Messages

[Off-Topic / Re: Documentary: The Evolution of Your Gaming Setup (aka Happy Place)]

Nice room Ozzy!  Some of those shelves on the back wall in the first picture look really wide for records - they weigh a ton! Are there brackets on there I can't see?

Yea when people think of weight on shelves, they always think stuff like the big, thick hardcover books are bad.  But for me, I collect D&D manuals, these thin hard cover books are the worse cause so many pack in, same with records.  One record weighs nothing, but you fit SOOO many in them.

He has supports for the long runs with boards placed randomly, and not all of them are the same size:


Most of them are the 2x12s he used for the shelves, but some are 2x8s, and 2 to 4 of them are OSD it looks like.

And the top of the TV stand is a closet door.  We were living at the house almost 6 months before I noticed that.

[Off-Topic / Re: Documentary: The Evolution of Your Gaming Setup (aka Happy Place)]

Ozzy, I just skimmed your pics, don't you have a MAME cab?

Half of one, it's a single player bartop.  I planned on making a second one, but no PC inside, just a monitor, controls, power, and USB, then link the two cabs using a VGA screen mirror.  So each person sees the same screen, but it's a head to head, no elbow poking setup.  Never did get around to it.

But in this setup I'm one of the few people who's arcade machine can keep their drinks cold:




And since I'm here, show the rest off for good measure:


I work from home, and it's nothing for me to have 6-8 PuTTY windows open, so I need 3 monitors.  I used 3 at my old job too, thought it was a bit much, I took this new gig, and when I went to meet my coworkers, most of them had 4-6 monitors on their desks, just not all the same thing.   

If you're wondering, yes, that's three monitors on one laptop.  They're connected to USB video cards, and those plus the usb sound card runs into a heavy duty USB hub (I've burned up many cheap ones), and that runs into a mechanical USB switcher.  I have my laptop's docking station plugged into port 1, so when I dock the laptop, it reads the speakers and monitors.  If I want to use my personal laptop on here, I just plug it into the usb and press button 2, and boom.



This isn't even close to my home lab, before we moved the front of the rack was filled, I was working on the back. Now I only work directly with Fortigate firewalls, no Cisco gear, so I've not bothered mounting the rest, or wiring it up.

[Off-Topic / Re: Documentary: The Evolution of Your Gaming Setup (aka Happy Place)]

This is a cool thread, and while I'm a bit late to the party, I came prepared.  Well actually I came some sticky white stuff, but we don't need to talk about that

So here's the setup before I owned the house:


The person before me was a record collector, the whole down stairs area was wall to wall records.  This picture was October 18th, 2013, so this is right before we moved in.



Here it is on the 3rd, 2014.  Yes, it's one hell of a mess.  For those who don't know me, I got my Duo with my own money from working as a kid, and I've been "collecting" since 14ish.  Or just buying a shit ton of old games, depending on what you call it; I was too messy to be considered a collector for a long time.  Anyways, shit happened, and my games were stored in boxes at my parents house.  At some point, someone moved said collection into the barn, and they didn't even use the same boxes.  They just dumped them into larger boxes, and put in the barn where bats could poop on it, and rats could eat them.  And the cords, I think they used them as jump ropes to tangle them all up.  Took me FOREVER to untangle.

In this picture I'm messing around some with system placement ideas a shelf area in the center of the room where he used to keep his records.  That's a crap-tastic 33" CRT with way too much over scan.

Note the perforated peg board in the middle.  It didn't last too long.



Here it is in June, 2014 with a new coat of primer, the center part ripped out, and my $5 goodwill speakers (Still using them). You can see my kick ass Extron video switch in the center, I'll show pics of what it can do later


And a bit later on in the month, I started painting it.  While it looks like I didn't finish, I painted all I needed too; I was going to make a "face" for in front of the shelves, and paint it black.  Then put hooks in it to hold the controllers for each system.  Ran into a shit ton of design issues though, think I got them all figured out now though.  Note the baby CRT, think it's a 19", it's now off to the left somewhere.  I keep it around, due in part cause of the power of my Extron switch.



Lookie what I got for $60 at goodwill.  It's a LCD projection TV, so has most of the benefits of CRT and LCD combined (But requires bulbs every so often; I get them for $20 each)



And here's me trying it out some.  This isn't actually a console, that's an emulator running in that pic. I dislike modding hardware, this way I can keep it all stock, and still get many of the picture benefits + play games I don't own.  A best of both worlds setup.



And how here it is today (Nov. 17th, 2015)


Almost nothing's hooked up, I still need a lot of wires to show up; the Extron uses BNC and I just now got the adapters, but I'm still waiting on some spools of instrument cable and RCA ends to start making all my interconnects.  And power, that won't be for ages; I'm getting my first switched power block tomorrow to test out.

Anyways, first thing's first, there's no place to sit yet.  One reason it goes slow down there. And yes, that is a C64 on the coffee table.  The Denon receiver ($8 goodwill again) runs it's speakers into a switcher, so I can run the speakers on the game stand itself, plus enable the surrounds or turn them off if I don't want to bother the wife.


I mentioned the Extron, it's a big boy video switch.  It's a 6U case if you know what that means, and it's a 16 input, 8 output matrix switcher:


If you're going to go big on a setup, you really should look into a matrix switcher.  It let's me take any input, and send it to any output.  I could play nes on the CRT for some duck hunt goodness, then switch it over to the LCD and run snes on the CRT.  Or I could run the Duo on both, just because I feel like it. The coffee table has a LCD on it, one new part I'm waiting on is a composite -> HDMI converter, meaning yes, I have 3 monitors I can run systems too, all right there.  One of the outputs of the switch runs to the Denon, meaning I can have nes on the CRT, using the CRT's speakers, and snes on the LCD, playing through the sound system, only to flip it and have nes on the sound system.  Or, I can play a CD in the DUO, and not even have it on the TV.

If you know me, or if you looked at the fucking wall of text I just wrote, you know I don't half ass stuff.  When I do something, I fucking over do it.  4 of the outputs from the switch run into a CCTV processor, for security cameras.  If you don't know about these amazing devices, they're in a sense a picture-in-picture device with all sorts of options.  With a matrix switcher, this gives you amazing abilities,



For example, I decided to send my xbox to all 4 inputs on the CCTV, then sent the CCTV back to both TVs.  The result is 8 XBOXs.  And now I decide to send Turrican (TG-16 version of course) to the CRT, and port #1 of the CCTV:


But I changed my mind, and now want him on the LCD, I just send the CCTV to the CRT, and the Duo to the LCD (And it's still also going to the CCTV):


I'm sure a bunch of you think this is dumb as fucking hell.  Well besides the ability to have more systems going, it's great for a few other tricks.  Playstation had some games that used the link cable, now I can use those on the two TVs, or send them both to the LCD.  I'm planning on getting 3 more gamecubes, and the GBA players.  4 of the gamecubes will be setup will pretend to be GBA's, but rather than play say, 4 swords on tiny GBA screens, I can now route the 4 sub-cubes to the LCD, and the main gamecube runs on the CRT for some kick-ass 5 player action.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Poll- Are you a new or old PC Engine/TurboGrafx gamer?]

When I was deep into Super Nintendo, a friend of mine from school invited me over to his house.  He was playing Exile on a TurboGrafx CD.  It was the first time I had ever heard actual voices being spoken in a video game. 

There were voice samples all over SNES games. I guess you mean longer recorded narration and dialog.

Or better quotes than Jago's "endokuken" that comes out as "Hey you puken?" or "electrocution!"

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Turbob Xpress: Bringing affordable "gamer's" games to the community!]

"These repros are why we're going to have fewer translations done going forward"

I'm not sure I follow fully. I assume it is because people are not getting compensation or credit for their hard work to translate a game and somebody making a killer profit off everybody else's work? I assume that is what you are aiming at and I get that. I see it all the time with Mother 3 translations. 

I'm not agreeing with anybody taking somebodys work that was given to the public for free, and then cashing in and not even give credit. I get that most people that did those translations are a member of this site and probably been burned on it and not want it to happen again or keep doing something that might be kept being used despite not giving there persmission to do so. But since nobody was making a profit really off these I figure it might be a different circumstance.

Just as people choose not to look into Tobias/Fudoh/PCEWorks/PCEngine20thAnniversary/animeforever/HudsonSoftofJapan, they also don't bother to do the most basic research into the origin of these translations. If PCEWorks says their team of fans did everything, then that all you need to know.

The person who organized the Drac X translation and Ys IV dub (which Tobias has already admitted to pressing) said for years that he would be done with PCE projects if anyone ever pressed discs of anything he worked on. Even if it was a community pressing sold at a loss or just given out for free.

It's all fine and well to speculate what he may or may not have done next otherwise, but at the very least a series of dubs would have been likely. Other hackers and misc dev scene people have also expressed that they are second guessing various projects because of Tobias' actions.

One particular slap in the face was Tobias' claim that he'd be lucky to afford to offer Nightwolve as much as $1 per set. But that if he accepted, then he'd officially be part of the "team" and it would likely have been advertised more specifically than the current bs description.

The damage is already done and if most of these loose discs make it into the hands of players, then hopefully far fewer will be flipped for profit. But it's definitely having the opposite effect of encouraging fan translations. It's not about what you or I theoretically think how fan translators might feel, it's what they've already expressed.

Another thing is people who make translations or hacks without the IP holders permission normally want to stay low, and not draw too much attention to themselves incase the owner of the IP decides to send a C&D or to try to make an example out of them.

Then again I'm sure nightwolve can name one exception to the list of translators who liked to stay out of the spotlight.


There's also the whole "Seeing your work ripped from your control" that sucks ass. I have some old demos on PC-Engine, and back when Cowering was still starting out, they were marked as PD, Public Domain, when I can assure you I did not release them as public domain.  I didn't press too much though since I was using stolen artwork as place holders at the time.

[Feedback / Re: Adjusting the narrow width - Possible?]

  On one hand I hate to bump an old post, but it's only moving up 4 spots, so it's not too bad.  And this looks like something that people ask a few times anyways.

  A program I've used for years is proxomitron http://www.proxomitron.info/ it's a local web proxy.  In a nutshell you point your web browser to it, and can modify any webpage by matching regex, and replacing it with code you like.  It doesn't work so well with HTTPS due to certificate issues, but for normal HTTP it works great, and out of the box it's one of the best banner ad blockers.

[Feedback / Re: Should we have a post requirement for new people posting in the sales thread?]

While I'm way below the post count, I was going to vote for it.  But then I thought, sure, it prevents a lot of the "drive-buy" people, but who does it help by keeping them out.  The person selling them here has less people to sell to, and limiting post count before you can sell means there's less things to buy.  Should just state in the rules "Sellers are free to refuse sales to anyone they wish, and are encouraged to not sell to people with under 100 posts".

Personally, I think before anyone's allowed to buy any US HuCards\TurboChips, they have to buy one CD-Rom or import.  I'll freely admit I'm not a collectard hater, but people who say "I have a complete TG-16 library" when they don't have a single CD-rom or import piss me off; you're ignoring the bulk of the good games.  Course 90% of those people can only name bonk, zonk, blazing lasers, and magical chase; maybe Ys too.  But I'm biased too and been playing imports for years thanks to DieHard Gamefan getting me addicted.

[Off-Topic / Re: NintendoTwizer, collector who sold out for $130,000 looking for PCEFX handouts!]

Ozzy: you shouldn't worry about what people who don't know your friend are saying about his history so far on this site and instead do what he should have and take your time to browse each section and read through popular threads to get a feel for the place.

Even if what NintendoTwizer has done wouldn't seem offensive in other places, a quick glance around the forum is all it takes to get a feel for how much it's frowned upon here. That's why people are upset about it and why there's no point in arguing about it.

I do that every where I go actually.  Hence a year before I posted on NA and having a whole 10 posts here.

I just think people are twisting "Oh hey a free auction" around some.  I mean, if people get bent out of shape about people joining them, why have so many?  It's like entrapment or bait. Even if it's not a nice thing he did, is it really THAT bad, when two of them were designed for noobs?  I know this isn't a forum I call home, but as a PCE fanboy for over 20 years, it seems wrong forums would jump all over members like this.  Unless they're dickheads, then fuckem.  But Twizer isn't

[Off-Topic / Re: NintendoTwizer, collector who sold out for $130,000 looking for PCEFX handouts!]

Ozzy is NintendoTwizer's collector bro from Nintendo Age. That should shed some light on his defense of this poor misunderstood member.

Actually I know him first from thecoverproject.  Not that it matters, like I said, I thought he was a nice guy, and still feel this thread is over reacting.  He's not looking for handouts, he joined a few fun raffles, at least one for low post count, and was talking about one for new people.  This is hardly the person hurting the hobby.

And for the record, as I mentioned there, I'm an original duo owner, bought mine when it came out. I was in kabuki_danjiro's turbonetwork in the early 2000s on yahoo, was making demos I never finished in HuC shortly after it came out (HOW THE FUCK DO YOU DETECT COLLISIONS?!) .  I've seen crazy French guys named after stars of Ys selling great looking games for big bucks on ebay,, and listened to people call him crazy (Yet, it was still bought).  I've seen circus lido drop to 1/4 of it's old price.  I've seen someone start selling counterfeit sapphires he had pressed for care4data, and turn the whole "CDs are always legit" ideas on it's head.   Raising prices in PCE games has been going on for years and years, it's not new.  Sure they spiked a few years ago along with everything else, but we just got out of a recession. People have money now.  I'm not some "collectard" defending his collectard bros (Gah I sound stupid even saying that shit), I'm just someone who thought a nice guy was getting a bum wrap and having his stuff twisted around (Not nearly as fun as it sounds)

[Off-Topic / Re: NintendoTwizer, collector who sold out for $130,000 looking for PCEFX handouts!]

That doesn't look like he tried to join to me if you're talking about the duo one, he was being nice and saying congrats. 

There are at least 8 raffles in his posting history where he asked to be included.  12 of his 23 posts are in raffle threads.  What conclusion should a reasonable person come to?

We're all seeing different numbers here so something's up. 

Going from here: https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?action=profile;u=5743;area=showposts;start=0
I see he has 23 posts, so that's easy to go over
#1,5,6,7  are all welcome posts to new people

#2 says "Sign me up!  Wait, dang it, I need to post more", with no edits, so he was just joking.  I sure can't count this one

#3 sets the count to 1 raffle.  Fighting street...

#4 is saying amazing raffle, congrats to all who enter.

#8-9 was a raffle for new people only, and he made a post wondering what his date was, and he didn't qualify.  So I'd say so far he's tried joining 1-2

#10 I have no idea here, I had to look into the thread to see this was him entering silent debuggers.  So 2-3 raffles joined, and I was not seeing this at first glance.

#11 was a raffle, so 3-4

#12 was a raffle... for a CD-r.  I'll count it as a real raffle, so 4-5

#13-14 gibberish

#15 Sealed final lap twin raffle, 5-6 total raffles

#16 nothing

17 - 18 8-9 raffle, so higher than I thought

All older posts, nothing. So I was wrong on the amount (Who the fuck enters a raffle with ...)

So in a nut shell, I can't fuckin count, ignore me. I only saw like 4 raffles where he actually entered.  I still like the guy though and know he's always been a nice and helpful guy on many forums.

[Off-Topic / Re: NintendoTwizer, collector who sold out for $130,000 looking for PCEFX handouts!]

That doesn't look like he tried to join to me if you're talking about the duo one, he was being nice and saying congrats.

[Off-Topic / Re: NintendoTwizer, collector who sold out for $130,000 looking for PCEFX handouts!]

NintendoTwizer is one of the nicest guys you could meet though, always helpful to people and never bashing others. He didn't "flip a collection", he sold it when he moved to a new house.

And he didn't just get into collecting a few years ago, his dad owned a game store, he was raised into gaming.

Who gives a fuck?  None of that negates the fact that he's a leech, with more than half of his posts here asking for free stuff.

I for one did, cause I like the guy. And the OP was posting wrong info about a guy.  I didn't say anything about it making a different about raffles or trying to justify what he did. I'm just correcting it some.

what "wrong" info was posted by OP?

I was wrong, it wasn't the OP who said the two years for the collecting part, that's the only wrong info I was pointing out. 

But if we're getting into the weeds, sure, he posted in a lot of raffle threads, but how many were AFTER it ended?  And for example in the duo raffle (A fuckin DUO raffle?!), he posted "Amazing raffle, very generous!  Good luck to those that are entered", and it required a 300 post count to enter.

It looks like he enters like 3-4 raffles to me, tops.

[Off-Topic / Re: NintendoTwizer, collector who sold out for $130,000 looking for PCEFX handouts!]

NintendoTwizer is one of the nicest guys you could meet though, always helpful to people and never bashing others. He didn't "flip a collection", he sold it when he moved to a new house.

And he didn't just get into collecting a few years ago, his dad owned a game store, he was raised into gaming.

Who gives a fuck?  None of that negates the fact that he's a leech, with more than half of his posts here asking for free stuff.

I for one did, cause I like the guy. And the OP was posting wrong info about a guy.  I didn't say anything about it making a different about raffles or trying to justify what he did. I'm just correcting it some.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Will there ever be a TG16 price crash?]

Collectards are already paying more for several PCEWorks releases than the originals.

For the life of me, I can't understand paying extra for a known forgery.

Because it is literally more rare.

I think cause in part cause of the great package they put together with stolen artwork around their stolen games.  (At least I'm assuming they stole most of the artwork used).  I'm also pretty sure the ton of youtube reviewers who talk about how great this is, many of them got free copies.

[Off-Topic / Re: NintendoTwizer, collector who sold out for $130,000 looking for PCEFX handouts!]

NintendoTwizer is one of the nicest guys you could meet though, always helpful to people and never bashing others. He didn't "flip a collection", he sold it when he moved to a new house.

And he didn't just get into collecting a few years ago, his dad owned a game store, he was raised into gaming.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Flash Hiders - Arcade Card]

I was looking on wikipedia and somehow ended up on the flash hiders page, and noticed something odd.  It says

While the game requires the Super CD (known in North America as Turbo CD) to run, it is recommended that the "Arcade Card" is installed in the PC Engine for the game to run at its intended speed.

My manual for the game isn't in the best of shape, it's missing some pages, so I can't be sure, but I do not remember any mention of an arcade card needed.  And I don't see how the arcade card would affect speed anyways.  I could see frames of animation being dropped, but that would be it.   Anyone ever hear about it using the arcade card?

[NEC Console Resource / Re: Another new person just saying hi]

Well have to say of course Ys, wouldn't be right if I didn't say one cliche game.  Flash Hiders is also a fave, along with the Neutopias and Dungeon Explorers.  And of course all the bombermans, and Military Madness, and Dragon Slayer somewhere in there.

One game I should like but never could get myself to like is Order of the Griffon.  It plays like the SSI Goldbox games I love so much, but the controls is just a bit to cumbersome for my tastes.

And yes, I didn't name a single shooter.

[NEC Console Resource / Re: Another new person just saying hi]

Was 450 moo cows when I left,



This photo from google is a bit off, on the left side, you see two silos, a blue one and grey cement one,  Slightly to the up\left from there, you can see what looks like part of a blue silo.  There should be TWO blue silos there, looks like that's where they stitched two photos together.  It also erased a cement pad back in that area, and squished a building on the end there.  Not exactly "cute"

[NEC Console Resource / Another new person just saying hi]

All the other new people did an intro thread, so thought I'd say hi too.  While I'm new here, I'm not new to the PC-Engine, I've just been away for a while. I was on TurboGrafx Network on yahoo groups back in 2002ish era, and hung out on IRC and sometimes on the Magic Engine forums.

I was into the duo back when I bought one at 14 (Worked on my family farm to pay for it), got a used one from Game Dude.  About 8ish years ago I stopped with game collecting just due to no room, and the unemployment thing kinda hurt too. Since I now moved into our second house and have room for it, I dug out my collection of games and been beefing it up, and I have to say, damn, things have changed.

Magical Chase?  When I quit, it was all about Sapphire, Circus Lidos, and incomplete versions of bomberman.  Lidos isn't even all that rare anymore, they found more of them from the looks of it.  And there were never any "tg-16 cart-only" collectors; heck, I never met anyone who only collected US releases since we all got shafted.

Anyways, 'ello, and wonder if anyone remembers me.