As it turns out, Sega’s long defunct Dreamcast console is still thinking. The company behind the machine cut support long ago due in part to the commercial pressures applied by Sony’s PlayStation 2 console, but that never stopped the most dedicated of Dreamcast fans from seeking out its true potential. Thanks to [Stefanos] and his team, the genre defining Grand Theft Auto III (GTA 3), can now run on Sega’s hardware. Their combined efforts have yielded a fully playable port of the PC version of the game for the Dreamcast.

The porting effort was years in the making. It began with reverse engineering the entire source code of GTA 3 then implementing it into the homebrew SDK for the Dreamcast, KallistiOS. All the in-game graphic and sound assets are only pulled from a user provided PC copy of the game. Steps for those seeking to compile a bootable Dreamcast image of their own have been provided on the project’s website. Real hardware enthusiasts will be pleased as the port runs fine on the twenty-five year old Dreamcast as evidenced in the video below.

This port of GTA 3 represents what could have been a true butterfly effect moment in console gaming history. The game was a major hit in the early days of the PlayStation 2, and it has been theorized that it could have proven to be a major commercial success for Sega as well had it been pressed onto a Dreamcast GD-ROM disc. Recently one of the original developers of GTA 3, Obbe Vermejj, divulged that the game actually began development on the Dreamcast. The project was obviously transferred onto PlayStation 2 for commercial reasons, but with this port from [Stefanos] and crew we no longer have to dream of what could have been.

To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of their Trinitron line of televisions, Sony launched the KX-45ED1. At forty three inches the screen on this particular model made it the largest tube television in the world, and it came with the kind of price tag that if you need to ask…you can’t afford it (likely around $100,000 USD today). Three decades later, only two of these mythical displays were thought to exist and [shank] chronicled his quest to acquire one of the last remaining “Big Boys” in the mini documentary below.

As it turns out, one of these gigantic tube televisions was located on the second floor of a restaurant in Japan still sitting in the same place it was installed in 1989. It hadn’t moved in the intervening decades, because the television and its specialized support stand weighed over 500 pounds. Having an object that heavy physically moved down a flight of stairs would seem to be the most formidable challenge for most, but compounding the issue for [shank] was that the building housing this colossal CRT was set to be permanently closed in less than a week.

With next to no time to arrange an international flight, [shank] utilized the power of internet to ask for help from anyone currently living near the “Big Boy” CRT’s soon-to-be final resting place. It just so happened that a fellow retro tech enthusiast based in Japan saw the post, and traveled over an hour by train at a moment’s notice to aid [shank]. The heartwarming story of total strangers united by a common interest of preserving a rare piece of tech history is certainly worth a watch. Let alone the goofy size comparison footage of the smallest CRT display sitting on top of the biggest one.

For more on tube TVs and the like, check out this article by Dave on retro gaming on CRT displays.

Pumpkin spice, also known as allspice with better marketing, has found its way into a seemingly endless amount of products over the years. It goes beyond the obvious foodstuffs of pies and cakes; because there are plenty of candles, deodorants, and air fresheners ready to add a little more spice to your world. One such autumnal smell enthusiast, YouTube user [J-Knows], sought to automate the delivery mechanism with his 3D printed pumpkin spice aerosol sprayer.

The sprayer device uses an Arduino to rotate a small 3D printed arm that depresses the button on an air freshener cap. This design came as a result of multiple attempts to create a clip that would securely attach to a standard canister. When problems arose with the clip slipping out of place after the motor rotated, a pinch of sticky tack ended up being just the solution. With the proper amount of adhesion, the automated sprayer could now “pollute” any space it is in, as [J-Knows] described.

What took this project to another level is the addition of an Adafruit GPS module. It was coded to respond when it was within one mile of a Starbucks — arguably the organization responsible for the pumpkin spice craze. For some the company’s pumpkin spice latte (PSL) is synonymous with all things fall, and marks the beginning of the season when it is brought back to the coffee menu. Though not being a regular coffee drinker himself, [J-Knows] fully committed to the bit by taking his creation on a test trip to his local Starbucks for a PSL. Judging by the amount of pumpkin spice aerosol solution that ended up on his car dash, he is going to be smelling it into the next year.

They simply don’t make them like they used to, and in the case of this retro LX system build, they only make what never existed in the first place. Earlier this year the long awaited video game UFO 50 released to widespread critical acclaim. The conceit of the game is an interactive anthology of a faux 1980’s game console constructed by a large group of actual indie game developers. Leave it to [Luke], who admitted to UFO 50 to taking over his life, to bring the LX system from the digital screen to the real world.

Each piece of the LX System case was printed on a multi-color filament capable Bambu Labs P1S. Dual XLR jacks wired up as USB serve as controller ports, and the controller itself is a repurposed NES style USB controller fitted with a new housing printed with the same filament as the case. Both the prominent front mounted power and “sys” buttons are functional; the latter actually switches to a new game within UFO 50. The brains of this project is a mini Windows PC hooked up to a 9 inch 720p LCD screen which is plenty enough resolution for pixelated look of the games. As impressive as replicating the whole case look is, it’s really brought together by the addition of a 3.5 inch floppy drive. It could be an interesting way to backup save files, provided they fit within 1.44 MB.

In addition to sharing the completed LX System, [Luke] has also made the print files available online along with a list of project materials used. It would be neat to see an alternate color scheme or remix for this working prototype of a console that never actually existed. In the meantime, there are plenty more games to play and discover in UFO 50…there’s 50 of them after all.

via Time Extension

Thirty years is a long time to keep a piece of software alive, but there aren’t many pieces of software like NHL ’94 for the Sega Genesis. Despite new annual iterations of publisher Electronic Arts’ NHL hockey video game some players never connected with it like quite like they did in 1994. For years now it’s been a tradition for members of the NHL ’94 forums to incorporate the hockey league’s current players into the Sega Genesis original, however, the work [Adam] contributed this season goes beyond a mere roster update. This NHL ’24 ROM hack is more like a complete overhaul. Everything that was old is new again.

Home ice was completely revamped for every team in the game. New franchises that never existed in 1994, like the Las Vegas Golden Knights, appear with current logo designs and player portraits. Every team’s roster has been meticulously input into [Adam]’s revised player skill rating system in an effort to make the game as realistic as possible. Six button controller support has been added in as to allow quick switching to the goalie. The game’s entire color palette has been revised to appear more realistic, and even the Zamboni driver’s sprite got a facelift.

In order to play this ROM hack the user needs a PAL or NTSC version of NHL ’94 on Sega Genesis/Megadrive along with the .bps patch created by [Adam]. There are many ways in order to create a digital copy (dump) of the physical cartridge, including utilizing a retro game playing device called the Retron 5. Custom firmware for the Retron 5 device can be flashed via the SD card slot that allows the user to save a backup of the cartridge. The fact that the Retron 5 supports game cartridges from seven different consoles/handhelds can make it a more cost effective ROM dumping device than other dedicated pieces of hardware. With a clean dumped image of NHL ’94 users can apply the patch via an online tool like Rom Patcher JS. The patched ROM file can then be played on the user’s emulator of choice or real hardware.

Few games have enjoyed the sort of status that NHL ’94 has among hockey fans. Electronic Arts recognized this when they released their own official ROM hack of sorts in NHL ’94 Rewind on PS4 and Xbox One in 2020. Just this year, NHL ’94 was the subject of a documentary featuring new interview footage of the game’s original programmer Mark Lesser. Without spoiling the storyline it’s best summed up by Mark when he said, “There was a sort of magic going on in Maine at that time.”

There was a time early in the development of the Super Nintendo (SNES) where the new console was to feature backwards compatibility with NES games. The solution would have required a cumbersome cartridge adapter and a hard switch on every console to flip the CPU into 8-bit mode. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be — outside of the first public demo of the console, little evidence exists to suggest the gamers would have been able to supercharge their old NES carts on their Super Nintendo.

But thanks to the impressive port of Metroid to the SNES by [infidelity], we can imagine what such a capability might have been like. There’s more on offer here than reduced sprite flicker. There are additional frames of animation compared to the original, so now Samus’ arm cannon stays consistent rather than magically switching arms when turning around. A complete save game system from the Famicom Disk System version has also been implemented as well, with the traditional three slots. Although purists can still utilize the password system if they so choose.

Ultimately the most impressive inclusion of [infidelity]’s work is the MSU-1 enhancement chip implementation. Fun video intro sequences lead into the main menu where players can select the accompanying soundtrack. There’s the original 8-bit music remapped onto the SNES sound chip, the expanded 8-bit version from the Famicom Disk System, the reimagined sound of Metroid Zero Mission, or a full orchestral score. It really is the sort of situation where there are no wrong answers.

While you’re here, check out this post about bringing Poke’mon ROM hacks into physical cartridge form.

It’s weird to think that an abacus would have still been used sixty years ago, or so posits the documentary series The Computer and the Mind of Man. This six part series originally aired on San Francisco local television station KQED in 1962, a time where few people outside of academia had even stood next to such a device.

Episode 3 titled “The Universal Machine” was dedicated to teaching the public how a computer can enhance every type of business provided humans can sufficiently describe it in coded logic. Though mainly filtered through IBM’s perspective as the company was responsible for funding the set of films; learning how experts of the time contextualized the computer’s potential was illuminating.

The real meat of the episode was the interview with Dr. Charles Decarlo, who was the director of education at IBM at the time. He explained how a major obstacle to the progression of the medium was the development of programming languages like Fortran and Algol. How these programming languages are structured was a key point of emphasis as to distinguish them from spoken languages, because the order in which the words appear matters more to a machine than the context of those words. As much as we might like for our computers (and other humans) to understand sarcasm…it only complicates communication on the other end.

Everything in the documentary sounds appropriately science-fictiony. Lots of boops and bleeps paired with discordant strings are punctuated by that prototypical narrator voice over where everything is pointedly enunciated. Thanks goes to [William] for uploading the series to YouTube and for reminding us how great the acronym GIGO is. In other words, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

“The computer, the universal machine; in that it is capable of doing whatever we are capable of instructing it to do.”

– Narrator, The Computer and The Mind of Man (1962)

Also just in case you missed it, there’s another great Retrotechtacular post on crash testing trucks with a soundtrack that is everything you would hope it would be.