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Interesting tangent from the article: >Today, SNES emulation is in a very good place. Barring unusual peripherals that are resistant to emulation (such as a li
by FillardMillmore 7y ago
Interesting tangent from the article:
>Today, SNES emulation is in a very good place. Barring unusual peripherals that are resistant to emulation (such as a light-sensor based golf club, an exercise bike, or a dial-up modem used to place real-money bets on live horse races in Japan), every officially licensed SNES title is fully playable
I had to look up the 'dial-up modem' reference - apparently it's a Japan-only peripheral called the "Famicom Network System" that did in fact have software available that allowed for bets to be placed on live horse races.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Computer_Network_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Computer_Network_System
http://niwanetwork.org/wiki/JRA-PAT http://niwanetwork.org/wiki/JRA-PAT
- Zenbit_UX 7y agoNintendo had dial up modems and their own intranet in 37% of Japanese households in the mid 80s? How did I not know this was a thing.
- hkmurakami 7y agoSNES was 90s iirc?
- FillardMillmore 7y agoYes, I believe it was, but this peripheral and the software was (unless I read or interpreted incorrectly) designed for the original NES. (There is a note that there were remakes of the horse race betting software for SNES and Dreamcast)
- Zenbit_UX 7y agoNot the Famicom according to GPs wiki.
- gryson 7y ago>Nintendo had dial up modems and their own intranet in 37% of Japanese households in the mid 80s? That Wikipedia link says that the Famicom (NES) was in 37% of households. Nintendo only shipped 130,000 modems, a tiny percentage of the total Famicom units sold.
- dr-detroit 7y agoThey also had HDTV and robots equivalent to roombas
- Kaze404 7y agoIf this is interesting to you, I recommend this (1) documentary on XBAND, a peripheral used to access an Xbox Live-like service for the Super Nintendo. It's a fascinating piece of engineering for the time. (1) - https://youtu.be/k_5M-z_RUKA https://youtu.be/k_5M-z_RUKA
- filmgirlcw 7y agoI rented an XBAND from Blockbuster video in 1995 and it was one of my first “online” experiences outside of using USENET in elementary school. We got a new family computer (a Pentium 90!) with a 14.4 modem and Windows 95 about 6 months later — and that’s what started me on the life I know now. But the XBAND and the article in Nintendo Power about it were an early party of my lifelong love affair with the web.
- matheusmoreira 7y agoA brazilian bank released software for the Mega Drive. Looks like it could display the accounts as well as manage investments and credit cards. Wonder how many people actually used this... https://segaretro.org/Telebradesco_Residência https://segaretro.org/Telebradesco_Residência https://www.sega-brasil.com.br/Tectoy/Telebradesco_Residencia_para_Mega_Drive https://www.sega-brasil.com.br/Tectoy/Telebradesco_Residenci... https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/1995/3/22/dinheiro/26.html https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/1995/3/22/dinheiro/26.html
- jacobush 7y agoI guess many - Sega was uuuuuuge in Brazil. It was almost like a PC.
- lambertsimnel 7y agoInteresting. Do you remember the Mega PC? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_Mega_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_Mega_PC It was a Sega Mega Drive and a PC.
- jacobush 7y agoI only learned about it long after
- malux85 7y agoWhat the heck?!? This is awesome!!!
- kzrdude 7y agoI wonder what the security solution was, assuming this didn't use SSL/TLS
- ginko 7y agoYeah, that was my first thought as well. I doubt the 68000 could have done any serious encryption.
- GuiA 7y agoI imagine that these could still be emulatable in software, right? I.e. you could simulate whatever data the golf club was generating and pipe it into the emulator, such that you could play that golf game with a Wiimote or some other peripheral. Similarly you could have some shim code for the online games like the horse race one that talks to some community run server, re-enabling a new kind of net experience.
- byuu 7y agoYou can to varying degrees, yes. There's a barcode scanner, an exercise bike, a baseball bat, and more. I designed higan around a modular tree structure so that you can just create a new derived node for any peripheral, and define whatever API you like, so that we can emulate the protocol. Then it's up to the GUI to figure out how to do something when it sees Node::ExerciseBike, and how to do I/O with its API interface. One could imagine, for instance, connecting an actual USB barcode reader to emulate the Barcode Battler, or providing a text box to hand-type a barcode number. I don't see anyone actually bothering to simulate the entire horse betting network complete with virtual bank accounts, but if you're really interested, Raphael Assenat reverse engineered quite a bit of the JRA-PAT system for fun here: https://www.raphnet.net/divers/retro_challenge_2018_09/index_en.php https://www.raphnet.net/divers/retro_challenge_2018_09/index... It's a pretty good read as well!
- crehn 7y agoFor those curious, here it is in action: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wtMlEcf8x6Q https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wtMlEcf8x6Q
- alzoid 7y agoThey also had a Satellite service (Satellaview) where they delivered a 4 episode Zelda Game that could only be playing during certain hours. https://zelda.gamepedia.com/BS_The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Ancient_Stone_Tablets https://zelda.gamepedia.com/BS_The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Ancient_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview_games_from_The_Legend_of_Zelda_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview_games_from_The_Leg...
- jowsie 7y agoThis can actually be played today, with the FM sound track, all translated into English https://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/bs1files.shtml https://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/bs1files.shtml