Games – synt4x's blog

Building a Game Boy Pocket Color

I’ve always thought the Game Boy Pocket was the sleekest looking model of the Game Boy line. Even after the Game Boy Color came out with its undeniably sharper looking color screen, I thought the GBC itself looked quite bulky and ugly in comparison. And apparently I’m not alone in thinking this, because over the last couple of years there have been several projects to recreate the GBC so it fits inside a GBP shell. I decided to build one of these ultimate Pockets for myself.

Game Collection Manager project

TLDR: I made a Game Collection Manager in Python/QT. Check it out.

A few months ago I wanted to play something from my collection, but I couldn’t decide what. I now have over 500 games in my collection, so it can be a bit overwhelming to choose. But since I already had my collection in a spreadsheet on Google docs, I thought what if I just download that as csv files and write a simple Python application that chooses for me. This idea eventually grew into a bigger project which manages a game collection. Oh and yeah, I didn’t actually play anything that day…

Region modding the Sega Mega Drive

A friend of mine was kind enough to get me a version 1 Sega Mega Drive for Christmas, since he knew I had been meaning to get one for quite some time now. The main reason I haven’t is that I’ve been a bit worried about the space all the games I’d get for it would take… but I guess I’ll have to worry about that as it happens now!

Either way, the Mega Drive I received was a PAL unit, and these days I can’t stand playing games in 50hz with borders. So obviously something had to be done. Continue reading “Region modding the Sega Mega Drive”

Fixing Glitchy Graphics on Famicom Disk System

The Famicom Disk System is an interesting piece of hardware that I’ve been interested in buying for a long time, but have been a bit apprehensive about collecting for since the floppy disk format is rather fragile. Add in the fact that the disk drive itself often needs to be recalibrated and repaired because of the drive belt wearing out and that a lot of the disks for sale have been overwritten with other games over the years, and it’s a pretty hard sell for me. Continue reading “Fixing Glitchy Graphics on Famicom Disk System”

Game Boy Pocket Backlight Mod

Recently I’ve been teaching myself how to solder, and also reading up on various console mods I could try out just for fun. An obvious, and quite simple mod is installing a backlight on a Game Boy. It only involves four solder points in total, soldering the backlight to the main board of the console. The original Game Boy consoles of course didn’t have a lit-up screen, so installing a backlight is a huge improvement. Since I already have an original Game Boy with a backlight and bivert mod — generously gifted to me by a friend who did the mod himself — and the fact that I have a bunch of Game Boy Pockets lying around, I decided to install a backlight and bivert mod into one of those. Continue reading “Game Boy Pocket Backlight Mod”

The rollercoaster is now open

The old Rollercoaster Tycoon is one of those games that I’ve been playing on and off since it first came out. Usually I’ll play it (or rather RCT2, the superior sequel) intensively for a week or so and burn out on it, and then I won’t play it again for half a year or so. But man is it still fun and addictive when you do fire it up.

rct2 Continue reading “The rollercoaster is now open”

EMS USB 64M Smartcard

This is an archived post from my old blog. Since this was the most visited post on that blog, I thought I’d replicate it here. So I went on Archive.org and found a snapshot and have replicated the post here. These days there’s a better Game Boy flashcart called Everdrive GB which is basically superior in every way. So I recommend getting that instead, although the Smartcard is still cheaper.
Continue reading “EMS USB 64M Smartcard”