"Cause our shitty engineers didn't design our console with a blast processor, even though they had over 2 years after the release of the Genesis."

"Because we can see the future."

Yeah NES was the best. We kinda kept begging my parents to get one until after SNES came out. I did the same thing with the 3DO. They went from shit-tons of money down to people donating them to goodwill just to get 'em out of their house. I was really into FMV back then so I was excited for Duelin Firemen so I got one, but the Dreamcast was sent to me and I sort of fake lied about how much I liked some Sega games more than Nintendo games (like Sonic Adventure) and the 360 was literally curbed by someone so I took it.

But I can get netflix on the 360 and usually don't have to use a screwdriver to keep a game in. Still, NES is the best.

Still my favorite sound chip, to. Sure it's primitive (not even a chip really, it's part of the CPU) but there's something about the nonlinearities in the oscillators that just really works for me. Gameboy sounds really different. I'm pretty sure there's a fixed lowpass filter in there that has a lot to do with it, too. OR maybe it's something about how vibrato is calculated, or some kind of subtle artifacts from the way it calculates smooth pitch changes or something, I don't know. A pulsewave lead with vibrato on the NES has this kind of haunting, melancholy timbre to it that I've never quite heard from any other synth.

IZ, you don't need a screwdriver, replace the connector that the games plug in to. I'm pretty sure you can still gt them or under (I replaced mine about a decade ago but I've seen them for sale in the past year, I think it's still a stock part) and you don't even need to solder, it's socketed onto the motherboard so you just open up the NES, take out a few screws, pull the old, worn out connector and plug the new one in.

Or you could do what we always did in middle school and keep a Game Genie permanently plugged in.

Hell yeah that's 199X IZ talking. If a game didn't play just stick another one on top of it like some video game threesome. #whattheydontteachyouatworldofnintendo

But if I still had my nintendo I'd be taking it apart to circuit bend and chiptune it! I suck at it but I've made a pretty cool bent gameboy color before I broke it and hooked it up to a little guitar pickup.

I think my favorite format was S3M or XM though personally.

Yeah, sticking another game on top was how Idid it usually since I didn't own a game genie. I had a friend who, if blowing into the cartridge (which we all know now makes it worse in the long run) didn't work, would rub first the back then the front of the cartridge on his belly in fast circles. There's no way it could possibly have done anything (unless maybe through some incredible fluke it built up a static charge on the plastic that drew dust away from the contacts, but I would bet a month's pay that did not happen) it did seem to work about 1/3 of the time, and it's probably the dumbest NES ritual I've ever heard of.

s3m is cool, although I used Impulse Tracker so I usually saved in its native .IT format.

The cartridge slot is a proprietary design (in that there's no standard socket that uses the same number of pins with the same spacing), so it's not a stock part... but fans of the system developed and sell replacement connectors. Most people who replace them these days disable the hinky carriage you push down after inserting the cartridge.

In the past maybe 5 years or so, the community for refurbishing and modding retro consoles has exploded and some very interesting things have come out of it. You can get a little board now to put in your NES that supports HDMI at 1080p, stereo audio, a frame buffer, and scanline generation. Except for the stereo audio (the sound chip outputs stereo but the console only has a mono channel wired up by default) these things are all important to have if you ever want to play on a large modern TV and not have it look like hot garbage.

It's pretty cool.

I'm glad there's still a big market for old school gaming! When I had a dreamcast I downloaded an .iso with every NES game on it, so it all worked fine for me! But it's like Spotify vs. Buying a Vinyl. I like pinball more than video games but if you told me that there was something that recreated the experience of pinball at home (without buying the actual pinball machine) I'd tell you to go fuck right off. Glad to know the old mare is being used and loved.

Modding and DIY in general has really been amazing for the last 5 years or so for sure. Just the fact that you can go on Highlyliquid and get a board for that will let you build almost and custom MIDI controller, or one that will let you add MIDI to almost any switch matrix (i.e. no velocity) keyboard, or add MIDI control to the joystick ports on an Atari 2600 still blows my mind and that stuff's not even very new.

In the music world, it's gotten to the point where a lot of DIY stuff you can make for a couple hundred dollars is as good as or better than comparable commercial things that cost 5-10 times as much (if there's anything comparable at all). It's really a great time to tinker with things.

I worked for the 2010 Census. I knocked on one door, and a crotchedy old white dude came out, I told him I was with the census, and he said, "Oh, I've been waiting for you."
I'm initially afraid that he's going to kill me, but instead he says, "There are two people living in this household, that's all The Constitution requires me to tell you."
He the goes on a rant about Obama and Obamacare, after about 5 minutes I cut him off and said,"Well sir, I really need to get back to work, but before I go may I ask one more question?"
"What's that?"
I begin to read from my script as stiffly as possible, "Are you or any members of this household of hispanic, latino, or Spanish orgins?"
Irritated he says, "Do I look like that boy?"
"No sir, have a nice day."
I leave with a chuckle. Nothing like some IRL trolling to brighten my day.

Oh god, I worked the 2010 Census too.

Nothing made me inwardly groan like going up to a door and seeing American flags everywhere.

Did you also get the "I only have to tell you how many residents there are, because The Constitution only mentions the Census for numbers, not data on race, income, or anything else" schtick? Libertarians are big on that. Neal Boortz would tell his listeners not to give census takers anything more.

Eek! I never canvassed but worked phones for the Fund for the Public Interest for a while. Even though it was for good, it was still the "always be closing" foot-in-the-door kind of mentality. I lost it when I called some confused old lady about a campaign, I dunno, somewhere in Pennsylvania maybe and it was quota from her or my job. Like I've never even been to Pennsylvania! She thought I was calling about her husband, who had just died, ya know.. I just couldn't do it. It was like robbery so I just dropped the mic and walked out because I knew what my supervisor would say anyway. Greedy nonprofits are worse than almost anything.

But like the Fund, this sounds like one of those jobs that would be really easy to get kids into: DO YOU LIKE NINTENDO? just like the Fund is always like DO YOU LIKE TO SAVE THE PLANET? Fuck, I'd rather work at World of Nintendo.