After getting addicted to DiRT for the Xbox 360, I started making a top-down, rally game in flash. Assuming I have the time, I’d like have a ton of tracks and cars as well as online racing/tournaments. It is very unpolished at this point and only has 1 track and 1 car… but here it is after a few hours.
Being tired of my original NES blinking when attempting to play games, I started looking for NES to Famicom adapters to use with my Super Joy III. After realizing the cheapest I could get them was around $25, I ordered an NES clone for about the same price. The clone I chose was the Family Boy 8. It comes with the system, two controllers, and the Famicom-NES adapter for around $30 on Ebay. I actually like the way the controllers feel more than the original NES controller and the NES Max controller.
The only problem I have with it is, if I bump it while it’s on, the game will sometimes freeze. This is due to the way the cartridge sits in the console. Other than that, it works better than my Original NES. It’s a great deal if you are looking to play some of your old NES games without an emulator or the Virtual Console (rip-off).
Synaesthete is an interesting mix of genres. It is part shooter and part rhythm. Imagine playing Geometry Wars but instead of pointing where you want to shoot, you have to press buttons to match the rhythm much like Dance Dance Revolution. If you are interested in trying it out, it can be downloaded for free here. Synaesthete is a finalist for the Independant Games Festival so be sure to vote for it if you like it.
I added an Atari/Amiga/Commodore joystick port to my Xbox 360 X-Arcade stick today… Why you ask? Sensible World of Soccer of course! Although I never played the older versions, I have become very addicted to the recent Xbox Live Arcade release. The guys at sensiblesoccer.de seem to prefer an Amiga joystick over any other type of control method so I decided I would give it a shot. Since the Xbox 360 controller can be used on the PC, I figured this project would also be good for emulation.
The gamepad I used is a wired Xbox 360 MicroCon Game Pad Pro. I had to use a relay (TF2E-4.5v-1-H50 ATF20620) on the left and right buttons because they don’t share a common ground. If you decide to do this and just want a joystick port on the controller and not the X-Arcade stick, you should use an opto-isolator instead of a relay as they are smaller.
| 1 | UP |
| 2 | DOWN |
| 3 | LEFT |
| 4 | RIGHT |
| 6 | BUTTON |
| 8 | GND |
On my controller, pins 3 and 4 go to the following relays which connect to the left and right d-pad buttons. Other controllers may be set up differently. Any button that does not share a common ground needs a relay or an opto-isolator.
I picked up a used Super Joy III a few weeks ago to mess around with. I knew before I bought it the quality would be fairly low and it would not come with the amount of games it promised, but it was worse than I thought. It promises about 76,000 games and comes with around 100. The graphics are a little worse than the originals as well. That being said, it does have a connection to plug in Famicom games. With an adapter, original NES games can be played on it as well.
I was thinking of doing some sort of controller mod with it but it doesn’t seem worth it to me. I am pretty disappointed with the amount of games on it (although I would have known this with a bit of research). Some of the guys at benheck.com have done some interesting things with it if you want to check it out. I might do something with it later on.
A NooberoUno Folding@home team has been created and anyone can now join. You will need to have downloaded the Folding@home software or own a Playstation 3 in order to participate. Once you have it up and running, just enter 91933 as the team number. If you have no idea what Folding@home is then read the following:
“What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease?
Proteins are biology’s workhorses — its “nanomachines.” Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or “fold.” The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.
Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. “misfold”), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
You can help by simply running a piece of software.
Folding@home is a distributed computing project — people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.”
Having recently acquired a PS3, I decided to install Linux on it. If you are only interested in playing games, specifically newer games that require a graphics accelerator, then don’t bother. If you are looking for something that has the potential to be the next XBMC, can run many emulators, and has a ton of built in apps including Thunderbird (e-mail) and Open Office (MS Office equivelant) then this is something you need to do. Unfortunately for us, Sony only allows other operating systems to use a fraction of the processing power the PS3 has to offer. This means that linux can run a tad slow but is still able to run the majority of apps I was interested in.
Read on for instructions…
I have been meaning to try this out for a while and finally got around to it. It is extremely easy to set everything up and works just like the video shows.
For easy to follow instructions visit the DS Music Interface website.
After getting my first Wii replaced, I turned it on for a few minutes to see that it was working properly and it was. I hadn’t turned it on until today when I decided to start Super Paper Mario. After about 30 minutes of playing, the Wii shut down. There was no power getting to the Wii at all. After unplugging it and plugging it back in, I turned it on and it seemed to work again. After five seconds of investigation, I narrowed the problem down to overheating due to the fan not working. Time to send it back to Nintendo.
From what I gather this does not seem to be a common problem.
The Orange Box is Valve’s new compilation of five great games including: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress. If you have not played Half-Life 2 then that alone is a reason to own it. If you have played Half-Life 2 and/or Episode 1 already (most have), consider them a bonus. Portal and Team Fortress together are worth the price of The Orange Box.
Team Fortress is a multiplayer first person shooter where each character type plays a very unique role. For instance, an engineer can build turrets to defend an area while a spy can disguise themselves as a player on the other team in order to sneak past their defenses. It took me a while to learn the basics, but is turning out to be a very solid multiplayer shooter.
Portal is a first person puzzle game where you are given a gun that shoots portals too help you get through the levels. While the story mode may only be a few (extremely entertaining) hours long, there are many more things to do once you complete it. Unless you are a genius, this game should last between 10-1,000 hours depending on how smart you are. 
The Orange Box is currently available for the PC and Xbox 360. It will be available for the PS3. To find out more about any of these games, check out The Orange Box site.
