Celebrating the first NES Tetris game crash • Hacker News Board

Re: Celebrating the first NES Tetris game crash

#31

Post by 0134340 » Sat, Dec 23, 2023, 10:05 AM UTC

teruakohatu wrote: post #17

conradev wrote: post #4

I recently got a Miyoo Mini and I almost exclusively use it to play NES Tetris. I’m hooked and I didn’t know there even was a community! https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805029072733.html

Is the Miyoo Mini worth getting?

Or you could get an r36s for less price which has a bit more power to handle some PSP, Dreamcast and N64 games. I honestly can't review it yet because it's still in delivery but /r/SBCGaming sold me on it.

Re: Celebrating the first NES Tetris game crash

#32

Post by iforgotpassword » Sat, Dec 23, 2023, 10:43 AM UTC

NamTaf wrote: post #26

gleenn wrote: post #23

I recently blew the dust off my GameBoy and Tetris game, put some fresh AA batteries in, and it happily booted up and played like a champ even after decades. I wish any hardware or software written today would preserve so well, everything requires internet connections and the hardware hardly lasts this long.

I broke out my OG beige brick Gameboy and pokemon red about 5 years ago. I swapped out the dissolved acidic powder, cleaned off the terminals and threw in some fresh batteries before hitting the switch. For a moment, I was deeply disappointed that nothing displayed. Then I remembered that they came with a brightness rotary dial. Swung that around and it was as good as the day I got it. The cartridge even held my chil…

Huh, shouldn't the save have vanished without power from the battery? My Pokémon gold save was already gone in 2018ish when I stumbled upon the cartridge plus gba, but then again that game contains an rtc, so higher power draw I guess.

Edit: got it, you helpfully left some batteries in the Gameboy for future you; you're not talking about opening the cartridge..

Re: Celebrating the first NES Tetris game crash

#33

Post by criddell » Sat, Dec 23, 2023, 11:49 AM UTC

teruakohatu wrote: post #17

conradev wrote: post #4

I recently got a Miyoo Mini and I almost exclusively use it to play NES Tetris. I’m hooked and I didn’t know there even was a community! https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805029072733.html

Is the Miyoo Mini worth getting?

I bought an Analogue Pocket and installed a bunch of emulators and games from archive.org. Gameboy Tetris is great (I bought a cartridge from EBay) but for me, that’s the exception. I’ve tried a handful of the other games and came to realize that games from that era just don’t click with me.

Re: Celebrating the first NES Tetris game crash

#34

Post by Danieru » Sat, Dec 23, 2023, 12:13 PM UTC

iforgotpassword wrote: post #32

NamTaf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I broke out my OG beige brick Gameboy and pokemon red about 5 years ago. I swapped out the dissolved acidic powder, cleaned off the terminals and threw in some fresh batteries before hitting the switch. For a moment, I was deeply disappointed that nothing displayed. Then I remembered that they came with a brightness rotary dial. Swung that around and it was as good as the day I got it. The cartridge even held my chil…

Huh, shouldn't the save have vanished without power from the battery? My Pokémon gold save was already gone in 2018ish when I stumbled upon the cartridge plus gba, but then again that game contains an rtc, so higher power draw I guess. Edit: got it, you helpfully left some batteries in the Gameboy for future you; you're not talking about opening the cartridge..

Pokemon Red had no real time clock. That was the fatal weakness of gold and silver.

Re: Celebrating the first NES Tetris game crash

#35

Post by Uvix » Sat, Dec 23, 2023, 1:13 PM UTC

Kwpolska wrote: post #27

yard2010 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. But keep in mind that is not perfect either, some games that use a clock feature depend on a small battery in the cartridge which is depleted after a decade or so

Same goes for saving games on the old systems — that's using a RAM chip kept alive by a battery inside the cartridge.

Depends on how old. NES and Game Boy were all batteries, but by the N64 and Game Boy Advance they had started to use Flash memory or EEPROMs in many games instead.

Re: Celebrating the first NES Tetris game crash

#36

Post by ceedan » Sat, Dec 23, 2023, 1:49 PM UTC

Do these players suffer from Tetris Syndrome? I played a bunch for a few weeks many years ago and had trouble sleeping because I couldn't stop seeing tetris pieces falling in place, every time I closed my eyes.

Re: Celebrating the first NES Tetris game crash

#37

Post by dzdt » Sat, Dec 23, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

One of my childhood claims-to-fame was getting a windows 3.1 version of Tetris to wrap around to negative scores. The score there was a 16 bit signed integer; after +32767 points it wrapped to -32768. At least in that version the challenge to playing at the highest speed wasn't so much the brainpower to decide where you wanted to get the pieces to go; when you get into the flow that is pretty much a nonissue. The challenge is getting the inputs to occur fast enough. On the PC the maximum key repeat rate you could set was no where near high enough, but with a good spring-loaded keyboard tapping keys that fast was doable. Later in college I tried with a laptop keyboard and it was completely impossible; the springs weren't strong enough to return the key in time to get the taps in. I'm curious about the "rolling" input method described here: maybe a workaround to get the NES controller to take inputs quickly enough?

Re: Celebrating the first NES Tetris game crash

#38

Post by ndiddy » Sat, Dec 23, 2023, 2:17 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #33

teruakohatu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the Miyoo Mini worth getting?

I bought an Analogue Pocket and installed a bunch of emulators and games from archive.org. Gameboy Tetris is great (I bought a cartridge from EBay) but for me, that’s the exception. I’ve tried a handful of the other games and came to realize that games from that era just don’t click with me.

You should try Tetris DX, it plays way better than the original Gameboy Tetris.

Re: Celebrating the first NES Tetris game crash

#39

Post by philistine » Sat, Dec 23, 2023, 2:27 PM UTC

iforgotpassword wrote: post #32

NamTaf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I broke out my OG beige brick Gameboy and pokemon red about 5 years ago. I swapped out the dissolved acidic powder, cleaned off the terminals and threw in some fresh batteries before hitting the switch. For a moment, I was deeply disappointed that nothing displayed. Then I remembered that they came with a brightness rotary dial. Swung that around and it was as good as the day I got it. The cartridge even held my chil…

Huh, shouldn't the save have vanished without power from the battery? My Pokémon gold save was already gone in 2018ish when I stumbled upon the cartridge plus gba, but then again that game contains an rtc, so higher power draw I guess. Edit: got it, you helpfully left some batteries in the Gameboy for future you; you're not talking about opening the cartridge..

You're right that the save is going to vanish from the batteries, but tests and anecdata have shown that cartridge batteries on Game Boy can easily last more than three decades.

Pokémon Silver, Gold, and Crystal have a clock inside the cartridge, limiting their survivability to around a decade.

Re: Celebrating the first NES Tetris game crash

#40

Post by crtasm » Sat, Dec 23, 2023, 2:38 PM UTC

gleenn wrote: post #23

I recently blew the dust off my GameBoy and Tetris game, put some fresh AA batteries in, and it happily booted up and played like a champ even after decades. I wish any hardware or software written today would preserve so well, everything requires internet connections and the hardware hardly lasts this long.

We got out our Nintendo DS consoles and played some download play games recently (no internet required, one sends the game program directly to the other). Great fun! The battery is less easily replacable though.