Retail Clerk '89 started as a personal exercise to learn Sega Genesis programming. It's now a complete, albeit short, game demo.
Reflections on Video Game Retail from 1992-1997
A look back at 16 and 32 bit wars from the perspective of a lowly retail clerk. Relive all the highs and lows of the era - from the Sega CD launch to the rise of the Sony PlayStation and everything in-between.
Aridia is a ROM editor for Phantasy Star III.
November 14, 2020
Let's take a mental break from 2020 for a couple minutes by teleporting back to late summer 1997. It was a time when the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation were doing well while the Saturn was flailing. Also, for some reason, it was the era of interactive Barney toys.
October 18, 2020
October is usually a busy month for me. With all my usual plans canceled I decided to dig deep into my video game backlog. That led me to play J.B. Harold Murder Club on the TurboGrafx-16 CD. It was OK until I somehow got into an unwinnable state. Rather than give up, I looked at the save RAM to determine which actions are required to complete the story. Along the way I might have figured out the fastest path through the game.
September 27, 2020
Let's travel back to the summer of 1999 when we were excited about new Star Wars movies instead of cynical. This little catalog from the UK is dedicated to Phantom Menace games and merchandise.
September 23, 2020
I really didn't want to make maps for Dungeon Explorer and apparently neither did anyone else. That left me with a choice - leave this classic game unmapped or power through them until I never want to think about Dungeon Explorer again. I chose the latter and only slightly regret it now.
September 20, 2020
A brief tutorial on how to prevent Skype from constantly setting itself as an autostart application.
August 29, 2020
After going through all the Hyper Catalog CDs I decided to try the Ultra Box series. About halfway through I questioned why I thought this was a good idea for a review/gallery type thing. This series is just so... well, bizarre and thirsty.
August 16, 2020
In an attempt to stave-off quarantine madness for another week, here's a guide to hacking Ys V save states. It covers HP, MP, XP, and items at least.
August 8, 2020
Many years ago I wrote a walkthrough for Tombs and Treasure on the NES. I'm aware of at least one person who read it, making it one of the most popular things on this site. Tombs and Treasure is a port of Asteka II for the Famicom. For no particular reason I decided to see what was different in these two versions.
July 5, 2020
Just a small example on how to interact with the 4 Way Play if that's something you're interested in.
June 7, 2020
In the mid-00s Google undertook a project to scan newspapers, later some papers asked for their content to be removed. I wasn't smart enough back then to capture articles about video games. So today I'm grabbing what I can from the eclectic assortment of papers still there.
May 30, 2020
This time around I'm looking at a seldom-discussed and potentially useless feature of the Genesis hardware - the VDP sprite collision flag. Let's see how it works and decide whether there's any benefit to using it.
March 28, 2020
If you're stuck indoors this weekend here's something that will help you stave off insanity for a couple minutes. It's a look at the last two Hyper Catalog CDs (well three actually). Released in 1994 they are a preview of the PC Engine's twilight era.
