Java Troubleshooting

Hello everyone.

Recently Oracle made an update to their utility known as Java. Since then I haven't been able to start up any online Java applications, even to the point where the Java Icon doesn't appear on my Dock and a Java console window won't appear on the top-left of my screen. It may be related to my home folder not being in the same hard drive as my system's Library (Java Preferences do not allow me to change the location of the main Java data files).
I also should note I have Adblock on. Because screw you I don't want any spyware and tracking cookies on my Mac.

If you want to help, I need some checking with what I have checked under "Advanced":

Tetris Printer Algorithm

First off, Happy new year to all my readers!

I know this thing has already existed for seven months on the internet and was spread around to death, but I do want to make my say on this little project from Michael Birken:

This is a tool designed with the mind of making pixel art out of Tetris blocks, explained in full detail at this link. As a quick Tl;DR version, basically by placing and eliminating just the correct blocks and rows on an enlarged Tetris board (20 blocks wide), you can form pixel art of up to 8 colors. After seeing this I contacted Michael about the possibility of making an online tool for taking low-res pixel art and turning it into a GIF image that simulates the experience of the video above, and he considered it as a "Part II" of the algorithm.

As for the artist's edge of things, I'm still not really in full swing yet. Damn you Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch and your large online community!

SMB1 Snow

I guess you can say this is somewhat fitting, considering Christmas coming within the next two days from when I'm typing this.

Here is a faithful reconstruction of the "Super Mario Bros. Snow Editon" featured as a challenge in NES Remix. I'm hoping this gets dumped and distributed online like what eventually happened with Donkey Kong Classic and Mario Bros. Classic. 

Anyways happy holidays.

Wai Wai World: Minus a Kong and a Goonie

I know this blog doesn't get as many readers as others, but it's still fun writing up posts regarding some of the more insane stuff I come across.

If you couldn't tell by the title, this is in regards to Konami's Japan-only crossover platformer Wai Wai World, perhaps one of the earliest examples of a video game crossover, alongside the Famicom Jump games. Wai Wai World has since gotten quite an overseas following in the more recent years thanks to the whole console emulation boom, and even featuring two non-Konami guest stars, which (obviously pulled from Wikipedia) got included as Konami-developed games based around the two guest characters spawned years prior. These two characters were Mikey from The Goonies and King Kong from the film series of the same name, preferably the sequel "King Kong Lives" which was dubbed as King Kong 2 in Japan. Konami made two licensed games each for the two characters, with Mikey getting The Goonies and the video game-only sequel The Goonies II (the later being the only of these games to be released outside Japan) and Kong being granted both Yomigaeru Densetsu (exclusive to the MSX2) and the slightly more known Ikari no Megaton Punch. Seeing as Konami still held the rights to these two series, they decided to include the two in Wai Wai World, giving both Mikey and Kong their own respective stages and abilities. The "sequel", Wai Wai World 2 - SOS!! Paseri Jou (and I put that in quotes since it doesn't really play like the first game) didn't feature any guest stars, and stuck solely to Konami-based franchises. Very likely this was since Konami lost the rights to both The Goonies and Kong Kong between both the Wai's (or however you wish to call them).

Fast forward to 2006, when Konami began it's slew of porting their classic titles to mobile phones, with Wai Wai World included in the lineup. This version was altered in slight parts to remove any and all mention of The Goonies and King Kong, instead featuring Upa from Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa and Penta from Antarctic Adventure respectively. Since then I've been trying to look for good-quality screens or videos or even a playable/downloadable version of the Mobile version outside of the actual mobile version and not counting the screens on the official site, but sadly no such things exist. I'd be surprised (and excited) if someone ported it to the NES via excessive ASM and sprite hacking.

If anyone out there either has the Mobile port and can take decent screens or knows where I can easily get it without a classic mobile phone (not iOS or Android) I'd appreciate it.

To all giant monsters and etc that eat people

This picture pretty much explains it.

The ultimate revenge to a carnivorous dragon/giant/kaiju that swallows you whole without chewing.

And no, mutating into a monster from inside the carnivore's stomach is not something I'd consider "giving out a message" to the monster's allies. Humans in the Attack on Titan canon are so small, I really want to see someone dig their way inside a Titan's body (a place where even a Titan itself couldn't reach) then climb around and slowly rip apart organ after organ as the Titan does its daily routine, slowly killing it.

iOS Game "Orborun" Available Now

Hello everyone.

A while back I mentioned a game known as Orborun, a Super Monkey Ball-esque ball-rolling game that had an online demo available for some time. Since then, the full game was just recently made available, which contains many new improvements and environments.

Now where do I fit in all this? One of the characters in Aozora's Adventure, Ball-Kun, was used as the basis for an unlockable skin for the "Lightning Orbot" character, as shown below:

Chinese Arkanoid- a Hack Preview

Greetings everyone. As you can see from the above screenshots I have decided to create a ROM hack of the NES port of Taito's arcade smash hit Arkanoid. This hack was constructed based on a Chinese translation (of the Japanese version) you can find online, and unlike Dragon Eye Studios' Dimension of DOH, this hack intends to feel more like an official game with proper difficulty, decent power-up capsule placement (so it feels randomized like mostly every other Arkanoid clone), and 32 levels created based on a Chinese theme. It was constructed thanks to the "Arkalavista" utility by Trax, whom I'm assisting with to further advance the emulator so it becomes more user-friendly and not as complex to use (especially compared to the original 1.0 release of the utility) by someone who's not familiar with hexes or ROM hacking in general.

I'll release this onto Romhacking.net once it's ready.

Salaryman Champ: Emulation Talk

I wouldn't think I'd ever touch this game again after my failures to try and get it to run the first time. But after finally downloading all the necessary files for ePSXe and running Arkanoid R 2000, I got the motivation to finally try Salaryman Champ in MAME (since the game in question had a PSX port).

Let's just say it's not as satisfying as I had hoped. No it's not a bad game by any means, but if you want more explanation on the "not as satisfying" part, please read on.

Before I jump in, let me explain a bit of the game's backstory. Not the other "Bishi Bashi" games that predated Salaryman Champ but just this game in general. Each player takes control of one of three salarymen: Burning Red, Intelligent Green, and Cool Blue (their names according to the PSX intro) and competes in 27 individual activities that all utilize three buttons. Unlike other "party" games such as Daisu Kiss, all the mini games progress through a set order rather than being randomized, and some play almost identically to each other, leaving the game a bit short on variety. Players are given ranks based on the number of victories and defeats he/she gets in each mini game, with victories moving upwards and defeats moving down (any player that doesn't finish in either 1st or 2nd loses a life, and must insert another credit to continue through). There are two Top 10 leaderboards featuring those that finished the game, one for Best 10 and one for Worst 10.

In the world of home emulation... ho boy. Unless you want to spend hundreds of dollars to get a Japanese PSX and Salaryman Champ itself, get this: In MAME, the game only supports two players compared to the three that are normally featured, with Intelligent Green always being controlled by the computer, leaving human players only to Burning Red and Cool Blue. To my understanding, there are certain Bishi Bashi cabinets (in Japan) that run with only two sets of buttons instead of three (and considering how almost all Japanese arcade games are not given dedicated cabinets; they're all conversions into blank cabinets). The PSX port, to my knowledge, also only does two players (with Cool Blue now the always-CPU character) unless you have a multitap, from there you can link every controller to the console to present all the characters with someone to control them.

To get Salaryman Champ running in MAME, you have to get both the ROM, (I believe) a BIOS, and two CHD's. Then you put them into the ROMS folder just like you would a basic standalone game, run it, press the indicated buttons/keys when prompted. It will take some time to configure the controls. Configuring Burning Red's controls is easy, but Cool Blue's three buttons are mapped else ware to whatever is Player 1's Down, Left, and Right buttons in other MAME games. From there you shouldn't have to wait much for the game to load up after booting the ROM. Just insert your credits when the game enters attract mode, and there. You'll be playing Salaryman Champ against some of the most brutal A.I ever known in any party game.

I'm as of yet uncertain if the PSX port of Salaryman Champ has been dumped publicly; every download points to the Arcade version. Similarly, I'm trying to figure out how to set 3P Bishi Bashi cabinets in MAME so I can control all three characters with no computer players.

With that said, there's nothing really much left to comment on. As a little bonus, here's some stills of the playable trio. Use them for any purpose you desire.

FTR, yes I'm quite aware of the recently-launched Mighty No. 9.

SMBC; with a touch of Special.

Yesterday the most recent version of Super Mario Bros Crossover, version 3.0, was released to the masses; the biggest update to the game thus far, adding in the entirety of Super Mario Bros. Special as well as Easy and Hard variations of it and vanilla SMB, quadrupling the number of maps in the game. Considering how much of a sucker I am for Special, I decided to list off some notes regarding the design choices.

*As expected, the game is built to run with SMB1/2J physics, not the choppy and crappy ones from the home computers.
*The Sharp X1 version's skin is the only available version of the two; the PC88 skin is completely absent even if just about all the needed resources for it exist on the Exploding Rabbit forums and the Spriters Resource. Restricted colors or not, I consider the PC88 version the most well-known incarnation of Super Mario Bros. Special.
*The levels are not 100% authentic recreations of the original's, however unlike the NES romhack, the level recreations are much closer and capture all the original charm, since SMBC does not run on the limits of how tiles in SMB1/2J could be placed. And the differences in the level design present are very minimal compared to those of the NES romhack, such as reversing the direction of an underground elevator platform, adding an extra 1UP into a castle level, and making a previously-invisible block now visible.
*Levels now take advantage of the extra map hight in SMB1/2J, 13 tiles high as opposed to 12.
*The unintentional traps of 4-2 and 4-3's major secrets have been ridden of. 4-2's supposed "Warp Zone" which was non-functional in the original, now leads to a secret room that wasn't in the original (or the Mari0 recreation from last year) with many coins spelling out "Exploding Rabbit" and a secret item that completely stocks up your character of all his/her weapons/upgrades, resembling the ER logo. As for 4-3's bonus room, it now exits to the proper pipe under the staircase of mushrooms.

You can play the game directly from this link. Or on its Exploding Rabbit page.

I crafted a skin

Further proof I have no life.

A bit on the worse tips.

Hello everyone. I want to make this a quick post and say this.

Ever since about several months or so ago, I've been trying to keep these few controversial acts that I've sparked either intentionally or accidentally behind me and just try to look for smarter people I can get used to more easily. I don't care about very minor things like say, how many achievements you've won total across every game, or whenever or not you follow me on deviantART and the like.

Most people have asked me "hey, why don't you learn game-programing yourself? You're almost 20 and I know 13-year olds that can code!" Well, for the first part, not everyone is able to learn programing at such a young age compared to others. Second, due to my often lazy nature, the only way I could see myself actually programing in something would be to get a local tutor that knows c+ and allow him/her to physically train me.

Second, please don't abuse the block feature of a particular site (deviantART and Twitter come to mind) for absolutely dumb reasons like "Oh I'm spreading lies of you and have no way of backing up my claims of you" or "Hey I will never give up something that happened two years ago even if you've done the same". And don't even get me started on sending your biggest followers to white-knight when you go batshit on me doing the same.

Give a fair fight if you want one ; don't wuss out and block just so you can think you won without stating anything legitimate off the top of your head. Furthermore, just let it go, and I won't keep bringing up the thing(s) I may have against you. Don't get all two-faced over what I may draw or do either. Treat me like you'd treat everyone else regardless of what talent he/she happens to excel in. Because I've been starting to notice a lot of hypocrisy around these areas...

ATTACK ON KOOPA

TITAN SPOTTED IN MUSHROOM KINGDOM, REQUESTING IMMEDIATE BACKUP, PLUMBERS ARE GOING IN!

Asains ranting is funny

So why am I getting the feeling of making this Masayoshi's japanese seiyu?

Oh dear god

It's like Atsushi Ōkubo and Bryan Lee O'Malley collaborated.

Titles:
C-C-B 超サイバーボーイ
東京P.R.O

Character Source: Hiroki

For a bit of trivia, this was the original video where the concept for Keanu originated.