It's great man. All you need is the .wad that comes with the game and you can install it. It's basically the same maps with added features and a hell of a lot more gore. Version 20 just came out. Great way to revisit the games.
(Topic ID: 128353)
Odon, IN
Quoted from LITZ:Some fun reproduction games I picked up for the NES and SNES with dip switches to change the game time if you don't want 6 min 21 sec. And two player Tetris using the Game Genie code to play the unfinished version.
I have an Everdrive 64 and Super Everdrive. Also, I have a Star Fox 2 in a black cart that I have never played.
2 weeks later
my neighbor and I were picking up copies of stunt trax and converting them to star fox 2 carts 2 years ago. I think that we still have about 5 carts that we still need to do.
I even went so far as to source an EU copy of winter gold (which had the FX2 chip and more ram). it's still sitting in the living room waiting to get converted to a star fox 2 cart, which will be my keeper copy 
2 weeks later
Quoted from sulli10:Any comments on the new NES RETRO systems that are out now. I saw one last night. That could work for 5 systems and cost 139 dollars
While visiting my parents' house over the weekend to clean some old stuff out of the basement, I stumbled into a giant rubbermaid container of about probably 50-60 old NES games. Salivation happens almost immediately. My original NES console is too fidgety to get a game in that one position where the picture will actually load, so a few years ago I picked up one of the Retro NES consoles on eBay for $20. Wasn't expecting much, and I think I played it once before I put it into storage. I brought the whole thing home though over the weekend to play with my son, and damn we had fun.
Quick review (of a product for which I can't recall the name, but probably applies to other similar cheap Retro consoles):
I knew the boards and overall BoM would be light and cheap, and sure enough if the original NES console was the weight of a college textbook, this new one weighs like a box of tissues. That's great, but being a top loading console, and with a very tight connection of pins that hold the game, it is a process to remove a game. Wiggle hard back and forth to break the thing free and the down-force you put on the console with your other hand is to the point you question if you're going to put your hand through it. We actually had one game left in it (SME1 / Duck Hunt) and that board was in there so tight, it ripped right out of the game!!! Thankfully I also own SME1 / Duck Hunt / WCTM so this isn't a giant loss, but just a reminder to be careful removing games, and don't leave one in there for 2 years in storage.
Just like the NES, you have to have all the pins correctly in contact or you don't get the video... but seating the game completely in the console with a touch of "oomph" once you hear the game engage almost has a 100% success rate.
In the picture below, you'll see the game went widescreen. I'm not going to get all tech-nerd here. In NO WAY am I buying that $500 HDMI NES console (that's a cheap early 80s project pin... priorities!), and I really don't care about DPI, pixalation, filtering, aspect ratio or any other A/V techie term, because that's not my goal here (quickly reliving childhood on random occasion is). The image was a bit stretched, but not wildly. It's 8-bit gaming, not real people, so the visual effect of stretching isn't as bad as compared to let's say an older movie shot in 4:3 with real actors.
At times there are some glitches. The ninja turtles and foot solders sometimes go half missing for a split second... but hey, this is a $20 eBay solution, not a $500 HDMI work of art with 9-axis-CNC-manufactured screws. A/V cables are strictly White and Yellow composite (red not even used), so it is what it is... and what it was, was my son and I having a blast on a Saturday night playing a bunch of games he never knew existed. With the simpler concepts of retro gaming, no stupid DLC, no loading, no online multiplayer, no complex rules with 1000 options menus to get through, it was perfect for us. Also it accepts our original NES controllers which is cool, but the ones that come with it are serviceable enough and a tad more ergonomic.
Overall, it's real cool for $20. However, now that I see similar systems that have multi-ports to accommodate NES, Sega, and SNES all at once, I think one of those is in my near future. My Sega Genesis only has Coax output, and none of my TVs have that and a trip to Best Buy showed me there's no adapter from Coax to Composite (there's vice versa, but it's not backwards compatible).
If you're on the fence, have some old games, and want to just play and not worry about all the techie nonsense, do it.
Kitchener, ON
a trip to Best Buy showed me there's no adapter from Coax to Composite (there's vice versa, but it's not backwards compatible).
Sure there is. The easiest way would be to find a VCR. What you need to find a video modulator. NOT an RF modulator. 
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The top one in the pic is just an rf modulator, it will down convert video to coaxial. These are common
The bottom one here is a multi-switcher that can take a coax signal and output it on the rca wires. Might be hard to find now a days. I've had this one for ~15 years.
Any VCR can do this for you too.
2 weeks later
Well 240p on a 36" screen over component looks pretty sharp. Wasn't surprised by the slight blurring because of the bigger screen size as I've heard the scanlines are "fatter" with bigger sets, not to mention the bigger aperture grill ("pixels") certainly doesn't help. I almost modded in s-video to my smaller TV but I'm not confident enough in my precision soldering skills (yet).
1 week later
Has anyone tried using RGB SCART with a computer monitor? I heard some monitors won't accept 15kHz signals.
Quoted from Crash:Has anyone tried using RGB SCART with a computer monitor? I heard some monitors won't accept 15kHz signals.
I only know of a few that do sync at 15Khz like some Commodore Amiga Multisync monitors, or some high end Bosch Monitors.
Quoted from Luckydogg420:a trip to Best Buy showed me there's no adapter from Coax to Composite (there's vice versa, but it's not backwards compatible).
Sure there is. The easiest way would be to find a VCR. What you need to find a video modulator. NOT an RF modulator. image.jpg
The top one in the pic is just an rf modulator, it will down convert video to coaxial. These are common
The bottom one here is a multi-switcher that can take a coax signal and output it on the rca wires. Might be hard to find now a days. I've had this one for ~15 years.
Any VCR can do this for you too.
Depending on how much work you want to do on a classic console, you can get separate video and audio out from them. you only need to tap the audio and video signals going to the RF modulator that sends out he signal for the antenna output. I did this with a damaged NES top loader that the connector was broken off on. It's pretty much the same for any device that outputs to an antenna connection.
You just tap the audio, video line to the module, and a common (what most people refer to as "Ground") and run hem to a pair of RCA connectors. I'll try to get a photo of the NES I did some time this week and post it.
If you just need composite and audio out of a console, it's simpler to do what girloveswaffles suggests and it will yield better picture/audio quality. You're just bypassing the RF modulator that was originally used with very old TVs (late 80s and earlier).
While we're on the subject, it's possible to do the complete opposite with TVs. It's much like adding outputs to consoles, but you're adding extra inputs to your monitor. Here's a great example with RGB.
http://mikejmoffitt.com/wp/?p=284
This can also be done to add s-video to composite/RF TVs. Ones with RF only can't be modified (or rather, shouldn't) due to them using a "hot ground" for everything on the monitor chassis.
Quoted from Crash:... While we're on the subject, it's possible to do the complete opposite with TVs. It's much like adding outputs to consoles, but you're adding extra inputs to your monitor....
I remember in some gaming magazine back in the '80s telling how to do that (Electronic Gaming Monthly I believe)
Although heavy, my 27" Phillips flat screed CRT will never leave. Perfect for retro games and also works with gun games.
Quoted from Crash:I'd like to see that article.
Wish I could find it. Not sure if EMG was the right magazine, but i seems like it.
Edit: I meant Electronic Games. BTW here's a site that has scans of several issues from back in the day:
Classic video games, both arcade and console, are tied along with some other eclectic interests for my second favorite hobby behind pinball. I have an light sixer 2600, a 2600 Junior, an Atari 800, and an Atari 800 XL, plus two Atari 1050 disc drives, an Atari 810 disc drive, and an Atari 410 disc drive. Additionally, I have an absolute crap-ton of perfectly-functioning 20-30-year-old floppy discs filled with games and other software that was clearly pirated off of BBS-es. I have them connected to a crappy 20-year-old Sanyo CRT and a surprisingly good portable speaker. I really wish I hadn't gotten rid of my Sony Trinitron before I acquired my classic gaming stuff so I could have used it with it. 
1 week later
Sweet, great idea! Meanwhile I've been moving forward with my s-video input mod for my 20" TV...
I soldered the Y, C, and grounds into the corresponding inputs on the jungle IC. This kinda works, but the TV won't strip sync from the luminance signal so it still needs to receive sync through the composite input. I don't have a sync stripper to produce composite sync, but fortunately composite video works pretty well without muddling up the picture (video component of the signal is ignored). Dang, I had forgotten how much BETTER s-video is over crapposite. I drilled out an unused hole in the back of the case and mounted the jack to the chassis board. All that's left to do is add AC coupling caps to correct the brightness levels.
Before and after pics. Bye bye dot crawl!
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I don't mean to run this subject into the ground but DANG, I still can't believe how much better the picture looks now! Details are sharper and the color really pops! Text is rich and clean, black levels are amazing! There's no way my flatpanel TV could even come CLOSE to matching a CRT. I can't imagine what a Trinitron would look like! 
My phone dulled the color in the second and third photos but holy crap, it's amazing now. I can't believe this TV sold for just $80 at Kmart!
So I dug out a SEGA Saturn that I've needed to re solder the battery holder back down onto the PC board today. Sure, only three contacts. Should only take a few minutes to do, right? ... until you see what it takes to get to it:
Saturn 1.jpg
... just to fix this:
And it turns out this was a bad job from the factory. The pin on the edge of the board was never soldered on right! 
Reminds me of tearing down a whole playfield just to fix a switch. Have you tried memory capacitors?
Quoted from Crash:Reminds me of tearing down a whole playfield just to fix a switch. Have you tried memory capacitors?
It probably wouldn't work on the Saturn without some board modifications because there's no way to charge it, but would be great for a Dreamcast since it uses a LiR2032 rechargeable battery.
1 month later
3 months later
Posted this on another forum.
I found an old eMachines 17" PC monitor a while back and decided to build a Windows 98 machine around it. The picture is freaking incredible for a consumer product. I have never seen a Sony PVM but judging by the photos compared to my pictures it looks pretty darn close. The convergence is a bit sloppy at the corners but that's to be expected. It's technically a flat viewing surface but I don't think it's a "flat tube" per say. It may be appropriate to call a good PC monitor a poor man's PVM. It even syncs at 1080p 60Hz but with a bit of overscan. I cannot believe I haven't used a CRT PC monitor for these old CD-ROM games since my high school days. They look like utter crap on my 22" 1080p LCD.
The color saturation is really washed out in these photos but in person this display is gorgeous. A mix of 240p and 480p images, I used a hard edge scanline filter for the 240p ones. Since this monitor is 31kHz only inserting a black line mask reproduces the double strike effect with real scanlines. Some games do this too such as the StarCraft character portraits during campaign mission briefings to save vertical resolution in the sprites. Only the 240p photos are a full frame shot since they blur together past that point with 480p. Screen refresh rate is 120Hz.
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Quoted from Crash:Posted this on another forum.
I found an old eMachines 17" PC monitor a while back and decided to build a Windows 98 machine around it. The picture is freaking incredible for a consumer product. I have never seen a Sony PVM but judging by the photos compared to my pictures it looks pretty darn close. The convergence is a bit sloppy at the corners but that's to be expected. It's technically a flat viewing surface but I don't think it's a "flat tube" per say. It may be appropriate to call a good PC monitor a poor man's PVM. It even syncs at 1080p 60Hz but with a bit of overscan. I cannot believe I haven't used a CRT PC monitor for these old CD-ROM games since my high school days. They look like utter crap on my 22" 1080p LCD.
The color saturation is really washed out in these photos but in person this display is gorgeous. A mix of 240p and 480p images, I used a hard edge scanline filter for the 240p ones. Since this monitor is 31kHz only inserting a black line mask reproduces the double strike effect with real scanlines. Some games do this too such as the StarCraft character portraits during campaign mission briefings to save vertical resolution in the sprites. Only the 240p photos are a full frame shot since they blur together past that point with 480p. Screen refresh rate is 120Hz.
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Abe Vigoda. 
3 weeks later
I just got my Analogue Nt, it's sweeeeet! I'm sorry I'm leaving the CRT behind, but I love how looks in HD. I might become one of those Framemeister people soon for my other consoles. It doesn't hurt that I've primarily been using a toploader via RF with those annoying vertical lines lately, so the upgrade feels even bigger.
I decided to beef up my NES library a bit but prices are insane now. Old games-flation is apparently ten times worse than pinflation. Some pins have doubled or tripled in price, but lots of NES games are up 5-10x what they were a few years ago.
1 week later
Quoted from Crash:Super Smash Bros. is crazy expensive now too. In fact just about any N64 game these days.
You're not kidding! I spent the weekend at MGC. I'm mostly into collecting SNES stuff, but I'm pretty choosy about what I grab. I'm always looking for the usual gems at decent prices, but anyone there knows exactly what they have. The rarest game I own is a complete Earthbound (though the manual is pretty well beat up). They had one at the show missing the cardboard insert for $850!! The cartridges alone are $200, and I'm pretty certain one of those sold.
The other thing I was surprised to see were what appeared to be ROM flashed cartridges.. they're basically named as knockoffs (Super Mario Mega Land, or something for Super Mario World). I was sort of annoyed with that.. I have some of these old games, and always had fun searching for them. How can these guys be selling these things? It's not like they're hiding, they were plenty visible at MGC...
The other game I was surprised about was Clay Figher Sculptor's Cut. I don't know anything about it, but it was priced at something like 2,500.. Crazy..
Quoted from Deaconblooze:The other thing I was surprised to see were what appeared to be ROM flashed cartridges.. they're basically named as knockoffs (Super Mario Mega Land, or something for Super Mario World). I was sort of annoyed with that.. I have some of these old games, and always had fun searching for them. How can these guys be selling these things? It's not like they're hiding, they were plenty visible at MGC...
NintendoAge is FULL of repros and bootlegs, etc. too. I don't have a problem with hacks and translations on a cart as a collector (although I recognize the copyright infringement), but the "reproduction" labels and bootleg games that can be passed off as real seem like they make collecting rare games a huge hassle now where I need pics of the board every time. For example... $20 fake Little Samson: http://goo.gl/tJuMw8
Some places are selling hacks for $100s: http://www.rosecoloredgaming.com/shop/zelda-legend-of-link-snes-game/ - Either they're trying to profit off the original game, the hack that can't be commercially sold, or a cardboard box for it all. It's pirated EPROMs on a cart, it's not like you're selling some collectible real game...
1 month later
For anyone who is interested in how this works: every TV from the early 1990s to 2008 has an on-screen display for menus, channel numbers, and captions. This overlay system has two main components: a microcontroller IC and a video IC. The microcontroller generates digital RGB and blanking signals to be used with the video IC's analog RGB inputs. The blanking signal switches the RGB on and off on a per-line basis. By disconnecting these lines, injecting your own RGB, and connecting the blanking input on the video IC to 5v so the RGB display is always on you can effectively turn the TV into an RGB monitor. Some people install a switch to disconnect these inputs and reconnect the microcontroller to allow the original video inputs to be used. I'm thinking of just taking out all of the existing ports, dropping in a single SCART plug, and using one of these from now on. I can wire the 5v coming from my game's video cable to the blanking input and still get a black and white OSD as well as my existing inputs when I disconnect the SCART cable and plug in the RCA adapter.
1 month later
It's done! Mwahahahaha! Check it out if you're interested. Amazing results.
http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/crt-tv-rgb-input-hack-attempt.62175/
what's BK? I have Mario Kart & Smash bros. I working on getting Mario tennis & Diddy Kong Racing. I like harvest moon and SM64 but I don't really play 1-player games anymore. It's more about having people over and playing. I'm looking for Mario party 2 & 3.
What else?
1 month later
So I scored an Emerson 20" Standard definition CRT T.V. with a flat tube for only $6. Best part, it was made in 2008 so it has both analog and digital tuning. Just what I need to test some of my consoles on and test some of my light guns for various systems.
Quoted from girloveswaffles:So I scored an Emerson 20" Standard definition CRT T.V. with a flat tube for only $6. Best part, it was made in 2008 so it has both analog and digital tuning. Just what I need to test some of my consoles on and test some of my light guns for various systems.
Nice! I think 20" is just about right, any bigger and you have to sit father back from a 100lb+ box that takes up the space of a medium sized desk. Plus the convergence is more of an issue with bigger tubes. I like being able to see the phosphors without scooting up 3 feet, it helps smoothen the image.
Run the 240p test suite if you can. This set may be too new to show scanlines at 240p resolution.
1 week later
Quoted from Friengineer:So I'm buying N64 games, what are the top 5 games? Go!
My top 5:
Conker's Bad Fur Day
Super Mario 64
Mario Kart 64
Starfox 64
Mischief Makers
And to keep this on topic, I love the UltraHDMI mod!!!! Ever since installing it, I've been playing my N64 a lot and trying to play thru games I never finished before.
8 months later
To bring some interest back to this thread, I picked up a 1999 17" Sony Trinitron PC monitor from the side of the road during spring cleanup week. It had a slight wang of smoke and a damaged case, but works perfectly. The smell wore off fast. It has awesome color and nearly perfect convergence. Using it for my retro gaming PC. Evidently it sold for $1000 new geared towards office users and Sony boasts its sharpness when using spreadsheet applications, lol. And Trinitron monitors of this era still fetch $150-$300 on the used market!
5 months later
I recently upgraded the screen in my Gameboy Advance to the replacement AGS-101 used in the GBA SP. The difference is huge! I'll be playing my GBA a lot more now. This video also explains how you not only get an awesome backlit screen with deep blacks and rich color, but also BETTER battery life!
I also bought a SoundBlaster 16 for my retro PC. It's going to be a challenge getting it working but it will be fun. I have several DOS games I want to play just for this.
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