What is the Holiday Season for you? For me, it's the idea of "free time" (and spending time with friends and family, above all else). I am always getting into something, but during free time, I like to experiment with many technical things, ROM Hacking being one such example. I also do other "technical" things that involve long, drawn out processes due to modern hardware being a pain to work with in regards to retro stuff. That said, let's begin...
Experiment 1!
The Video CD, according to Philips
[img width=385 height=345]http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a136/DarkTheThief/f38cb4de-4dfc-11e6-966d-7e7ea334f58a_zpsqiarpkkg.jpg[/img]
This is going to sound strange to everyone, I am sure, but I really like what one would describe as "dead formats", but "dead" is far from the truth! While the Video CD is not making a comeback, Laserdiscs and (as far as I know) Betamax Tapes have big collector markets these days. In fact, one store here in my Hometown sells Laserdiscs and makes a lot of money doing it. Anyway, to get to the point, ever since I learned of Video CDs' existence, I've been fascinated with them. So I decided to try my hand at making some. It was hard. See, when the Philips CD-i released (note that my CD-i is the only method I have of playing these Video CDs), Philips added 4 certain files to their Video CDs that prevented them from playing on standard Video CD Players. This odd setup also prevents standard Video CDs from playing on the CD-i. Anyway, the 4 files can be found easily enough by searching the internet, but they can't be added to a CD easily. I learned how to do it thanks to the very helpful folks at the forums here: http://www.videohelp.com/ What's more, your video files need to be of a specific file type and at the same time, encoded a very specific way to work. So why is all this hard? You can't do it on a modern Operating System. You need to use a VM (Virtual Machine), which is an Operating System that works like a program within your current Operating System. Was all this difficult? Yes. Did it take me around 3 days to get it right? Also yes. Was it worth it? To me, very much so. I like older technology, and I'm sure we can all relate in one way or another, considering what this website is.
Experiment 2!
ROM Hacking, because I can
[img width=569 height=521]http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a136/DarkTheThief/Faxanadu%20ROM%20Hack_zps3ubsfxno.png[/img]
ROM Hacking is hacking an older game's data to modify/add stuff to the game. One thing I love about RPGs is that you can name (or rename) Characters to whatever you want. The example above is from an NES Game called Faxanadu. In the Famicom Version, you could name the Main Character, but for reasons unknown to me, they took this feature out of the NES Version. I found out about this about a year ago, and at the time, I couldn't do anything about it. As time passed, I learned how to hack ROMs, so I did what you see above to remedy it. I did something similar with The Goonies 2, also an NES Game (though you couldn't name characters in that one in any version). At some point after this, I thought "What if I could do this with a 16-Bit Game?", so I tried my hand at ROM Hacking Shadowrun for the Genesis. This was surprisingly easy, and while I don't have a Screenshot on hand to show it, it was also just a simple Name Change. Was this whole thing stupid? To a few people, yes, but I can say that at least two friends thought it was cool.
I get a lot of free time in October, November, and December, and those are just a couple of things I did this year in said free time. The Holiday Season is great: Time with family and friends, time off from work/free time in general, giving and receiving items, and much more. What do YOU like to do during your free time this time of year?
Super Mario, a name we all know and love...Has he ever disappointed us? Nope. However, even our friendly neighborhood Plumber has skeletons in his closet. Today, I'm here to tell you the story of the Mario Game that could have been. This is the story of...
[img width=497 height=375]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_60EdE-4xjwk/TADDkn-sYkI/AAAAAAAAHFA/sQ3fnkPENlk/s1600/front.jpg[/img]
Super Mario's Wacky Worlds was to be developed for the Philips CD-i by a company called NovaLogic. It was to be the sequel to Super Mario World. Developers Silas Warner and John Brooks were drafted as the game's designers, and worked 24 hours a day for two weeks on the game, finishing only a part of one level to present to Nintendo. Their meeting with the Nintendo developers came at 8:00 AM on a Friday morning, and they had their short part of the game on a disc four hours before this. Nintendo was very much impressed at the two men's job, but because of poor CD-i sales was forced to cancel the game. This ended the CD-i career of Warner, who had expected Nintendo's exact reaction, however other developers such as lead artist Nina Stanley stayed with the project.
So what became of this game? It was unfinished and ultimately never released. Well, officially, anyway. There is a Prototype ISO floating around the Web that can be played, but it is far from a complete game. Anyway, after this game was cancelled, we got this...
[img width=505 height=450]http://www.mariowiki.com/images/8/8f/Hmario.jpg[/img]
That's Hotel Mario, also for the CD-i. It's a Puzzle Game with some platforming elements. The general goal in each stage is to close all the doors on every floor. However, various enemies will interfere and reopen them at times. Elevators are needed to travel between floors. It can be quite difficult at times, even to the point where it would become un-fun to the casual gamer. Anyway, this game is generally not accepted by Mario Fans, or Nintendo for that matter, despite it being a decent game.
Well, that's all. Thanks for reading! 
Did you know that in the 90s, a "Legend of Zelda" Game was released by Philips called Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon? After a botched deal between Nintendo and Philips to create a CD Add-On for the SNES, Philips got the (temporary) right to use some of Nintendo's Characters in they're games. As far as I know, 4 different games were created using the characters. One of them was Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. It was a Side Scrolling Platformer much like Zelda II, but unlike Zelda II, the whole universe hates this game, and the other three games as well. Why? Like always, I have no idea. What I do know is that these games are fun to me, and I actually enjoy them. People say the Voice Acting is awful, the animation is awful, and the gameplay is awful, but I don't think so. As such, I did a whole LP (Let's Play) Series of Videos for The Wand of Gamelon. It was certainly tough, but I managed to play through the whole game. So, I now proudly present you with all the parts right here. Here we go!
Well, that's it. All 16 parts. I hope you enjoy watching it. 
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