#game hardware

[smbhax]

Dreamcast (JP)

[n64retro]

photo by: Hand Held Legend

[natsumipocket]

Evan Amos The Game Console 2.0

[prokopetz]

I've always known it was unusual that well-designed NES games could run at a steady 60fps while games for much more powerful contemporary desktop PCs struggled to hit 15, and I had an inkling that it had something to do with the system's graphics engine being implemented in hardware, but reading up on the details of that implementation really brings home how fucking nuts the decisions the system's designers made to hit that performance target are. Like, what do you mean its graphics pipeline is completely unbuffered? What do you mean it does stupid tricks with hardware registers to perform just-in-time rendering of individual pixels while the CRT television is in the middle of drawing the frame? What do you mean it schedules code execution for the horizontal blanking interval between scanlines?

Basically, what I mean to say is that hobby programmers who still develop for this thing are insane, and they have my respect.

[arcadebroke]

[liminalmindcore]

Atari ST

[bleaksimmer]

Very FIRST Sims Game

Did you know that there was a sims game…BEFORE the sims 1?

The Sims Steering Committee was an initial prototype of the game, released on June 4, 1998. I've read that this prototype was given to EA to greenlight the full production of the Sims - although, I'm unsure if that's 100% true.

It's fully playable! You can get it though this LINK

I've played it before and honestly found it quite interesting how good the simple demo of a game can be? Albeit there are issues, it's fun!

There are four scenarios in this version, which were never included in the main game. They're called 'The Accident', 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun', 'The Kiss' & 'The Money Pit'.

The scenarios take the player through what your sims are capable of...in the style of a interactive tutorial!

You even get to explore the first ever Sims neighbourhood! It's called Happy Acres. I wish we got Happy Acres in the main Sims game...I might re-create it for the sims 2 sometime.

There are many videos online & on youtube about the game if you search up 'The Sims Steering Committee', so here is the link to one → CLICK HERE

The Cutting Room Floor gives you more details about the demo, if you'd like to read more!

[zman80]

Turbocharged Spectrum

[shouts-into-the-void]

I really don't think we appreciate how feral Renee is. Like, she puts on the front of a good Christian girl, and she is trying so hard, but the second anything goes slightly wrong she defaults to crime immediately.

[centralbunnyunit]

[pianokantzart]

Apparently, Nintendo's Twitter account changed their banner to Mario and Luigi gesturing at an empty space, and a lot of people theorize that it's because there's a Switch 2 announcement on the horizon...

[adafruit]

🎄💾🗓️ Day 14: Retrocomputing Advent Calendar - Atari 400/800🎄💾🗓️

The Atari 8-bit computer line was launched in 1979 with the Atari 400 and Atari 800. Both were advanced for home computers at the time. Both were driven by a 1.79 MHz MOS Technology 6502 CPU, with ANTIC and CTIA/GTIA custom chips for advanced graphics and the POKEY chip handling sound and input/output duties. The Atari 800 was the premium model, featuring a full mechanical keyboard, user-expandable to 48 KB of memory, more metal shielding, and more durability. The Atari 400 was a lower-cost alternative with a membrane keyboard, limited to 16 KB of RAM, and a simplified construction.

With hardware-accelerated scrolling, Player/Missile graphics, and rich sound, the Atari 8-bit systems were known for gaming and creative applications. They were a versatile platform with cartridge-based software, cassette, and floppy disk storage. Atari's proprietary SIO (Serial Input/Output) port allowed daisy-chaining peripherals such as printers, modems, and disk drives, making connecting them easier than with other systems.

Newer models were more compact, combined memory expansion to as much as 128KB, and compatibility with developing software and peripherals improved. Atari's 8-bit computers are remembered for having groundbreaking hardware and a very colorful game library, and they are still being used by the retrocomputing community.

While doing research for this, I saw the XE Game System, never saw it before, very 80s for sure!

The Atari XEGS (XE Game System) was launched in 1987. A repackaged 65XE with a removable keyboard, it boots to the 1981 port of Missile Command instead of BASIC if the keyboard is disconnected.

Have first computer memories? Post’em up in the comments, or post yours on socialz’ and tag them #firstcomputer #retrocomputing – See you back here tomorrow!

[n64retro]

Nintendo 64 Funtastic Series

[richter-ursidae]

hiiiii

tested an ips tft display i have since ahh... spring. not so long ago ive got an idea to embody a scene from 8:11, when ryker got splashed with blood at the screen with leon.

its a wip now but i hope i would not be eaten by exams due this week..

heres more photos of display, but now in a dark.

less interesting - while writing the code it turned out that i didnt have the library i needed, which wasn't even in the built-in ide library search. so i went to github, and there it turned out that the library was outdated and in its place there was a new one (since 2020 ig), the version of which was already downloaded. i had to download the archive and upload it to ide to make everything work. also, i need to edit the program a little and clean it from unnecessary #includes, so there is no confusion.. and i also used a breadboard

[prokopetz]

Today's aesthetic: dude with an ultrawide monitor playing an emulated copy of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past with the aspect ratio stretched out so that Link is literally twice as wide as he is tall and insisting it's better this way because it uses the whole monitor.