Awesome Video of Errata

August 8, 2008

Now, I realize that the "system specs" spewed forth in the above video were probably intentionally skewed so as to follow the whacky, 80s style zaniness, but as an uber nerd and somebody who's intimately familiar with NES hardware, I feel compelled to correct their errors.

Claim #1: 3.58Mhz video core clock speed
The NES video processor, a Ricoh 2C02 "Picture Processing Unit", or PPU, is actually clocked at 5.37Mhz. The CPU is exactly one third of this, or 1.79Mhz. The figure they're quoting is the timing of a color NTSC signal.

Claim #2: 240x226 resolution
The PPU actually worked with an internal resolution 256x240, though most old TVs did not display the first and last eight scanlines effectively making the resolution 256x224. This was the same for both NTSC and PAL models.

Claim #3: 16 sprite pixel depth
I don't even know where to begin on this one. Firstly, the NES had enough sprite RAM (object attribute memory, or OAM) for 64, 8x8 or 8x16 sprites. Secondly, every sprite could have three colors (four if you include transparency) from a palette of 53 colors. Every scanline could hae a maximum of eight sprites, and when this limit was exceeded some sprites were not drawn causing the infamous flicker. Finally, you could have a total of 25 colors per scanline. What the hell they were talking about to begin with baffles me, but there were no 16s involved there at all. Except maybe that internal 16-bit PPU register that could be written to through dual writes to address $2006....

Claim #4: NES has a Zilog Z80 processor
This one's easy. The NES did not have a Z80. It had a Ricoh 2A03, which was a 6502 without decimal mode and a set of sound instructions. The Gameboy, however, had a Z80 and the Sega Genesis used one as its sound processor.

Claim #5 It's an 8-bit system
Well, that's about the only thing they got right. Though, the system did have a 16-bit address bus....

Well, I'm finished. I'm sure somewhere God has smote a kitten for my nerdy rantingness, but it had to be said and I said it. Caio.

Metal Gear Music Day!

July 4, 2008

I missed a week again, but here I am performing my civic duty whilst on vacation. Today, the music of choice is Metal Gear Solid. I recently just finished the first one and as soon as I return from vacation will begin work on MGS2. If you have a PS2 and have not plaed any of these games I highly recommend picking up the recently released Essential Collection as I did. Three games for thirty bucks is a really good deal for excellent games such as these. But anyways, on to the music.

Continue reading Metal Gear Music Day!

Game Music Friday - Gerudo Valley

June 13, 2008

One of the first video game songs I remember really enjoying was Gerudo Valley from Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64. Back when I had a crappy computer and little hard drive space, I would listen to MIDI files and Gerudo Valley was one of the few songs that had a pretty good version out there. Of course, now that disk space isn't an issue, I've moved on to MP3s. However, I still find myself listening to more remixes than the actual original itself (because, let's face it, the N64 instrument library sucked). But, anyways, here are this weeks Gerudo Valley music picks.

Continue reading Game Music Friday - Gerudo Valley

Game Music Friday - Some Mario Paint

May 29, 2008

Back in August of 1992, Nintendo released unto the world the little gem known as Mario Paint. Bundled with it's own mouse Mario Paint was the equivalent of Adobe Creative Suite for the Super Nintendo. You could draw pictures, do animations, and it even came with a nifty little mouse based game called Gnat Attack. However, Mario Paint's legacy lies not in it's visual abilities (though it inspired a certain internet cartoon). No, Mario Paint is all about its music creating abilities and the amount of high quality Mario Paint remixes on YouTube is absolutely astounding. Narrowing it down to three videos was a challenge not only because of the sheer volume of videos out there, but there are two guys who have the lions share and I wanted to give everybody a chance. Oh, and Mario Paint Composer doesn't count. But, enough rambling, enjoy!

Continue reading Game Music Friday - Some Mario Paint

Welcome to Game Music Fridays!

May 23, 2008

Some time ago, video game news site Joystiq began a weekly series of posts highlighting video game music as performed by the YouTube community. For some reason unbeknownst to me they no longer do this. So in the spirit of all things game and music related, I bring you Game Music Friday. Every week I will select a theme or game and show three videos from YouTube pertaining to said topic. The only stipulation being that the music must be performed or arranged by the community. That means AMVs are out. If you have any suggestions for videos or a topic, please leave a comment below and I'll be sure to check it out.

Without further ado, I bring to you the first Game Music Friday, the topic of choice being Dr. Mario. Enjoy!

Continue reading Welcome to Game Music Fridays!

Latest Entries

• Display Time Code in After Effects with Expressions
• The De-evolution of Nintendo Box Asses
• I've been killed!
• Building a Web-based Media Player - Part 1
• We bring you... dxprog media!
• From the Orlando Anime Festival
• Speed Cubing
• Awesome Video of Errata
• Up next on dxprog.com
• Mograph - now with more 3D

Archives

• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• July 2008
• June 2008
• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• December 2006
• November 2006
• October 2006
• September 2006
• August 2006
• July 2006
• June 2006
• May 2006
• April 2006
• March 2006
• January 2006
• December 2005
• November 2005
• October 2005
• September 2005
• August 2005
• July 2005
• June 2005
• June 2003
• May 2003
• April 2003