Nintendo | I Spit Hot Fire

UberNES – Nintendo Screen Saver [Cool Stuff]

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

I had an article about UberNES’ Nintendo Screen Saver bookmarked for a while, but I finally got it fully working a few days ago.

What is it? A screensaver that plays Nintendo games. Multiple ones at once. You can download videos (don’t worry they’re small) of others players’ play sessions and it’s like you’re 8 and watching your friends play again. Like most good software in life, Windows only.

It’s not so hard to setup:

Get NES roms (try Torrent)
Get the Screensaver: http://ubernes.com/nesscreensaver.html
Install and set up rom DB (read the documentation)
Watch Nintendo games being played galore- you can even jump in to any game and pick it up while it’s happening!
Geek out. (Screenshot of my own shown below)

Features

Completely stand-alone; you do not need to have UberNES in order to run the Nintendo Screen Saver

Don’t have any UberNES movies to play? No problem – the screen saver has built-in support for downloading and playing movies from the UberNES online movie gallery!

Currently, the UberNES online movie gallery contains over 100 movies that provide over two full days of unique NES gameplay footage.

Multiple movies can be played at once and tiled over the screen to create a "wall of NES games" effect

Users can press the space bar to take over for a movie and start playing the game themselves using a keyboard/joypad/etc.

Movie checkpoints are utilized to begin playing movies from various key points in movies, rather than just playing each movie from the beginning every time.

Screen saver is highly configurable – the following settings can be adjusted:

Length of time each movie is played before advancing to new one

Sound on/off

Information scrolled along bottom of NES display

Extensive video options are included

Software upscalers such as HQX, ScaleX, and NTSC provide improved picture quality in higher resolutions

Custom display modes can be selected for the screen saver to run in

Video can be routed through GDI or DirectDraw video subsystems, providing greater flexibility

UberNES – Nintendo Screen Saver

Tags: emulator, nintendo, roms, screensaver, screenshots, ubernes, Video Games

05.11.2009 Video Games 2 Comments

Apollo Justice, Ace Attorney (DS) [Review]

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

I am prone to writing too much. On and on. I am verbose.

And even though I am not a great speaker, I talk too much at times as well, stumbling, mumbling my way to some sloppy kind of communication.

So, about Apollo Justice, Ace Attorney, I am officially tired of the Ace Attorney series.

I’ve played every game in the series, reviewing the first and third. When I played the first Phoenix Wright game, I was super into playing a lawyer and would yell out, “Objection!” and “Take That!” into the DS microphone. “In your FACE, Edgeworth!”

With Apollo Justice, the fourth game in the series, I found myself just trying to go as fast as I could. I even used a walkthrough for the very last segments of Apollo Justice, just so I wouldn’t have to think

Played any of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney games? Rename all the characters and you have Apollo Justice.

The same game. For the fourth time.

But let’s be positive. The story and writing, fantastic. The gameplay linear and not always logical.

The same game. For the fourth time.

I used to think I could be a bad-ass attorney, and now I’ve resigned to the fact that I can be a bad-ass reader of dialogue instead.

But should you buy it? If you’ve never played a Ace game, yes. If you’re an Ace veteran and think you still love Phoenix Wright, then also yes. But rent it if you can. You may find yourself a little bitter that you couldn’t have just read out the story in a comic book GameFaq.

Tags: DS, nintendo, phoenix wright, Reviews, Video Games

27.04.2008 Random, Video Games No Comments

The King of Kong [Review]

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

Billy Mitchell is a big time douche.

Brian Kuh is an even bigger douche because he’s Billy Mitchell’s willing homosexual sex-slave.

Those stories and more on….The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters!

I like movies. I like video games. I like documentaries. All 3 combined = The King of Kong, a look at classic arcade video gaming competition, specifically the battle over the world scoring record for Donkey Kong in which you’re introduced to guys like Mitchell, Kuh, and Steve Wiebe, the good guy of this story.

I knew who Billy Mitchell was before watching this movie. I also knew about Twin Galaxies, the gaming scorekeeper for classic games. This documentary is about Mitchell, the record holder for Donkey Kong, but more so, Mitchell the character. It’s also about Steve Wiebe, who has to battle and Mitchell the (ego) symbol more than he actually battles the man in his quest to gain the record.

It’s a very good movie, and while I can never be sure if a documentary is slanted right, Mitchell sure comes out of it looking like a jackass, Kuh is just a buffoon, and Wiebe is just a normal guy you want to root for.

I don’t know why I have to even diss him in this post, but you just have to hope that Kuh has a moment where he remembers he’s human (“I think therefore I am”?) and doesn’t have to be a boob. Watch the movie and you will surely agree with me.

I gave it a 8/10 on IMDB, and I highly recommend it if stories about video games interest you at all.

Tags: arcade, billy mitchell, donkey kong, Movies, nintendo, Reviews, steve wiebe, twin galaxies, Video Games, Videos

08.03.2008 Movies, Reviews, Video Games No Comments

Orcs And Elves (DS) [Review]

Monday, February 18th, 2008

Orcs and Elves is Doom RPG in a fantasy-dungeon-style setting with better music. And that is good if you like simplicity, and linear progression, which I do.

There you go, the quickest review I can do.

But wait, there’s more!

In more detail, Orcs and Elves (OE) is another mobile game from John Carmack and ID Software, with their first being the previously mentioned Doom RPG (DRPG). OE, like DRPG, featured a really nice 3D engine and quick, if somewhat brainless, gameplay. Where DRPG has only been released for mobile phones, OE was also released for the Nintendo DS, and features a nice musical soundtrack.

Where DRPG was a first person shooter in turn-based trappings, OE is more of a traditional dungeon crawler- go through the dungeon destroying trolls and evil to save the world. You’ll become more powerful through time, earning or buying new weapons and potions and learning new magic spells on the way. Again, it’s all nothing fancy, but it’s enjoyable. The game is probably a bit too short (6-7 hrs) for a DS game (I think I read it had added content versus the mobile version, which also happens to be much cheaper), and for me, replay is low. Linear, and light on story (that doesn’t mean the plot is badly constructed however, I liked it), it’s hard for me to want to get back into it. It’s one of those games were you just try to race to the finish, rather than cherish every moment of the experience and hope (subconsciously) it never ends.

I’d recommend it to everyone for when it goes on sale for around $20 USD.

Tags: doom, DS, john carmack, nintendo, orcs and elves, Reviews, rpg, Video Games

18.02.2008 Reviews, Video Games 2 Comments

Purchased: Books and Stuff

Monday, November 12th, 2007

Books:

Comics:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 1: The Long Way Home
by Joss Whedon, Georges Jeanty, Andy Owens, Jo Chen

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Strangers In Paradise Pocket Book 5 (Strangers in Paradise (Graphic Novels))
by Terry Moore

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Strangers In Paradise Pocket Book 6 (Strangers in Paradise (Graphic Novels))
by Terry Moore

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Video Games:

Game Over Press Start To Continue
by David Sheff, Andy Eddy

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The Making of Doom(r) III: The Official Guide
by Steven L. Kent

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Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
by David Kushner

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The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon–The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World
by Steven L. Kent

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