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Mark Vergeer's blog
Capcom Shmups - Taking a look at the 194x series
Sat, 08/21/2010 - 11:52am — Mark Vergeer
Taking a look at a wonderful series of shmups created by Capcom in the 80's and early 90's. The games were released out of sequence with the 1942 game appearing first and then 1943. The 1941, 1944 and 19xx games came afterwards. Just a simple set of video-reviews that I thought would be interesting to our readers (viewers?) over here at Armchair Arcade. Let me know what you think. The videos can be found within this article. Enjoy!
Tutorial: How to create MSX-disks on a PC to run MSX cartridge files from disk on a real MSX machine
Sun, 08/15/2010 - 3:33am — Mark Vergeer
The MSX is a home computer system much like the AppleII, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC and Commodore 64. Home computers were first developed in the 70's to be able to compete with the hugely expensive PCs that were available at the time. Home computer systems were relatively cheap and could easily outperform the PCs in terms of graphics, sound and versatility. Read more below on how to actually use games, disks and files on these (old) wonderful computer systems.
Metropolis Streetracer Review (DC) - August 2010
Tue, 08/10/2010 - 2:08pm — Mark VergeerMSR - METROPOLIS STREET RACER (Dreamcast) - Please watch the HD version!
Xbox Indie games still not available in quite a few European Countries
Fri, 07/30/2010 - 10:03am — Mark Vergeer
Xbox Indie games are still not available in the Netherlands. It is unclear when they will be available in the Netherlands. Dutch Microsoft spokesman, Thijs van Doorn, says "...it is a matter of resources...". Probably they just don't think it is economically viable to pay for license fees in the small country of the Netherlands.
The same happened with the Video store not being available in the Netherlands. Of course there are a lot of games on the service not worth the download, but there are some gems that the Dutch are missing out on dearly.
Blacklily8 Caricature made by JacesFaces
Fri, 04/30/2010 - 12:58pm — Mark Vergeer Our own Matt Barton has gotten an amazing caricature created by a wonderful artist who goes by the youtube handle Jacesfaces. Check out this video:
Got a Videopac/Odyssey 2 multicart (233-in-1)
Wed, 03/31/2010 - 6:29am — Mark Vergeer
Unboxing a package I received today, a Videopac / Odyssey 2 233-in-1 multicart. It contains just about all the games released on the platform including some extras like homebrew and the special + series that I am able to use on my Odyssey 3 command module otherwise known as the Videopac G7400+ console.
This cart works in both PAL and NTSC consoles, G7000 and other variants of the Videopac/Odyssey 2 platform. Excellent value.
The manual is needed to set the dip switches to get get access to a specific game. There is no room for a fancy menu nor is there any need for it. Excellent stuff.
I'll do a follow up on this with gameplay video and a proper review.
Checked out the Atari 7800 and its library...
Wed, 03/31/2010 - 4:26am — Mark Vergeer
So what type of games are available for the 7800? Mostly arcade ports, and very good ones at that. The system is backwards compatible with the 2600 and is in fact in my opinion 'the atari console system' to own.
The system could output 320x200x256 with 25 colors and 100 sprites and that shows. The sound is lacking in quality though as it uses the same limited sound chip as the 2600.
It's a much overlooked system as the 7800 has great games available for it. Excellent ports of arcade games, mostly action arcade style games. It was designed to be upgradable to a full computer - probably something to up-ease worrying parents - but this never became a reality contrary to the likes of some other 8 bit consoles out there offering the same 'expandability'.
System and software library get a whopping 87% from me.
Valve offers Steam natively on OSX...
Tue, 03/09/2010 - 10:44am — Mark Vergeer
From April onwards Mac-users will be able to use Valve's Steam platform natively on OS X. Using Steam on OS X was possible before by using Wine but compatibility was varying. Wine is a set of open source Windows Libraries ported over to Linux/OS X allowing Windows applications and games to run natively within the Linux/OS X environment. Together with the appearance of a Native OS X Steam variant the recently announced Portal-2 will appear on Steam simultaneously in both PC- and OS X flavors.
