So Christmas over, and what with having a small child and a pregnant wife , free time was hard to come by , so the two or three videos I was planning to do didnt happen.(still had a great Christmas with them though!).
I managed to get Terminator Future shock working with Dosbox, and had a blast with it.
Its still a good game and reminds me a lot of Fallout 3 (speaking of which I picked up Fallout:NV for a fiver in the steam sale , God knows when I'll have some free time to play it though), especially in that you can enter any of the wrecked buildings.
I managed a playthough and commentary recording one night.Shot a live action bit at the end over 10 minutes the next , added a very crappy special effect the last night , then did a render and uploaded.
The review contains about 6 seconds of the terminator theme tune (around 3 at the start and 3 or so at the end) , I don't reckon this is enough to get flagged , but I re-rendered a second video with it removed just in case.
I'd been hoping to do a bit on Fatal Racing/Whiplash and Screamer (even have a sealed screamer for an unboxing), but they just dont run well in dosbox.I'm going to revive an old Win98 era laptop and output its S-video port to the vidcap card on my pc (Its still handier than Virtual machining seemingly) so that's another one for the "To-do" list.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
New stuff on the Youtube channel
hola!
Keep meaning to update this blog a bit more, been absolutely flying the last few weeks ,and thrown a few new videos up
This month I has been mostly playing
Arkanoid
Rally Speedway
Night Driver and Battlezone
Cosmic Ark and Solar Fox
And lastly Montezuma's Revenge
That last one is in the new format that I'm using
I've a slightly better intro , and I'm using a new video editor to assemble the whole lot.Downside is that the rendering takes longer and the uploads are bigger , which on my rubbish ADSL is bad.Generally vids take 2 evenings to do .One to play and record and edit , then the other to render and upload.
Also the way the sound was recorded was a bit different.
What I usually do is play the game and either a/ record my audio later (based on notes I took)b/ record a rough version of the audio (using audacity) and rerecord it (with all the ahhs and ums taken out)c/ record it live and redo the bad bits later.(using audacity)
What I did for Montezuma's was take the video input from my capture card , but the audio from mic when recording the gameplay .I was able to keep it together and actually make sense with fairly few mistakes while playing , so hopefully I can do it this way in future.
Have a few more vids planned over christmas , I have a special project which is either going to work well or die horribly , I want to look at some older PC games , and in the new year theres some Amiga stuff I want to try.
Keep meaning to update this blog a bit more, been absolutely flying the last few weeks ,and thrown a few new videos up
This month I has been mostly playing
Arkanoid
Rally Speedway
Night Driver and Battlezone
Cosmic Ark and Solar Fox
And lastly Montezuma's Revenge
That last one is in the new format that I'm using
I've a slightly better intro , and I'm using a new video editor to assemble the whole lot.Downside is that the rendering takes longer and the uploads are bigger , which on my rubbish ADSL is bad.Generally vids take 2 evenings to do .One to play and record and edit , then the other to render and upload.
Also the way the sound was recorded was a bit different.
What I usually do is play the game and either a/ record my audio later (based on notes I took)b/ record a rough version of the audio (using audacity) and rerecord it (with all the ahhs and ums taken out)c/ record it live and redo the bad bits later.(using audacity)
What I did for Montezuma's was take the video input from my capture card , but the audio from mic when recording the gameplay .I was able to keep it together and actually make sense with fairly few mistakes while playing , so hopefully I can do it this way in future.
Have a few more vids planned over christmas , I have a special project which is either going to work well or die horribly , I want to look at some older PC games , and in the new year theres some Amiga stuff I want to try.
Monday, November 14, 2011
More Vids!
Oh hey ..good stuff , a nice chap called stevebenway gave my youtube channel a shoutout last week , which meant lots of nice new subscribers! Which was nice. :)
lots of new vids from me
oh and I finally decided to step in front of the camera!
lots of new vids from me
oh and I finally decided to step in front of the camera!
Mod me too!
SO...actually went back and finished the megadrive mod . I did the longer version of the mod , and lo and behold it worked ! I think that the pin numbering on the "shorter" guide was off , or maybe it was the cabling I was using , but it's all working correctly now!I nabbed a replacement RGB cable and it all looks great.I went back and hotglued (as the switch holes I made were a bit too big) the switches , and replaced the red LED with a yellow one ..just ..well , just cause I could!
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Mod me do!
I've had an odd few weeks or two and no mistake.
Due to a snafu with ebay (involving a parcel making an unexpected and frankly reasonless trip to Lima) I've found myself with two megadrives.Where as previsouly I was lacking in the megadrive 1 department , I am now overflowing. Rather than doing the anything sensible like , you know , selling one and making my wife happy, or trading it, I instead decided to modify one, kepping the other one as a spare.I wanted to have an uber setup that would run any cartridge I threw at it.
Well... Sega cartridge obviously.
The first part , which involved widening the cart slot wasnt too bad .Much hacking , and scraping and cutting , and after I'd bandaged my hands and wiped up the blood, I had a machine that still looked decent enough and would take the slightly wider Japanese cartridges.
The second part , the part that would show me as the uber modder that I am involved fitting two switches to the side of the machine , one to change it from 50/60hz , the other to force it between japanese and english language .Both are essential to playing import games properly.
Making the holes for the first piart wasnt too bad, although the jerry rigged drill setup I used didnt go 100 percent correctly (I'm pretty sure the skin on my thumb will grow back , although it makes typing this a lot harder .Thank God for spellchecks , thats all I can say),and eventually I got a bit gung ho and just used the side of the soldering iron to melt the slots for the switches into the side of the unit.This worked out quite well , although the computer room still smells like of burnt plastic a week later.I'd picked up two switches in maplin , and an old keyboard cable which had the right amount of cored cables inside.After breaking the trace on two jumpers on the motherboard I was ready to go.
I 'd used a guide from mmonkey's guides , which involved a few less cables , a neater design and a bit less soldering.
It was perfect , or at least it would have if it had actually worked.
Sadly some thing had gone wrong somewhere and the machine refused to start.
Eventually I got some small cables , made mini jumpers out of them and soldered them where the cut traces had been .Success , the machine was starting now! Except its now running in 60hz mode!
It shouldnt!
But!
It!
Does!
It needs an RGB cable to work in colour though..doh!
I've decided to go back to the drawing board and restart this from scratch , with a less complicated switch design.Hopefully itll work
Oh and in other news I picked up 2 fake sega 6 button pads (they work fine but appear to be made out of the same plastic used for dog -chew-toys), and somehow got a Master system converter (the big one that sits ontop of the megadrive 1 ) for a fiver off ebay.Normally there 20-40 quid so I lucked out there .Its a good thing I have the spare meg to use them on!
Due to a snafu with ebay (involving a parcel making an unexpected and frankly reasonless trip to Lima) I've found myself with two megadrives.Where as previsouly I was lacking in the megadrive 1 department , I am now overflowing. Rather than doing the anything sensible like , you know , selling one and making my wife happy, or trading it, I instead decided to modify one, kepping the other one as a spare.I wanted to have an uber setup that would run any cartridge I threw at it.
Well... Sega cartridge obviously.
The first part , which involved widening the cart slot wasnt too bad .Much hacking , and scraping and cutting , and after I'd bandaged my hands and wiped up the blood, I had a machine that still looked decent enough and would take the slightly wider Japanese cartridges.
The second part , the part that would show me as the uber modder that I am involved fitting two switches to the side of the machine , one to change it from 50/60hz , the other to force it between japanese and english language .Both are essential to playing import games properly.
Making the holes for the first piart wasnt too bad, although the jerry rigged drill setup I used didnt go 100 percent correctly (I'm pretty sure the skin on my thumb will grow back , although it makes typing this a lot harder .Thank God for spellchecks , thats all I can say),and eventually I got a bit gung ho and just used the side of the soldering iron to melt the slots for the switches into the side of the unit.This worked out quite well , although the computer room still smells like of burnt plastic a week later.I'd picked up two switches in maplin , and an old keyboard cable which had the right amount of cored cables inside.After breaking the trace on two jumpers on the motherboard I was ready to go.
I 'd used a guide from mmonkey's guides , which involved a few less cables , a neater design and a bit less soldering.
It was perfect , or at least it would have if it had actually worked.
Sadly some thing had gone wrong somewhere and the machine refused to start.
Eventually I got some small cables , made mini jumpers out of them and soldered them where the cut traces had been .Success , the machine was starting now! Except its now running in 60hz mode!
It shouldnt!
But!
It!
Does!
It needs an RGB cable to work in colour though..doh!
I've decided to go back to the drawing board and restart this from scratch , with a less complicated switch design.Hopefully itll work
Oh and in other news I picked up 2 fake sega 6 button pads (they work fine but appear to be made out of the same plastic used for dog -chew-toys), and somehow got a Master system converter (the big one that sits ontop of the megadrive 1 ) for a fiver off ebay.Normally there 20-40 quid so I lucked out there .Its a good thing I have the spare meg to use them on!
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
ahh way too long between updates.Had a ton of stuff going on , and not much spare time.
Load of new updates over on the youtube channel. Finally finshed the outrun reviews , covering the msx/dos ps2 versions and having a crack at the arcade version.Did mini reviews of robocop2 chase hq on the c64 , granada on the meg and treasure island dizzy.
The current one up at the mo is Kings field , the rock hard precursor to dark souls
I covered the first part of a batman gaming retrospective over at www.gamersireland.ie too
I've the second part finished , I just have to get a chance to get it uploaded properly!
I'd a few background problems too . I'd gotten a new video capture device, and while it works fine , conicidentally I'd noticed that all the narration I recorded since was very lispy.I couldnt work out what was wrong, I dont talk with a lisp in real life , I changed the headset/rerecored in audacity , but it was still there.EVENTUALLY I worked out what had happened .I've a little usb cam on my desk .It has a mike built in (I hadnt realised this).When I first started recording youtube vids and doing recordings , I'd been using a headset , but windows had defaulted the microphone to the usb web cam one.Ironically it seems to be much better at recording my voice than the headset! Its a happy accident as if I'd heard the lispyness on the first few vids I would have given up making them!
Anything else? oh yeah I'm now the proud owner of 2 megadrive 1's .I'd bought one from a nice guy on ebay .I'd managed to get it "as is " and "possibly working" for 99p plus a tenner postage.The chap split it up into 3 parcels when sending , 1 for pads , 1 for psu and 1 for the meg.?Two of them arrived ..one (with the meg) didnt .Time passed , and in fairness to the guy he offered a full refund.JUST as I was going to drop him a mail and look for 2-3 quid back for the meg , it arrived.With a delivery docket showing it had ended up at LIMA airport .Thats in Peru. LIMA.PERU. My irish address was correct and readable.LIMA! No idea how the hell it got diverted to there.
Of course in the meantime I'd gone out and picked up a second MD 1 (I traded one of my many c64s for it).
So now I've two .One is probably going to be modded to run every region of MD cart , the other left pristine(and yeah probably traded for another console a few months from now).
Load of new updates over on the youtube channel. Finally finshed the outrun reviews , covering the msx/dos ps2 versions and having a crack at the arcade version.Did mini reviews of robocop2 chase hq on the c64 , granada on the meg and treasure island dizzy.
The current one up at the mo is Kings field , the rock hard precursor to dark souls
I covered the first part of a batman gaming retrospective over at www.gamersireland.ie too
I've the second part finished , I just have to get a chance to get it uploaded properly!
I'd a few background problems too . I'd gotten a new video capture device, and while it works fine , conicidentally I'd noticed that all the narration I recorded since was very lispy.I couldnt work out what was wrong, I dont talk with a lisp in real life , I changed the headset/rerecored in audacity , but it was still there.EVENTUALLY I worked out what had happened .I've a little usb cam on my desk .It has a mike built in (I hadnt realised this).When I first started recording youtube vids and doing recordings , I'd been using a headset , but windows had defaulted the microphone to the usb web cam one.Ironically it seems to be much better at recording my voice than the headset! Its a happy accident as if I'd heard the lispyness on the first few vids I would have given up making them!
Anything else? oh yeah I'm now the proud owner of 2 megadrive 1's .I'd bought one from a nice guy on ebay .I'd managed to get it "as is " and "possibly working" for 99p plus a tenner postage.The chap split it up into 3 parcels when sending , 1 for pads , 1 for psu and 1 for the meg.?Two of them arrived ..one (with the meg) didnt .Time passed , and in fairness to the guy he offered a full refund.JUST as I was going to drop him a mail and look for 2-3 quid back for the meg , it arrived.With a delivery docket showing it had ended up at LIMA airport .Thats in Peru. LIMA.PERU. My irish address was correct and readable.LIMA! No idea how the hell it got diverted to there.
Of course in the meantime I'd gone out and picked up a second MD 1 (I traded one of my many c64s for it).
So now I've two .One is probably going to be modded to run every region of MD cart , the other left pristine(and yeah probably traded for another console a few months from now).
Monday, September 5, 2011
Amiga!!
Picked up a lovely A600 , monitor!! and a non working a500+ via a nice chap(cheers aidan)
so going to film me fitting a hard disk ,(hopefully) in the next day or two
so going to film me fitting a hard disk ,(hopefully) in the next day or two
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