May 15

Friday Post: F-Zero AX

Hey All,

So, I used to collect arcade games, but when I moved, I had to sell my collection.  Now that I own a house with a garage, I’m able to start rebuilding my mini arcade (and using PiPlay in the mean time 🙂 ).

One of my favorites and prized machines was an F-Zero AX.  This is the companion to the GameCube’s F-Zero GX.  It has a magnetic card reader, which allows you to save your pilot data between racers, and has a gamecube memory card slot which can access your save data.

I got very lucky that my original machine went up for sale, so I was able to repurchase it!!

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The board it uses is called the TriForce, which is a regular GameCube with more memory.  The game is on optical media, but rather than using gamecube optical discs, it uses GD-ROMs.  Yep, the same media used in the Dreamcast.  In fact, the platform is a collaboration between Sega, Namco, and Nintendo (hence, TriForce).  The racing cabinet is a standard Namco / Sega model.

It’s really awesome, and I’m so glad to have it back.

Have a good weekend!

-Shea

Sep 06

Friday Post: PiMAME 0.7.9

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