I moved my hacks of the UFO Pro 8 (old floppy disk SFC copier) from hex editing to the 64tass assembler. So now I'm working on the BMP display of 240p images, and full highres interlaced (512x478) pixels in the VRAM viewer feature of the UFO. Also, no music, English and no floppy autoload...

Has anyone ever noticed this? If you return to the SPECIAL zone in Super Mario World by pausing and exiting a stage (particularly 2nd from bottom-left), the bass guitar sample is much louder than entering the zone via the star or by completing a level...

European NES Mega Man and Mega Man II original art pieces at the Capcom exhibition, Tokyo.

Street Fighter II & Turbo original artwork at the Capcom exhibition, Tokyo.

Forgotten Worlds and Sidearms original artwork at the Capcom exhibition, Tokyo.

Rockman 2 / Megaman 2 original art at the Capcom Exhibition in Tokyo. This was especially difficult to try to photograph without reflections, since it had at least 2 layers of animation cels on top of the background art board.

Rockman / Megaman original art at the Capcom Exhibition. Painted animation cels on art board (hard to capture!)

More original artwork from the Capcom exhibition in Tokyo. Ghosts 'n Goblins (魔界村) art. 2nd pic... um, Prin-Prin needed a second going-over, I think...

SFII planning document for E. Honda's stage. This has many interesting tidbits, including: the character being named "E. Suzuki" and "Japan: Sumo" on the reverse of the paper. Also, several areas labeled 「すじ流れ範囲　ビョーン」indicating line scrolling areas that get warped, "sproing! zoom!" [sic] etc .

Planning document for SFII from the Capcom exhibition in Tokyo: Ryu's stage. Nothing special here, but the artwork is quite nice.

Finally, for now, another close-up look at the texture of the acrylic on illustration board original artwork for Black Tiger/Black Dragon, at the Capcom expo/museum in Tokyo. Loving that glowing red brick work!

SFII character Chun-Li stage planning doc at Capcom exhibition: Lots of activity meant to be going on in the background in this stage. And the location seems to be "Da'an Road" (大安路 Dà'ān lù) as per the sign bottom-right... is that a real place in Beijing/Shanghai, or Hong Kong etc?

SFII @ Capcom exhibition: Character design for Zhi Li (智麗; not Chun-Li yet), where she still resembles Tong Pooh from arcade Strider

More SFII planning sheets from the Capcom exhibition in Tokyo. Dhalsim's stage has nothing unusual or incriminating -- the stage name just says "India". There are some cute sketches/stamps, though.

SFII character Guile stage planning doc at Capcom exhibition: On the reverse (and in large on the left!) was an initial name for Guile: Jinjin (じんじん), reportedly based on Jean Pierre from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure comic books. Both "Jean" and "Jojo" have too many 'J's to be a coincidence...

I went to the Capcom exhibition today; they had a number of original planning docs for SFII, Final Fight and Rockman. The SFII stages looked like they were stored 'gatefolded' since there was some writing visible in the back, eg. Bison/Balrog's stage had written "USA: Tyson"...🤯

Pic 1: Spatters. Pic 2: Ladd Spencer? Pic 3: No, it is Strider Hiryu. He will never leave Eurasia alive! Fantastic original painted works at the Capcom exhibition, Tokyo

I found the locations on the SFC Dragonfly in-development maps where some magazine screenshots were taken, so how about some Mode 7 pixel mockups?

Back on the topic of Pilotwings, even without looking into the code, we can see how the regular vehicles and the "bonus" characters likely reuse code w/ similar/identical controls, propulsion, viewpoints, etc. (Bonus stages can also be accessed by hacking the Debug mode back into the game.)

I feel ppl don't give SNES Pilotwings much thought, but it's one of my most-played games. I would love to transform the game into what it once was, the unreleased Dragonfly. We can get a taste in the heli stage (108048) using Action Replay code 7E0CAB02- you get zippy dragonfly controls and missiles

I've updated my secret page (www.chrismcovell.com/secret.html) with two dozen new images of the 1988, 1989 prototype Super Famicom and its demonstration of Dragonfly and SMB4, and more! Thank you to Gaming Alexandria for their scanning a Sept 1989 Famimaga! bsky.app/profile/gami...

This was a cute fixer-upper at a HardOff whose 2nd floor has a really good junk section (unlike the recently emasculated one in Hachioji): a National/Panasonic RX-C20 really low-profile cassette boombox, with all the features you'd want. (See hand for height comparison)

Some other fun finds at HardOff: A bog-standard old word processor but whose disks were cute and colourful. Original owner seemed handy with a calligraphy pen. Also, some mini-keychains of a Casio Reversi/calculator and Sound Burger. The most surprising: What's a Tragically Hip 🇨🇦 CD doing in Japan?

Screenshot Saturday: How about a TOMY Scramble VFD game I picked up at a HardOff? It has a wild Fresnel lens that doesn't magnify but creates that warspeed blurring effect you see. Removing the lens makes the game much clearer. It has a column of "stuck" elements but probably impossible to repair...

My being a cheapskate has finally paid off as I assembled JP21 M-M cables and an old crusty RGB switchbox found for cheap on Yahoo JP. Now I can switch through my RGB systems (and MiSTer in both 15khz and VGA modes) into my XRGB2 scan converter. Works flawlessly.🙂

Over the new year's holiday, I had a little fun investigating and hacking the BIOS of the Pro Fighter X Turbo SNES copier. Namely, remove its nag screen and change the flag graphics in the background to something custom. I succeeded after a bit of disassembly and head-scratching. 👍

I just don't get you guys...

The data in the SRAM of the second Mario Paint cartridge is a little more artistic. The cart's former owner was likely someone named Koyama/Oyama (小山)

I hope everyone is enjoying the final days of 2025. I had a good day doing 2 HardOff trips, selling some of my stuff, desoldering a chip, and then dumping the SRAM inside of used Mario Paint cartridges. The first one is a mess of custom stamps with similarly nonsensical music...

Journey to Silius ([new thread] 7/13): OK, I don't see how this unused mech-brain boss of Stage 3 fit into the Terminator concept, but it's really interesting. Tile arrangements are just my guess as to how it fit together.

Sunsoft's Journey to Silius (0/13) I posted this on other social media a long time ago, so I think it's time for a refresh: SSS: The title used in the time between The Terminator and Journey to Silius

An early title screen (left) for Phantasy Star II (MD) compared to its final release (right). Besides the similar but nude single woman, the same planets are there, but a nice portrait of Alis/Arisa(?) disappeared for the final title screen.

"Dear Sirs, I am writing in response to your inquiry dated [42 weeks ago]..."

Happy Holidays, everyone! After a few mentally-exhausting pre-Xmas days, I can finally relax a bit with some hot Glühwein in a funky drunk-snowman glass, and enjoy NES games, as is tradition. (Also, Arkista's Ring is just a variation on the GB Rolan's Curse engine, isn't it?)

The Pro Fighter Turbo SNES copier has "Gold Finger" ROM patches for 350 games built-in. Both the game names and codes are mostly stored in plaintext format in the copier's ROM. When loading a game from disk, the copier gives you the option of auto-patching the game (with all codes at once for it).

Inside the SFC Copier "Turbo X 32M." Its Sony MPF120-01 floppy drive seemed near-dead. I tried other FDDs but got thrown by the cable and drive's pin keying (all over the place on different drives). Got a Panasonic one working with correct L/R cable orientation and copier works great with it.

SFC Copier that names itself "Turbo X 32M." Some screenshots of the interface: a logo in Chinese (what does it say?) zooms in Mode 7; SFC side menu and GB dumper menu

I picked up a SFC Copier recently that names itself "Turbo X 32M." Turns out it's in the Pro Fighter X Turbo line of copiers. It takes SFC and also GameBoy cartridges through the side for GB game dumping, or rewriting to battery-backed(?) "smart cards".

How about a tip of the hat to NES-era composer Michiharu Hasuya (蓮谷通治), whose distinctive, throaty pulse-wave leads and bass lines were heard in Solomon's Key, Rygar, Golgo 13, Clash at Demonhead, Patlabor, & on the TG-16, Keith Courage? He has worked for Tecmo, Advance Communication, VIC Tokai etc.

Those who remember from the 1990s when GMO-pushing corporations argued that being forced to label any food containing GMO would impact sales, and that hey, GMO foods are everywhere anyway can see this nefarious argument being made again by AI co's.

At a HardOff I caught a glimpse of an oldschool Japanese mechanical typewriter. The Nippon Type PanWriter types in 3 colours and somehow impacts one of the over 2300 glyphs onto the paper after the user manually slides over the rows & columns and presses down to type it. (Zoom in for the details)

I took out my WB64 to play the beautiful Trip World DX on Scanline Sunday. The N64 introduces a bit of horizontal (& vertical!) blur but it's such a lovely game.

Random game Saturday: games I've been playing this week have been Roger Rabbit and Sneaky Snakes on the GameBoy. I'm still not sure if either game is actually fun. Roger Rabbit feels like an unfinished NES->GB port of Willow somehow...

The Musashi-Sakai HardOff also had some nice cassettes (Real Life, yes, with "Send Me an Angel" on it) etc. but they were a mad 2700 yen each. Also, the Yamaha MIDI boombox that runs on 3.5" floppy disks. Anyway, goes to show you should take those chances even on a rainy day. Carpe Diem and all that

One night in late October I had planned a look around Nakano Broadway and one more HardOff stop just to see what was there. The HO in Musashi-Sakai looked small & played 2nd fiddle to a wholesale supermarket. I almost skipped it, since it would be a 1.8km walk in the pouring rain at night. But...

A stop by HardOff also found me this 3.5" floppy disk case, unused and unopened for 297 yen :) Stylish and useful, but it's already full now!

Stop by HardOff after work. I thought this Sanyo PH-WCD800 boombox (missing speakers) was rather handsome, though apparently it's from 1987, when boring blackness was beginning to take over. I like its wide dual cassette doors & feature maximalism, such as an LED spectrum analyzer on the tape door!

I was switching between Famicom & PCE/TG16 games and was annoyed at how PCE screens were shifted to the left compared to Fami. So I did some measurements: the Fami's active pixels start ~7.6us after the end of HSync while the PCE's can be 7.0us (early) or 8.47us (late), but never the same as Fami :/

In 2005, I translated the fun Game Gear game Head Buster to English, and recently I found the game boxed w/ manual. So, here's the manual transcribed & translated, giving lots of details about weapon stats, movement, etc. www.chrismcovell.com/HeadBusterEn... (www.chrismcovell.com/HeadBusterEn...)

And at another HardOff there was an original F-Zero slot car racing set from TOMY from the early '90s... cool but a ridiculous price on this one