I got them all! Even the end guys. But minutillo.com doesn’t have room to post them all. I’ve already put up Guile and Chun-Li, I’ll add one more, hmmm… how about… Ryu. What should I do with the rest? Is there some other site I should donate them to or is willing to host them? All together, they’re about 20 megs, and if they’re within reach of the GoogleBot, I’d expect a reasonable amount of bandwidth would be needed too.

UPDATE: Found a host, here are all the MP3s.

Guile – and I can get the rest tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll post them all here though, that would take up too much space.

The sprites will take a little longer. I compiled in some options to dump the video RAM and some other buffers, but now I have to figure out what kind of crazy format they’re dumped in and how to convert them to something reasonable.

For absolutely no good reason, my latest thing is ripping music and sprites from old video games. I did this animated gif of Chun-Li the old fashioned way, which means I take screenshots from MAME and then import them into Photoshop for painstaking pixel by pixel cutout work. (actually just masking out the colors of the background works well and is pretty fast)

I also know I can rip music by setting up one of those programs that records all the sound passing through your sound card to a file. But both of these methods are a pain: Screenshots and cutting out sprites takes too long, and recording music means you’ll also record sound effects. I want to go right to the source! So I downloaded the source. Of MAME. And I’m looking at it now.

It seems there’s some defines in there to do just exactly what I want, to dump out the sprites as they’re rendered to all seperate files, and to dump the sound, channel by channel, also to seperate files! But, you need to compile those flags in. It looks like the path of least resistance there is to do the work on my PC since MAME only compiles out of the box on the Mac if you have CodeWarrior.

Of course by relying on the lazyweb I can get some of what I want for free: Here’s an MP3 of Chun-Li’s music, and one of Rastan. But I want more. I want ALL.

Don’t miss this movie:

Man, this game is hard! But all my effort is finally paying off. I am in the top 10 players worldwide in the realm of Expodrine in Progress Quest!

My character, Vigo the Unholy, is wicked cool. I’ve got a +67 Polished Pronged Broadsword, and +49 Cambric Banded Diamond Mail Vambraces. I just finished Exterminating the Pit Fiends, and just now I’m looking for the Puissant Talisman. Soon I’ll be done with Act XLVII, I wonder what turns the plot will take in Act XLVIII?

I just hope my boss doesn’t find out I’ve been playing at work. How else can I make any progress?

UPDATE: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!O!O!!OO!!!!! The Council of Roilwachhs must have met to vote on the rankings right after I posted this, I just sank to 79th place. I must redouble my efforts…

Nintendo says their next console is coming out in 2005 or 2006, at the same time, or even before Xbox 2 and PlayStation 3. Will this be the first Nintendo console that actually comes out on time?

More at The Register and Planet GameCube.

I played DOA2:HC (thanks Toto!) long enough to open up the CG Gallery, and at the same time some sort of other secret option opened up on the mode select screen. It’s in between Options and CG Gallery, and it says “???”. When you select it, nothing (apparently) happens. What is it?

(by the way this DOA2:HC is the sort-of-prequel to the game I almost got the poster for at the Tokyo Game Show, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, which comes out in the US at the end of this month, but only for the stupid Xbox.)

It seems Nintendo has a new version of the Game Boy Advance. Now it’s smaller, backlit, square, and guess what: proprietary battery pack! (but they claim super long battery life.) $99, available March 23rd.

Compare with original GBA | USA Today story | More pictures at Gamespot | Official press release from Nintendo

The backlit screen is a big plus, but it looks really uncomfortable to hold and play. Maybe I’ll just wait and get the Gameboy Advance Player instead two months later for half the price.

I showed Jenny Hextris and she said “Remember that other game I used to like, Lines or something?” One Google search later: Lines

Her jaw dropped at the power of the internet. I think it was at that exact moment that she was enlightened.

I was thinking today that it might be a fun exercise to make a nice version of Hextris that worked on both Windows and OS X. I forgot that on the Lazy Web, all you need to do is type hextris.com.

Not that smooth looking though.. hmm…..

I beat the game! But it still reports only 33% complete. I focused on moving the main story ahead, without doing the side jobs or rampages, or searching every crevice for secrets. Maybe I’ll go back in for more. What a great game! I used to be a total Nintendo zealot, but GTA3 is the game that finally made me branch out into other systems.

I just missed the concert by a few weeks, but I got the CD! It comes with the December issue of Famitsu Cube plus Advance. Let me tell you, what a magazine! Besides the regular video game content (which I can’t read), it had:

• the CD
• fold-it-yourself cardboard CD case
• pullout walkthough of Yoshi’s Island
• stickers
• IRON ONS

…all for only 590 Yen!

As my gift to you, the viewing public, here’s one of the tracks: Dr. Mario. Get it while the getting’s good, it may disappear at any time.

Most obscure music on the CD that I was able to recognize: MACH RIDER.

Pictures from the Tokyo Game Show. I was in Japan on my honeymoon a coupla months ago while the show was going on, and my new wife and I took a whole bunch of pictures. If those pictures are interesting to you, you might also like the rest of our pictures from Japan.