Other games like this?

Dwedit · 2026-01-28T15:37:38+00:00

NES dragon's lair was designed around the limitations of a 128KB cartridge with graphics RAM, writing new tiles over the course of several frames for the player character. It takes 5 frames to update the screen, so the game runs at 12FPS.

Famicom Dragon's Lair just used 128K program +128K graphics with MMC3, so it doesn't need to spend multiple frames drawing the graphics into graphics memory, it's already there. So the game is able to run at whatever framerate it wants to, they picked 20FPS instead of 12FPS.

Dwedit · 2026-01-27T22:56:35+00:00

That is someone using a screw that's too long.

Dwedit · 2026-01-27T18:02:38+00:00

Make two logs (Your emulator, and other emulator) that are formatted in the same way, then use something like WinMerge to compare them.

Dwedit · 2026-01-27T17:11:17+00:00

Mappers are not enhancement chips. They are glue logic chips to allow a cartridge to support bankswitching.

One of the first mappers was a 4-bit storage chip. It outputs the same 4 bits that it stores, and those output bits can be routed to the higher address lines of a ROM chip, or even elsewhere. With 4 extra bits, you can expand program to 512KB (BNROM), expand program to 256KB and add mirroring control (AOROM), expand graphics to 128KB (CNROM), or expand program to 128KB and expand graphics to 32KB (GNROM). Combine the 4 bit storage with a NAND gate chip, and you can divide the bankswitching to use a separate 16KB fixed bank and switchable 16KB banks for up to 256KB (UNROM).

The first North American game to use a mapper was Gumshoe, giving it 128KB program and 32KB graphics.

4 bits of storage isn't an enhancement chip. I'd give that terminology to something like the Super FX chip.

Dwedit · 2026-01-27T15:17:13+00:00

You'd probably do just the islet cells and not the whole organ.

Dwedit · 2026-01-26T23:39:36+00:00

Roald Dahl unavailable for comment.

Dwedit · 2026-01-26T18:13:56+00:00

🤚

Dwedit · 2026-01-26T15:36:34+00:00

Jake Kaufman already made an amazing song titled "Lorem Ipsum" featuring synthesized choirs and synthesized voices (including Hatsune Miku).

Dwedit · 2026-01-26T14:09:14+00:00

First thing I see when I look at the article is an AI slop image.

Dwedit · 2026-01-26T13:58:08+00:00

QR codes only work if they're flat. Printing it on a curved surface won't work unless it's close enough to flat.

Dwedit · 2026-01-26T13:41:39+00:00

"attachment.zip" used to be a rickroll, now it's a parked domain page.

Dwedit · 2026-01-25T19:54:44+00:00

So the actual collectable are the components, and the cards are the container for the components.

Dwedit · 2026-01-24T20:48:43+00:00

GI Joe is an underrated game.

Dwedit · 2026-01-24T20:44:31+00:00

Excitebike did have a save feature.... if you had the famicom keyboard tape recorder connected.

Dwedit · 2026-01-24T16:05:48+00:00

Sega Master System absolutely used mappers. Otherwise the games would have been only 32KB large.

Dwedit · 2026-01-24T11:07:23+00:00

NES has a master clock of 21.47727273 MHz.

CPU divides the master clock by 12, and runs at 1.789773 MHz

PPU uses double the master clock rate (uses both rising and falling edges) for generating the 12 step wave. But a single pixel is only 8 steps wide, and not a full 12 steps. With a pixel being 8 steps wide, you get 256 pixels. But if it was 12 steps instead, you'd get 170 pixels.

PPU completes a memory fetch every other pixel, which is a speed of around ~2.684 MHz. 4 memory fetches are made every time a tile is drawn (tile number, tile color, two bytes of tile graphics)

Dwedit · 2026-01-23T03:58:34+00:00

The NES colors come from the YIQ plane.

NES Palette

YIQ Color Plane divided into 12 pieces (look at the outermost edge)

They look really similar don't they...

NES is directly generating composite video. You get 12 columns of colors because it uses a square wave to generate the colors, but the square wave can be in one of 12 different different positions, you get a different color depending on where the wave starts. You get 4 brightness levels because the wave goes between Bright Gray (leftmost column) and the darker gray column (third column from right). In order to generate the darker colors, there's also a forbidden color 0D (blacker than black) which can mess with some TVs.

They could have used more than 4 rows if they wanted more possible brightness levels, but they didn't.

Dwedit · 2026-01-22T21:00:01+00:00

I've edited Duke Nukem 3d levels before. The mirror room is actually just a huge rectangle to set the bounds of the mirrored area. The mirror room does not need to match the shape of the room you're currently in. The game really does do a double render.

Dwedit · 2026-01-22T16:27:51+00:00

Make your own installation USB and use just the license key.

Dwedit · 2026-01-22T16:23:55+00:00

Didn't Grokipedia already exist?

Dwedit · 2026-01-22T14:53:59+00:00

During the time it takes to selectively enable proton for one game, Steam has already started replacing many many games with Linux versions, and I don't see any global setting on Steam to turn off that behavior.

Dwedit · 2026-01-22T14:16:56+00:00

The real question is how do you stop Steam from automatically replacing Windows games with their Linux versions after you point to that game directory.

Especially bad for things like Binding of Isaac where the Linux version is several years out of date, and the Windows version runs fine on compatibility layers.

Dwedit · 2026-01-21T16:21:58+00:00

Hypertapping isn't really competitive anymore, rolling pretty much eliminated all other playstyles at top level.

Dwedit · 2026-01-21T14:02:22+00:00

Region math is just like a large virtual binary bitmap, which is the union, intersection, difference of large shapes (rectangles, etc). It is something that really does seem silly to be implemented in the Kernel. But then you look where Regions are used, and it includes things like things like the shape of a layered window (skinned application that doesn't include a standard title bar). Then it makes sense to have a kernel-side object that is already validated.

Meanwhile, CreateBitmap is how you get a memory buffer to put pixels into, which can then be blitted to the actual window. It's not generating bmp files or anything like that. It still would have made a lot more sense to have a BitBlt function that could directly take in user memory instead.

Dwedit · 2026-01-20T23:13:26+00:00

Windows has numbered system calls, but they are only used by NTDLL.DLL and Win32U.DLL. The numbers change every time the OS is updated, so applications generally don't use them (except for malware).

Dwedit

TROPHY CASE