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.
September 8, 2019
I think I'm done working on Retail Clerk '89 so it's time to explore other Genesis demo ideas. First up is deciphering how to add 6 button controller support and detect whether a 3 or 6 button controller is connected. This article also includes a demo ROM that's handy for testing controllers on real hardware and controller configuration on emulators.
August 18, 2019
Here's the "final" version of Retail Clerk '89. At this point I'm not planning any changes unless a catastrophic error is found. This is a very anti-climatic moment for me. There's a sense of achievement in finishing this demo but I also never want to look at it again. So on to the next thing, whatever that is...
August 3, 2019
The complete story is now playable with three possible endings. It has also been fairly thoroughly debugged. I won't claim this is fun. This is pretty close to the final version. An entire playthrough should take about an hour. I expect the final release later this month or September after another round of testing, no promises though.
June 30, 2019
The story is now playable up through the "bad" ending. There are a huge number of changes in this version including saving & loading. It would not surprise me if there is a game-breaking bug somewhere in it.
June 8, 2019
Let's take a look at the second Hyper Catalog sampler CD which features demos of Bonk 3, Dynastic Hero, and Winds of Thunder.
July 1, 2019
This was the last major feature I planned to add to Retail Clerk '89. I kept putting it off because I thought it would be a lot of work. It really wasn't though.
May 27, 2019
In this demo the rough story for the first seven days is playable. There are eight days planned in total so this is getting closer to the "main story complete" milestone. It still isn't especially fun but I'm not sure that was ever the point of this project.
April 28, 2019
A recap of the 2016 show posted in 2019 for reasons. This one features pictures of real and fake prototype consoles.
April 27, 2019
In this demo the rough story for the first six days is playable. It's still far from being a complete game.
April 27, 2019
I skipped posting these recaps from 2016-2018 and regret it. To make up for lost time here's an extra large recap of the snowy 2019 event.