The Spam Thread!

[huckleberrypie]

I presume you're referring to the Rockchip-powered Genesis clone, right?

Yep. Retron5 allowed hot swapping of carts as long as you exited the game first. The Genesis HD doesn't let you do that despite also being based on Android.

Makes me wonder if someone would take the effort of getting the Genesis HD to run on vanilla Android.

[cpd2009]

My latest obsession... trying to beat a knockoff Contra homebrew called "Super Contra 7". Or "Super Contra 8". Both are the same game, and they happily reside under the Contra submenu on the CoolBaby console.

It's a well known Chinese homebrew that sort of plays like Contra, and steals many of the same SFX from the real games, but it runs at half the frame rate and the music programming is very subpar. Most music ends up sounding like someone going crazy on the electronic keyboard. To it's credit, the hit detection is rather decent. It's merely the placement of enemies and poor physics that end up causing a lot of cheap deaths.

More info here: http://bootleggames.wikia.com/wiki/Super_Contra_7

[huckleberrypie]

There's a fifty-lives cheat, but since it doesn't have the infamous Konami code, I'd pass.

[cpd2009]

Well, I just finished beating Super Contra 7/8, and the ending is as pathetic as you expect. Just a simple screen with Chinese text. You can even see this ending screen by simply watching the game demo through to the end.

Some other random notes regarding the CoolBaby console. Some of the popular games that are thrown in, like SMB 3, Chip & Dale, or the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, are the Japanese versions. SMB3 J is a bit more difficult due to differences in how power ups are handled. A good example is getting a tanooki suit. In the US version, you would revert to Super Mario if you got hit with the suit on. In the Japan version, you immediately revert to small Mario if you lose your suit.

There are also a lot of ROM hacks of various games. The "Mario" menu contains several of these, such as Lode Runner with Mario graphics, a weird pot-based Yoshi's Cookie hack called "Yoshi Hash Cookie", the infamous Kamikaze Mario games, and lazy hacks like "Super Bros 6" AKA Tiny Toon Adventures.

You can even play the equally infamous Sonic the Hedgehog... which starts you at Spring Yard Zone for some reason. Sadly, no Somari. They could have put it under the Mario menu as "Fast Mario".

[huckleberrypie]

tfw a clone console you bought came with a marijuana-themed ROM hack of a Mario game. Though apparently that one's just a title screen hack and nothing else.

Anyway, I've just opened a new section on the forum for the Nabi SE line, including those "Powered by Nabi" variants sold under the Barbie, Hot Wheels and AG lines.

[cpd2009]

I'm getting into the home stretch in regards in getting several WiiWare or VC game titles before Nintendo pulls the plug on Wii Points March 26th. There really isn't much more to get. Most WiiWare titles are shovelware (as always), but there are plenty of good exclusives like the Art Style puzzle games or the various Konami/Taito games.

Technically, there are still some VC titles that I could get, but they are either available on the 3DS or can still be acquired as a cartridge without spending too much.

Of course, there is a risk by archiving these gems. If my Wii U bites the dust, those games go with it. I could just get back into collecting retro games and re-acquire the cartridge versions over time as they aren't that expensive, and I mainly started selling off my games just to get those knockoff clone things and other stuff. Carts have issues of their own though, such as the games with save batteries. Those batteries are getting close to dying, and I don't have soldering skills so I can't replace them myself. And some of the most popular SNES games have batteries (aka the DKC and Kirby games). Also, SNES games are rising in price as well. :/

The weather is finally starting to warm up where I live, and that means Garage Sale season is upon us. My collecting focus this year will be for Nintendo DS/3DS and Game Boy Advance. I already have two GBA SPs I found at a garage sale and after cleaning up the various stickers on them and adding my own, they look rather good even if they are scratched up a bit. The batteries also hold a good charge too. I'd rather not take my chances of getting GBA games off eBay due to the abundance of bootleg carts.

[huckleberrypie]

Interesting... Wonder if you'd end up getting an American Girl DS game or two if you wind up with them at a garage sale.

And yeah, that's the problem with digital distribution - if a store offering games ceased operations, you may not be able to re-download them again unless you're up to getting it some place else, e.g. piracy or your own personal dumps.

[cpd2009]

Interesting... Wonder if you'd end up getting an American Girl DS game or two if you wind up with them at a garage sale.

And yeah, that's the problem with digital distribution - if a store offering games ceased operations, you may not be able to re-download them again unless you're up to getting it some place else, e.g. piracy or your own personal dumps.

I do believe Wii hackers have managed to grab all the WiiWare, based on what I read at TVTropes, and they distribute them as WADs, and not the WADs from Doom. Of course, using these requires delving into piracy and hacking your Wii/Wii U. But for the majority of the games on WiiWare that will never see a rerelease, piracy is the only option. :/ 

I did have an opportunity to get a DS Lite at a rummage sale last summer, but I didn't really need one at the time. They also came with games, but they sellers let me pick and choose the ones I was after, namely the well known stuff. The rest was typical licensed shovelware games based on movies and cartoons. I'd expect that if I do come across a DS and bundle games at a garage sale, most of the games will be shovelware since kids don't really notice just how mediocre the games are... until they grow up and go back to said games that is. Anything to keep the kids busy I guess. The same was true with those GBA SPs. There was only one game in the bundled that I really cared for, Konami Arcade Advanced. The rest were movie or cartoon tie-ins, but I did keep My Little Pony: Runaway Rainbow.

When it comes to DS, I'm after some of the Pokémon games along with Kirby titles and maybe Professor Layton. These games sell for $20 to $30 complete on eBay, and I prefer them to be complete with manual, or at least with the original case. I rarely buy standalone game cards. As for GBA, I'm most interested in the Super Mario Advance series.

[huckleberrypie]

I do believe Wii hackers have managed to grab all the WiiWare, based on what I read at TVTropes, and they distribute them as WADs, and not the WADs from Doom. Of course, using these requires delving into piracy and hacking your Wii/Wii U. But for the majority of the games on WiiWare that will never see a rerelease, piracy is the only option. :/ 

I did have an opportunity to get a DS Lite at a rummage sale last summer, but I didn't really need one at the time. They also came with games, but they sellers let me pick and choose the ones I was after, namely the well known stuff. The rest was typical licensed shovelware games based on movies and cartoons. I'd expect that if I do come across a DS and bundle games at a garage sale, most of the games will be shovelware since kids don't really notice just how mediocre the games are... until they grow up and go back to said games that is. Anything to keep the kids busy I guess. The same was true with those GBA SPs. There was only one game in the bundled that I really cared for, Konami Arcade Advanced. The rest were movie or cartoon tie-ins, but I did keep My Little Pony: Runaway Rainbow.

When it comes to DS, I'm after some of the Pokémon games along with Kirby titles and maybe Professor Layton. These games sell for $20 to $30 complete on eBay, and I prefer them to be complete with manual, or at least with the original case. I rarely buy standalone game cards. As for GBA, I'm most interested in the Super Mario Advance series.

Well, if anything, it's a necessary evil for the purposes of preservation. The guy who spearheaded development of a Mega Man compilation admitted to piracy at one point, and whilst he didn't want to condone indiscriminate piracy, he did feel that companies need to deal with it in a reasonable manner rather than go draconian either through intrusive DRM or raid innocent people's homes.

As far as licenced games go, as long as it's a recognisable brand like Disney Princesses or Sofia The First, kids won't give a drat about its quality. That's why cancer thrives on Google Play in the form of asset flips, weird, copyright-infringing rips of said licenced properties, and adware forks of popular emulators. Parents and/or their kids would simply download what appears to be attractive or appealing to them, without realising how crap it is in retrospect.

I've played Pokemon for a bit before, but these never seem to appeal to me much, but I can more or less get a grasp of what's going on in the series so as not to get lost in a conversation. Heck, when the Pokemon Go hype train first came in, even my dad of all people tried the game out perhaps out of curiosity.

[cpd2009]

People seem to hate on Microsoft Edge a lot. It's flawed, but it's not nearly as bad as IE was. It's still not perfect. Very long web pages (like scrolling through a long Facebook timeline) can still slow down Edge even on a good system like Pearl. The Reading Mode is buggy and doesn't display all the article, and it's extremely easy to drag tabs out of the top by accident since it's so sensitive to even the smallest mouse drags.

I figured it was time to try out an alternative. Enter Firefox Quantum. I was intrigued by how this new Firefox version is made to utilize all your CPU cores to help speed up browsing, something Edge or Chrome don't apparently have yet. And it's much faster than Edge. I also like the new interface.

So yeah... I think I'll stick with Firefox now. Too bad Windows 10 feels the need to beg you to use Edge. It nags you when you try to switch the default browser, or if you leave the Edge icon in the taskbar, though I just removed it for that reason. There is even news that the Mail app in recent Windows 10 insider builds now opens all email links in Edge, regardless of your default browser setting.

I understand MS wants to WinBackTheCrowd with Edge, but it still needs plenty of work to match the performance of either Firefox Quantum or Chrome.