UsaSatsui wrote:

I command this thread to rise from it's grave and answer my question: On NES games with a battery save feature, why -did- we have to hold reset while we turned the power off? And why was this not necessary in later games?

The only way to cheaply employ "saved" games in the NES era was by using volitive memory. This is RAM that only retains it's data until power is cut from it. When you pressed the "RESET" button, the system would cut the feed from the power supply until you released the button, thereby reclosing the connection. This was a safer way of preventing any "spikes" in the power feed to the cartridge, which could interupt the battery in the cartridge. If that happened... POOF! No more data.

Slayer1 wrote:

In the Wikipedia article on "Nightmare of Druaga" it's said that no one has ever beaten the game or rather no one has made it to top of the tower between "heaven and earth". Is this true?

I can't prove that this is bogus, however a quick search shows that there are Code Breaker cheats for the game, including Infinate Health, which would stand to reason that someone has beaten the game, and if not, it wouldn't be overly difficult. Perhaps I may try it.

5 Years life, was the what Nintendo originally claimed. However, studies have shown that a high percentage of NES games with battery backups have lasted over 20 years without dying. Also, you can replace the battery if you wish. And, as long as you know how to solder.

Slayer1 wrote:

I know the answer to this, but I want to see if I can stump you with this one Knyte... How can you set up the Source Developer Kit for Left 4 Dead?

As of the 15th of May, a beta of the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools has been released. It is available as a free download and can be found under the "Tools" tab in Steam.

Is that what you are looking for?

Ba'al wrote:

Snes9x or ZSNES?

ZSNES

Syd wrote:

Where do the majority of baby Pokemon come from? Only a very limited number of Pokemons are depicted as having both boy and girl versions.

The fact that I acually had to research this makes me depise you ever so slightly. (Mating habits of Pokemon! For fuckschiks!!!!)

There appears to be no one set way. Some pokemon have been shown has male and female, so no explanation nessicarry. (If you do need one, go get someone else to tell you about the "pidgeys and the beedrills")

There are other types, that may have different breeding methods:

For example, pokemon like sunflora and tangela most likely breed like plants but as they are mobile they can just come up and touch flowers.

Mineral pokemon are in an interesting thought but most the others are pretty straight forward.

Pokémon like Grimer and Koffing, however, probably reproduce through mitosis, or "splitting." (Though, Grimer's dex entry says something about Grimer coming from piles of toxic sludge, so that may be canon.)

And ditto can tranform its body to any form so they can reproduce with anything that can reproduce and this factor is in the games.

That's the best answer I am going to give you, because I refuse to look up the individual breeding stats on 493+ pokemon.

Douche McCallister wrote:

How about just the first 150?

No. How about just one?

Mewtwo was a genetically modified descendant of Mew created after years of work by a solitary scientist.

Douche McCallister wrote:

How do people make roms?

(Layman's Answer) You have to use, modify, or create a device that read the data stored on the cartridge's Rom chip.

(Canned answer) ROMs can be copied from the read-only memory chips found in cartridge-based games and many arcade machines using a dedicated device in a process known as dumping. For most common home video game systems, these devices are widely available. Dumping ROMs from arcade machines, which in fact are highly customized PCBs, often requires individual setups for each machine along with a large amount of expertise.

Creating images from other media is often considerably easier and can often be performed with off-the-shelf hardware. For example, the creation of tape images from games stored on magnetic tapes (from, for example, the Sinclair ZX80 computer) generally involves simply playing the magnetic tape using a standard audio tape player connected to the line-in of a PC sound card. This is then recorded to an audio file and transformed into a tape image file using another program. Likewise, many CD and DVD games may be copied using a standard PC CD/DVD drive.

I know about 10 years ago I really wanted to buy a Z64, which was a device that attached to the bottom of a N64, and had a built in ZIP drive that you could use to copy games from the cratridges and the play them off the zip disks. I think it was about $150 at the time, which I figure was cheap, because it was only the price of 3 N64 games, so buy renting games and copying them, I would make my money back in no time. Never did get it, though...

Ba'al wrote:

So what makes ZSNES better than Snes9x?

Snes9x's CPU core is written in assembly, and its graphics engine and SPC700 engine are well optimized. Both versions sport very nice GUIs. Snes9x supports graphics modes 0-7, 2 joysticks, transparencies, Super FX support and has real time save/loading. This is now one of the best SNES emulators around, and it stands only second to ZSNES in terms of compatibility.

ZSNES is a highly compatible, highly configurable SNES emulator for the PC. It boasts multiple video filters, high-quality audio, and extremely accurate emulation of the SNES hardware.

Aside from emulating much of the system's internal and external hardware to obtain a high compatibility rate with games, ZSNES has many notable features as of the current version:

Video scale adjustment
Video filters
Video synchronization
Windowed and fullscreen display modes
Rewinding and fast-forwarding of gameplay
Movie recording in ZMV format
Music ripping in SPC format
Soft-patching in IPS format
State saving and loading in ZST format
Cheat code creation, modification, and application in CHT format
GUI color customization

I just chose ZSNES as that is the one I have been using for the last 10 years. It probably doesn't really matter which one you use. Just get the one you like best.