I wanted to update listeners on a few things related to the music stream, the recently added remix tracks have not been playing due to an issue with the play list. This issue has now been resolved and I will be adding some additional music from the Turbo Duo soon. I also took some time today to trim the fat so to speak and brought the total tracks down to the 400′s, I really want to work to remove the fluff and only play the songs that people want to hear.
You should now find that the stream is much improved!
I found this online and just had to share it, according to the description it is “A map of the NES/SNES-era Mushroom Kingdom, encompassing the worlds of Super Mario Bros. 1 & 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario RPG, Yoshi’s Island and Super Mario Kart.”
The original as well as options to purchase prints can be found here.
Yet another amazing wallpaper from Orioto, please click on the image for the full size.
“All wallpapers are found at random online, in cases where I can find the original creator I will recognize the individual and link to their site if possible. If you find that your work has been posted here and would like to receive credit please send me an email and I will gladly do so.”
Television: For classic gaming nothing beats one of the old CRT televisions, they are big and heavy but the picture cannot be beaten for low res content and unlike the new flat screen HD televisions they work with all gun games and other peripherals like the 3D glassess on the Sega Master System. Opinions vary on make and model but I currently use and have had good luck with the Sony Wega line of televisions which can easily be found on Craigs list for under $100, be forewarned however that these televisions are heavy! Please ensure that you have a t.v stand that can support one of these 200-300 pound behemoths, as well as a truck and 1-2 friends to help you transport it.
Video Selector: I have tried various video selectors over the years however I have not found one that offers as many connections or features as the “Pelican Universal System Selector Pro“. It has inputs for Composite, S-video, Component and ethernet, it is fairly sturdy and has held up well over the years. If I had a complaint it would be that the units are too light, with “20 pounds” of cable hanging off the back of the unit it can be a little prone to tilting back or sliding around on the shelf. I currently use two units daisy chained to my television and have never had an issue with either one, Pelican does not seem to offer either the original or 2.0 version of this unit anymore so I would suggest eBay or Amazon for finding one.
Scart Converter: Fancy yourself some component quality video from classic consoles? Buy yourself a scart cable and a scart to component converter. Several model converters can be found online at various places but the two most popular seem to be the CVS2087 and the CSY-2100, both devices can easily be found online. You will find that the CVS2087 is cheaper at close to $50 while the CSY-2100 will usually run you around $100.
Additional Notes: This guide should be considered a work in progress and will be updated or edited as I find additional information. If you find errors or have additional information that you feel should be added then please leave a comment or send me an email.
I wanted to take a moment to update everyone on the stream, it seems the updates resolved the crashing issues but I will continue to keep an eye on things just to be sure.
On the music front I purged the audio files down from over 13k files to just under 900 and then again to 712 audio files. As of now there is a pretty solid collection of tracks for the SMS, Genesis, NES, SNES, TG16, and various remixes such as the Smashing Live concert and some OCREMIX content. In the coming weeks I plan on adding more content for the TG16, some additional remixes and I would like to also branch out to some CD based audio for the Sega-CD etc.. As always please post requests, opinions etc. on the forums so that I can improve things for you the listeners.
The playing\collecting side of things has been fairly slow as of late but I am going to start focusing on gathering up all of the Alex Kidd titles so expect some updates on those soon!
Over the past 2-3 weeks there has been some instability with the shoutcast server which has caused the stream to stop every couple of days without warning. I performed some updates a few days ago and so far so good, hopefully the crashes have stopped.
Looking forward I plan to clean up the music selection, as of now the play list contains over 13 thousand sound files which while impressive it also means that there is a lot of fluff and some favorite tracks are rarely repeated. My hope is to continue covering all of the classic consoles but to trim the selection down considerably so that only the best songs are played, I am also hoping to add more reproductions of music done by retro gaming bands and some ocremix content.
This is where you come in, please let us know what you are wanting to hear!
Well… actually it arrived last week but it has been busy sitting inside of my Powerbase Converter, what started as a simple test of the game as I do with all new arrivals ended up with me playing and beating the game over the span of around 5 days. Since Wonder Boy like most older games does not have game save capabilities and my play time was limited I simply left the console on the entire time. Being new to both the original Wonder Boy and Adventure Island I was in for a treat, I have not had that much fun with a game in a very long time.
It took awhile to find a near mint complete copy of this classic on eBay but the hunt finally led me to this auction!
Another amazing wallpaper from Orioto, please click on the image for the full size.
“All wallpapers are found at random online, in cases where I can find the original creator I will recognize the individual and link to their site if possible. If you find that your work has been posted here and would like to receive credit please send me an email and I will gladly do so.”
My favorite SNES emulator bsnes was recently updated to v087 and now fully supports all of the SNES’s coprocessors which means that bnes can now claim to be the only SNES emulator with “100% known compatibility with all officially released games”.
Per the release notes on the site,
Changelog:
emulated the 21.47MHz ST018 (ARMv3) coprocessor used by Hayazashi Nidan Morita Shougi 2
fixed PPU TM/TS edge case; fixes bottom scanline of text boxes in Moryo Senki Madara 2
fixed saving and loading of Super Game Boy save RAM
NEC uPD7725,96050 ROMs now stored in little-endian format for consistency
cartridge folder concept has been reworked to use fixed file names
added emulation of serial USART interface (replaces asynchronous UART support previously)
I have been doing a lot of research into getting the most out of my Master System console and figured I would compile a list with links here to share with everyone.
Video:
The video options are pretty scarce on the SMS, beyond the RF adapter you have the standard AV cables which offer a less noisy video signal but does not do much for those of us hoping for a little more. If you would like to take things a step further and are not afraid of soldering there is the modding route which you can find more about here, here, and here.
If soldering is not really your thing and you want to aim for a higher quality connection you can go the component route via a scart cable, the scart cable can easily be found on eBay and when combined with a scart to component converter box it can provide you with a near RGB quality signal. It will work almost identical to the video below which is showing the same process being done for the Genesis.
Another thing of note regarding scart cables, scart cables carry both the audio and video signals across the same cable so since American T.V’s do not accept scart connections and we will be using a converter to convert the video to component we will need a way to get audio out to our t.v or reciever. This can easily be accomplished by using a simple 2-4 port scart switch with audio outputs, this has the added benefit of allowing you to have multiple consoles connected via scart while using only one scart to component converter. Something like this would work nicely.
Audio:
On the audio front there did not seem to be much room for improvement but after digging into things I did find that the Japanese Sega Master System has FM sound capability which is a big improvement over the PSG sound found on the consoles from other regions.
So how do you play with FM sound? Well there are a few catches and it is definitely not easy but if you are dedicated and willing to spend some time, money, can solder some things into place and have room for multiple setups it can be done. Ideally you will want both a Japanese Master System (not to be confused with the Mark III) and a U.S or Pal Master System.
With the Japanese console you will get FM sound without any modifications however you will need an adapter to play carts from other regions due to differences in cart design on the Japanese console, that said not all games will work such as the ones listed below.
4 Pak
Lord of the Sword
Maze Hunter 3D
Outrun
Rescue Mission
Time Soldiers
Wonderboy
Several adapters are available such as Bock’s and the Tototek for the slot conversion.
Because not all games will work on the Japanese console the next step would be to modify a U.S or Pal system to add an FM board. The FM board is a fairly simple install, more information and ordering info can be found here. It seems that there are some issues with a couple games such as Time Soldiers and Wonder Boy III when using the FM board, a fix has been posted here. Hopefully a second run of the boards will be released which include the fix already applied for those afraid of soldering things.
Additional Notes:
This guide should be considered a work in progress and will be updated or edited as I find additional information. My hope is that this will serve as a collection of info regarding the various improvements that can be made to the SMS. If you find errors or have additional information that you feel should be added then please leave a comment or send me an email.
Most information was gathered from various forum threads at the following web sites.
I have been watching eBay for over a month now trying to find a near mint copy of Wonder Boy, I finally found one which should arrive within a few days!
“All wallpapers are found at random online, in cases where I can find the original creator I will recognize the individual and link to their site if possible. If you find that your work has been posted here and would like to receive credit please send me an email and I will gladly do so.”
Another purchase down and on it’s way from the U.K, this time it is Sonic 2 for the SMS. I am currently playing Sonic the Hedgehog and hope to have impressions and perhaps even a video on our youtube channel within the next week.
Occasionally I will find a cool music video or song online that pays tribute to classic gaming, this one in particular is simply amazing. After some digging around I found that the band “2080″ has both Facebook and Youtube accounts and you can purchase their EP off of iTunes as well.
