Taking an AxROM to Wizards and Warriors

When I asked the question, “what made the NES so interesting”, my answer was to describe the memory mappers used by the console. But what’s interesting is that the very first cartridge to feature a memory mapper was not from Nintendo themselves; they were late to the game of expansion hardware on cartridges, since their plan to expand the console...

Oops, that last Cassette Vision post was supposed to be a review of some games for it. This is a fairly historically important console, but not a huge seller; video games didn’t really boom in Japan until the Famicom. Not a flop by any means, but maybe keep that in mind. What’s the difference between the titles on the Famicom and the titles here?...

So recently I’ve been binge-watching RandomStranger’s Famidaily project and came across his video on Guardic Gaiden, the game we know in the west as The Guardian Legend. In it, he said that the Twin Famicom has slowdown on this game that the regular model doesn’t. Now, I’ve been a big fan of the Sharp Twin Famicom– it’s got no lockout chip, a...

The Epoch Cassette Vision is often reported as the first Japanese cartridge-based game console. But reality is always a bit more complicated. In 1978, years before the Cassette Vision, two Japanese companies put together cartridge-based game consoles that were unique to Japan, but relied on technology and chips licensed from American firms. And...

Recently I’ve had a bit of a fascination with rhythm machines. Not the computerized digital ones like that built into my old Yamaha organ, but fully analog ones. There’s something quite appealing about producing drum-like sounds with just discrete circuits of transistors, capacitors, and resistors. Let’s take a glimpse into a realm so analog that...