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

I went on a little walking trip to a relatively new HardOff in Zama. Pretty bleh there, though they did have a *really* grimy but unique General/Paxon MSX1 built into a TV. RF inputs only, but the article I have here says the internal MSX connection was RGB, so it should have been a sharp display.

The pre-Transformer Soundwave, known as "Cassetteman" in the Microchange series, has been selling for almost-mad amounts on Yahoo Japan. So, to assuage those pangs, I stitched together some photos and printed up a smaller-scale Cassetteman box, just for fun.

You know how you know something is yours? You customize its appearance, its colors, tweak it until it's perfect and fits how you like to work & use it; and then you don't change a thing about it for years and are happy. The current world is full of UIs telling us "No, this is ours, not yours. Ours."

Yeahhh! I was playing through some FDS games randomly for an hour and popped in Gyruss FDS. I got a good stock of about 7 extra ships without dying once, then those damn random tentacle etc bosses came in. But I held out to the end and finished the game with 1 ship in reserve. 👍

1) Begin video on a well-researched topic guaranteed to appeal to subscriber base 2) subtly change tone and start to tell a story that reveals a time of personal weakness or inadequacy 3) launch into promotion of today's video sponsor and how they can magically solve your failings too.

Laid up at home with a cold so I thought I'd play around once again with communicating with PC-Engines and Famicoms through RS-232/UART and doing fun stuff.

I bought Puzzle Boy for the GB recently, so here is a box scan, plus some of the art minus the hero, Poterin (ポテりん) in this Japanese version of Kwirk. The other characters are Nasubi-Kun (ナスビくん), Carota (キャロ太), P-Man (Ｐマン), and Tomato-Chan (トマトちゃん).

Also here's a chart illustrating the curious situation I've found myself in:

I managed to find cheaply a 110 film camera in a beat-up box that came with actual Kodak 110 film in its own beat-up box. Let's slot this thing in and see what shots we can get! ... (says here I'd better develop my prints before May 1988.)

A little drawing from the instruction manual of Puzzle Boy (US: Kwirk) on the GB.

I didn't buy much for myself at today's HardOff, but I loved the pastel '80s colours of this blank 10-min cassette, themed for making your own Karaoke tapes

I took a trip to a new HardOff (Aikoishida) today and they had a nice antique & toy section. Obviously it was seeded with the stock from a shuttered old toy store because they had tons of '80s/'90s licensed kids' show goods. Game-adjacent ones were Wataru, GranZort, Solbrain, B-Daman, and Haadogumi.

Remember way back ('90s) when idiots would add up the bits of all the CPUs on machines, and we end up with the Neo-Geo being "24 bits"? We actually should bring that back: it would add a lot more honesty to projects where a Raspberry Pi does the heavy lifting and yet the headline is "DOOM on NES!!"

Do you remember Nintendo Power's 'Purple Period'? 👀😶 It's a time from late '90~Apr '91 when many screenshots had a purple tint to them. I don't think this was a printing error: more like their RGB NES for capture had a miscalibrated Green control. Famimaga in Japan had similar problems at this time.

Alright, so I've listed the regional differences I had known about in Super R-Type on The Cutting Room Floor. ✌️😄 tcrf.net/Super_R-Type

Screenshot Saturday: been playing Super R-Type on SFC. Why oh why did the US version swap out the beautiful view of the asteroid belt and Jupiter (? Saturn?) in the JP version for the generic TNG-intro-style purple and green planets?

I'm going to put my recent little write-ups about visiting several HardOff stores on my webpage, I think, so I made an image link in preparation...

18/final. In the past when I wanted/needed something specific at HardOff and was dismayed at the prices, I became frustrated looking around. But mostly now I have fun and enjoy the walks and the showcases. The best game museums in Japan are HardOffs, and the best actual game shop is your own room.

17/ A brief stop next at Nishi-Tokorozawa. This merest vapour of a HardOff shop had a token games section, and not much else interesting. I did stock up on colourful DD & HD 3.5" floppies... The final stop was Higashi-Kurume, which was all average-sized and decent. I bought GB Dracula Densetsu here.

16/ I found a novelty 110-film camera keychain for 500 yen. Minus the Bakabon styling, it was the same that I had as a kid. On the way home, I passed by a house whose owner clearly had their best years in the 1990s: Seattle Mariners towel and 90s Hondas baking in the sun & sinking into the lawn...

15/ From here, it was a local train ride to Musashi-Fujisawa, followed by a nice long walk (with a stop in a small park for lunch). This was a 1-storey large HardOff / Off House with a nice Diaclone Vanette in the case -- too much for me at 47000 yen or so. Not much else here, but...

14/ The Higashi-Tokorozawa shop always had pretty decent selection despite the average size of the store. However, prices on used games are slightly ridiculously high now, moreso than some larger, more popular shops around here. Anyhow, for levity, some more images of a DVD player shaped like a car:

13/ Day 2 of my trip around multiple HardOffs started at Higashi-Tokorozawa, where I had once lived for 3 years. I once bought a computer desk and wheeled it the 1km back home.😅 I sold a game, looked at the cassette selection, and found the wildest DVD player shaped like a Ferrari F40. Just lovely.

12/ Well, that's the end of this rant. Granted, foreign game freaks like me help drive up the prices, but so do Japanese guys and the teams of Vietnamese dudes that scour the bins looking for some deals... + For your reference, a glimpse at HardOff's strategy: lukedupont.substack.com/p/hard-off-c...

11/ I use FDS disks as a barometer of this. Once the junk bins were full of 'em, at 50-100 yen each. The evergreen games were 200 or 350 yen. In the late teens that went up, and now those junk FDS disks with unwanted titles are 800-1100 yen as of 2025, and not in the blue bins but hanging by tags.

10/ Prices have increased on the "premium" and "collectible" items, probably due to the rise of retro collecting, perhaps COVID helped a bit, and perhaps HardOff's growing notoriety abroad helped in all this. But the company sure is taking advantage of it. Junk bins have a "repairability" tax added.

9/ Perhaps I should go on an aside /rant(?) and talk about how HardOff has changed. I first went to a store in 2004 or so, and at that time, I think junk was treated as "junk." Sift through the bins, no warranties. Here's a loose MD I got from one such bin that year. Yes, it's 10-20x that now...