The Gamer's Quarter

[Tablesaw]

I just received a copy of the Encyclopedia of Game Machines, and it's pretty good stuff. I'm filling in a lot of the gaps in my console knowledge, and it's a very beautiful book in general.

But as I read about Nintendo peripherals available only in Asia, I really wonder why I haven't heard about them before. I mean, for almost a year, people have been talking about how the Revolution will allow players to download older Nintendo games. Recently, there's been a lot of comparison to the GBA rereleases of NES games and, more recently, to Xbox Live Arcade. But why is it that in all of these articles, editorials, and commentaries, I haven't heard about the iQue, the new Nintendo console which lets Chinese players download Nintendo 64 games onto flash cartridges for about $5? See, that seems pretty relevant to me. Have I been reading the wrong blogs? I mean does it really take a book filled with slow, unelectronic words to show the history of Nintendo's online downlad service with the Satellaview peripheral for the Super Famicom? It seems like even Nintendo's wifi kiosks providing DS demos to Japanese gamers is underreported, though pretty damn interesting in the scheme of Revolution speculations.

Seriously, is it just me? Should I be looking at some other sources? Or is it just a general English-language bias against the game-delivery innovations that never left East Asia?
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It's the saw of the table!

[ryan]

Don't they have wifi DS demos here? I thought people could download stuff inside EBs.

And it's totally because of bias, because no one wants to hear about anything interesting ever.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[dessgeega]

[Alc]

[Shapermc]

I don't know... I mean, the iQue is pretty old news, and as far as I am aware it was considered a failure. I mean, the only reason it was released was because Nintendo wanted to attempt to break into the pirate infested China.

Also, the Satellaview was much before the times of the internet. So I mean, there is no real reason to talk about it. People do still talk about Sega Channel though, which one of the two compines actually had the decency to release over here.

Oh, and the DS downloadable demos, yea, I don't know. I have bitched about that quite a few times. Sometimes it even allows you to download new songs and items and whatnot that actually save to your carts. I don't talk about it alot because not alot of news gets out about it. The stuff that does usually makes me either angry, or it does not pertain to me, so I ignore it.

I think you are just reading the wrong news honestly.

How is the book? I was tempted to get it, but I mean, it sounded like it got a horrible translation.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Tablesaw]

[Shapermc]

[dessgeega]

plus i made their news post a while back so they're clearly people of taste.
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[Shapermc]

[Lockeownzj00]

[Alc]

You can generally buy iQue's from the large Asian import shops online (Lik-Sang, Lan Kwei, Goldenshop etc), and Satellaviews pop up on ebay from time to time (not that they're of any use, of course), there's one going NIB right now in fact. They are obscure but not unknown. The real issue is that neither were ever released in the west so most people won't have heard of them.

[Lockeownzj00]

question: i've always wondered about defunct wireless/networking-capable systems like the Satellaview: would it be possible (admittedly probably through lots of effort and money, but i'm just talking about in theory) to set up one's own network for the system to connect to?

Would there be a way to trick it into connecting to some independent closed-network type thing? Could I theoretically set up a brand new Satellaview 'system' and have at least one other person connect to it and download something off of it?

[dark steve]

In theory I don't see why not, but you'd probably have to hack the living hell out of it.

[Alc]

I assume you don't mean getting your own satellite in orbit to provide service.

It'd be slightly more practical to attempt to reverse-engineer the protocol it requires and trick it to upload some BS ROMs. It's not going to be easy, and you wouldn't have the original interface. If you wanted to enable your friend to use the service, he'd have to have his SNES hooked up to your PC.

I'n terms of user-created networking services offered to commercial games that weren't intended to use them, there have been a few attempts. There's the PC GTA online thing, which last I checked was doing alright, Warpipe for the Gamecube where you can play Mario Kart Double Dash/that Kirby racing game over the net, and I seem to remember there being some fan-made replacements of various Dreamcast games... maybe Quake 3? PSO, if the servers aren't up any more? Also some naughty people play games they haven't paid for on an Xbox Live!-alike service through their PC. So yeah, it does happen, but only if the functionality is lacking and someone can be bothered.

[Lackey]

I seem to remember my brother-in-law playing Halo 1 over internet connection using a fake system link. I don't know how that works, but I guess the functionality would already be there.
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