A series of unknown files scattered after the destruction of Kiltseryl Hatchall Radium nuclear plant.
Ingrid Hellblade found Radimore's files done before Ericka Martyich did.

• 24Mar 11

  Gaming Graveyard: Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.

  For my nest Reportage I will introduce you to Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis). This console made the debut of Sonic the Hedgehog.

  

  The Sega Mega Drive was Sega's third console. It was a 16 bit console released in Japan in 1988 and in America in 1989. It was released in the rest of the world in 1990. It had the name Genesis in North America, because Sega was unable to secure the rights to the Mega Drive name.

  It was the competitor of the SNES, but is was released 2 years earlier.

  **********History**********

  *Development*

  Although the Sega Master System had proved a success in Brazil and Europe, it failed to ignite much interest in the North American or Japanese markets, which by the mid-to-late 1980s were both dominated by Nintendo with 95% and 92% market shares respectively. Hoping to dramatically increase their share, Sega set about creating a new machine that would be at least as powerful as the then most impressive hardware on the market - the 16-bit Commodore Amiga,Atari ST, and the Macintosh II home computers.

  Since the Sega System 16 was very popular, Hayao Nakayama, Sega's CEO at the time, decided to make their new home system utilize a 16-bit architecture. The final design was ported to the arcade, and eventually used in the Mega-Tech, Mega-Play and System-C arcade machines. Any game made for the Mega Drive hardware could easily be ported to these systems.

  The first name Sega considered for their console was the MK-1601, but they ultimately decided to call it the "Sega Mega Drive". "Mega" had the connotation of superiority, and "Drive" had the connotation of speed and power. Sega used the name Mega Drive for the Japanese, European, Asian, Australian and Brazilian versions of the console. The North American version went by the name "Genesis" due to a trademark dispute, while the South Korean versions were called Super Gam*Boy (수퍼겜보이 and Super Aladdin Boy (transliterated from 수퍼알라딘보이; this was the Korean version of Mega Drive 2). The Korean-market consoles were licensed and distributed by Samsung Electronics. Since the Sega Satern was on the way, the Genesis get 2 Add-ons fore life support to last long enought to bring the Satern on the scene. 1 of these add-ons are the Sega 32X. A 32 bit add-on compadable with 16 and 32 bit games.

  *Japanese Release*The Mega Drive was released in Japan in October 29 1988 for ¥21,000, almost exactly a year after the first of the fourth generation consoles - NEC PC Engine. Although this initially caused slow sales, the Mega Drive soon eclipsed the earlier machine in popularity. However, after the release of the PC-Engine CD add-on and the Nintendo Super Famicom, the Mega Drive soon lost ground. The Mega Drive was not as popular as the two aforementioned systems in Japan.

  *North American Release*

  In 1987, Sega announced a North American release date for the system of January 9 1989, making it the second console to feature a 16-bit CPU (the first one being the Mattel Intellivision) and the first to feature single-instruction 32-bit arithmetic. Sega was not able to meet the initial release date and U.S. sales began on August 14, 1989 in New York City and Los Angeles with a suggested retail price of USD$200 at launch. The Genesis was released in the rest of North America on September 15 of the same year with the price reduced slightly to $190.

  The Genesis initially competed against the 8-bit NES, over which it had superior graphics and sound. Nonetheless, it had a hard time overcoming Nintendo's ubiquitous presence in the consumer's home and the huge catalogue of popular games already available for it. In an attempt to build themselves a significant consumer base, Sega decided to focus on slightly older buyers, especially young men in their late teens and early 20s who would have more disposable income and who were anxious for more "grown-up" titles with more mature content and/or more in-depth game play. As such, Sega released titles such as Altered Beast and the Phantasy Star series. Although the NES and Nintendo's impending SNES were still threats to Sega's market share, they had forced the theoretically competitive TurboGrafx-16 system into relative obscurity, thanks in part to NEC's poor North American marketing campaign.

  *European Release*

  The European release was on November 30, 1990. In the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland it was priced at £189.99. The first UK shipment of 30,000 units was sold at retailers Comet, Dixons, Rumbelows and Toys "R" Us.

  *Brazilian Release*

  The Mega Drive was released by Tec Toy in 1990, only a year after the Brazilian release of the Sega Master System. Tec Toy also released the internet service Mega Net, and made exclusive games including a port of Duke Nukem 3D. The Mega Drive is still manufactured in Brazil, with many games built into the console.

  **********Competition**********

  Eventually, the main competition for the Mega Drive became Nintendo's 16-bit SNES, over which it had a head start in terms of user base and number of games, reversing the problem Sega had faced against the NES. The Mega Drive continued to hold on to a healthy fan base composed significantly of RPG and sports games fans. The release of Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991 began to threaten Nintendo's up-to-then stranglehold on the number one console position in the USA. Sonic was released to replace former mascot Alex Kidd, and to provide the "killer app" that Sega needed. This sparked what was arguably the greatest console war in video gaming history.

  By 1992, Sega was enjoying a strong hold on the market, holding a 55% market share in North America. Faced with a slight recession in sales and a brief loss of market share to the SNES, Sega again looked to Sonic to rejuvenate sales. The release of the highly anticipated Sonic the Hedgehog 2, coinciding with an aggressive ad campaign that took shots at Nintendo, fuelled Genesis sales a while longer and boosted Sega's market share percentage back up, to an astounding 65%.

  Less than a year later, in 1993, Sega released a redesigned version of the console at a newly reduced price. By consolidating the internal chipset onto a smaller, unified motherboard, Sega was able to both physically reduce the system's size and bring down production costs by simplifying the assembly procedure and reducing the number of integrated circuits required for each unit.

  Aside from the release of the Sega CD and 32X add-ons for the Mega Drive, Sega's last big announcement came in the form of a partnership with Time Warner in the U.S. to offer a subscription-based service called Sega Channel, which would allow subscribers to "download" games on a month-by-month basis.

  The failures of the Sega CD and 32X, a lack of effective advertising, and disputes between Sega of America and Sega of Japan had taken their toll on the company. By mid 1994, Sega's market share had dropped from 65% to 46%, and the official announcements of newer, more powerful consoles, such as the Saturn, Sony Playstation, and Nintendo 64 signalled that the 16-bit era was drawing to a close. Interest in the Genesis suffered greatly as a result, compounding its already falling sales. In 1996, less than a year after the debut of their Saturn console, Sega quickly brought their participation in the 16-bit era to an end by discontinuing production of the Mega Drive and its associated accessories. This obviously angered consumers around the world who had bought the Sega CD and 32X attachments only to see Sega abandon all support. This can, at least in slight, be seen as a contributing factor to the downfall of Sega as a console manufacturer.

  **********Resurgent Popularity**********

  In recent years, there has been something of a revival of interest in the Mega Drive/Genesis, led largely by the grey market trade in both unlicensed cartridges and dumped ROMs.

  In the 2000s, there came a trend toward plug-and-play TV games, and Radica has released licensed, self-contained versions of the Sega Mega Drive in both North America (as the Play TV Legends Sega Genesis) which contain six popular games in a small box and control pad. It does not have a cartridge slot, and thus is a dedicated console. However, Benjamin Heckendorn, of Atari portablizing fame, has proven that it is possible to connect a cartridge slot with some soldering.

  The GameTap subscription gaming service includes a Genesis emulator, and has several dozen licensed Genesis games in its catalogue.

  On March 23 2006, it was announced at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California that Nintendo will offer Sega Mega Drive games to be emulated on the Wii home console. These games will be available along with other systems' titles under the Wii's Virtual Console. The 16-bit Sega selections available on the Virtual Console at launch are Altered Beast, Columns, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, Ecco the Dolphin, Golden Axe, Gunstar Heroes, Ristar, and Sonic the Hedgehog. Each title costs 800 Wii Points ($8US) except in Japan, where they are 600 Points (¥600).

  On May 22 2006 Super Fighter Team released Beggar Prince, a game translated from a 1996 Chinese original. It is the first commercial Sega Megadrive game since 1998. It was released worldwide.

  At Tokyo Game Show on September 21 2006, Ken Kutaragi, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, announced that Sega Mega Drive game ports will be available on the PlayStation Network Platform (network service for the Playstation 3). No specific titles or price points have been confirmed as of yet, with Kutagari simply stating that these specifics will be discussed with individual publishers. This, however, was later contradicted by SEGA Japan when a short statement was issued stating "that such claims are not correct at this point".

  **********Variations*********

  During its lifespan, the Mega Drive and Genesis quite possibly received more officially licensed variations than any other console. While only one major design revision of the console was created during its lifespan, each region has its own peculiarities and unique items, while other variations were exercises in reducing costs (such as the removal of the little-used 9-pin EXT. port) or expanding the capabilities of the Mega Drive/Genesis.

  • Posted Mar 24, 2011 11:23 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
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• 22Mar 11

  Gaming Graveyard: The Nintendo Entertainment System.

  For my first reportage on gaming's lost artifacts, I will show you about the Famicom. or the Nintendo Entertainment System.

  

  The Nintendo Entertainment System (also known as NES) is a Nintendo manufactured video game console known as the Famicom (Family Computer) in Japan and Tata Famicom in Souther Asian countries. It is considered the successor to Nintendo's Color TV Game series, and is Nintendo's first home console with interchangeable cartridges. It is an 8-bit console that introduced various franchises to the world from The Legend of Zelda to Final Fantasy. Nearly 62 million units were sold worldwide, making it the best selling Nintendo console of all time (excluding the Wii). The best selling game on the console is Super Mario Bros., though the total number of units sold includes those bundled with the console (which consists of a majority of the units). The best selling stand alone title on the system is Super Mario Bros. 3 at 18 million copies sold worldwide. The Nintendo Entertainment System has been sold to retailers in a majority of Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia.

  **********History and Development***********
  

  The NES is an iconic system that consisted of vast advancements, impressive video games and the industry's most lucrative franchises. It's importance to video games is arguably unparalleled having saved the US industry from collapsing following Atari's infamous crash in the early eighties. The NES propelled video games to new heights when it came to game design, save functions, story involvement, and character control. With the NES came the modern model for third party developers on video game consoles and licensing of video games.

  Nintendo had made a name for itself by releasing games such as Donkey Kong, the Game & Watch series and the Color TV Game series. Mario had become one of the best known video game characters and Nintendo was well on their way to becoming the industry leader. After the arcade boom companies went onto creating home consoles that would let consumers play their favorite games at home, among other games made exclusively for the consoles. Nintendo had licensed their popular video games to other systems, and Donkey Kong rose to become one of the most popularly ported video game of the early eighties, appearing on ColecoVision and Atari systems, among others, in the North American market. Nintendo soon announced plans to release a console of their own in Japan titled the Famicom, or Family Computer. The project was headed by Masayuki Uemura of Nintendo R&D2 who had wanted to initially give the console a 16-bit CPU with a floppy disk drive, though because of the complicated technology they settled for an 8-bit CPU. According to Uemura, Hiroshi Yamauchi, who was then president of Nintendo, called him and told him that the sales of the Game & Watch would not last, and that they needed to start work on a new product. Yamauchi made several requirements for the new product including the need for it to be a console that connects to the television and the need for it to have interchangeable cartridges.

  Nintendo would eventually launch the system in 1983 in Japan. It was Nintendo's first console with the capability of playing different games. They released it on July 15 of that year, and it ran for ¥14,800. In order to generate early sales, Nintendo recreated their popular arcade hits Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. on the platform. They also created a game that sported the Popeye license that was titled Popeye. Interestingly, Shigeru Miyamoto had originally wanted Donkey Kong to have Popeye characters but couldn't obtain the rights to it. After Nintendo gained popularity it was no wonder that they managed to get the license, though Miyamoto was ultimately not involved in the project.

  

  A mockup of the NES.

  The first batch of Famicom consoles were glitchy and caused the consoles to crash. Nintendo immediately issued a recall on all of the Famicoms they sold, and replaced them with new hardware. Following this, the Famicom became a best selling console and launched to the top of people's most wanted lists. Countless successes spurred Nintendo to eye a new region across the pacific. Nintendo had already opened the doors to success in America with games such as Donkey Kong becoming the second best selling arcade game of all time. Game & Watch units brought on moderate success but come 1983, the year the Famicom was released, the industry wasn't in its best shape. Atari, the most well known name in video games, crashed this year when they lost all of their reliability. The games that were being released on the console were no longer generating interest among consumers, and most of them, such as the Pac-Man port and the game based on the E.T. property, were downright terrible. Atari soon enough had to dump their inventory, and soon thereafter brought the entire video game industry down when it inevitably collapsed. All good things come to an end, and this was especially true for Atari. Bad business choices and too many third party publishers wanting to get a piece of the pie would lead to the downfall, and there seemed no way out when the consumer lost interest.

  

  Early concept art for the Advanced Video System.

  While the Famicom and Nintendo was doing great in Japan, the same couldn't be said about Nintendo of America. Nintendo wasn't making many arcade hits and the Game & Watch sales were dwindling. NoA president Minoru Arakawa had to make a bold move, and decided to try and release the console in America. They attempted to get a deal with Atari, where they would release it under the name Nintendo Advanced Video Game System, though this fell through. Looking back on this Arakawa remarks that "it was the best thing to happen to Nintendo", and that "if Atari had taken the product, it's doubtful that Nintendo of America would exist today." Various attempts of releasing the system to the market always failed, and Nintendo would eventually start to release Famicom games as arcade titles under the Nintendo Vs. series, which contained similar hardware to that of the Famicom. At CES in June of 1985, however, Nintendo would unveil that they would release the Famicom in America under the name of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo tried to differentiate their console from Atari's as much as they could, knowing full well that retailers would be weary. And they were: very few agreed to purchase them, so Nintendo made a risk free deal where they would purchase back all unsold units. They released the first batch at a sole retailer in New York who reluctantly agreed to purchase it. Nintendo managed to convince some retailers by saying it was more of a toy than a video game system. The inclusion of R.O.B. the robot supported this. On October 18 of 1985, Nintendo would release the system to a few retailers and would bundle the video game Super Mario Bros. with it, which would heavily bolster sales. An estimated 9/10th of the 100,000 shipment were sold. By February in 1986, after the incredible success, Nintendo would release it to various other retailers in America and would expand their reaches to Canada. Nintendo had a much larger launch lineup than for America than they did with Japan - eighteen games compared to a measly three.

  

  The final design of the NES.

  The Nintendo Entertainment System did fantastic in America. Hits were being regularly released and after making their mark on two prominent regions, Nintendo set their sights on Europe and Australia. Nintendo would not actually distribute the consoles in these regions, and would enlist the help of Mattel to distribute it in various countries. The NES didn't do phenomenally well, and underperformed compared to the more advanced Sega Master System (excluding in Australia). Hyundai Electronics distributed the system in South Korea, who marketed it as the Comboy instead of the Famicom or Nintendo Entertainment System. By 1987, Nintendo would open a European branch and would distribute the system themselves in that region.

  Upon the arrival of the nineties, the consumer's interest in the system started to diminish. Nintendo had released the Game Boy by now, and was planning to release the NES's successor, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo had plans beyond the NES, and expected for this to occur. They would continue to distribute the NES as it was still profitable, though they had newer and bolder plans for the SNES, or Super Famicom in Japan. In the nineties Nintendo released an updated NES called the NES 2, which corrected some of the problems with the first one. Come the mid nineties, Nintendo would discontinue support of the console in America, with Wario's Woods being their last game for the system in that region (it should also be noted that Wario's Woods was the only NES game that sported an ESRB rating). By 1995, Nintendo stopped distribution of the NES, and a year later they were set on releasing the SNES's successor, the Nintendo 64. In Japan, however, Nintendo continued to sell the Famicom until September of 2003, when they stopped production of both the Famicom and Super Famicom. Due to the shortage of parts necessary for repair, Nintendo of Japan stopped repairing Famicom systems in October of 2007. They had stopped doing so years prior elsewhere. With the release of the Wii in 2006, Nintendo started to redistribute NES games online through the system's Virtual Console. The prices of the games varied, though were typically 500 Nintendo Points, or $5.

  • Posted Mar 22, 2011 6:14 pm GMT
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• 19Nov 10

  Reach Out To The Truth lyrics

  Reach Out To The Truth lyrics

  (rearranged some parts with newgrounds elements.)

  Yeah
  Naked truth lies only if you realize
  Appearing in nobody's eyes till they sterilize
  Stop the guerrilla warfare to keep it fair
  Bro change your rage to a smarter greater cause
  You know the stake is high stardom is near
  Those who sympathized you die killers pass you by
  Do not waste your time in hating flirting guys
  Use your might to Tom Fulp to do justice to them all

  Now I face out with Pico
  I reach out to the truth of Newgrounds
  Seeking to seize on the whole moment to now break away

  Oh God let me out
  Can you let me out
  Can you set me free from this dark net Portal
  Save me now
  To The end of tommorow!

  Yeah
  Naked truth lies only if you realize
  Appearing in nobody's eyes till they sterilize
  Stop the guerrilla warfare to keep it fair
  Bro change your rage to a smarter greater cause
  You know the stake is high stardom is near
  Those who sympathized you die killers pass you by
  Do not waste your time in hating flirting guys
  Use your might to Tom Fulp to do justice to them all

  Now I face out with Pico
  I reach out to the truth of Newgrounds
  Seeking to seize on the whole moment to now break away

  Oh God let me out
  Can you let me out
  Can you set me free from this dark net Portal
  Save me now
  To The end of tommorow!

  Remember the Persona 4 Battle Theme?

  Reach Out to the Truth is the normal battle theme of Persona 4. There are three versions of the track found in the Persona 4 Original Soundtrack; the ~First Battle~ version, the normal version and the ~Inst version~ (played in game in the attract mode video). It has been remixed once.

  
  

  • Posted Nov 19, 2010 10:19 pm GMT
  • Category: Music
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