Tag Archives: NFC

Nov 23

Late Friday Post (yeah it’s Sunday): IAAPA! Super Smash Bros!

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Hey All,

Sorry for the super late post.  The weather changes here in Florida knocked me on my butt.  I’ve been in bed for the past two days trying to get over this cold.  Going from 40 degrees to 70 to 80 back to 40 just messes with me.  It also didn’t help that I ran myself ragged on Friday.

IAAPA

So Friday was the “members of the public” day at IAAPA.  IAAPA stands for  International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, which means that if you ever wanted to see how a ride works, or where to get new arcade machines, or pretty much anything within the amusement / coin op sector, this is the place.  I go every year and it is always a blast.  The biggest noticeable trend this year is how un-3d everything is.  2 years ago every ride and game had a 3D gimmick to it.  Now, pretty much nothing is 3D except for the big ride experiences.

This year some of my coworkers went with me.  They enjoyed themselves.

Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U came out this weekend.  Holy crap it is amazing.  I had friends over on Friday, we played 8 player smash, and it was a riot.  I will have the image of me playing as Samus getting the smash ball and taking out all 7 of the other players in one final smash attack burned into my memory for a very long time.

It’s a beautiful, well made, extensive game.  I have no idea how long it is going to take me to unlock everything.

The game also includes support for Nintendo’s new NFC characters called Amiibos.  Think Skylanders but different.  For now, the way they work is dependant on each game.  For Mario Kart 8, it just unlocks new outfits.  In Smash Bros, they act as a super smart CPU character.  The figures are really well made and look good sitting on display.

IMG_4536

I’m still trying to get some of the NFC info from them.  I’d love to write a program to back up the data, but it’s hard finding info on the MIFARE Ultralight chip it identifies as.

If you have any info please let me know!

Have a good week all,

-Shea

Sep 06

Friday Post: PiMAME 0.7.9

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Hey All,

PiMAME 0.7.9

PiMAME 0.7.9 is now uploaded to SourceForge

A new release of PiMAME is being uploaded.  This time it’s 0.7.9, and the biggest edition is DGEN, a Sega Genesis emulator.  PiSNES now supports 2 players, and the script was updated to not overwrite some of the config files.  You can use the update.sh script right now to upgrade.  I’ll update this post once the new image is on SourceForge.

Pokemon Rumble U

So, I’m a sucker for collectibles.  Make little collectible figurines, add NFC, and let them interact with a video game, and I might as well just hand over my paycheck to the developer.  I have so far kept myself away from Skylanders, and Disney Infinity, because I KNEW I would spend too much, but now Nintendo has come into the market with Pokemon Rumble U.

It’s an inexpensive Wii U game.  Download only.  It’s like a combination of Super Smash Bros., Mario Party, and bullet hell games.

There are 649 in game Pokemon to catch/befriend/see, but the real fun comes with these:

There are 18 different figurines to collect, and each one levels up as you play.  When you bring them to a friends house, you can place the little figure on their wii u gamepad and it brings over all your stats and moves.

It’s using NFC tags inside the figure’s base to read and write this data, and if you hold it up to an Android phone with NFC, it will try and read the data.  So far I have been unsuccessful getting a good data dump, but it would be neat if I could back up my figures stats and try moving them to blank tags.

Have a good weekend all!

-Shea