I know it's not over yet, but this sure has been an interesting weekend. Not quite as diverse as I originally thought, being that I only played Super Mario Brothers. If I played it on multiple formats does that count? No?
My first goal this weekend was to try to find a way to capture the gameplay. This was inspired by our own
Crabmaster2000 (of course), as well
davidr64yt, who has over 400 videos of his gameplay to watch (with audio commentary).
At first I decided to try capturing the gameplay with my old capture device. The video was nice but the lag was so great that it was unusable. Basically it would be great for a traditional JRPG but it is useless for action. Next I tried using a VCR, but no usable VHS tape busted that (which is ironic considering that at my current work I find old VCRs all the time). My final was to record it while playing on an emulator. I'm not super hip to this, mainly because NES games just don't interest me unless I'm playing with an original controller (though I don't have this problem with any other platform). While I was able to get some usable video in this manner, I'm not going to post it, due to the fact that it is ugly (the colors are off).
While I did spend a large amount of my gaming time jerking around with production, I did manage to sneak in some SMB action. Despite my confession of not playing it in a long time, when I picked up my NES controller it felt like I never put it down to begin with. Within a few moments of adjustment (primarily to get the controller into a comfortable playing position) I was able to play quite competently. I did have some difficulty remembering where the second set of warp pipes were located (though I found the third quite easily). Once I remembered (watching a speedrun of the Vs. SMB game jogged this memory) I was able to skate to the end pretty quickly. I still haven't beat it though. For some reason I can get to World 8-2 very quickly, but once I get there die. Usually I can get to 8-4, but once that happens I die again, loosing my fireball, then I waste the rest of my lives (which are usually three) at Bowser.
I think that I end up using the VCR option to record, though I would love to find an encoding box under $60 that can record in real-time (probably hopeless). I think from now on I will start recording gameplay the
first time I fire up the game, just for fun. Any tips that you, the fine folks of RF Generation, would like to share would be much appreciated.
