the capabilities of the Genesis.
Though they never quite made it in the console market, Sega can still be found today publishing popular games for numerous platforms. Thank you Sega for re-igniting my passion for vintage gaming.
The phone’s specs are amazing, but it can also catch houses on fire.
As we head deeper and deeper into Winter, more people are going to stay indoors to avoid the cold weather. Eventually, people will get bored and will start killing time on the Internet. To make things a bit more pleasant for those who happen to be bored, never fear!
Our weekly links will have you laughing, crying, and cursing multibiollion dollar corporations all at the same time. With that said, here’s this week’s links.
Valve Joins the Linux Foundation: Gaming was such a contentous issue on operating systems other than OS X and Windows until Valve came along to port their Steam Client. The company that brought one of the most successful game distribution services is now an official member of the Linux Foundation.
Samsung PR Move on Galaxy S4 Catching Fire Backfires (MaximumPC): In an attempt to do damage control on a problematic product, the problems of said product go viral instead. Remember kids, preventing one from suing and broadcasting the fact that defects in a product exist is not good PR.
Overlooked Pop Culture
There are people who are here to help you poop: We aren’t making this up. There is a product called Squatty Potty that helps the person squat instead of sit on their toilet. Something about making it all come out easier…….
Foolish users brick their XBOX One consoles (Daily Dot): Thanks to a convincing looking image via 4Chan, a number of uses enabled the developer mode on their XBOX One consoles in the hopes that they’ll be able to play their XBOX 360 games. Unfortunately, the instructions rendered said consoles inoperable. Remember, kids…. never follow instructions from an image board, and for crying out loud, stay out of /b/!
Growing up, we all had our favorite past times. Some played baseball, while others played video games. My favorite activity revolved around the latter, and one of my favorite consoles was the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
As it turns out, most console emulators will only be just accurate enough for the games to be playable. According to Byuu, who wrote quite an informative piece on Ars Technica:
These days, the most dominant emulators are Nestopia and Nintendulator, requiring 800MHz and 1.6GHz, respectively, to attain full speed. The need for speed isn’t because the emulators aren’t well optimized: it’s because they are a far more faithful recreation of the original NES hardware in software.
Now compare these to the older N64 emulator, UltraHLE, whose system requirements were a meager 350MHz Pentium II system. To the casual observer, it can be quite perplexing to see Mario 64 requiring less processing power than the original Mario Bros.
My experience in emulation is in the SNES field, working on the bsnes emulator. I adored the ideal behind Nestopia, and wanted to recreate this level of accuracy for the Super Nintendo. As it turns out, the same level of dedication to accuracy pushed requirements up into the 2-3GHz range, depending on the title.
