#multitap

[mirislamh]

MULTITAP - Battaniyem

[smbhax]

Xenophobe in Midway Arcade Treasures 2 (PS2)

You have to have a multitap and get three players in the game to be able to see all nine playable characters in Xenophobe! I threw my multitap out years ago 'cause I never had anyone to play with : P but fortunately you can just check a box to simulate a multitap using the PCSX2 emulator, so I could finally check out all 9 characters. : )

Session: https://youtu.be/nSghnvvWmiY

[otuhafkafa]

bu zamana ait değil asi ruhlarımız

[aardwolfpack]

Multitap?  Now there’s a blast from the past!

Super Bomberman was one of those games you bought a Multitap for and then another because somebody was going to get mad.

[addyarts]

for another collab, we drew our favorite Digimon!! I went with Pulsemon and Black Gatomon Uver !

the full collab can be found here: https://twitter.com/PizzaStart/status/1567908006632869890 !

[coquelicoq]

Hi sweetie i hear you are sick i am so sorry! love grammy

text from my grandmother i thought was sweet, and then i discovered her cellphone has multitap texting, and now i think it's REALLY sweet. because this is what she had to "punch in" in order to send me this message:

44 444 0 7777 9 33 33 8 444 33 0 0 444 0 44 33 2 777 0 999 666 88 0 2 777 33 0 7777 444 222 55 0 0 444 0 2 6 0 7777 666 0 7777 666 777 777 999 0 555 666 888 33 0 4 777 2 6 6 999

and like if you've ever used multitap, you know that you have to get the timing perfect so that the phone knows you're trying to do, for example, "hi" (44 [pause] 444) and not "ggggg" (pauses between each 4). and she hardly ever texts anyone so it's not like she's super proficient, so it must have taken a lot of effort! i am feeling very loved right now!!!

[wainwrightjakobshammerlock]

I love how in BL3 we help two gun manufacturers and the devs made one of them godlike (Jakobs) and the other nigh complete trash (Atlas).

[nentuaby]

OP: "If you get this, 'you are old'" Also OP: Literally includes a visual key to decipher it. (Also nobody would have texted 'you are old' in full multi-tap mode. Woulda been 'ur old' at most. Maybe the T9 kids woulda entered 96802730653.)

I need a little help here

[dinopuncher]

who wants to come to my house and play crash team racing together

[gaminghardwareingames]

Super Smash Bros.

[smbhax]

Xenophobe

There are nine characters to choose from in Xenophobe, three for each joystick. The leftmost controller (red) features Mr. M.Brace, Dr. Kwack, and Col. Poupon. The middle controller (yellow) features Mr. Fogg, Col F. Truth, and Dr. Udderbay. The right controller (blue) features Mr. Eeez, Dr. Zordirz, and Col. Schickn. Humans and aliens alike make up the playable characters—for instance, Dr. Kwack has a duck's head. Players are also color-coded; for instance, the left player's choices wear red shirts, middle player's yellow, right player's blue

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobe_(video_game)#Characters

Drat, Wikipedia's PS2 Multitap list doesn't include Midway Arcade Treasures 2 but the back of the case and this old review indicate it does have multitap support--and it looks like with my two default ports I can only stat as player 1 or player 2...and I got rid of my multitaps when I moved to the wrong side of the state years ago. ; D Oh well, I guess I'll have to stick with Dr. Kwack over Mr. Eeez. : PP

[hardcore-gaming-101]

Iwatobi Penguin: Rocky x Hopper

This article is part of our Japanese Obscurities feature. We put out a whole book about them, which is available as both a full color hardcover and a Kindle ebook from Amazon! If you’d like to see more of these features, please check out the book and if you enjoyed it, leave a five star review so we can do a follow up with even more interesting, offbeat, or historically important Japanese games!

An iwatobi penguin is what’s known in English as a Southern rockhopper penguin, known for their large bushy eyebrows and ornate head feathers. Rocky and Hopper are two computer generated penguins created for a series of hair product commercials by Japanese cosmetic company Shiseido. They’re cute and amusing, thanks to their lively expressions and ridiculous feathers, which obviously made them good mascots but apparently also qualified them for a video game. Focused primarily on multiplayer, with the support for the multitap for four players, it offers several types of minigames.

Read more...

[luigiblood]

Something is going on with Retro NSO

I figured this stuff should be part of a post because I think it's an interesting thing to talk about.

As of the last few updates, I started to notice some changes to the NES and SNES emulators specifically, particularly related to emulation of accessories.

NES Four Score

If you don't know what the NES Four Score is, it's an accessory that allows you to play the NES up to 4 players.

I had actually never really datamined the NES emulator that much but at one point I randomly decided to give it a real shot for the July 2024 update (version 6.9.0).

Then I got actually surprised to notice code for playing using the Four Score, so I eventually went versions back, and found out it was a recent addition of 6.6.0, back in September 2023.

However, it is a little weird, it doesn't seem to be really accurate (to be more exact it only implements one ID for the second controller port, if you know, you know), but it seems functional. In fact in the 6.5.0 update (June 2023), it seemed to have been actually forced on all games, for some reason.

I couldn't notice any code regarding the NES Zapper or any other accessories however, but something that kind of gets me is that I don't notice any code for the Hori 4 Players Adaptor, which is like the Four Score but for the japanese Famicom, and it has some differences on a technical level.

My suspicion is that this was worked on when they were looking into Rare Studio titles, and R.C. Pro Am 2 is definitely a game that uses it. That said, there is one game on NES NSO already that supports the Four Score, but you cannot use it: It's Downtown Nekketsu March Super-Awesome Field Day!, which is kind of a sports games with various sports. (For some reason Nintendo is not using the newly localized ROM and that's a shame.)

SNES Super MultiTap

This is not new, this was part of the SNES emulator's code the entire time since launch, but considering we just talked about the Four Score for NES, I figured it it would also be a good time to talk a little bit about it, and bring you up to speed.

On SNES, there is the Super MultiTap that can let you play up to 5 players on the same system (it plugs into the second controller port, where you can plug 4 controllers on that, plus the first controller on the first controller port on the system).

There are actually 6 games that can use the Super MultiTap on SNES NSO as of right now, but you cannot play more than 2 players currently, BUT I confirm that it actually does emulate the accessory regardless, just that the application does not let you go past 2 players, but the games do recognize that the device is plugged.

Those games are Super Puyo Puyo 2 (actually available since SNES NSO launch!), Natsume Championship Wrestling, Amazing Hebereke, Kunio-kun no Dodgeball da yo Zen'in Shūgō!, Smash Tennis, and The Peace Keepers.

I figured it would be worth mentioning, because I don't think the addition of Four Score to the NES emulator is just an experiment, it might be possible that SNES NSO might get a major update too regarding the ability to play up to 4 or 5 players for a limited amount of games in the future... especially because of...

SNES Mouse

Like the Super Multitap, the SNES NSO emulator actually contained code to emulate the SNES Mouse the entire time since launch. However, there has been a new development as of today.

I already talked about this in one of my posts, but I'll just do a roundup of what we datamined in the past: Initially, the SNES emulator checked for specific game identification to enable the SNES Mouse emulation, and looked for 3 specific games.

We don't know what those games are, but considering the limited amount of games, I believe it is reasonable to assume they were limited to games on SNES that only worked with the SNES Mouse and nothing else, in which case, we can assume the following games:

Mario Paint

Mario & Wario

The problem however... those are the only SNES games that released that requires the SNES Mouse to play. You'd wonder what could be the 3rd game that could be best played with a Mouse, but I have a list of what could be it:

Mario Paint (PAL version)

Sound Fantasy

For a few reasons however, I don't believe the PAL version of Mario Paint would be likely, and it leaves the unreleased Nintendo game Sound Fantasy as the other option, we know it was actually completed, and it required the SNES Mouse to play. I won't delve too much on that game, but think of it as a mix of Mario Paint and Electroplankton on DS together, but back in 1994.

In later updates, they removed code that refers to the game identification and relied on game metadata instead. That was done fairly quickly in its life even.

That would have been the end of it if it wasn't for today's SNES NSO update (3.10.0), where a major rework of SNES Mouse emulation was done:

They added the ability to emulate the SNES Mouse on both controller ports, it used to be only on the first controller port.

Internally they can now do input replays of SNES Mouse devices.

There's code for configuring the behavior of the SNES Mouse between either Original, or something else.

This is actually rather interesting, this was added in the emulator between February and August 2024, so this is a legit recent development.

The mention of the SNES Mouse behavior configuration is also interesting, because it means they're looking into ways to support the SNES Mouse in different, possibly more accessible ways than using a USB Mouse.

The fact that they can also emulate the SNES Mouse on both controller ports is also potential evidence that they're looking further into other games than just SNES Mouse only titles, as some games did use the mouse on the second port instead, while leaving the first SNES controller plugged.

To this day, I haven't seen any code for the Super Scope just yet, or the Satellaview for that matter, unfortunately.

Conclusion

Just as a bit of a tl;dr for people who don't like reading:

They secretly added support last year for the NES Four Score to allow 4 player multiplayer, but isn't used yet.

They secretly had SNES Super Multitap support since day one to allow 5 player multiplayer, but isn't used yet.

They secretly had SNES Mouse support since day one, but today (18 September 2024) they released an update that reworked it significantly.

The developers seems to be busy adding or reworking accessories as of the last year. I gotta be honest, I find this a little suspect. We might be going onto something major soon that reworks the NES and SNES applications for multiplayer and more.

I hope so much that would be sooner rather than later.

...also, please, add localized ROMs to NES and SNES NSO. There's no reason not to have them.

[addyarts]

i can't believe i forgot to post the best boi, Sidon!

another piece as part of a collab <3

[lesbiankendall]

my most 'old person' take is that i hate typing on touchscreen keyboards bring back the old multitap keyboards pleaseeeee